500: Players Only Love You When They’re Playing

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly podcast where two old internet vets talk about technology, the internet, where it's going to shit and what we do to fix it.

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian and Jason, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Let's get started. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Party time, episode 500. I raided my kids' stash of toys, I thought you'd appreciate that. You probably just woke them up so your wife's going to come in and scream at me.

Probably, that's very possible. We're doing a rare late night recording. I have my wine. Yes, I have some Guinness. And yeah, it's funny. So I lost power right when we were going to record on Tuesday morning. It is now Wednesday at 8.15 at night, which is technically past my bedtime by about half an hour.

Yeah. It is for me. I mean, certainly since my kid has been born, like 9 o'clock, my brain shuts off. So we've got 45 minutes of decent podcasts. And after that, I might just be snoozing. We'll see. If we make it a 45, I'll be – I think we should get a pass because it's episode 500.

Come on. Eight years. Eight years we've been doing this. So I couldn't get my electrician guy out. And he wasn't answering my phone because he was at another famous person's house doing their electric side. Sorry, you said another famous person's house as if implying that you are – No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Not me. No. He's always doing famous people. So he was – it's when he's trying to get a hold of him, he doesn't answer. He's at a famous person's house. So he was at – was it Kaylee Cucoe? Is that her name? Oh, the Big Bang Theory? Big Bang Theory, yeah. We'll be talking about some Bing Bang people later. Okay, yeah. So we were trying to text him all day.

And I'm like, dude, come on. I think it's a breaker. Come, help, help. So I didn't have any power all day. So I lost an entire day's worth of work for a $200 part. So anyway, we're back in the saddle. Back in the saddle. Knock on wood. We're drinking. It's episode 500. And we're going to give you some stale news.

Yes. Old news. Older than usual. Apologies for that. But anyway, let's start this 500-episode train wreck off in typical Grumpy Old Geeks fashion.

Let's talk about the nifty. Woo, nifty. So Stevie Nicks has crushed my dreams was a title on TMZ that I saw and caught my eye because NFT is on TMZ. Oh, we're getting acronym overload there. So Nathan Apodaca wanted to put his little video, his little TikTok meme video of him on the skateboard with, you know, the ocean spray and the dreams in the background.

He wanted to put it up as an NFT. And he reached out to Warner Music and they said, let me ask the songwriter, which would be Stevie Nicks. And she said, nope, ain't going to happen, buddy. And, you know, because you actually have, I would argue that he not only would have to get the rights from Stevie Nicks, he would probably actually have to contact Ocean Spray.

I don't know about that. Well, he's using their copywritten logo, their juice, their product to sell something. I don't know. I mean, they gave him a truck full of ocean spray. Well, yes, because at that point it was good advertising, not a you're going to make a lot of money and we want to be cut into the deal.

Yeah. I mean, he might have. We don't know. He was offering Stevie Nicks 50% of the sale. Okay. Hold on a second. Yeah. Now, let me just break this down for you really quickly. Rumors as of 2017 had sold 40 million copies. And this is just one of Fleabag's bestselling multi-platinum albums.

It is the 11th bestselling album in UK history. It has received the Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association in America for 20 times platinum certification or 20 million copies shipped. And that was back in 2012. Stevie Nicks doesn't need your fucking pocket change.

Exactly. Yep. That's pretty much it. That's why she didn't care when it was a big thing. Good on her for not selling out for some easy cash. Now, look, I know record labels are scrambling right now to try to figure out this NFT stuff and the deals and, look, a mutual friend of ours, Sean Bonner, has gone on an NFT fucking mission online and he's trying to explain.

Oh, did you read his new thing? I read it all. And I understand it. It makes a lot of sense for younger, up-and-coming visual artists. Everybody is grasping for straws right now because if you're a creator, no matter what you do, be it music, be it film, be it digital artwork, podcasting, whatever, everything is out there basically for free.

So you're trying to figure out a way to make money. Do I really think that NFTs are going to be a thing? No. They will go away eventually. No. Sorry. I apologize. They will not go away. They will be there. But we are in a mad scramble gold rush bubble right now.

It's not going to be like this. So let's all calm the fuck down. And by the way, we also can't steal other people's artwork and put it into our NFTs. Oh, that's a big thing. Yeah. That's a big thing right now. Even, but here's the, you know, Apodaca is going to actually put it up for sale still.

Yep. But he's going to put it up for $500,000 with no song. Yep. And yeah, good luck. Nobody's going to buy that. No. Ain't going to happen because the song made it, you know. Let's be honest here. So yeah, it's called copyright.

Get off your skateboard and look it up, buddy. Sorry. You're screwed. The crazy thing about this is like we can look at this and laugh at it. And, you know, obviously this is, he's not a young man, this dog face or whatever he's calling himself, Nathan Apodaca.

But what we're discovering is how woefully misunderstood copyright is and how many people don't understand. And of course they don't. This is the generation that was born of the generation that stole everything online, that just downloaded entire catalogs off Napster.

Of course they don't understand copyright. But unfortunately, the lawyers do. Well, I think he does actually, you know, kind of understand it because he did ask permission. There's a, he did ask. I think somebody told him he needs to ask permission. Probably. I think if it were, if he were left to his own devices and he figured out the labyrinth that you have to go through to even put up an NFT for sale, somebody helped him with that, I'm guessing.

So I'm thinking that those people said, you know, you probably just can't do this. Yeah. Or his lawyer that he has now, his, his high powered Hollywood attorney, because he made a fortune off that video, you know, and good for him. It was a good video. It was funny. Um, you know, and it was funny.

And he had his 15 minutes of fame and he made his money. Stopped trying to cash it in even further. Mm hmm. Get back on your skateboard and give us something new. Dance, monkey, dance. Yeah. Find another song. Yep. Just skateboard too and see if that goes viral.

Good luck with that. So I had some good news out there for anybody that may be potentially averse to going out and getting your vaccine. If you get your vaccine, and by the way, you can right now, if you happen to be diabetic and this ties in directly with the story.

Yeah, I know. Krispy Kreme will offer you a free donut all year long. If you just show your vaccine card, that's one donut a day. Absolutely free just to get the damn vaccine. So get your diabetic asses into the fucking CVS. No, here's the thing.

They should give you the donuts until you're diabetic. So you can get the vaccine. They're not, they're not thinking for the long game. Oh my God. Yeah, no. And I love it, on the name on the card that they've been passing around is Jane Doe.

Like, you know, Doe. Yeah. Funny. Har. Har. Dad jokes. Still. Krispy Kreme donut. I'm going to cash in on that. And I can't drive my self-driving car to my Krispy Kreme because, you know, this is episode 500. We're eight years into this thing and self-driving cars are still 20 years away.

For eight years, you and I have been covering stories about how self-driving cars are just around the corner. Nope. Nope. I saw this one over at Geekology and it's drone footage of a guy testing out Tesla's full self-driving autopilot mode on an unprotected left turn.

So he's making a left turn basically in the middle of the road. And long story short is he would have died about 85% of the time if he wouldn't have stepped in. So, yep. Nope. Not ready for prime time.

It's well worth watching if you want to spend the time. But if you don't want to spend the time, yeah, he'd have died a lot. In the news. Speaking of Tesla. Apparently, you can kill yourself now with a car you can buy with Bitcoin.

Yeah. Yeah. You can go buy it with Bitcoin, says Elon Musk. And we knew this was coming because they said so a while ago. I mean, duh. They bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and have been sitting on it and they're running a bunch of nodes for it to speed up the transaction times.

But it still takes about six hours to, you know, get your Bitcoin through their system. But here's the sticky wicket. So you buy your Tesla with Bitcoin, you take it home, you go, man, not for me. And you want to return it.

Well, they have the choice of what they pay you back in if they're going to give you dollars or Bitcoin. Because by the time you leave the lot, Bitcoin could have gone up like three X and they're going to be like, we're going to give you the cash. You're screwed. So get it. They've basically now created another new unregulated market.

You can buy Teslas, hold on to them, see if Bitcoin goes up or down, return your Tesla and perhaps make money in US dollars, depending on if Bitcoin went down or not. No, because it's up to Tesla. So if you return it and Bitcoin has gone down, they're going to pay you back in Bitcoin.

But if Bitcoin has gone up, they'll pay you back in dollars equivalent to what you spent with the Bitcoin. You see why unregulated currency is fun, kids? Exactly. I don't know if your Tesla stock went up anymore today, but I thought you were going to sell it, though.

I haven't sold it yet because it's been down. I'm waiting for it to go back up. Okay. Oh, man. And I talked about the Dispo app and that I wouldn't review it because of their, just their policy with invite only, you know, that stupid red velvet rope type of thing.

I was thinking red velvet cake because we were talking about Krispy Kreme, but just the velvet rope. So, yeah, David Dobrik is in hot water because of, you know, some rapiness going on with one of his buddies that he was complicit to, sort of. I mean, still, that's still working through.

But yeah, everybody kind of just said, no, we're done. We're done. We're stepping away. And yes, of course. Of course. Because once you start talking the amount of money that we're talking about, you can't have that kind of stuff in your past. I mean, even though, even though this hasn't gone through the court yet, though, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, everything's alleged, but it doesn't matter in our day and age.

Yeah. Unless you're Elon Musk, then you can fucking do anything you want. It doesn't seem to fucking matter. But yes, you can't, you cannot do this shit, especially if you're in your twenties and we're talking millions of dollars. You just can't. I told you the other week that I'd started listening to the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

They fucking went into this big time on the latest episode and Scott Galloway was just like, here's the fucking deal. You want to play with the big boys? You got to be a big boy. You don't get to be a little fucking shit. You cannot have this kind of shit on your record. You have to.

Sure. You're a kid. Okay. But as soon as that fucking thing is signed, as soon as you've got $20 million in your pocket, grow the fuck up. Yeah. And these people aren't growing up. So. Yeah. Selling out comes with strings. Just ask Green Day, you know, it's a, yeah, that, that heroin addiction that Billy Joe had for a long time kind of disappeared after that dookie money came in, came back.

I'm sure every now and again, every now and again, in between albums, there may have been a, you know, uh, an upswing, but, uh, at least he wasn't doing it on fucking YouTube. Yes. So much. See, that's the, that's the way musicians are great at it.

Just like, you know, they take time off to, you know, to write. They're taking time off to write. I will touch exactly on the same topic again at the library when we get there. Okay. But since we're in the middle of talking about shitty male misconduct, I thought, uh, you would have seen this story as well.

I think maybe you posted this in our, yeah, I posted this in our discord. Yes. LA goth nightclub known for rituals and secrecy is closed amid sexual misconduct claims. Now this is well past you when I left the Hollywood goth club scene. Uh, I remember when we were going, we thought that the people that we knew that were 30 years old were fucking creepy being there and well past 30.

So it's been a long time since we stopped going to these clubs, but there was the first thing I saw was there are still goth clubs in Hollywood. I know that was it. I was shocked and surprised too. However, I wonder how goth this club actually was. It was called the pig and the whistle and it was in the pig and whistle, a well-known crappy pub here in Hollywood.

And, uh, but they sold memberships. No goth club worth its salt back in the day would have ever sold memberships to celebrities. I remember control factory, the ultimate LA industrial club that Madonna showed up at, tried to get into, and the owner said, we don't want you here.

This club sold memberships to celebrities at a high premium to let them in. Yeah. Uh, you know, so there you go. And apparently a lot of bad shit happened there. Uh, it was run by, uh, two rapey musician types, Adam Brevin from She Wants Revenge and Michael Patterson, a producer and remixer and mixer who has worked with many, many, many, many people that you and I both listened to.

Um, and basically they just did really bad things. They use their power to basically hit on everything that walked in the door and, uh, they let a bunch of celebrities in like, uh, I told you, we talk about Silicon Valley again, Thomas Middlevich. Yeah. Who basically bought himself a membership into the club and ran around grabbing ladies' booties without their permission.

Yeah. Now, I, I, do you remember what the goth club, uh, was it Bordner's? Oh, it's, that's not, that one's, well, that was. It's still going. It's still going. That one is actually still going. I can't remember what it's called anymore. But, uh, yeah. Yeah. A friend of the show, Fogarty and I were talking about that because we were banned for life from there.

One night, and, and, and, and Brian, you're going to love this. It wasn't my fault. Brian, Brian, I, uh, you have to believe me on this. You have to believe me on this. I don't. Bob bit a bouncer. Okay. I do believe that. Bit a bouncer. I, I, I, yeah. Okay. Bar Sinister.

That's what it was called. Bar Sinister. That was it. Bar Sinister. Yes. That's still going. So, uh, and the, at the Pig and Whistle, we actually, uh, St. Bob who got kicked us, got us kicked out of Bar Sinister. We dined and ditched at the Pig and Whistle on St. Patrick's Day one time because their service was so bad.

They wouldn't bring us a check for an hour and a half. And we're like, fuck it. We're out of here. I don't call that dining and dashing. I call that dining and you took too fucking long. Yeah, that was pretty much it. We went back later to see if we were like, you know, uh, they had our most wanted poster up on the wall, but nah, nobody cared. Yeah.

Anyways, uh, Sherman writes in and said, what's up geeks? Looks like India is finally tired of the Bitcoin bullshit. And, uh, we've reported on this earlier. India will reportedly introduce a bill to make owning cryptocurrency illegal. So I talked about this when they first floated the idea. Apparently they're moving forward with it now, which is great.

They will introduce a bill that criminalizes trading, mining, issuing, transferring, or possessing cryptocurrency. It will, it is most likely to pass if introduced. And it looks like it's going to giving India some of the world's strictest digital currency laws. Under the plan, people who own digital assets will have six months to liquidate their holdings.

Good time to do it, everybody. Yeah. Source, a government official didn't specify the punishment for breaking the rules after that. But a 2019 government panel recommended a jail sentence of up to 10 years for cryptocurrency related offenses. Yeah. But it depends on the market value of the crypto at the time.

Yeah. If it's down, you only get two years. But if it's back up, then you get 10. Look, I've been saying this all along. No government wants this. Um, we, look, regardless of friend of the show, Sean Bonner's firm belief, belief in NFTs, uh, everybody knows this is for money laundering in general.

That's it. It's for nefarious duties. And scamming, lots and lots of scamming. Yes. Yeah. Crypto punks my aching ass. And Johannes also wrote in and said, hi Grumps, here's a fun read for your nifty news section. I'm sure you'll enjoy the absurdity of what's laid out in this thread.

Cheers from Boston. And this is a Twitter thread from a user called Jaunty. And, uh, basically he got into the nuts and bolts of, uh, a particular NFT token. And, uh, basically, uh, the TLDR on this is basically you don't even actually get the file.

It's just in the blockchain, which is just a URL to the person that you bought it from. So when they inevitably go out of business and their hosting and servers go away, that thing that you bought just went away too. Yeah, and they're hosting it on IPFS, which is the interplanetary file system.

Ooh, sounds fantastic, except it's only been around since 2015. And it's basically like Dropbox meets BitTorrent. So if you sign up for it, like your files are spread around the world and everybody can, you know, they're hosting bits and pieces of them, things like that.

We heard about this long, long ago. Yeah, sounds super secure. Yeah, and it's like, okay, uh, so how much kiddie porn do I have on my computer right now? I am, I would be thrilled that my $5 million thing that I just bought from a fucking Grimes is just going to disappear in 10 years when this company goes out of business.

Oh yeah, no, it's all, it's all ridiculous. And, uh, yeah. No, even Beeple said that the value of NFT is going to go to zero. Beeple said it. Come on. Of course it is. Of course it is. And you know what's actually going to be worthwhile, uh, or not worthwhile because they're still vastly overpriced, but you know, what's going to stick around the ones that are backed by sports companies because they are basically the digital version of fucking baseball cards.

The one the NBA is doing, that's never going to go away. They're hosting. Oh, never say never. Never say never. But I mean, why not? They're digital trading cards. That's all they are. They're not going to get, you're going to get a download link and say, here's your card. We're going out of business and we're shutting down Top Shot.

Servers will be down next week because nobody's buying them anymore. So have your GIF and eat it too. You may be right about that, but I think it'll outlast all the rest of this shit. Oh, probably. Yeah. Cause it's sports. Sports. But yeah, this, uh, the standard NFT stuff, you know, it's, the horse is thoroughly dead and beaten, but it's going to stick around for, I mean, I gave it six months.

Oh no, it's going to be longer than that, man. Yeah. But I mean, the bubble's going to burst. The bubble will burst in two months. Yeah. No, it's, there will still be an underground market for it, but there's not going to be this, this ridiculous gold rush going on. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be perpetuated by people for a long time trying to get their money back out of it.

You know, it's like, how much will you give me for this GIF? It's a non-fungible GameStop. Oh God. And, uh, this one I saw at the EFF. I thought it was pretty funny. Facebook treats punk rockers like crazy conspiracy, conspiracy theorists and kicks them offline.

Now this is a punk rock band in Oakland called Adrenochrome. Well, turns out QAnon had kind of co-opted that term and the band's page and all of the band members who were in the band got their Facebook pages taken down with no warning, no nothing, blah, blah, blah.

Right. Which is typical Facebookage, you know? Exactly. And, uh, I love this. One of the band members said, I had 2,300 friends on Facebook. A lot of people I'd met on tour. Some of these people, I don't know how to reach anymore. I had wedding photos and baby photos that I didn't have copies of anywhere else.

Well, that's your own fucking fault. That's your fucking fault. Fault. Exactly. First off, uh, what did you use to put the wedding photos and baby photos up there? And why don't you have that device anymore? Yeah, did you just delete them as soon as it was done? Well, it's up on Facebook. I might as well delete my own personal copy of this. Yeah, because Facebook's never going away.

Oh God, no. It is, you know, it's there forever. And, uh, so the EFFs stepped in and had their account brought back. Then it was taken down again. It was brought back. Then it was taken down again. Dude. Yeah, of course. This is the Facebook, the Facebook AI fucking censorship loop.

I mean, I've experienced that with trying to post things before. I talked about it a couple of weeks ago and I, I didn't do the follow-up on that because I reposted it and said that it seemed fine and it had been up. It got taken down again. So, yeah. No, it is just what it is. Yeah. Get your own damn website.

And if you want to get in touch with people, get their email address or better yet, their phone number. You know, if you meet somebody on tour, get their address. By the way, you're a band. Get a fucking mailing list. What are you doing? Exactly. We'll talk about mailing list soon. All right.

Yes, we will. And there's more Facebook news. Facebook is exploring paid deals for a new publishing platform. Oh, this is going to go well. I'm sure this will be great. I'm sure this will work out well for me, the consumer. Facebook is soon going to be testing partnerships with a small group of independent writers for its new publishing platform.

Oh, God. The platform, which includes tools for journalists to build actual websites in addition to newsletters, will be tested with a small group of writers, some of whom Facebook plans to pay to help get the tools off the ground. In time, Facebook plans to build tools within the platform to allow writers to monetize their websites and newsletters with subscriptions and possibly other forms of revenue down the line.

Now, if history has taught us anything, no, you're a damn fool if you want to peg anything that has to do with your livelihood on Facebook, period. And I saw in this article that Facebook hasn't named this yet. It's yet to be officially named.

Might I suggest Substack? Oh, wait. That business model and name is already taken. So, yes, there's Substack. Substack has been out for a little while now. In a very short time, Substack has apparently supercharged the newsletter industry and helped make it newly attractive to a wide range of authors by offering things like, say, pay to be on my mailing list.

Okay, fair enough. They've also done things like Facebook is promising to do, which is basically they've paid a bunch of people to come on over to the platform, make it seem like they're making a ton of money because they're being paid by Substack to get a bunch of people to sign up and join. It's a fucking bullshit scam.

What's the newsletter company that Twitter just bought? Because I know I pay for some people on that one, but I'm not sure which one that one is. Oh, man. I don't think it's a bad idea. In theory, it's a great idea. But the thing is, they're artificially pumping their numbers and they're lying about it.

Wait. Yeah, yeah. Hold on a second. Can you imagine that happening? No, I can't, Brian. Jesus fucking Christ. Like, this shit just never stops. It's the same fucking playbook again and again and again. Yeah.

Review was the company that Twitter bought, by the way. Well, Substack has gotten a lot of steam recently. I mean, obviously, they're doing very well. Even Dan Rather took himself over there. It's not a bad concept. You know, build simple, really good tools for people to go in and write really good newsletters and send them out and make sure that you take care of all the spam filtering and blacklisting and all that sort of stuff and allow people to charge for it.

Great. Nothing wrong with that idea. The thing is, when you fucking lie and you won't tell people that you're, who's, who's paying, who you're paying to be on the platform and who you aren't, and you're, you're making it seem like you can make all this sort of money, but a lot of people aren't making money.

But then you hear about some of the people that are making money. Jason, there are people on this platform that have less listeners or less subscribers than we have listeners that are making $250,000 a year. Jiminy jeepers. What the fuck are we doing wrong? Speaking, apparently.

By the way, somebody should just start a company right now that lets you do a podcast, but charge for it. Oh, I think there's, how many of those now? Hmm. Oh, a lot. Okay. A lot. Great, are they? No, they're not. They're not. Maybe we should just redo Usenet.

We'll do paid Usenet. How's that? Fido. I think we can do that. I prefer that. Yeah, Fido. And I found this one that was just pretty funny. Substack's UI and OnePassword just cost me $2,023. And it's really funny. This is just the way.

I mean, it's a confluence of really shitty events. So there's a way to choose a subscription plan where you can click Founder, and Founder will then let you put in whatever number you want. Well, this guy wasn't paying attention, and he used Autofill.

And as he put in his things, it used the founding member field for his credit card expiration date, which was 2023. Oops. So, yes, he did get his money back, but it's a pretty funny little tale on how shit can possibly go wrong.

We should actually just do a Patreon level at like $7,000 and just see if anybody accidentally clicks on it. Well, since nobody did the $100 level, probably not. I'm guessing no. We should just have two. One or $7,000. Yeah, that's it.

And I thought this one was pretty funny. We have now hit Theranos 2.0. Co-founders of bankrupt poop testing company, Ubiome have been charged with fraud. So this is a married couple up north who they basically had poop in a tube, and it would tell you everything you need to know about your gut biome.

And they were basically bilking the insurance companies and the government for people getting this test. And it turns out it was completely crap. Go figure. I'm just going to say right now to everybody listening once again, given the state of everything that we talk about in the security segment most of the time, or just what we talk about in general about how corrupt and horrible all these companies are, please, for the love

of God, stop sending your bodily fluids or solids to any of these companies. Yeah, Tim Ferriss actually sent me one of these a long time ago. Did he send you the kit or did he send you his poop? Did he miss mail those?

I think when I quit his show, he was mad. He just sent me a jar of poop. He sent you his poop in a bag and he lit it on fire on your doorstep. This will teach you to fill a poe. No, but I just couldn't bring myself to poop in a tube.

I just couldn't. You know, I don't really care how you really don't have the dexterity for that. I don't. I really, really don't. You need to do more yoga before you can. Exactly. Downward facing poo tube. Now, if we only didn't already have a show title.

Oh, and just to wrap up our old news, I thought this was great because, yeah, things are turning back to normal. And everybody's like, oh, oh, we're all going to work from home forever. It's going to be bliss. Google plans to invest $7 billion in U.S. offices and data centers, including new offices in Houston and Portland, even while others are permanent remote working because they know everybody wants to get the fuck out of their house.

All my wife says all day, every day is when can I go back to my office? I'm tempted to go get a fucking corporate job just so I can go to an office. I'm going to.

So a couple nights back, I was up awake and I had had a little bit of wine, much like I have right now. And I was looking for something to watch and I had the TV had been off since my kid had gone away.

So I launched the TV and it was still stuck on Disney Plus because we were watching, I don't know, Sharks, Taylor. No, that's not on Disney Plus. I'll get to that in a second. Some other fucking thing because he's all about the ocean right now. It must've been finding Nemo or something like that. So I was like, well, what the fuck else is in here?

And I was scrolling around and I saw the world according to Jeff Goldblum. All right. I like Jeff Goldblum. He's a funny man. It's a delightful show. I have to say it is well worth watching. It is seriously funny. There's only a few episodes.

Every one of them is good. Some of them are about things I don't give a shit about, but because Jeff Goldblum is talking about them, they're very fucking funny and engaging. It's highly worth a watch. Have you watched it yet, Jason? I've never even heard of it until now. Oh, you have to go watch it. It's so good.

It's so funny. It's well worth it. And as I was watching it, and again, because I had some wine, I was actually just, something was niggling at my brain. And then I realized there is no difference between William Shatner and Jeff Goldblum except for one thing.

Everybody has a Shatner impression. A lot of people have a Goldberg impression. The only difference between the impression is one thing. So the Shatner, right? You just do the awkward pauses. Pause. Yeah. So to switch from Shatner to Goldblum, instead of pausing and leaving the space, you do this.

You just put in noises. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Between the different things that you say. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You've got to change your inflections a little bit. And that's the only difference. For Shatner, you leave the pause.

For Goldblum, you throw in a, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Instead of just being empty space. Try it. You'll be delighted. Oh, now I want to go back and watch Jurassic Park. Such a good, speaking of, speaking of poop. Anyway, oh, by the way, Shatner turned 90.

90 this week. Yes. Well done. Yeah. Well done, my friend. Good on you, TJ Hooker. Yep. So speaking of the kids' stuff, I watched A Shark Tale. I know this is not a new movie. Delightful. Delightful. Okay. Will Smith. I prefer Shark Tank, but.

It was very good for an animated film. It was very funny. I enjoyed it. And I also watched Bring on the Night, the Sting documentary for his first solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles, back in 84 or something like that. Whoa. Yeah. I'll get to why I watched it when we get to at the library, but it was great.

It is not available for streaming anywhere. But there are tons of illegal rips all over YouTube. So. Okay. There you go. That's all that matters. It's how he put his whole band together. It's how he put the whole band together initially. It's really actually fascinating. Really good footage.

I mean, these musicians that he used were top of the line fucking jazz musicians at the time. Like, it was just stunning how good they are. And they kind of make fun of him the whole time, too, which is great. So, it was awesome. Really good stuff. Okay. And I, you know, I love Sting and I love the police and I loved all that stuff.

So, it was a really good watch. I enjoyed that. I actually did a, I did a, I did a website for a mini website for Sting in Rocktropolis. Oh, yeah. I remember Rocktropolis. My first, first websites. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So, like my second job on the internet. We did a, we did a little mini site for Sting.

And that was, that was right. That, that Sting website got us the job to do the first website for Prince and Paisley Park. Ah, yes. Which I then got fired. I got the company fired from and they reneged on $25,000 because I made fun of their website. But I forgot to change my reply to email address and they caught me.

Reply all. You're always fucked by reply all. Yes, you are. And then I saw this other bit of news. Tower Records is coming back. And why now, now at all times. So, this guy, Danny Zijel, I guess is how you pronounce it, is the new CEO of Tower Records.

He bought the brand back in 2007 and in auction after the original Tower went kaput. And if you've not watched the documentary about Tower Records yet, you should. It's awesome. I think I watched it, but I can't. We talked about it on the show a couple of years back when I first watched it.

It was phenomenally, really cool. The guy that ran it before, Solomon, I think was his last name, character from crazy, you know, cocaine, whiskey, everything. Like, it was just nuts. Yeah. But great story. But at the time, you know, he died. He passed away. Obviously, all the stores closed down except for the one in Japan, which finally closed eventually, he bought all the intellectual property, the name, the logo, the website, et cetera, for about four million bucks in 2007.

And then it just sat dormant forever. He was planning to relaunch. They were going to do a big coming out party at South by Southwest in 2020. But obviously, COVID happened. So none of that happened. But he did a soft launch anyways, and Tower Records is back in business. The website is back up.

They're selling vinyl. So they're kind of running on that train because vinyl is obviously doing big business as friend of the show. MXV would say, sold more than CDs last year. Yeah, because nobody bought a fucking CD. Sold more than eight tracks, too, motherfucker.

Yeah, exactly. Sold more than 10 types. I'll give you that. So anyways, they're capitalizing on that boom. So they're doing a lot of that sort of stuff. They're, you know, buying exclusives from record companies and all that. You can buy vinyl records. You can buy CDs. You can even buy cassette tapes. They have a couple of those.

And you can get Tower Nostalgia with logo T-shirts and all that sort of stuff. And you get that yellow bag that if you're of a certain age, you totally remember. So they're hoping they can carve out some sort of niche. But I doubt it. You know, why? Why would you do this?

You can get records cheaper on Amazon. You can go to other places for it. But he's banking on the idea that Tower Records will make an emotional connection with the brand. And there's added value in tribal bonds of which, as somebody who lived in Tower Records, I will tell you right now, no.

There isn't. I think a lot of people will buy once. I'll buy a T-shirt. Yeah. Or something to get the bag or something like that, you know? Yeah. Just something once. So they're throwing out these ideas right now, which none of them will ever come to fruition because they'll never do it because they'll never have the money.

They're thinking about having in-house music experts so you can come in and maybe pay a monthly subscription fee to access these experts and talk about records and get suggestions for new artists to try. Give me a fucking break. That ship has sailed. It's gone. Move on. You know, though, I watched the last Blockbuster this week, and I understand what they're trying to do, and I applaud it.

Because after watching the last Blockbuster, my roommate and I, all we could talk about was the feeling of going into a video store and trying to get a movie. You don't know what's what. Talking to the people around you. Getting recommendations from people. That whole social aspect around it was so much fun.

And is there a way to rekindle that? No. It doesn't translate to digital. Well, that's the problem. You know, that's the thing. But the last Blockbuster was a phenomenal documentary. I highly recommend it. You will have all the feels. And I want to make a trip to Bend, Oregon now just to go to that last one while it's still there just because.

I mean, I thought the last one was Alaska, and it closed, and you could, like, hire it for a night and bang in the back in the couch with popcorn. Didn't we talk about that? Well, you're mixing them up. The one in Alaska was the one where John Oliver sent the Russell Crowe memorabilia that they bought and sent it up there to keep it open.

And that was the second to last Blockbuster. The last Blockbuster is in Bend, Oregon, because the one in Alaska closed. But the one in Alaska did send the Russell Crowe memorabilia to the one in Bend, Oregon. So they have it on display there, and they're hoping it's not cursed. Or worn by the employees, by the second to last employee.

Well, it's a whole family affair that runs that place. It's well worth the watch. And, yeah, no, it's really good. They've got some really funny comedians on there. I think Doug Benson, who I don't find generally that funny, was pretty good at it, though, and made a pilgrimage. It's a great little documentary.

Highly recommend. It's like an hour and a half, but well worth it. It's, you know, if you like the Tower documentary, definitely watch the Blockbuster documentary, too. It's going to give you all the same feels. Yeah. I do miss that congregating thing. Oh, so much. The local experts, the people in the store that knew their shit.

Like, all that's gone. It's just gone. Try and figure out a way to rekindle that, because we racked our brain and we came up with nothing. Cups and doodads. Ryan, I wish this next one was not an Indiegogo campaign, because I really want it.

It's called the Bird Buddy, a smart bird feeder. Now that you're a homeowner and you're old, you're going to find that having a birdhouse and feeding the birds is one of the greatest things that getting old will provide you. I have multiple hummingbird feeders.

I have multiple bird feeders. We sit out there and watch the birds all the time. It's nice. It's relaxing. And this is basically a bird feeder with a selfie cam and an app that identifies what type of bird it is. And it's cool. It's neat.

A bird feeder with a selfie cam. Well, not really a selfie cam. It's a camera. Built in Slovenia has made $6.2 million. See, therein lies the rub. That's the problem I have with it. Do you think any of these people are going to get one of these?

Yet. I don't know if they speak Russian and Slovenia. They probably speak Slovenian, but I'm going to throw it out there. Probably not. But we have marketing extensively to people near military bases.

Basically, they did a bunch of deep fakes of birds on a CGI birdhouse and got the Indiegogo going. But yeah, I mean, if I could walk into a Target or a Home Depot and buy one of these, I would because I think it's cool.

No, it's a cool idea. It's a cool concept. I'm definitely not going to fork over any cash and hope that it will show up. Oh, no. We've got some hard drive news this week. So disk capacity has continued to grow steadily, but with recent 16 terabyte and 18 terabyte drives, we are approaching the limits of conventional technology.

The solution may be two new techniques called microwave and heat-assisted magnetic recording, or more or hammer. Mammar? Mammar hammer. Mammar hammer. Hey, Mammar, put the hammer down. It sounds like some of the beach body exercises I've been doing recently, but okay.

I was thinking more convoy. I'm Mammar and I'm putting the hammer down. There's a bear in the air. So they use an energy source, either a microwave-generating device called a spin-torque oscillator or a laser, and change the platter material's coercivity.

This, coupled with a more stable platter material and a smaller right head, lets you pack more data onto each platter. These things should theoretically go up to 60 terabytes, which is pretty crazy. Theoretically. It will be about $1.50 on Amazon in three months.

And it's called E-mer. E-mer. E-mer. E-mer. Hammer me memer me E-mer. Hammer me memer me E-mer. Now we're getting in Dr. C's territory. Or the Swedish chef. Or the Swedish chef. That's true. But pretty cool. Like, we haven't had a major advance in hard drive design in a long time, so this is pretty interesting.

Yeah. And I just bought a 12 terabyte hard drive. Mm-hmm. 250 bucks. I know. 250 bucks for a 12 fucking terabyte hard drive. I know. We're so old. Oh, God. We're so old. I know.

250 bucks didn't even get me my first hard drive, which was like one gig. Oh, God, no. Well, not. No, it was a megabyte. Like one megabyte. Yeah. So I got it because I'm mining Chia. I'm mining the crypto. You asshole. It's 250 bucks.

I'm playing around with it. Why the fuck not? It's good for the environment. It's not good for the environment. It's not shitty for the environment. It's not bad for the environment. It's less bad for the environment than the other ones. Yeah. Basically, it just runs in the background and it doesn't tear up. You can run it on a crappy computer.

But it's based on hard drive space like I talked about in the previous episode. Basically, I'm plotting bingo coins or bingo cards to get my Chia coin. The main net finally went online last Friday. So I have a seven-day window with 41 plots.

I'm going. I'm cooking along. I still got like another month before I fill up that 12 terabyte drive. But what the hell? It's something to do. Come on. It's 12 terabytes for 250 bucks and really burying the lead. It's insane. It's insane.

All right. So Stephen writes in here, hello, Grumps. A while back, I sent a question about LastPass. Now, I apologize in advance, Stephen, if this wasn't you. But if it was, I do recall we didn't so much get a question from someone about LastPass. We got a screed that the Unabomber would have been proud of about LastPass.

I don't think it was Stephen. I don't think it was Stephen. Maybe that was somebody else then. So again, I apologize in advance. Somebody sent us in a screed that like we probably should have forwarded to the FBI about LastPass. He was very upset. It was pretty bad. I remember you guys telling me that it was a bad option and you guys used something else.

Well, now I'm screwed and I should have listened to you guys. You're always right. Now, you can only have LastPass either on your phone or your computer, not both. What was the main reason why I have it for this purpose? I don't even know half my passwords. LastPass types all that gibberish. Now, if you guys could please remind me what you guys use, I promise I will listen this time.

I think you can have LastPass on both. You just have to pay for both. Pay for it. It's called paying for it. Yeah, which is also what we do, except we just pay one price for both and we both use one password. Yep, that's it.

You know, pay for software that actually does what it's supposed to do. Yeah. Woo! Now, this next one I think is just genius and why did it take so long? Tinder will soon let you gift a Lyft ride to your date.

Truly bringing delivery to its ultimate end. I swipe left. She swipes left. Or is it right? I don't know. I don't know how those things work. I've never used them. I was married pre these swiping things.

Yes. I don't know. I don't know. And then you swipe up, give her a free ride. Then you get a free ride. Then everybody goes home. Perfect. The ride's never free, Jason. It's never free. No, it's not. It is never free. It is never free. But it's genius. It is genius.

And Tinder was smart to do it with Lyft. That is genius, actually. That is good co-branding. All right. So I got a little sick of reading my sci-fi books and all that sort of stuff.

And I had been hearing about this book from some of my old music industry friends for so long. So I finally did get it. Don't Stand So Close. My Improbable Adventure is Sting's Guitarist by Jeffrey Lee Campbell. So Jeffrey Lee Campbell is a wonderfully talented guitarist guy.

And he got this gig with Sting for his Nothing Like the Sun tour, which was, I can't even remember what year that was. Probably 87 or something like that. I don't fucking know. His second solo album is actually the first show I ever went to.

I was 15 at the time. Sting was your first concert? My very first show that I ever saw was Sting's Nothing Like the Sun tour. So I saw this guy perform for my very first show. And, in fact, he even talks about the show in the book that I was at, my very first show.

So it was a really cool read. Very cool read if you're into the music industry and how it actually works. Now, obviously very dated, which is probably the most fun part of this entire read. I loved hearing his pros and cons because that was his one and only big music industry experience.

After that, he was kind of nothing ever happened again. And he ended up getting into Broadway stuff and shows in New York and all that. And he's had a wonderful career and made a lot of money and played on a lot of fucking... He did Cats and, like, all this other stuff for, like, the longest time ever. So he's had a very successful career as a guitarist, but just not in pop music or touring anymore after this.

But I loved reading it. It was fascinating. Hearing all the backstage stories and all that stuff. The best part about it was him talking about the pros and cons of touring pre-technology. Because he really gets into that. Because one of the reasons he probably never got invited back is he became a raging alcoholic on tour, as most people do.

So I'm like, I thought that was a feature, not a bug, right? Well, it used to be. Not so much anymore. So as he says, the pro of touring back then is nobody had cell phone shots of all the shenanigans you got up to. Nobody was taking videos. Nobody knew what was going on.

There were no message boards talking about what was going on. There were no crazy fans stalking you and then posting on all the boards about what was going on. So you kind of just got to do whatever the fuck you want. And, of course, the con on the other side is when you went on the road to, say, Europe for three months, you were literally cut off from everything and everyone.

There were no cell phones. There was no internet. Like, long-distance phone calls were exceedingly expensive. So, like, you were alone. And that sucked. You were all alone together. I'm sorry. You're alone on tour with a rock band.

Boo fucking hoo. Read the book then, Jason. Okay. It will change your mind. Okay. I'm sorry. It was a good book, man. It was actually very well written. Like, I was very impressed by this. Okay. Cool. Now I was just thinking about my first concert, which was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

You know I became, like, really good friends with Keith Emerson, right? Yeah, I think we talked about that when he died. Yeah, yeah. So, I listened to The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe by Arvind Ethan David. It's a short story that is actually read by Neil Gaiman and Jewel State from Firefly.

And it's a cute story. It's 30 minutes long. And if you have an Audible account, it is free. Comes with it. At least it comes with my account. I have the super account. So, your mileage may vary on that. But it was 30 minutes. It was very cute. I liked it a lot. It was good sci-fi.

It was actually science fiction for some strange reason. Then I read A Moral Man, which could be read many ways because it's all one word. A True Story and Other Lies by Derek Delgadio. Why does that name ring a bell? He did the Hulu special.

Oh, there we go. He's the crazy magician Hulu special that makes your head go boom. Yeah, this is kind of his backstory. It's his life growing up. And now that I know he's a magician, I don't know how much is lies and how much are truth.

Kind of got to dig into him a little bit more. He did a show with Tom Segura about like two weeks ago on Tom Talks. So, I just queued that up in my podcast player. So, I'm going to go check that out. But I'm a huge fan of his. His card work is incredible.

All that card work that he did in that special was not a trick. He does that. You know? It's like, oh, people like that you don't want to play poker with. No. Because that's what they do. Yeah. And then I listened to Darren Brown's Boot Camp for the Brain by Darren Brown and Brian King.

This is another Audible original and they call it a podcast. It's not. It's eight parts long and it's pretty good if you like Darren Brown, which I do. And then I bought a book in Audible called Everybody Has a Podcast Except You. Do you hate yourself?

Yes, I do. Okay. Yes, I do. Because you know what I did, Brian? You like to torture yourself, don't you? You know that book, This Is How the World Ends that you put in here? Yes. I bought it. I listened to half an hour of it and I returned it because I'm like, you know what I don't need to do?

Listen to this book because... So then you turned around and you bought this one. And then I returned this one too. Oh, God. Yeah, this is... I saw this on... Because it came through Wired and they had an article that said, starting a podcast is harder than it looks.

And I'm like, no shit. Well, it turns out the Brothers McElroy, who are much richer than us because they have a successful podcast, wrote a book on how to podcast. And since I do a lot of stuff on how to podcast right now, I wanted to see what the competition's doing.

Whoa, boy, is that a bad book on how to podcast. If you want to learn how to podcast, do anything but buy that book is all I'm going to say. You do realize that the entire self-help industry is written exclusively with really shitty books that will not get you to your goal, right?

I think if you go back to episode one of Grumpy Old Geeks, we covered that eight years ago. You can't do write a book about how to do. Exactly. So, yeah, I'm just going to tell you as a professional podcaster, yes, these guys have hit the jackpot with their show because they do a bunch of other stuff.

Their advice for new podcasters is some of the worst advice I've ever heard in my life. So don't buy that book, please, please. And, of course, Brian, you know what I'm going to say when they got to the microphone section and they said what the best microphone for new podcasters to get is.

Oh, God. Did they really say Blue Yeti? Yes, they did. Yes, they did. That's amazing. You know that 30 seconds after that is when I returned that book, right? Do you still have an iPad or did you actually throw it against the wall?

I was, no, it was on, I was, I had my AirPod Pros in because I was listening to it. I was listening to the audio version. Oh, sorry, that's right. You don't actually, yeah, you listen, not read, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because I know that on Kindle it's really hard to return a book, but on Audible it's one click in the app.

So, and by the way, if you really want to know why I think the Blue Yeti sounds so bad for podcasting, go listen to episode one of Grumpy Old Geeks because we recorded it with a fucking Blue Yeti. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't the fact that we did it in a giant room that was cavernous with no soundproofing whatsoever and we were both drunk.

That might have had something to do with it. And under an airport and on 100 floors. But guess what? That's what most podcasters do when they're starting out. True, true. Feedback loop. So Barrett writes in, so of course this is this.

And he links to an article over at Politico about Trump teasing his new social media platform. Hello? Yes. Make sure to get this domain before he snags it up. And he sent a link to an image that says, loading, racistpieceofshit.com.

Okay. I'm sure that'll garner us a negative review immediately. I'm sure there is much of a chance of this social media platform happening as that border wall or that new medical program that was going to replace Obamacare. And we were going to get details on that any minute now for four years.

Or fixing the country's infrastructure, which was a big deal for four years. I thought we were done with politics. Just going away or eliminating the national debt or all the other fucking promises. Trump is not a builder. He doesn't know how to build.

He does not know how to create things. He slaps his name on other shit and resells it. And that's all he knows how to do. This is never going to happen unless they fucking replace. They slap a fucking new label and call it Trump parlor. This shit ain't happening. So.

Okay. Okay. Hopefully this will be the last bit of Trump news and politics news we have for fucking ever. Because I like our listeners. I want them to stay around. Matthias writes in, hey guys, I'm preparing for the book, the book, how the world ends ought to be here today.

This video popped up on my YouTube feed. No idea why, since I only check barbecue and tech videos. And yes, I do know that the USA is in bad shape, really bad shape. But a few things in here was like, what the fuck? This is a video from David Cross called why America sucks at everything.

It's an explainer video on why we suck at everything. And Matthias ends up by saying, hey, I ruined your day. Woohoo. No, Matthias, we live here. We know. We know. And David Cross basically cribbed everything from Aaron Sorkin, who basically wrote the original on this.

If you've never seen the opening scene of the show, HBO's Newsroom, written by Aaron Sorkin. Why America is not the greatest country. Also linked in the show notes and well worth the watch. Yep. Pretty much. Miles writes in, hi, Jason and Brian, long time listener.

I had an acquaintance post on FB about how frustrated he was trying to delete posts from social media. I know there were a few Chrome extensions I searched for in the show notes, but they were a few years old. Just wanted to see if you had any current extensions that either you are using or liking. Thanks.

I'll be sure to send in a recurring donation after a few years of not doing so. I don't bother deleting my Facebook stuff. My Facebook account is locked. Not that that means anything, so I probably should find another account that does that sort of thing. However, it seems to be that, like everything else in the world, Twitter is the one that really matters.

Everybody that we hear about being canceled or whatever, it's all because of tweets that are thousands of years old and taken completely out of whatever context they were put in at the time. I don't know why anybody thinks that their old tweets are used. Holy shit, NFTs.

Jack just sold his for almost $3 million. There's the reason to keep all your old tweets. And if anybody, what was the name of that woman that got fired while she was on her intercontinental flight because of her fucking racist? If I could buy that tweet as an NFT, I probably fucking would.

Oh, God, that was great. So, OK, other than trying to fucking capitalize as an NFT, there is no reason to keep your old tweets. Jason and I both use tweetdelete.net. They don't make any sense on Twitter out of context and out of time.

So why are they there? Just so you can get in trouble later and get fired from multimillion dollar projects, apparently. I think I think I said that, by the way, on like episode three of Grumpy Old Geeks. I believe you did, too. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I literally wrote Evan and said, hey, can you guys turn this on?

And he's like, nope. So I'm like, OK, thanks. Fine. The other one is social post media manager. If you want to get rid of your Facebook post, it's another tweetdelete.net. It's an actual site that you log in using your Twitter credentials. But social post media manager, I believe, is an extension that will go through and use some DOM scripting to get rid of your posts.

So and if you're on Parler, you know, don't bother because the FBI has got it all already. And if you really want to post racist shit, go to L.O. Nobody will know. L.O. Goodbye. Hey, they still fucking exist.

Remember when I got the wrong around that one? Fuckers. Oh, yeah. That was great. Wait, no, no. That wasn't L.O. That was. Oh, shit. That wasn't L.O. That wasn't L.O. It was the one that you could do micropayments on and sell shit. I gave you the T-shirt, didn't I? That you used as a rag.

We got a free T-shirt from them. I washed my car with it a few times, threw it out. Yeah, it had a little green guy on it. We're going to have to go through the archives and find that. But yeah, it wasn't them. They were pissed at me. Oh, yeah. You got them good. But too bad you can't go through your tweets and find out who they were because. Shame they're out of business.

Well, yeah. Yeah, I called that one. Yeah. Christian writes in, Jason, I'm surprised that you didn't mention this drone in bowling alley video from Minneapolis. I didn't mention it because we're an audio podcast and it's a great video. And it had also made the rounds at that point.

This is the guy who did the, actually, it's a team that flew a drone through a bowling alley. And it is, you cannot believe that it's not CGI and it's not CGI. So, yeah, it is so cool. The name of the drone, too, is really funny.

I forget it off the top of my head. But it's like, I don't know, Sinawuki or some shit like that. It's got a really strange name. But I think Peter Jackson invited them. Oh, no. What was it? Guardians of the Galaxy, where they're shooting version three now. You mean James Gunn?

James Gunn. One of the guys that probably wouldn't have had too many problems if he would use Tweet Delete, Yep, he invited them to the set for Guardians 3. But it's a great video. Link will be in the show notes. He also said, Brian, if you use the Ublock Origin extension on your web browser of choice, you can disable JavaScript on your per-site basis and read any article you want in LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and I'm sure others.

Not that I would ever do that. And then James also wrote in and said, Brian, on your last episode, you complained about only being able to read five articles in the LA Times before they cut you off. May I present my gift to you a lifetime free subscription to the LA Times and other major newspaper publications in the Western world by a plugin that bypasses paywalls.

Now, again, we kind of complained just for comedic effect. We actually have subscriptions to the LA Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others as well, and we do pay for them. I actually forgot that we had an LA Times subscription, which is why I was pissed off that I wasn't able to get in.

Actually, that one's mine, but we share on that. That's yours. Yes. Well, I gave you my Atlantic one, so, you know, fair enough. I forgot we had an Atlantic one. Shit. We have an Atlantic one. I'll send it to you again. Damn. Okay. We do pay for the New York Times. I pay for the Washington Post up until, I think I got another three weeks on that.

They're kind of exorbitant and everybody covers them, so I don't know if I want to pay for that one. But I know I have at least seven major news publications that I pay for, and that's enough. Yeah, we do. Because all you have to do is read BuzzFeed. You know, BuzzFeed just rips everybody off anyway, so you don't have to pay for shit anymore. Plus, they tell me the top 10 hottest moments of Kim Kardashian.

That's right. That's right. And Sarong writes in, hi, Brian and Jason. Oh, I cut all this out because it was a very long-winded thing about thanking us for talking about podcast mics and stuff like that. But he has started a podcast, and he would like a shout-out. It's an F1 racing podcast, and it is fanfiction.com, where the fiction has a one is an I.

I should talk to you about branding sometime. Yes, the first I. That's what I'm saying. We should talk about branding and URLs sometime. It looks cool. Terrible domain. Sorry. I listened to a little bit of the show. I'm not going to listen to the whole thing because F1 racing, not my jam.

But sounds good. So the mic that I recommended, spot on. Blue Yeti. No, he got the ATR2100X. So good for him. Go check it out. If you guys are into F1 racing, looks like a good show. He seems to know his shit. So check it out.

Thanks, man. All right. Thank you. And by the way, I just want to say, And this is the wine talking. Every time that we say Blue Yeti from now on, we have to do it in yellow. We have to go, Blue, Blue, Yeti. I think I need to make a drop for my soundboard for that then.

We'll have to do that. We'll have to do that. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. We'll have to do it in yellow. And over at PayPal, we've got Michelle, Tom, Josh, Zorong, John, Mark, Andrew, Tom, Jeffrey, John, Andre, Joseph, Michael, Kira.

And Kira says, just sent over 50 bucks to congratulate you on your 500th episode coming up. Long-time listener, wish I could afford to send you 500. So do we. This is not our 50th episode, Kira. Come on. God. I thought you cared.

I thought you cared. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. I went down memory lane a bit on Patreon. They give you some tools where you can see the subscriber growth over the years since we've been doing this for eight years. And I think we've been on Patreon for five or six of them.

I can't remember. And I just looked at the graph and it made me feel like you care. You really like us, just not enough for us to make a living. Hey, don't be pissing these people out. These are the ones that actually, they help a lot.

No, they do. They do. Thank you. I wonder, is Beach Mama? No, Beach Mama never gave us anything. Beach Mama was our first fan. Yeah, she was our first fan. She came back once. She took a hiatus and then came back. And then we've never heard from her again. So if anybody knows who Beach Mama is.

I hope Beach Mama as well. Anyway, our other massive shout out goes to our compatriot, our other co-host, Dave Bittner, who could not be here because. Your power went out. My power went out. And it is now 923 at night, which means it is not 10.

It is past midnight where he's at. And Dave is a, you know, his furry clock goes off at six in the morning, so he wouldn't stay up this late. He's at a fur orgy. Don't want to see that. He's actually stalking the neighborhood in his stormtrooper outfit.

Anyway, thank you all so much for sticking with us this long. If you have, if you're new, sorry. Anyway, until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. I don't know what you're apologizing for. This is just like our first few shows. And I'm Ryan Schemeister. It really is. It's kind of fun.

Let's do this every time. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, please consider visiting gog.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 500. From there, you can find all the links we talked about in this episode.

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And if you know somebody who has too much hope in their heart and spring in their step, then definitely tell them about the show. Misery loves company. Stay grumpy 500 fucking times. Welcome to episode 10 of Grumpy Old Geeks. This is the episode that we said would be our last if we didn't make any money.

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