[00:00:00]
Hey everybody, it's Alessio coming at you before the episode with a very very special two-part message.

[00:00:06]
Part number one. The show officially ends and releases its last episode on November 22nd.

[00:00:13]
Part of that episode is going to include some very very special messages from a lot of our friends

[00:00:18]
and it wouldn't be complete without you guys. So you have until November the 15th to send us your

[00:00:25]
final words for Metal Gear Mondays. You can record yourself and send it to me via mp3,

[00:00:33]
mov, mp4, heic, dnxhd, ogg, flak, dvave, .flv, mdma, phd, pdf, or jpeg, whatever you can encode audio

[00:00:48]
onto or just write me an email. The easiest way to get that to us as quickly as humanly possible

[00:00:54]
is going to be for you to email me at alessio at alessiosummerfield.com. Again, that is alessio

[00:01:01]
a-l-e-s-s-i-o at alessiosummerfield, just how it sounds, .com. One last thing. I am going to go through

[00:01:11]
and give a very very special thank you to everybody who has ever patronized this show.

[00:01:17]
I'm going to try and do it quickly. I'm also going to just cover my ass even more and

[00:01:23]
shout out a very special thank you to all of our current Discord server members.

[00:01:30]
This is my version of the poker rap. I apologize if I screw up your name. I just want to give thanks

[00:01:35]
for things that do and you guys have supported us for a very long time. Here we go. Thank you so much.

[00:02:23]
Elclay and Rednest, Brandon Parks, Weeba, even Jr., Matt, Toby, Rothenbauer, Gasey, Conn again,

[00:02:27]
No secret facts, my cast, Michael, E, Millson, Zachary, Steel, Nick, Ziggler, Dean, Kevin, Nunez,

[00:02:29]
Tom, Scholling, Sam, Linky, Rachel, Frank, Will, Boyer, the one and only, Tori, Gord,

[00:02:31]
S, Toby, Brady, River, B2, 10, Scott, Fox, Brandon, Ryan, Jacob, Sir, Sam,

[00:02:34]
Lager, Kramer, Knight, Nick, Frank, Henry, Kyle, Andrew, Andrew, F, Kira, T-Ratman, Joshua,

[00:02:35]
Wile, Cole, Duncan, Matt, Leninowich, Jackie, Boy, Adam, Ratter, Dayland, Matt Smith,

[00:02:38]
100, Penseko, Andre, Steve, Jr., Benz, Liam, S, Brian, Sir, S, Darryl, Palumbo,

[00:02:41]
Dean, David, Tanya, Jeff, Kenos, N, Brown, Steven, V, and here we go, very good with the patrons,

[00:02:43]
Blunder, David, Sam, Neil, Jesse, Fox, Oliver, Dan, Tuck, and Flick, I, Apollo,

[00:02:45]
my big boy, M.E.6, my big boy, M.E.6, monitor, RS, Simple, Paul,

[00:02:48]
Shalash, Shaskam, Moose, Forth, S.H.R.M, The Dojo Clan, Kira, H, Alex, H, Alex, S,

[00:02:50]
Ancient, Belunted, Tor, 20, C, Bald, Ben, Cobbles, Calvin, C, Calvin, Chintini, C, Jaker,

[00:02:53]
C, Gress, Goss, Golden, Ken, Crathen, Mike, Rose, Dissolving,

[00:02:56]
Elvubio, Faces, Form, Fleming, Ship, Flaming, 2.5, Geegas, Ips, Glynder,

[00:02:59]
Grackles, Half, Flambeer, L, Garr, H, Henry, Incent, Tung, B, Jason,

[00:03:01]
Janey, Dr, Baby, Jeff, Jason, Joey, Dagger, Johnny, Forestry, Josh,

[00:03:04]
Grace, WK, Sylvie, Joss, Lincoln, 64, L, Mike, L, P6, No1, Meron,

[00:03:07]
Time, Machaki, A3, Matt, Sky, Odyssey, MGS, 5, is really good, Mike,

[00:03:10]
Insac, Mr. Mike, Mr. Krobs, Octo, 332, Nick, 5, NC, W7, Reda, Original Sheds,

[00:03:13]
Patreon, AXE, Amber, God, Furb, Milo, Fathalo Blue, PSJ, Arcley, Toe, Arcley,

[00:03:17]
Rain, 3-Bow, Sean's Brother, Ode, S.A.D, Hip, Potato Chip, T.O. Alex,

[00:03:20]
Blue, Tom, Loose, Change, His Name, Torrey, The Fianc, Millie,

[00:03:21]
The Real, Walter, Fane, Snoop, Goop, Goop, Your Best Friend, Sean, Zach,

[00:03:22]
Nathan, Zicky, Saki, Doss, Jesus Christ, thank you so much for all of the support and love,

[00:03:27]
that was very long, I apologize everybody. Now let's get to the opening skit, bye.

[00:03:33]
Oh god, holy shit. Who knew that Torrey and Warren would make for such heavy corpses, Jesus Christ.

[00:03:50]
God damn it.

[00:03:52]
Excuse me, boy, what's your junk on catch in their set tripping with love for?

[00:03:58]
Excuse me?

[00:03:59]
Ah, son, watchaboo's and God's and Benga's, they gotcha doodle peepie poopoo and let that sack man with the glove glove.

[00:04:10]
I believe what my friend is saying is,

[00:04:14]
Acap, Acap, Acap, Acap, Acap.

[00:04:18]
Get in the car, you big dumb dumb, it's us.

[00:04:21]
Oh my god, I haven't seen you guys since the Renton City Retro 300 years ago.

[00:04:27]
You definitely saw me after that, but yeah, for sure.

[00:04:31]
Yeah man, you saw me too. Geez, I'm a little upset over here.

[00:04:36]
Oh I'm sorry guys, I feel like a really bad friend.

[00:04:38]
Listen, it's alright, we've all been bad friends.

[00:04:42]
Bad friends to the listeners. Right, Isaac?

[00:04:46]
Yo, what is that supposed to mean?

[00:04:48]
Well, we might as well record since we're all here, right?

[00:04:52]
I, I'm sure, yeah.

[00:04:55]
Okay.

[00:04:55]
Guys, sorry, one last thing.

[00:04:57]
Have you guys ever considered the fact that somebody might be listening to this right now who has no idea who we are?

[00:05:04]
Naaaaaaaa!

[00:05:14]
What is it?

[00:05:19]
I need a tissue.

[00:05:22]
Let me blow my nose on all this Patreon money.

[00:05:24]
that we don't have.

[00:05:26]
Oh, no.

[00:05:28]
Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another episode of Metal Gear Mondays, the

[00:05:43]
number one Metal Gear podcast on the internet covering all things Metal Gear from top to

[00:05:47]
bottom, left to right, inside and out in pseudo-historical recreational order.

[00:05:52]
As I once was, I am now your host.

[00:05:56]
Unless you're Summerfield and this week I'm joined by...

[00:05:59]
Sam Wright.

[00:06:00]
It's me, your boy.

[00:06:03]
And...

[00:06:04]
Ray Robano.

[00:06:05]
Okay.

[00:06:06]
That's actually our super secret guest for this family.

[00:06:16]
Deborah!

[00:06:18]
Deborah!

[00:06:20]
Isaac, I have a question for you real quick before we get started.

[00:06:23]
Oh, yes.

[00:06:24]
Can you tell us what we did on the last episode?

[00:06:28]
Oh, really quickly, in a segment I like to call...

[00:06:32]
Fumbling in the dark with Isaac Lim.

[00:06:37]
Well, if you guys are going to do inhales, then I will do an inhale.

[00:06:42]
I believe it was about two, maybe three years ago at this point.

[00:06:51]
So, Alessio and I had this conversation about a week ago and I actually found what the last

[00:06:57]
episode was.

[00:06:58]
Don't tell him yet.

[00:06:59]
I'm not going to tell him.

[00:07:00]
I'm not going to tell him.

[00:07:01]
I just want...

[00:07:02]
Just for the pressure, I want him to know that I know that he doesn't know, but I know...

[00:07:10]
Well, I know that secretly he really does know and he's just a really good actor.

[00:07:15]
Yeah.

[00:07:16]
Alright, Isaac, what happened?

[00:07:17]
You guys are giving me too much credit.

[00:07:19]
Hold on, hold on, hold on.

[00:07:21]
Alessio, cue the who wants to be a millionaire and use it here.

[00:07:26]
Oh, man.

[00:07:28]
Flashbacks.

[00:07:29]
What did we do the last time, fellas?

[00:07:33]
Did we play video games?

[00:07:38]
Not last time.

[00:07:40]
Did we go on a scavenger hunt?

[00:07:46]
No.

[00:07:47]
Not last time.

[00:07:49]
I'm so unprofessional on this episode.

[00:07:56]
I'm sorry.

[00:07:57]
Did we?

[00:07:58]
Did we?

[00:07:59]
We did not.

[00:08:01]
Talk to people.

[00:08:06]
Each other?

[00:08:08]
Yeah.

[00:08:09]
Was there crying?

[00:08:12]
Typically.

[00:08:13]
Okay.

[00:08:14]
Yeah.

[00:08:15]
Alright, it's all coming back to me.

[00:08:17]
Oh, good.

[00:08:23]
Yeah, so we...

[00:08:24]
What last time what we did was we discussed our most primal fears and how we could overcome

[00:08:33]
that as human beings.

[00:08:38]
How close was he, Sam?

[00:08:41]
Not...

[00:08:42]
I mean, I guess it depends on how afraid you were of Marianne Williamson becoming the president

[00:08:48]
in 2016.

[00:08:49]
Oh, shoot.

[00:08:51]
Oh, my God, in 2016?

[00:08:54]
I think that is a good one.

[00:08:56]
Oh, no.

[00:08:57]
Episode, yeah, because it was before.

[00:08:59]
I wonder if it got released.

[00:09:00]
Did it get released late?

[00:09:01]
Because there's no way that the last time Isaac was on was four years ago.

[00:09:05]
Five years ago.

[00:09:06]
Five years ago.

[00:09:07]
That can't be right.

[00:09:08]
Sam, do your research.

[00:09:09]
Wait, wasn't she running for 2020?

[00:09:11]
Was she?

[00:09:12]
Yeah, she was running for 2020 and they were...

[00:09:15]
Because they were doing all the debates and stuff like a year or two or two years prior.

[00:09:19]
So it might have been 2018 then.

[00:09:21]
So not quite as severe.

[00:09:23]
Isaac.

[00:09:24]
It's about to be like, dude, we've been doing this show for two fucking long.

[00:09:27]
Yeah, that was 2016 because what the fuck?

[00:09:32]
The show was only a year old at that point.

[00:09:36]
Well, so, and I think we talk about this in another segment, but when we reposted everything

[00:09:42]
off of the geek time feed onto its own dedicated feed, I think all the dates got screwed up.

[00:09:48]
So Spotify says the first episode was like November of 2017 or something.

[00:09:53]
No.

[00:09:54]
Yeah, it's like September of 2015 or something.

[00:09:56]
Yeah.

[00:09:57]
So the last episode, Isaac was on August 7th, 2019.

[00:10:00]
It was an outer op.

[00:10:02]
Marianne Williamson or Metal Gear, where we quizzed him on whether or not a quote was from

[00:10:06]
Marianne Williamson, the Democratic potential candidate for presidency of the United States

[00:10:14]
in 2020 or from Metal Gear.

[00:10:17]
And Isaac actually didn't do...

[00:10:19]
He got 17 out of 20, which is pretty good.

[00:10:21]
Right.

[00:10:22]
Dude, spoilers for the episode.

[00:10:24]
I'm trying to trick Zoomers into going back in time and listening to these old fogies.

[00:10:29]
You kidding me?

[00:10:31]
Zoomers don't listen to podcasts.

[00:10:32]
All they do is do TikToks, eat hot chip and lie.

[00:10:36]
Yeah, exactly those things.

[00:10:39]
In that order.

[00:10:41]
Exactly that order.

[00:10:42]
Cool.

[00:10:43]
Well, so before we floss our way to the next day of the talk, I don't know what the fuck...

[00:10:49]
Shush.

[00:10:51]
Let me have this, Sam.

[00:10:54]
We should...

[00:10:55]
We're the three...

[00:10:56]
For Halloween, you, me and Isaac should be the three card playing old dudes that are in

[00:11:02]
every episode of Cowboy Peabot.

[00:11:04]
Yes.

[00:11:05]
I would love that.

[00:11:07]
Well, speaking of that, did you see that they were...

[00:11:09]
Entertainment Weekly released a picture of John Cho's spike walking down the street and

[00:11:13]
they're actually in the background.

[00:11:15]
Oh, thank God.

[00:11:16]
It's...

[00:11:17]
That's so mean.

[00:11:18]
I'm trying really hard to not get too hyped, but me and Chris...

[00:11:21]
We watched the intro and like legitimately we were fucking way too hyped.

[00:11:25]
It's so weird to me because like a lot of it looked great, but a lot of it also looked

[00:11:30]
like a really like high end cosplay.

[00:11:32]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:11:33]
Like fan made video.

[00:11:35]
It feels like their toe in the line, like they're doing like the sort of goofy, kitschy,

[00:11:39]
like 70s throwback thing.

[00:11:41]
Yeah, like if it's just like really pulpy and like kitschy and whatever, I can handle

[00:11:47]
that, but I really, all I wanted, all I wanted is to be good.

[00:11:50]
Yeah.

[00:11:51]
I just wanted to be good.

[00:11:52]
I just want Ed.

[00:11:53]
I just want Ed.

[00:11:54]
Well, they also welcome to Cowboy Bebop.

[00:11:58]
Yeah, welcome to Spoil-Beat Boop.

[00:12:02]
The director or whoever, the writer, never said that they purposely didn't include Ed

[00:12:08]
in all of the promo stuff because they want people to be pleasantly surprised and happy

[00:12:15]
about Ed's reveal.

[00:12:16]
Oh, well.

[00:12:17]
So...

[00:12:18]
So, Ed is the actor who plays the mountain from Game of Thrones.

[00:12:22]
Somebody said in the comments of that article that was Danny DeVito.

[00:12:26]
Oh, no.

[00:12:28]
All right.

[00:12:29]
Well, let's, so we have a series of round tables coming up.

[00:12:31]
So let's set the, let's set the table.

[00:12:33]
Let's set the table real quick.

[00:12:35]
So let me go get the silverware and the napkins.

[00:12:37]
I'll get the plate.

[00:12:38]
Can you kill, can you kill a few dishes sound effects here please?

[00:12:42]
Yeah, of course.

[00:12:43]
Whoops, I dropped all those dishes.

[00:12:45]
Broken, broken all over those like.

[00:12:47]
But yeah, so essentially what we thought would be a really fun idea.

[00:12:54]
Us and our seven other housemates because this is, y'all, this is like a potluck family

[00:13:01]
reunion at the rec center right now.

[00:13:03]
Fuckin' grandpa Sam's here.

[00:13:06]
Oh yeah, old man Sam.

[00:13:08]
Who's that?

[00:13:10]
Yeah, old man.

[00:13:12]
What are you doing?

[00:13:14]
I just wanted to be on the pod chair.

[00:13:17]
You know, fuck you old man.

[00:13:19]
Got it.

[00:13:20]
Fuck that guy.

[00:13:21]
I'm tired of him.

[00:13:22]
Sam.

[00:13:23]
God.

[00:13:24]
Disrespectful.

[00:13:25]
Disrespectful elders.

[00:13:26]
Disrespectful.

[00:13:27]
He tried to steal the pod.

[00:13:29]
Your pie.

[00:13:31]
My TV remote.

[00:13:35]
Perfect.

[00:13:36]
So we are doing a series of round tables featuring different eras from the entire

[00:13:41]
tenure of the show.

[00:13:43]
If you've been listening since the beginning and you're still here.

[00:13:46]
Oh my God.

[00:13:48]
Why?

[00:13:49]
Yeah, why?

[00:13:51]
If you're a new listener who jumped in like at a certain point, like if you're only familiar

[00:13:56]
with, I've actually noticed there's quite a few people that are only familiar with

[00:13:59]
Death Stranding onward.

[00:14:01]
So if you're one of those people and you only know Alessio from Creeping in the discord

[00:14:06]
and occasionally being on like a one round.

[00:14:08]
Random, random goodbye episodes.

[00:14:10]
Like who's this weirdo?

[00:14:12]
Yeah.

[00:14:13]
So if you, if you know me specifically as ghost dad, then you'll get to hear a lot of other

[00:14:19]
hosts you've never heard of.

[00:14:21]
But yeah.

[00:14:22]
Including Isaac Lim.

[00:14:24]
Yeah, correct.

[00:14:26]
The heart and soul of the Metal Gear Mondays podcast.

[00:14:29]
I might say.

[00:14:30]
Yes.

[00:14:31]
Isaac is the ghostest dad of the podcast.

[00:14:35]
Isaac, can we expect a tweet from doesn't have a tweet to mark the occasion?

[00:14:41]
We got to save it for the end.

[00:14:42]
We can't.

[00:14:43]
They may have shut it down.

[00:14:45]
Yeah, we got to, we got to let them, we got to.

[00:14:48]
It could happen between any of these.

[00:14:50]
It really could.

[00:14:51]
You never know when a tweet from doesn't have a tweet is going to happen.

[00:14:54]
And so you got to really.

[00:14:55]
We're going to be those annoying motherfuckers where it's like right after this commercial

[00:14:59]
break, we might find out what Isaac tweets.

[00:15:02]
Stick around.

[00:15:03]
Yeah.

[00:15:04]
So we're going to be doing that a lot, but there's some, there's some big boy episodes

[00:15:09]
that like we're, so we're recording this.

[00:15:11]
We're recording in a weird order.

[00:15:13]
So I already know half of what's going to happen, essentially.

[00:15:17]
And they're very long.

[00:15:18]
He's like a watcher of the Metal Gear.

[00:15:21]
Yes.

[00:15:22]
And so there's a lot of really good meaty content here and it's not just like silly

[00:15:26]
banana shenanigans, bananigans.

[00:15:29]
It's, it's, there's a lot of good shit.

[00:15:32]
There's a lot of reminiscing, a lot of really wish that this would have happened or.

[00:15:38]
Yeah.

[00:15:39]
Yeah.

[00:15:40]
Yeah.

[00:15:41]
Yeah.

[00:15:42]
Or I appreciate this now more because of blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:15:44]
But anyway, morals aside, we are going to segue into our OG Metal Gear Mondays 1.0

[00:15:50]
round table.

[00:15:51]
I will say this.

[00:15:53]
So if you hear anybody who is absent during any of this stuff, invitations were given

[00:16:00]
to everybody who's ever hosted.

[00:16:02]
And so if somebody's absent, it is not a slight.

[00:16:06]
We did our due diligence and never heard back.

[00:16:09]
So.

[00:16:10]
Yes.

[00:16:11]
Because they died.

[00:16:12]
Oh, no, no.

[00:16:13]
No, no, no.

[00:16:14]
Unfortunately too.

[00:16:15]
So we are later in this season because we're planning out like four weeks of content.

[00:16:24]
You will be hearing from like friends, fans, maybe some family.

[00:16:31]
But some of those like recurring guests and stuff may or may not be a part of these like

[00:16:36]
round tables.

[00:16:37]
So just it could be anybody.

[00:16:39]
This is the smash ultimate of Metal Gear Monday.

[00:16:42]
Everybody's here except for some.

[00:16:45]
But yeah, so let us using the magic of technology, we're going to hear music that represents

[00:16:53]
each era of Metal Gear Mondays.

[00:16:55]
And let's go back in time.

[00:16:59]
We're here at September 2015, Alessio lives in St. Louis and he's got these other two

[00:17:04]
gentlemen that are present to record and there's not a third gentleman, but there's

[00:17:08]
maybe a dog outside.

[00:17:10]
But there are some gentlemen and those gentlemen are named Sam.

[00:17:13]
Hey, Sam, if you could pick one pattern and two colors to decorate your personal Metal

[00:17:17]
Gear, which would it be?

[00:17:18]
Red, blue, flannel.

[00:17:20]
And Isaac, Isaac, if you could live anywhere in the Metal Gear universe, where would it

[00:17:24]
be?

[00:17:25]
In a box.

[00:17:28]
Amazing.

[00:17:35]
And round table question, but it's I'm just going to introduce myself again.

[00:17:38]
My name is Alessio.

[00:17:39]
If two characters in the Metal Gear universe were to start a podcast about Metal Gear Mondays,

[00:17:43]
who would it be?

[00:17:45]
I like Autocon is the obvious answer.

[00:17:47]
So, you know, Christopher Randolph is starting a podcast.

[00:17:51]
Do you think Snake would sit down and have a podcast with Autocon?

[00:17:54]
I don't think he would.

[00:17:55]
I think Snake would.

[00:17:56]
I think Snake would, but he would talk less than Isaac does.

[00:17:59]
Yes.

[00:18:00]
There'd be a lot of cigarette smoking sounds.

[00:18:03]
Yeah.

[00:18:04]
I think the sounds of cigarettes being smoked in the background.

[00:18:09]
Loud ethereal whoosh.

[00:18:11]
I feel like Meiling and Autocon would have a podcast.

[00:18:16]
Yeah, you know, I would enjoy that.

[00:18:18]
Yeah.

[00:18:19]
You know what I think?

[00:18:21]
I think I think Mastasha would probably.

[00:18:24]
Oh, for sure.

[00:18:26]
Like she would leverage her like writing career into like a tell all podcast where she would

[00:18:31]
have like people that were influential at the time of the incident on to talk about like

[00:18:37]
genome soldier number 1217 at 36.

[00:18:41]
Yeah, the ladies of Metal Gear.

[00:18:45]
The ladies of Metal Gear Isaac Isaac you horn dog.

[00:18:49]
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[00:18:52]
Am I right?

[00:18:54]
We took that in very different directions.

[00:19:00]
Editing is going to be a nightmare.

[00:19:06]
A quick random aside, did Mastasha ever get a 3D model?

[00:19:10]
I don't think so.

[00:19:11]
I don't know if I ever I've only ever seen the drawing of her.

[00:19:14]
She have a body in.

[00:19:15]
Well, she had a body.

[00:19:17]
She had a body.

[00:19:18]
But she.

[00:19:19]
Oh, no.

[00:19:21]
You like that zoomers?

[00:19:23]
I got you.

[00:19:24]
I'm back.

[00:19:25]
But she she had a body.

[00:19:27]
But I don't think like it was like a sketch.

[00:19:30]
She's Ukrainian.

[00:19:32]
Ukrainians.

[00:19:33]
That's not a real place.

[00:19:36]
All right, cool.

[00:19:37]
So yeah, round table.

[00:19:39]
Looking into the future.

[00:19:42]
The way that these are sort of handled is like, I'll kind of throw out some

[00:19:45]
questions, kind of help steer the conversation.

[00:19:47]
But besides that, it's pretty much no rules.

[00:19:50]
Let's talk.

[00:19:51]
Yeah.

[00:19:52]
Bees, no rules.

[00:19:53]
Just right, baby.

[00:19:54]
Yeah, baby.

[00:19:55]
What are those things called?

[00:19:56]
Chimmy cheesecakes?

[00:19:58]
What did you just call me?

[00:20:02]
Applebee's has a dessert called a chimmy cheesecake.

[00:20:05]
And it's like, it's like a churro.

[00:20:08]
I was thinking it was like a chimichanga, like a cheesecake filled chimichanga,

[00:20:13]
which I would.

[00:20:14]
It's kind of like that.

[00:20:15]
That's very good.

[00:20:16]
Actually sounds delicious.

[00:20:17]
It's quite good.

[00:20:19]
Applebee's has a really quick, because we're talking about Applebee's has

[00:20:22]
like a satellite place that sells Cheetos wings.

[00:20:25]
I made a YouTube video about it.

[00:20:27]
YouTube.com slash San versus sandwich chicken.

[00:20:29]
That was the most seamless plug I've ever heard.

[00:20:33]
Thank you.

[00:20:34]
But yeah, so let's, let's start.

[00:20:36]
Let's.

[00:20:37]
So we're the ones who can talk about where this all started, which I think gives us a

[00:20:41]
unique perspective.

[00:20:42]
So, and we've probably talked about it to death on the show before, but I'm trying to

[00:20:46]
kind of get into, I guess, like a mental headspace that maybe we haven't explored before.

[00:20:50]
So like, let's talk about like where we each were in our lives at the time.

[00:20:54]
So like, oh, no.

[00:20:57]
So, and obviously like share what you want to share.

[00:20:59]
You don't have to like go crazy.

[00:21:01]
But like, yeah, so Sam and I had been podcasting for a while for people who don't

[00:21:05]
have not already been told the story a million times.

[00:21:07]
Sam and I had been podcasting for a while already.

[00:21:10]
Isaac and I have been really good friends for not a really long time.

[00:21:14]
And I think we were all just kind of looking for something to do.

[00:21:17]
I had just moved.

[00:21:18]
I think it was only like a year or two into me moving.

[00:21:20]
So I was like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like,

[00:21:24]
I think it was only like a year or two into me moving.

[00:21:26]
So I was like very isolated, very lonely.

[00:21:29]
And I was just looking for something fun to do with my friends who lived far away.

[00:21:32]
And so I think we were like trying to figure out, we were like, yeah, you know,

[00:21:35]
I think Sam and I joked around about doing a Final Fantasy podcast for a long time.

[00:21:40]
Oh my God. Yeah, that's right.

[00:21:42]
Yeah. And we were like, we should do a podcast where every season is a different

[00:21:46]
Final Fantasy and we just cover it for like 20 episodes or something.

[00:21:51]
Nightmare.

[00:21:52]
Well, and so speaking of that, fucking friend of the show, Nick Frada and

[00:21:56]
yeah, old host Cameron Hill tried to do that and got burned out after like six months.

[00:22:01]
Yeah.

[00:22:02]
Cause it was a grind core.

[00:22:04]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:05]
They did.

[00:22:06]
Yeah. They did like Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex, a couple of their games.

[00:22:09]
But yeah, I just remember like they went really hard and then just kind of like

[00:22:13]
burned into the burned out into the sky like a shooting star.

[00:22:18]
But yeah. And Nick will be on later to talk about that too, which is cool.

[00:22:22]
But yeah, so I don't know. That's where I was Sam. Isaac.

[00:22:25]
I'm curious about like kind of where you guys were.

[00:22:27]
Isaac, you want to go to Amigo?

[00:22:30]
I will try to recall.

[00:22:32]
So I had always wanted to play the Metal Gear games, I guess,

[00:22:38]
but it always felt so daunting.

[00:22:40]
And I guess I had told Alessio that at some point.

[00:22:46]
And I never forgot it.

[00:22:50]
And maybe that's what triggered it.

[00:22:52]
The idea, the initial idea of like two people that haven't played and two people that have.

[00:23:00]
Yeah. Cause cause by the time we, cause Metal Gear Solid 5 had like just come out around

[00:23:06]
the time we started doing the show.

[00:23:09]
Yeah.

[00:23:10]
So you already had, cause I'm pretty sure it came out in like September of 2015.

[00:23:15]
And I don't know.

[00:23:18]
Oh, no, you're totally right. Literally.

[00:23:20]
Oh, no, September one, 2015 was the Japanese release.

[00:23:23]
Gotcha. Okay. So.

[00:23:25]
Oh no, worldwide. Holy shit, dude. You like that.

[00:23:28]
Hell yeah.

[00:23:29]
So, so like, I get what you mean by daunting. Cause by that point,

[00:23:34]
all, aside from fucking survive, all of the Metal Gear games had come out by that point.

[00:23:39]
And it's just like this big wall of lore that, you know, you would have heard about obviously

[00:23:44]
because your friends with Alessio.

[00:23:46]
But like, non stop.

[00:23:48]
Yeah. But it was just hard to, hard to parse really cause I remember cause at the time,

[00:23:54]
geek time has gone through a lot of like ownership quote changes cause it started.

[00:23:59]
Oh, you mean like this show?

[00:24:01]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:03]
Cause it started as a, it started as a geek time production.

[00:24:07]
And then geek time kind of came to an end and it moved over under forever and astronaut for a while.

[00:24:13]
And then.

[00:24:14]
I forgot about that.

[00:24:15]
Yeah. And then it just became like its own weird side entity. And I did. Yeah. After, after that.

[00:24:20]
So, but I remember it started as a geek time production and Alessio at the time was,

[00:24:28]
was writing articles about Metal Gear, like retrospective articles called Metal Gear Mondays.

[00:24:37]
And geek time was like, that's how I met Alessio was Tony Cook.

[00:24:41]
Oh, fucking runs into a club room, I guess one day cause he heard cause Alessio was like the guy who started the new media club.

[00:24:49]
And Tony was just like, I've heard of this guy. Let me see if he wants to write for our website.

[00:24:53]
Geek time.

[00:24:54]
Yeah. What a weird.

[00:24:56]
So strange and, and totally predicated on the fact that Alessio doesn't know how to say no to people.

[00:25:02]
So instead of being like, Oh, you fucking nerd, get outta here.

[00:25:05]
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What do you need?

[00:25:07]
There's like a, there's like a marble what if style like episode where Alessio did say no to Tony and I never, never know you guys.

[00:25:15]
I'm just a fucking nerd. Get outta here. I'll give you a wedgie.

[00:25:22]
And I took my cigar in his face.

[00:25:25]
Yeah.

[00:25:26]
Your ex's cigars.

[00:25:27]
I just remember we had like eight or nine writers and the only people that were writing anything was me and Alessio and then like somebody like somebody would like throw in like a weird thing every so often and then Jordan whenever he wanted to like up his press badges.

[00:25:45]
Write a dumb article.

[00:25:47]
Like somebody you mean Aaron.

[00:25:49]
Yeah.

[00:25:51]
But like the focus for a while we were just doing like the podcast and God if I never hear the word fucking niche again.

[00:25:59]
Oh my god.

[00:26:00]
Fuck.

[00:26:01]
We had so many discussions about finding our niche and what we wanted to do.

[00:26:04]
But we had success with Metal Gear because it was just like it was a market that hadn't really been tapped at that point.

[00:26:10]
But when we kind of started pulling back on the articles Alessio was just like what do you think about doing this article series as a podcast and roping in people who haven't played it before to talk to us about it.

[00:26:25]
And I was just like, hell yeah, let it roll.

[00:26:28]
And then we did.

[00:26:29]
Here we are.

[00:26:30]
Yeah, it was crazy because I think we it was going on in tandem with Jabber Tron, which was like the weird.

[00:26:37]
Yes.

[00:26:38]
Husk of a show that was left after geek time.

[00:26:40]
Yeah.

[00:26:41]
It was going on in tandem and I just remember being like, oh well, you know, in my mind I was like, yeah, it's weird.

[00:26:48]
You like unlock something when you just said that Sam.

[00:26:50]
But like we had struggled for years.

[00:26:54]
Like I can't even I cannot overstate it for years to be like we know people are listening because we never fucking knew like we didn't know if people were listening.

[00:27:06]
We thought we were just putting our time in a toilet.

[00:27:08]
Essentially, we had like we had like like five people we knew were listening like we had we had like because Nick Freida was listening to like back in the geek time days.

[00:27:16]
Remember Tyler Courtney and like Nick Freida.

[00:27:19]
Are you sure?

[00:27:21]
Yeah, he was definitely because we had because I'm well Nick said he found an MGM because of Watch Out for Fireballs.

[00:27:28]
I'm trying to fit the timeline because we had Nick on an episode of like the geek time podcast.

[00:27:38]
I'm pretty sure it was like right at the end of geek time.

[00:27:42]
Like it was right when like we had no idea what the fuck was going on and we were just kind of getting ready to close.

[00:27:47]
But I'm pretty sure Nick was like like tailing a geek time listener.

[00:27:53]
Maybe I don't know.

[00:27:54]
I don't know if we like resurfaced it or yeah, but time man.

[00:27:59]
Yeah, if 2020 and 2021 have taught me anything time is non-existent.

[00:28:05]
Yeah, it's worth a shed.

[00:28:07]
It's just it was so weird though because it was such a driving.

[00:28:12]
I mean it was like it was everything like for some reason we had just kept it felt like we were just like.

[00:28:17]
Like Sam tell me if I'm crazy.

[00:28:19]
It felt like we were doing the same fucking episode of a podcast and we were like redoing it every time.

[00:28:27]
Like that's what it felt like to be on the geek time podcast was it felt like we were doing the same episode over and over and over.

[00:28:37]
It was just like, why isn't anybody listening?

[00:28:40]
Like, yeah, I don't think that's inaccurate.

[00:28:44]
I think that was the thing about that was the thing about the geek time podcast was like I had like, you know, doing the geek time podcast with Aaron and James like it was it was it was James.

[00:28:52]
James Bainie not James.

[00:28:54]
Yeah, it was a very different James for those who too many James except they were they overlapped on a phone call.

[00:29:01]
They did.

[00:29:02]
That's that was a historic phone call.

[00:29:05]
Let's not talk about phone call.

[00:29:08]
But yeah, so it was like it was fun doing it because we were just we just got really goofy but like the content it was just like, here's for like, here's for dudes, here's for cis dudes just talking about nerd shit.

[00:29:26]
As if like that wasn't every podcast.

[00:29:29]
Yeah.

[00:29:30]
This side of fucking Mississippi at that point like it like that was a weird idiom to say.

[00:29:35]
I don't know why but we guys have this side meaning all sides.

[00:29:39]
Yeah, every side of the Mississippi.

[00:29:42]
Did you guys have like a structure to it or just get on and just talk whatever comes to mind structure never heard of her structure.

[00:29:52]
I barely know her.

[00:29:55]
Yeah, it's pretty right.

[00:29:57]
Well, it was weird too because as soon as Metal Gear Mondays came out it was like pretty.

[00:30:02]
I don't know like for the first year or two it was really hard to know if anybody was listening.

[00:30:06]
But I would say it was an order of magnitude more listened to than.

[00:30:15]
Yes, absolutely.

[00:30:16]
Immediately like right after the game like we knew that much.

[00:30:19]
Well, because I even think about like because we did it because we did a Patreon for geek time and then we did a Patreon for Metal Gear like even that just like from the very start of both of them like it was very like measurably in favor of Metal Gear Mondays.

[00:30:34]
Yeah.

[00:30:35]
So that was I mean that was a weird phone call that we had to make where it was like hey this random show that we did for shits and gigs is now kind of the main gig see.

[00:30:45]
It's kind of like the flagship show now so I guess whatever.

[00:30:49]
Yeah, which was a bummer because like like the other guys we podcasted with weren't on the Metal Gear show.

[00:30:54]
So for us to be like see a loser's.

[00:30:57]
Yeah, yeah.

[00:31:00]
Yeah, and they're not losers.

[00:31:01]
I was just putting on a I was just like a like a mean girls.

[00:31:05]
She mean biker man.

[00:31:06]
Yeah, she back.

[00:31:08]
Well, because like it was very uncomfortable because like I you know I like just to put it all on the table there like I knew James and Aaron like I am like they were they were they were and you know our friends like you know you know you drift apart and I'm in Seattle now so it's just kind of hard to keep up with people but at the time it was just like

[00:31:28]
Well fuck I don't know like what we're doing here.

[00:31:33]
The interest seems to have waned and like I am I am personally needing and wanting to shift my focus into this thing that's actually producing results and it was just a really uncomfortable situation for a while.

[00:31:48]
Yeah, it's like how do you talk to somebody because like it's not dissimilar from a conversation that we actually had off mic earlier but it was like when you are making a thing with people and they're getting more out of just spending time with you then you're getting out of making the thing.

[00:32:08]
I think then it puts you in a very uncomfortable situation.

[00:32:11]
You know what I mean.

[00:32:12]
Yeah.

[00:32:13]
Yeah, I don't know it's super weird when I felt weird too because I was just like this disembodied voice that was like no Sam come to the dark side.

[00:32:21]
Well I think that would be like I but that's the thing is like I wanted to quote come to the dark side.

[00:32:26]
Yeah, I wanted to focus my time on the thing that like not only did I enjoy it but like it was it was like semi successful was like at that point and even to this day like I you know I've been doing YouTube and stuff and that's been it's got you know a decent falling but I like the like the most

[00:32:42]
successful creative thing I've done on the Internet you know I think when you want to do something like that and also there's the draw of success like it's hard to push that away.

[00:32:54]
Yeah.

[00:32:55]
So it's not like it's not like you were you were like having to convince me to like do it.

[00:32:59]
Yeah.

[00:33:00]
It was just like like here's what I'm doing let's go but like also here are these people that you know I've been doing this also with for X amount of time similar amount of time that I was doing with Alessio.

[00:33:11]
And it was just like it felt like it felt like leaving people behind and it was just you know it's kind of a weird feeling.

[00:33:17]
Because then there becomes like a whole other different set of situations so like for geek time the whole issue that we've talked about over and over and over is like how the fuck do we get people to listen and then for Metal Gear Mondays it became a waiting

[00:33:31]
game where it was like okay the people who are finding us are total strangers so we know that something's working and then it's like and this is the hard thing so if you're making a podcast or you're thinking about making a podcast I'm just going to lay this out for you as potential help but it's like

[00:33:49]
Don't.

[00:33:51]
I think in podcast world specifically I think and I guess this probably applies to YouTube as well YouTube and podcast where time isn't important like so how do I say this so if I were to make so this podcast right now right this podcast right now 20 years from now somebody might just fucking stumble across it out of the blue and it's the same with

[00:34:15]
YouTube right like I watched tons of YouTube videos where it's like nine years ago and oh yeah I get I get I get 10 year old video recommendations all the time.

[00:34:23]
Yeah yeah yeah so it's what it's one of those things where it's like you can't.

[00:34:27]
You can't throw your fishing line into the lake and you can't like fly fish when you're when you're making a podcast like you can't just fucking toss it and pull it out toss it and pull it out you have to like.

[00:34:38]
Let it sit for like what might feel like an uncomfortable amount of time and I don't mean like make the thing and let the things sit but I mean keep doing what you're doing the shitty part is you're not really going to get measurable feedback until like a year of you doing the thing that you're doing

[00:34:58]
so the shitty part is like you kind of still don't know and you're kind of in the dark and you're just dancing in the dark by yourself hoping that there's somebody else in the room who can see you and then a year later somebody turned the fucking light on and there's 10 other people in the room

[00:35:12]
and you're like oh there were people you know and obviously there are exceptions to the role but for the most part yeah you're like I guess I just started kind of casually doing like YouTube stuff after I stepped away from the show and.

[00:35:26]
What is I didn't I didn't feel any kind of like return on that for very long time and I've been doing it for two years now and I'm still kind of you know I'm still kind of waiting for it but I think I think.

[00:35:39]
If you have the patience like you have to have like it was you said it basically boils down to having patience but also like.

[00:35:46]
Make sure you're enjoying what you're producing because while you're waiting for that recognition to come like if it ever comes if it ever comes yeah all you have to say.

[00:35:56]
What I would like to stand on is the enjoyment of the product that you're creating what it does for you how it fulfills you and so if you don't enjoy what you're making not only are you miserable because you hate what you're doing but you also are not even.

[00:36:11]
Getting the success that you want out of it and so it's just like a whole a whole negative thing and so you have to make sure you're at the very least doing what you're doing for you first before it can reach any kind of success.

[00:36:24]
People in small businesses tend to refer to this kind of thing as like failing fast right so it's like.

[00:36:30]
If you because I mean it I mean it is a large amount of work to put a show like this together.

[00:36:36]
And I mean I think that's something too I mean obviously we could probably do a whole fucking three hours on this but like.

[00:36:41]
Making a podcast while being in a new city while God forbid while covid's going on.

[00:36:50]
While people are being born and people are dying and all these like I mean it.

[00:36:55]
It is not a quick and easy slap together fuck it I'm going to have fun with my friends kind of a job at like it's there is fun to be had but I think.

[00:37:04]
There's way more work that goes into this shit and so if anybody's ever like oh man why.

[00:37:09]
Why are the hosts like a revolving door on some of these podcasts including metal gear Mondays and I think it's just because shit is hard.

[00:37:17]
Yeah it's hard and you burn out like creatively it's just like I spent like it was hard for me because like I spent so much time and I'm sure.

[00:37:27]
I'm sure these guys kind of like can agree with this and at least some way but I spent so much time focusing on this like one guy that made these games and.

[00:37:38]
Picking apart like every little thing that this person is done it kind of it just gets exhausting and you kind of you kind of learn.

[00:37:49]
In a weird way how to hate the thing that you love when you poke at it so much and so that was why I like stepped away because like after after Death Stranding.

[00:38:00]
Came out and I played that for the show with the guys I was just like I can't I can't do a day of Kojima anymore.

[00:38:08]
This is not something that makes me happy I can't like you know you know you got the memories but like fuck this guy.

[00:38:16]
And like when you start to feel that way that's when you kind of know you either have to shift focus or stop doing what you're doing.

[00:38:24]
And that's kind of been my experience is one of those things where like to kind of go back to the whole failure thing it's just like it's not unless you just stop.

[00:38:35]
It's not really failure but because everything you do everything you do is learning and so I have a hard time calling increasing your skills and learning learning and having an experience failure.

[00:38:49]
Yeah but I guess like iteration is probably like yeah yeah yeah that's like take what you learn and it's like Digimon world right you just grind that little fucker until he dies and then you take his pieces and you make a better newer one.

[00:39:01]
Yeah good old place.

[00:39:03]
Is that how Digimon works I don't know if that's how it works.

[00:39:08]
I appreciate the sentiment though.

[00:39:10]
Isaac.

[00:39:12]
So one we didn't let you.

[00:39:16]
So three three questions for Isaac one.

[00:39:19]
Where were you when all this went down emotionally like while you were working on Metal Gear Mondays for the OG season like where was your head at.

[00:39:29]
Yeah what were you into question number two what does it like to be sandwiched between these two loudmouth never stop talking motherfuckers for so long.

[00:39:38]
And then number three dude did you Irish goodbye the episode why didn't you ever have a proper farewell.

[00:39:44]
Oh man.

[00:39:46]
Well let's start at number one.

[00:39:50]
Yeah so I think for me I was getting to a point where I was a little in general burnt out on video games.

[00:40:01]
There was a time when I was like video games are amazing and I'm never going to get tired of video games.

[00:40:09]
And then slowly maybe it's the the work life that you know wears you down but I found myself playing video games less and less and same.

[00:40:22]
Yeah it's just what do you guys mean gamers for life.

[00:40:29]
And so when a less you came to me and is like hey what do you think of this idea.

[00:40:34]
I was like I mean I don't want to lose the love of video games and this would kind of help me steer back on track and get back on the wagon.

[00:40:47]
Back on the.

[00:40:48]
Is it all.

[00:40:49]
Yeah so I was like this is wagon maybe.

[00:40:57]
I think I heard you don't play video games but do you play video game.

[00:41:07]
And I think it's safe to say that I'm bad at video games as a parent through this podcast so I thought you're going to say as a parent and I was like I think

[00:41:18]
what has been hiding some shit from us brother.

[00:41:21]
Let me just tell you.

[00:41:22]
You got a lot of secrets.

[00:41:24]
A lot happened in the three years.

[00:41:29]
But yeah so it was good it was fun but I think a less you said it best when we went on our first hiatus when we discussed it and trying to figure out where everybody was at.

[00:41:44]
I think he said it and it started out as being fun just like playing video games and talking about it with your friends and you know that sort of thing but then after a while it felt almost like a homework assignment week after week that we had to keep up with and

[00:42:04]
I kind of shared that sentiment I guess even though I didn't put in the same amount of work that you two did for sure.

[00:42:14]
But yeah it was just it didn't feel as rewarding I guess it was like oh this I got to turn this on again and play through this little section and yeah so it was.

[00:42:29]
15 times.

[00:42:33]
And when you're bad at something it's really really hard for you to like stick to it.

[00:42:39]
It should have been like Isaac do you want to do a Dark Souls podcast.

[00:42:42]
Oh my god.

[00:42:43]
Well I feel like if we did a Dark Souls podcast Isaac would just like boss Dark Souls somehow like I just.

[00:42:50]
Yeah we would like you yeah I feel like it would be the podcast would just be like training montage music for the entire.

[00:42:58]
I would vote Isaac in the yearbook to be most likely to secretly be great at Dark Souls.

[00:43:03]
No let's do it.

[00:43:05]
You don't want to start another podcast.

[00:43:07]
Dark Souls done days everybody.

[00:43:11]
Question number two Isaac which was.

[00:43:19]
Question number one is where were you mentally question number two was oh what is it like to be sandwiched in between these two big big mouth.

[00:43:31]
I mean it's.

[00:43:34]
These big boys.

[00:43:37]
It's a.

[00:43:38]
It's always a good time that's for sure I mean being a little bit.

[00:43:44]
A little bit quieter I guess it is it can be hard.

[00:43:49]
Interjecting but that's you know that's the way it goes sometimes.

[00:43:55]
Isaac is a massive fucking personality in person though like that's something.

[00:44:00]
Oh my god Isaac.

[00:44:03]
So I'm going to say this here because I've mentioned it not to him via text until less it's a couple of the people are the last couple of weeks.

[00:44:11]
But I'm going to say it here live on air while Isaac is here so he can be embarrassed.

[00:44:16]
Isaac is perhaps one of the funniest people I know.

[00:44:22]
In life because so in real life.

[00:44:27]
Isaac is the physical manifestation of a fever dream.

[00:44:32]
I think in real life and I love it so much.

[00:44:36]
When he's on podcasts with us.

[00:44:40]
It's like somebody turned on a flashlight over like a mouse in the basement or something.

[00:44:45]
But that's the thing though is like he kind of but like Isaac will like it's kind of like he's prepping a fucking spirit bomb the entire episode and he'll just like store his energy when he's quiet and then he'll just say something that is the most off the wall.

[00:45:04]
Many many times has like the three things he said on a Metal Gear Mondays been the best part of the episode so many times.

[00:45:13]
And that's kind of that's that's who Isaac is.

[00:45:16]
I love that he's so funny incredibly funny.

[00:45:21]
Well, here I am.

[00:45:25]
I think I think for the entirety of me and Isaac's friendship I think we have worked so well together because we are the opposite.

[00:45:33]
I have to store the energy and I'm like get the energy out of me.

[00:45:36]
It's poison.

[00:45:40]
But no man.

[00:45:41]
Yeah, I think I think that's something that I would say we're turning into the Isaac gush podcast.

[00:45:46]
I think my life has been better for knowing Isaac and I think last that Isaac has been my friend for 20 years this year.

[00:45:57]
Jesus Christ.

[00:45:59]
Oh, we were talking about anniversaries like the eco anniversary.

[00:46:04]
I didn't think about that.

[00:46:06]
Silent Hill 2 turned 20 a couple days ago.

[00:46:10]
Yeah, weirdly enough Silent Hill 2 is older than eco which makes no fucking sense to my brain.

[00:46:16]
But yeah, so we share that the same anniversary.

[00:46:22]
Yeah, we'll say eco eco is our food.

[00:46:26]
That's true.

[00:46:28]
That's fitting.

[00:46:29]
So the third question is like why did you Irish by the podcast?

[00:46:34]
Let me just tell you from blues clues over here.

[00:46:39]
This is this is his moment where he comes back and says I'm super glad we're still friends.

[00:46:45]
We cry.

[00:46:47]
Take that meme and just put my face on top of this.

[00:46:52]
Maybe maybe that should be your tweet.

[00:46:55]
Oh, all right.

[00:46:57]
I'll be fake.

[00:46:58]
I'll be working in the background.

[00:47:00]
That'd be weird.

[00:47:03]
I mean, was it like, I'm sorry, I'm going to give you an out, I guess.

[00:47:08]
I mean, was it just as simple as like, hey, shit came up and things kind of went along their merry way?

[00:47:15]
Or I mean, was there like a specific moment when you were like, I'm done.

[00:47:21]
No, I just remember around that time.

[00:47:28]
Like I think you had called me and then Sam called me about like stuff going on with with the podcast and that you guys were, I guess, Alessio more so was kind of ready to part ways with the.

[00:47:45]
Alessio is getting ready to go and then I think I was like trying to test the waters of like, do you want to play Death Stranding?

[00:47:53]
Oh, that's right.

[00:47:54]
That was the last time.

[00:47:56]
If that if the Marianne Williamson episode was August, it was like August.

[00:48:01]
So it was like a comp like in like three three-ish months was going to be when we started covering.

[00:48:06]
Well, and I moved in July too.

[00:48:08]
So we probably recorded before I moved.

[00:48:10]
If I remember correctly.

[00:48:12]
Yes, I believe so.

[00:48:13]
Yeah.

[00:48:14]
I mean, that all lines up for sure because I think pre move.

[00:48:17]
I was like, dude, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this.

[00:48:20]
Yeah, because I was trying to figure out because I knew we were going to get colon to do Death Stranding.

[00:48:26]
And I said colon colon.

[00:48:31]
We wanted to get coal to do it.

[00:48:33]
And I was considering like, okay, we got to see if we can get Isaac in.

[00:48:38]
I kind of want to get Zach in.

[00:48:41]
And yeah, that's kind of that's kind of where where I was talking to Isaac at the time.

[00:48:45]
Right.

[00:48:47]
And Isaac called me and he said this motherfucker.

[00:48:50]
No, I'm kidding.

[00:48:52]
Well, Isaac swears like crazy when he's not on the podcast.

[00:48:55]
Hey, yeah.

[00:48:57]
He's all like this, like that.

[00:49:00]
I want to hear Isaac swear so bad.

[00:49:02]
I've heard him swear twice and it's so good.

[00:49:05]
20 years, you guys, one swear every day.

[00:49:10]
One swear every decade.

[00:49:13]
Yeah, I don't know.

[00:49:16]
I think it was that I was also kind of getting burned out again.

[00:49:23]
And so when Alessio was like expressing the same sentiment, I was like, well,

[00:49:31]
and then I think Alessio was like, Sam was trying to get a couple other hosts to do Death Stranding.

[00:49:39]
I was like, well, yeah.

[00:49:42]
It's a pretty solid reaction.

[00:49:47]
Yeah, so I was playing it back.

[00:49:50]
I was like, do I want to get into Death Stranding?

[00:49:54]
Do you want to get stranded?

[00:49:56]
Do I want to death?

[00:49:58]
Dude, I still have not played like halfway through that game.

[00:50:03]
So maybe you did play it though.

[00:50:05]
Yeah, I played through like, I don't know.

[00:50:08]
An hour.

[00:50:10]
Hey, for what it's worth, I think Death Stranding feels like the most like, yeah, Isaac wanted to make this video game.

[00:50:19]
I'll take it.

[00:50:21]
It feels like a fumbling in the dark skit got written down and actually produced by Cudino Production.

[00:50:26]
You know, it does.

[00:50:28]
Actually, never thinking about it.

[00:50:30]
They kind of paint Death Stranding a better life for me now.

[00:50:34]
This is Isaac's video game fever dreams with this.

[00:50:38]
Well, so it's funny when this might actually be a perfect segue into kind of later roundtables.

[00:50:46]
So I'll just kind of put this here.

[00:50:48]
So we did take a really long break in between MGS4 and then coming back.

[00:50:53]
And I think that actually helped us out a lot because getting James in there and kind of getting like distance.

[00:50:59]
I would argue, and maybe this is me being biased.

[00:51:02]
I would argue, I think it's episode, is it 65 when we came back?

[00:51:10]
I would argue that I think Rising Metal Gear Rising was the first thing we did when we got back.

[00:51:17]
Yes, that's that's right.

[00:51:19]
I think Metal Gear Rising up until the first trivia episode because there's been a second one.

[00:51:26]
There's been a second one since then.

[00:51:28]
I would say, yeah, from Rising to trivia is my personal golden age of the podcast.

[00:51:36]
Well, that's when we started doing like interviews too, right?

[00:51:40]
Yeah, it was like interviews, super, super specific, like not necessarily game focus because I mean, we did the fanfiction episode.

[00:51:48]
We did parody games.

[00:51:49]
We did fighting games.

[00:51:51]
Yeah, I don't know.

[00:51:52]
Maybe it's because we started branching out, but I really, really love that whole stint.

[00:51:57]
And I think we kind of solidified like the format, but like also how we went about the podcast, I think.

[00:52:07]
It was cool.

[00:52:08]
Well, and for what it's worth to you guys, three out of the top five most listened to episodes are all Metal Gear Solid 5 related.

[00:52:16]
So we did it.

[00:52:18]
But the other thing I was going to say, we did it.

[00:52:21]
But I would say and say I'm definitely like no tea, no shade, no lemonade.

[00:52:26]
I and this is the thing I'm going to be most curious to like not grill you guys, but like interrogate you guys to learn about.

[00:52:34]
I didn't expect anything to happen after Death Stranding.

[00:52:38]
I was like legitimately surprised that and not in like a bad way.

[00:52:42]
I just thought that like, because everybody was so fatigued at that point that I was like, oh, Death Stranding and we're going to wrap it up.

[00:52:49]
Like that's it.

[00:52:50]
Like put it put in the mothballs.

[00:52:52]
Well, I think so not to get too inside baseball about it, but whatever.

[00:52:59]
This is this is what this is for because we had a lot of discussions at the time after Death Stranding.

[00:53:04]
I was like, Alessio had left Isaac.

[00:53:06]
Isaac had left a while back.

[00:53:08]
I was leaving and so it was just like, well, do we even want to because then around the time that I said I was leaving Zach.

[00:53:18]
Zach was just like, oh, Zach was thinking about it and then I said I was going to.

[00:53:23]
So he took that.

[00:53:24]
I was like, oh, I need to.

[00:53:25]
How soon after Death Stranding was this though?

[00:53:27]
Because in my head, didn't you guys have like a season or two?

[00:53:30]
So we started.

[00:53:33]
We did before I left.

[00:53:37]
We played Observer.

[00:53:39]
Oh, yeah.

[00:53:40]
Warren produced it.

[00:53:42]
Right.

[00:53:43]
No, Warren.

[00:53:44]
Warren was a guest at the time.

[00:53:46]
So Warren had come on for the for my last full episode, which was like the wrap up episode for Observer and Blade Runner.

[00:53:55]
Yeah, I thought you guys copies of the game or something.

[00:53:59]
Yes.

[00:54:00]
Yeah.

[00:54:01]
Yeah.

[00:54:02]
Yes.

[00:54:03]
So at some point he sent us he sent us some PSN bucks to basically who's just like Observer is this cheap on PlayStation Plus.

[00:54:12]
Here's money to play Observer and get PlayStation Plus so you can get the deal.

[00:54:19]
And that was incredibly kind and Observer wound up being like a really great, a really great like experience.

[00:54:27]
But yeah, we did like after Death Stranding, we did like, I remember Cole, Zach, Chris and I did like a state of the podcast.

[00:54:41]
And this was like what we were planning on doing and this was right before this was literally like right before the pandemic hit in 2020.

[00:54:51]
We talked about like what our like ideal Metal Gear Solid 6 was.

[00:54:57]
And then we launched into Blade Runner.

[00:55:00]
We did Observer and then that was when the great skism.

[00:55:06]
And that's when Zach Cole and I left and then I think like July was when Revenge, the Metal Gear Mondays Revenge started.

[00:55:16]
And so we had conversations around the time I was leaving.

[00:55:22]
It was just like, do we want to end it?

[00:55:24]
Do we want to find some people to carry the torch?

[00:55:27]
And it wound up being, it wound up being.

[00:55:31]
How about both?

[00:55:32]
Yeah, basically.

[00:55:33]
So wound up being Chris and then we got Tori on it and then Cole was going to.

[00:55:42]
Yeah, he was on those first few episodes.

[00:55:44]
Yeah, Cole was going to record, going to go on with it, but I think just some like personal like mental health issues and stuff like that.

[00:55:51]
That kind of like put the kibosh on that.

[00:55:52]
So Cole stepped away and that's when they called Warren in and that's where we kind of are today.

[00:55:57]
And so I think all of these people.

[00:56:00]
Yeah.

[00:56:01]
And I think, I think there was just a lot of burnout all around from, from, from everyone.

[00:56:07]
And I think it just kind of made sense to do this.

[00:56:11]
Yeah, for sure.

[00:56:12]
Yeah, I'm going to dance around my words, not because I'm trying to tiptoe around anything bad, but because I don't want what I say to devalue anybody's participation in this project.

[00:56:26]
Contributions.

[00:56:27]
But I will say when you are three really good friends who start something just for shits and gigs and because people actually are listening and think you guys are fun to listen to.

[00:56:39]
It becomes really difficult.

[00:56:42]
Not just for us, not just for the people who took over after us and not just for listeners.

[00:56:46]
It's really difficult for everybody because you've got people who were listening because of the chemistry.

[00:56:52]
You've got friends who were making it because of the chemistry.

[00:56:57]
And then you have new people who once they get like two or three generations removed, it becomes this weird.

[00:57:04]
Here we go.

[00:57:05]
He's going to say the name of the thing.

[00:57:07]
It becomes this weird phantom pain where you're like carrying around, you're carrying around an obligation from someone else's obligation.

[00:57:18]
You know what I mean?

[00:57:19]
So it just becomes this weird.

[00:57:21]
So I don't know.

[00:57:22]
I think to some extent, and again, I'm not trying to say that the people that are currently working on the show are not making killer content.

[00:57:27]
I'm not trying to say that they're not enjoying what they're doing.

[00:57:30]
But I think there just is an overwhelming sense from top to bottom of everybody just wanting to move on.

[00:57:36]
I think.

[00:57:38]
And so we want to have fun and move on in a celebratory way and not in a downer way.

[00:57:42]
Yeah.

[00:57:43]
And it's one of those things too where it's just like, it's like I said, when you kind of cease to enjoy yourself doing it.

[00:57:50]
Enjoy yourself doing something.

[00:57:52]
It shows and it kind of becomes like.

[00:57:58]
Like you do it out of spite after a while.

[00:58:02]
And I know I didn't want that to be what happened to me.

[00:58:06]
And I prefaced that by saying that I don't think that's what is has happened with with, you know, the 2.0 team and anything like that.

[00:58:16]
What I what I think is that that overwhelming sense of wanting to move on would eventually evolve into that kind of.

[00:58:25]
Yeah, you're basically hate fucking what you're doing after a certain point.

[00:58:30]
Kind of like a lot for a team of fucking his fans as we discussed several times.

[00:58:35]
Without repeating the same material.

[00:58:38]
How do you cover something that got covered into the ground?

[00:58:43]
Right.

[00:58:44]
But I will say this and this is the last time I will mention it.

[00:58:47]
I think I do mention it later on in a different recording.

[00:58:50]
But this is the last time that I will mention it officially in chronology chronological sequence.

[00:58:58]
My two biggest regrets.

[00:59:00]
Yeah.

[00:59:01]
Two words.

[00:59:03]
Snatcher and police knots.

[00:59:05]
Yeah.

[00:59:06]
I really wanted to fucking play those games.

[00:59:09]
Yeah.

[00:59:10]
So I've played Snatcher and I've only played like a quarter of police knots, but I really wanted to play those games for the show.

[00:59:17]
That was and the crazy part about it is I'm pretty sure like before you stepped away, we had like, pinned that into the schedule and then it came in and like completely cleared the schedule and then everything kind of like fell off.

[00:59:33]
Yeah.

[00:59:34]
We plan to play police knots and Snatcher so many fucking times and it just never happened.

[00:59:40]
Yeah.

[00:59:41]
Well, and the other thing too that also bums me out is that Blade Runner observer and Snatcher would have been an excellent lead into Cyberpunk coming out.

[00:59:49]
Yes, absolutely.

[00:59:50]
With too bad Cyberpunk, why would it be?

[00:59:53]
Yeah.

[00:59:54]
But no, it's just very funny to me.

[00:59:56]
Like, because it's in a weird way too, it's like when you're not engaging, you almost have to like, from my perspective, I definitely engage with the

[01:00:03]
community on Discord way longer than my tenure on the podcast ran.

[01:00:08]
But I will say it's really difficult to listen to a podcast that you used to be on because no matter how good it is in the back of your head, you're like building schedules for seasons that don't exist.

[01:00:20]
You know what I mean?

[01:00:21]
Like at least that's how I am.

[01:00:22]
I'm like, oh, you could do this and you could do this and you could do this and it's like, it's not your thing.

[01:00:27]
It's kind of this.

[01:00:28]
Yeah.

[01:00:29]
It's kind of the same thing for me.

[01:00:30]
It's just really hard to like know.

[01:00:31]
It's like, this is the thing that I did.

[01:00:33]
And then it's just like, well, not anymore.

[01:00:36]
Yeah.

[01:00:38]
Well, nice.

[01:00:39]
No, this was good.

[01:00:40]
Isaac, did you want to add anything else?

[01:00:43]
Like 100% like if you have anything you ever wanted to say on the podcast.

[01:00:47]
Yeah, let it go now.

[01:00:48]
I should have should have thought on this.

[01:00:51]
I was like, what else is new?

[01:00:54]
Isaac.

[01:00:56]
No, I will say this probably what it was the longest thing I've been a part of in a while, like something that's been so big, I guess you could say.

[01:01:16]
And I know I wasn't very active in like discord or Twitter or a lot of Twitter.

[01:01:28]
Twitter.

[01:01:29]
Twitter.

[01:01:30]
But yeah, just like seeing the small footprint we had, I mean, it wasn't gigantic by any means, but it was it actually impacted people and seeing that was really cool.

[01:01:44]
And then like reading all the fan letters and all over the world seeing like how it how we kind of impacted them.

[01:01:56]
I will say positive, but you know, mostly positive.

[01:01:59]
I will say I think because of your like lack of participation in the discord and Twitter, I think.

[01:02:06]
I think the list kind of deified you a little.

[01:02:09]
Yeah, I think it's been with all of you.

[01:02:11]
This mystery man.

[01:02:14]
Me and Alessio laying our entire lives out.

[01:02:17]
Isaac's just like, I am secret.

[01:02:20]
I am.

[01:02:21]
That's it.

[01:02:23]
Well, so I guess I don't know if I ever told you this Isaac from my perspective sort of being this like weird being the shadow advisor for Metal Gear Mondays.

[01:02:36]
And also, I mean, again, I was very active in the discord for about a year and a half and then ultimately that then had like this weird, at least for me had this weird codependency where it's like, I have to respond to everything.

[01:02:51]
But I will say this, I think, and I don't know if anybody's told you this.

[01:02:57]
I think because of a podcast that we started, some people got to build their own community during COVID and legitimately stay sane and make lifelong friends because of this stupid fucking show.

[01:03:14]
Yeah.

[01:03:15]
And so I don't know, man, like, yeah, I don't know.

[01:03:20]
Every once in a while when you stop and think and kind of remove yourself from the equation, there's sort of like a cool, sad beauty to it.

[01:03:28]
Yeah.

[01:03:29]
That's true.

[01:03:30]
It's kind of like how back in the day, I guess it happens now is like, you'll have your best friend will be this dude that you've never met, but you play video games with him every night.

[01:03:45]
And then so like the game build brings you together, but you've never actually met, I guess.

[01:03:52]
And then some ways this is a similar situation I feel like we've provided the outlet for people to come together with a common interest and basically build lifelong friendships, which was really cool to see like, like seeing all that happen.

[01:04:14]
Well, fuck, even like, even if like the listeners absolutely, but if you think about it, that's what happened with us to like, obviously you and you and Alessio knew each other outside of like the podcast, but

[01:04:27]
Hell yeah.

[01:04:30]
But like, again, like, Alessio like me and Alessio bonded because of geek time and writing like I if Tony never walks into that, that room. I never know Alessio or I think or James or any of these people and

[01:04:45]
meet David.

[01:04:46]
Exactly.

[01:04:47]
Or David, my best friend.

[01:04:49]
But sorry, Tori.

[01:04:58]
But yeah, it's wild because like again, Alessio means interactions for the first like year of knowing each other was just like, hey, you write this thing. Okay, let me look at it. Okay, cool. Here it goes.

[01:05:10]
And then that's a weird thing too, because Sam I think because Sam had to read all my shit for it to get published. I think Sam knew more about me than I knew about Sam for a long time.

[01:05:22]
Yeah.

[01:05:23]
Yeah. And then we started doing the geek time podcast and then we bonded through that and then I remember the first time I ever met Alessio when he came to Ohio for for that convention where he met Cole and Cole and Gary.

[01:05:36]
Where I can see my pants.

[01:05:37]
Yeah, yeah, I saw that picture somewhere.

[01:05:41]
Hey, I would say that convention is how we got Cole on the podcast. Yeah, which is how we got Nick freighter to listen to the podcast, I think, which is that like, yeah, it's all just a fucking this thing.

[01:05:53]
And then obviously, I think like I'm, you know, I started talking to you because we did this podcast together and again, we were going back to like memory lane looking at like liquid metal mics like drawings that he did for us on

[01:06:08]
Facebook on the Facebook page and then just like 11 and then kind of going back through some pictures and seeing that picture that Kristen took of us sitting on the couch of Alessio's office in St. Louis, where the three of us were together for the first time and that was when I met James and all that stuff.

[01:06:27]
And it's so real to think about because like we did like we built this community so that these these listeners these people have now created these bonds and friendships but like it did it for us too.

[01:06:40]
Yeah, that's true.

[01:06:46]
Man, the whole time that you've been saying this have been staring at this picture that you made of Isaac.

[01:06:53]
It's just a picture of Steve with Isaac's face and it says I never forgot you ever and I'm still friend.

[01:07:03]
Oh, no.

[01:07:05]
I'm just staring at Isaac's face.

[01:07:08]
Oh my gosh.

[01:07:10]
I even like I even like tinted the skin to match Isaac's skin tone a little bit.

[01:07:16]
It's very good.

[01:07:17]
You can really see it in the second image because there's like a little bit of a darker shadow on Steve.

[01:07:23]
That's really nice.

[01:07:25]
Before we shift into yeah so we'll shift in a little segue then we'll do a brief little intro and then we'll shift into the next.

[01:07:33]
Before we shift back into the each of these is a painting.

[01:07:37]
Mario's coming back to the castle between you.

[01:07:41]
But before we do that, let's do like a fun closer.

[01:07:47]
I want to do one one thing for Fry's because I want to kind of bounce off the fact that Isaac is such a cloak and dagger motherfucker and never shared anything with anybody.

[01:08:01]
Isaac, I would like you to take this opportunity to share your deepest darkest secret.

[01:08:07]
Oh my God, that was 100%.

[01:08:09]
I was about to say what is one thing that each has never shared.

[01:08:17]
Well, let's start with Isaac then.

[01:08:19]
I started to see your thunder.

[01:08:21]
Please steal away my deepest dark darkest secret.

[01:08:27]
Well, it doesn't have to be.

[01:08:28]
No, I don't know.

[01:08:29]
Yes, it doesn't have to be the dead body in your attic.

[01:08:32]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:08:33]
That we know exists.

[01:08:34]
Yeah, just not just something that you've never like shared before and just something that might be fun for them to know.

[01:08:39]
It doesn't have to be like super personal, but hmm.

[01:08:44]
Well, I don't do well on the spot.

[01:08:49]
Would you like some time to think about it?

[01:08:51]
Let me.

[01:08:52]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:08:54]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:08:55]
All right, Sam, I still have to thank you.

[01:08:56]
Do you have anything in mind?

[01:08:57]
Oh, no.

[01:08:59]
Oh, no.

[01:09:00]
It was your question.

[01:09:02]
I know, I was hoping Isaac would take it.

[01:09:05]
Me too.

[01:09:06]
Hold on, hold on, hold on.

[01:09:07]
I'm trying to rack my brain because I feel like I'm way too much of an open book, so I'm trying to see if there's anything.

[01:09:11]
I don't really, I don't really like keep stuff back really.

[01:09:17]
Have I mentioned the weird stuffed animal thing?

[01:09:22]
No.

[01:09:23]
What?

[01:09:24]
So yeah, okay, I'm going to do this.

[01:09:26]
So as a young, I want to say 13 and younger.

[01:09:32]
So probably like Primo was like seven to 13.

[01:09:35]
So from like between seven years old and 13 years old.

[01:09:39]
No, like seven and 12, whatever.

[01:09:42]
So for a chunk of my adolescence, I had a bunch of stuffed animals.

[01:09:49]
Okay.

[01:09:50]
And for the most part, it was like, I don't know why I had so many fucking stuffed animals because I don't remember asking for them or buying them.

[01:09:56]
I think it was just gifts from family.

[01:09:59]
And my parents like never got rid of anything.

[01:10:01]
Like I still carry with me a whole bunch of porcelain bears from England that my mom collected while I was being, while I was in her stomach.

[01:10:13]
And I still fucking carry them with me and they've never seen the light of day.

[01:10:18]
Because I feel bad like getting rid of them.

[01:10:20]
But anyway, so my parents kept all these stuffed animals.

[01:10:24]
So it was like stuffed animals from the hospital when I was born stuffed animals from family, all this shit.

[01:10:29]
So they sat at the foot of my bed.

[01:10:31]
And so I had all these stuffed animals on the foot of my bed.

[01:10:34]
I was afraid to go to sleep unless I hugged and kissed and said I loved you to each and every one of them.

[01:10:42]
Because I was sad that if one of them didn't hear that from me that he would get jealous and kill me in my sleep.

[01:10:50]
Oh, that's right.

[01:10:52]
I did not.

[01:10:54]
Where I thought it was.

[01:10:55]
That's not where I expected it to go.

[01:10:56]
And this is why I respond to fan emails within the hour of them.

[01:11:02]
Wow.

[01:11:03]
Man, psychoses are weird, right?

[01:11:11]
They have creepy eyes, man.

[01:11:12]
They do.

[01:11:13]
They do.

[01:11:15]
I ordered the Ikea bear that Junkles Cog bear that like kind of slumps.

[01:11:22]
Oh, I have him and he's the best fellow so much.

[01:11:26]
Is that your secret thing?

[01:11:27]
No, no, no, that's absolutely public.

[01:11:31]
I feel like whoever just heard that somewhere who's not known that about me is probably just like, you know what?

[01:11:35]
That explains everything.

[01:11:37]
Yeah, I was like, I'm surprised you didn't know that.

[01:11:44]
I didn't know that.

[01:11:46]
That's wild.

[01:11:48]
I think I knew about the porcelain bears, but I didn't know you still had them.

[01:11:53]
Yeah.

[01:11:54]
Have I talked about my, oh boy, have I talked about my kingdom, kingdom hearts, my kingdom hearts fan fiction at all?

[01:12:05]
You've mentioned it and you said that if we ever hit a patron goal of like X dollars, dude, but I mean, it's all going away.

[01:12:12]
So now it's a chance.

[01:12:14]
It's never going to see the light of day, but I can.

[01:12:19]
What would the back of the DVD box for the fans?

[01:12:22]
Right.

[01:12:24]
This is a big get, by the way.

[01:12:26]
Like if anybody's listening to this, like this is a big deal.

[01:12:28]
Friendless middle schooler writes.

[01:12:34]
No, no, no, baby.

[01:12:35]
I want to know.

[01:12:36]
I want to know about the fanfic, not about you writing.

[01:12:40]
No.

[01:12:42]
Oh, well, shit.

[01:12:44]
Give me like the five sentence back of the book.

[01:12:47]
It's just like, well, so knowing, knowing who I was as a person when I wrote it is kind of like kind of like, because it was like, I was just like, I want every single final fantasy character to be in this fanfiction.

[01:13:03]
Yeah.

[01:13:04]
So like one of the main carriers was characters was fucking farion from final fantasy one.

[01:13:09]
Like it was just like, I was just like fucking and then like me being like this, like lonely, like, like fucking mid puberty teenagers, like everything like everybody's fucking.

[01:13:22]
And there was like a plot point where like they go, they go, they go, they go, they go a lot of time and they have to fucking save the world and soren Kyrie's daughter is like the fucking

[01:13:42]
President of this like the president.

[01:13:45]
Yeah.

[01:13:46]
No, the protagonist of this like section, but then there was like a point.

[01:13:51]
There was like a point towards the beginning of the book where I paid that off and they're just like, sores is like, you want to fuck and Kyrie's like, yeah.

[01:14:03]
Is there a physical version of this?

[01:14:05]
Or is it all typed?

[01:14:06]
No, it's all on fanfiction.net somewhere.

[01:14:08]
Oh, it's still around.

[01:14:10]
Yeah.

[01:14:11]
Oh, I found I looked at it like a month ago.

[01:14:13]
Yeah.

[01:14:14]
It's still on there.

[01:14:15]
I can say if you like I can't I can't do it with Melvin or Mondays, but like if somebody listen,

[01:14:25]
I find this before you finish talking, I'm absolutely sharing it with people.

[01:14:29]
Oh yeah.

[01:14:30]
No, if you can listen, if you find it before I finished talking, you deserve to share it with people.

[01:14:35]
But I don't think you will.

[01:14:36]
But yeah, but like it was like they had their daughter, but then like I did this.

[01:14:39]
It was like check out his fuck.

[01:14:41]
It's like check off sex scene where it's just like, like, like Kyrie and sort of fuck and then like I pay it off later by having their daughter be like the main character of the story and they travel in time and they have to help her fucking beat the heartless or some shit like that.

[01:14:54]
It was fucking the worst, the worst, the worst shit, like the worst like middle school angst garbage.

[01:15:02]
Like it was just rough.

[01:15:06]
But not find it.

[01:15:09]
Can we get like so hard.

[01:15:11]
I was also trying to paragraph on my own.

[01:15:14]
Dainty types.

[01:15:15]
It does have I will say it does have Kingdom Hearts in the title.

[01:15:18]
It's it is.

[01:15:20]
So here's the here's the narrow down to 18 bills.

[01:15:24]
Here's the here's the only hint I will give you it is Kingdom Hearts colon something and that something is one word.

[01:15:35]
Well, so let me ask you this.

[01:15:37]
Did you write under a pen name?

[01:15:40]
I did.

[01:15:41]
It was my my my my my my fan fiction.net account.

[01:15:48]
Okay, so if you type in Kingdom Hearts, I just need everybody at home to know that there are almost 11,000 stories on fan fiction.net.

[01:15:58]
Time to get a dig in.

[01:16:00]
All right.

[01:16:01]
Isaac, Isaac, what is yours?

[01:16:04]
Let's see.

[01:16:07]
I feel like I don't have just that was the most I've ever explained about this fan fiction in my life.

[01:16:13]
So that's it.

[01:16:14]
How's that?

[01:16:15]
I give you I found something that I found something that matches what you just described a little bit, but I'm going to keep going.

[01:16:22]
It said put the name of it in the chat and I'll tell you if it's right or not.

[01:16:26]
Yo.

[01:16:28]
Yeah, so I feel like I don't have anything crazy.

[01:16:32]
See, I'm sure it's not Kingdom Hearts by burning nightmare.

[01:16:36]
Sure.

[01:16:37]
It sure is not.

[01:16:38]
Isaac, you got nothing.

[01:16:40]
I don't got like a crazy story that you all do.

[01:16:42]
You all got something.

[01:16:44]
Wow, childhoods.

[01:16:48]
No, get out of here boy.

[01:16:51]
I know you got something.

[01:16:54]
I guess this will be.

[01:16:59]
I don't know if I've ever shared this, but you know, actually, I don't know Sam knows, but let's see, you know, I've got three sisters, right?

[01:17:10]
So yes.

[01:17:11]
What if I was like, no, I've made it this long.

[01:17:14]
You have sisters.

[01:17:18]
I didn't know Isaac had sisters for uncomfortably long time of knowing him.

[01:17:23]
Like I said, it comes from Isaac comes from a strong female family.

[01:17:29]
Like there are like it's Isaac and his dad and then just like a whole bunch of like very, very independent, strong female like human beings, like wonderful people.

[01:17:43]
Good recovery.

[01:17:44]
Unless you know, yeah.

[01:17:46]
No, yeah, they're they're great.

[01:17:48]
They're great.

[01:17:49]
Shout out to Kim Lam.

[01:17:51]
I remember in like eighth or ninth grade.

[01:17:56]
I revealed that my mom's name was Kim Lim to the class.

[01:18:00]
Yeah, I was the funniest thing I had ever heard.

[01:18:04]
Hold on.

[01:18:05]
Her name is Kim Lam.

[01:18:09]
I don't know why that was so funny.

[01:18:11]
I mean, yeah, but somebody brought up to somebody brought up.

[01:18:15]
And ask is your dad's name Jim Lin?

[01:18:21]
It would be too good.

[01:18:23]
Yeah.

[01:18:24]
Oh, not to be confused.

[01:18:25]
There's actually a musician who I listen to sometimes named Lim Kim.

[01:18:28]
Lim Kim.

[01:18:29]
Yes, I've heard of her.

[01:18:31]
Anyway, that's not my a quick waffling your story.

[01:18:34]
Oh, yeah.

[01:18:35]
Anyway, so when I was when I was young, I guess I felt like left out.

[01:18:44]
That they would always have like things to do amongst themselves.

[01:18:50]
Being the only guy it's like, ah, I got to do this all on my own.

[01:18:57]
And so, you know, they would like go and paint their nails and

[01:19:03]
braid their hairs and have girls night.

[01:19:06]
Break their individual hairs.

[01:19:09]
I just had this conversation with somebody yesterday.

[01:19:12]
They reacted the same way.

[01:19:17]
Oh man, braid their hair.

[01:19:21]
I don't know.

[01:19:23]
Anyway, so I got real upset and I was like, but mom, I want to

[01:19:29]
pay my nails and braid my hair.

[01:19:33]
And so she wouldn't let me.

[01:19:35]
She was like, okay, you can paint your nails, but it's got to be like

[01:19:41]
clear or something neutral.

[01:19:46]
So she, yeah, that's it.

[01:19:48]
That's the story.

[01:19:49]
That's it?

[01:19:50]
That's the whole plan?

[01:19:52]
You left me on a cliffhanger.

[01:19:54]
Did you ever have you ever had your nails painted?

[01:19:56]
Yes.

[01:19:57]
Yeah.

[01:19:58]
So we would have like quote unquote girls nights when I was a kid.

[01:20:03]
I would be able to paint my nails clear and they would paint their nails

[01:20:08]
like and I was included.

[01:20:12]
I love it.

[01:20:15]
And then yeah, so I guess that's a pretty dark.

[01:20:19]
That's not really.

[01:20:22]
I don't know what's happening.

[01:20:26]
I mean, to the extent where it moved, I mean, it like got to the

[01:20:34]
point where like I wanted to play with their barbies to get in there.

[01:20:39]
Boy get in there because I was like, I mean they're like, yeah, we're already

[01:20:44]
buying all these Barbies for these girls.

[01:20:46]
We don't have.

[01:20:47]
We can't spare money for like Hot Wheels for you.

[01:20:54]
So this Malibu Barbie gift set better be big enough for that track.

[01:21:01]
It's just some some real head of a normative peasant shit right there.

[01:21:05]
Can I can I talk a little bit more about my my fan fiction?

[01:21:09]
Yes, yes, please.

[01:21:11]
So I'm looking at I'm looking at the reviews.

[01:21:14]
People have reviewed it.

[01:21:17]
I'm still on the hunt.

[01:21:20]
Here's here's what else.

[01:21:21]
So again, the other thing that I've read a minute, lots of cursing, lots of

[01:21:25]
cursing, because of course, for it.

[01:21:28]
Also, as we're recording this yesterday, yesterday was exactly 15 years since

[01:21:40]
it was published.

[01:21:42]
Yeah, September 26.

[01:21:44]
I hate to date it.

[01:21:45]
September 26.

[01:21:47]
Yeah.

[01:21:48]
He's giving it a little bit of information.

[01:21:52]
That's how you're getting.

[01:21:53]
What's the what are the reviews like?

[01:21:56]
Great story update as soon as you can.

[01:21:59]
The story is truly.

[01:22:01]
I cannot believe you left them hanging for that long.

[01:22:04]
I'm not I'm not like I'm this I'm not bullshitting.

[01:22:07]
These are actual reviews for the story.

[01:22:10]
Great story update as soon as you can.

[01:22:12]
The story truly is amazing and Axel is totally awesome.

[01:22:14]
But I have one question.

[01:22:16]
Why is this fixed centered not censored people often hear me wrong.

[01:22:19]
So I formatted it so it like is centered on the page for some reason.

[01:22:25]
From.

[01:22:26]
Do you remember what genre you filed?

[01:22:29]
Yes, but I'm not telling you.

[01:22:33]
Let's see.

[01:22:35]
Everybody likes my axle.

[01:22:36]
He's really badass.

[01:22:38]
Boys.

[01:22:39]
Yeah.

[01:22:42]
Chance more more more more more.

[01:22:45]
Oh, I noticed that some parts seem a little dragged out and others seem rushed.

[01:22:48]
It can be distracting at times when I still love the story.

[01:22:50]
I'll be waiting for the next chapter.

[01:22:52]
Very interesting so far.

[01:22:53]
I really like the plot of the story.

[01:22:55]
Keep up a great work.

[01:22:56]
And then that was in 2007.

[01:22:58]
There's there's a couple more that I kind of breezed through, but that was in 2007.

[01:23:01]
And then in February 3rd 2009 was the last review.

[01:23:05]
The story sucks.

[01:23:07]
S.

[01:23:08]
That was me.

[01:23:10]
That was me.

[01:23:11]
Me rolling with a little bit of little taste of reality.

[01:23:16]
Little flavor there.

[01:23:18]
This story sucks.

[01:23:20]
This story sucks.

[01:23:25]
All right.

[01:23:26]
Well, I will I will dedicate the rest of my life to this.

[01:23:30]
I'll see you guys later.

[01:23:32]
No, no, no.

[01:23:34]
So back to the back to the task and let us blue skadoo back to the main wing of this very weird long episode.

[01:23:43]
See you on the other side.

[01:23:48]
All right.

[01:23:49]
Wow, we're already here.

[01:23:50]
Okay.

[01:23:53]
So so far you have heard us introduce the finale season, the grand finale, the death of Metal Gear Mondays long live Metal Gear Mondays.

[01:24:03]
We just did the 1.0 roundtable recollection nostalgia fueled nightmare with me, Sam and Isaac.

[01:24:11]
And what you are about to hear right now is.

[01:24:14]
Metal Gear Mondays 1.5.

[01:24:20]
And we are about to have a roundtable discussion as you've heard with Du Bois, Zach James and Cole Duncan Du Bois Du Bois Du Bois Du Bois Du Bois in the house.

[01:24:33]
We're going to talk about our time with Death Stranding.

[01:24:39]
We're going to talk about just other stuff of that nature.

[01:24:43]
We have another roundtable.

[01:24:44]
It's going to be lots of fun.

[01:24:45]
So let's see how it's going to be on that one with us.

[01:24:48]
Of course.

[01:24:49]
And we're just going to have a lot of fun.

[01:24:51]
Isaac, fuck off.

[01:24:53]
You're not allowed.

[01:25:03]
Listen, this is my show now.

[01:25:05]
This is this is the one that I did.

[01:25:07]
This is for me and it's mine now.

[01:25:10]
I'm in a chaotic mood.

[01:25:12]
Listen, I slammed fucking over the course of the last like three hours.

[01:25:17]
I slammed these like energy waters that have a lot of caffeine in them that I got from my job in real life.

[01:25:24]
I'm wearing jeans and a pole and a polo and I didn't change into comfortable clothes for this.

[01:25:31]
Listen, I'm in a chaotic place and I'm not that we're not about to talk about Metal Gear Mondays.

[01:25:36]
One point five.

[01:25:37]
I like to introduce some people.

[01:25:44]
You're called Duncan.

[01:25:45]
You're called Duncan.

[01:25:46]
You're a professional wrestler.

[01:25:47]
What is your entrance music?

[01:25:48]
Oh, fuck on the spot.

[01:25:55]
I would just step on a duck.

[01:25:56]
What was that?

[01:25:57]
Oh, oh, shit.

[01:25:59]
I don't know.

[01:26:00]
Fucking like southern nights.

[01:26:02]
I don't know.

[01:26:03]
Fuck.

[01:26:04]
It's lame.

[01:26:05]
I'm lame.

[01:26:06]
Hi, I'm back.

[01:26:07]
I know no one asked for this.

[01:26:09]
The correct answer should have been some like hardcore classical music.

[01:26:14]
Yeah, just fucking drop some of that heightened shit on me.

[01:26:21]
All right, Zach James.

[01:26:23]
Same question.

[01:26:24]
No, not same question.

[01:26:26]
Who's going to play you in the movie adaptation of your life?

[01:26:28]
Steve Buscemi.

[01:26:29]
Perfect.

[01:26:30]
I love a man who can fire from the hip.

[01:26:35]
That fact.

[01:26:36]
I know.

[01:26:37]
I know.

[01:26:38]
Alessio Somerfield, you you walk into a date and somebody's wearing an article of clothing

[01:26:42]
that makes you walk out immediately.

[01:26:44]
What is that article of clothing?

[01:26:46]
An oversized sombrero.

[01:26:47]
Perfect.

[01:26:48]
Fucking.

[01:26:49]
I'm staying for that one.

[01:26:53]
My mind immediately went to chain mail underwear, but there's no way that I would be able to know that.

[01:26:58]
Unless they're wearing it on the outside.

[01:27:00]
I like Captain Underpants.

[01:27:01]
That's true.

[01:27:02]
But I would I would respect that.

[01:27:04]
Anyway, thank you guys for.

[01:27:06]
And that's the end of the episode.

[01:27:09]
That's the end of the episode for celebrating for celebrating Metal Gear Mondays 1.5 here with us.

[01:27:15]
We want to do something that is customary for Metal Gear Mondays 1.5, which is we'd like to do a crispy pop for for the crowd out there.

[01:27:23]
So I'll start really quickly.

[01:27:29]
Oh, that was nice.

[01:27:30]
I like an open a Topo Chico hard seltzer.

[01:27:33]
Oh, an apple.

[01:27:35]
All right.

[01:27:36]
I'll go next.

[01:27:37]
Yeah.

[01:27:38]
Yeah.

[01:27:41]
And that would be a ranch boy, a ranch water.

[01:27:44]
All right.

[01:27:45]
What do you got, Zach?

[01:27:49]
I've got a a Steve's green tea.

[01:27:53]
Hell yeah.

[01:27:54]
Oh yeah.

[01:27:55]
What about you?

[01:27:56]
Alessio, do you have something that crispy pop or you're going to do the the whoop ass like you said off off mic?

[01:28:00]
Oh, my God.

[01:28:01]
Mine's a tall can of these.

[01:28:03]
Oh, yeah.

[01:28:04]
I want to know what the fuck kind of can.

[01:28:06]
I want to know what the fuck kind of can Alessio has there at gas before he gets over.

[01:28:10]
No, no, no.

[01:28:11]
That was so good to pop it.

[01:28:13]
That's me like getting ready to cry.

[01:28:15]
Alessio just killed the one sentient fucking can in the world.

[01:28:19]
The can was about to tell us that.

[01:28:21]
I'm going to go ahead and get it.

[01:28:23]
I'm going to get it.

[01:28:24]
I'm going to get it.

[01:28:25]
I'm going to get it.

[01:28:26]
I'm going to get it.

[01:28:27]
I'm going to get it.

[01:28:28]
The can was about to tell us the secrets of life.

[01:28:31]
And I just like it.

[01:28:33]
It's like FC is not alive.

[01:28:35]
Oh, no.

[01:28:38]
Not baby.

[01:28:40]
It's a little fstein.

[01:28:43]
Well, I've seen.

[01:28:44]
Get it right.

[01:28:45]
He's got sound cloud.

[01:28:47]
Oh, just say.

[01:28:51]
Boys were back.

[01:28:53]
We're back.

[01:28:54]
It's been a while.

[01:28:56]
One last rodeo for the boys.

[01:28:58]
Listen.

[01:28:59]
I, I, Alessio has been kind of in charge of like shepherding us

[01:29:04]
through these segments for these kind of final episodes of

[01:29:08]
Mount of the Mondays, but because 1.5 was like.

[01:29:11]
When I took the show over basically this one is this was on me.

[01:29:17]
The blood is on your hand.

[01:29:21]
Yeah, the blood is on my hands.

[01:29:23]
And so I just kind of want to want to talk to you guys about

[01:29:26]
like the experience on middle gear Mondays and kind of reminiscing

[01:29:31]
to kind of like start us off.

[01:29:33]
I want to talk about like we briefly kind of talked about it

[01:29:38]
in other sections, but like let's get into it because the journey

[01:29:42]
kind of actually starts back during like the 1.0 section of

[01:29:47]
metal gear Mondays to get to 1.5 because it kind of starts with

[01:29:51]
Zach being a listener.

[01:29:52]
So I want to talk to Zach really quick about how you found the

[01:29:59]
podcast and how you like what prompted you to write in to the

[01:30:04]
podcast that kind of led you to this place.

[01:30:07]
So we're going to, we're going to all jump back into the way

[01:30:09]
back machine here and go back to January 2016.

[01:30:12]
Oh fuck.

[01:30:13]
Hey, hey, hey, hold on.

[01:30:16]
Zach can answer this in two words.

[01:30:18]
Planet fitness.

[01:30:19]
Oh, come on man.

[01:30:20]
I don't want to give you a bridged version.

[01:30:25]
No suspense at all.

[01:30:27]
Yeah.

[01:30:28]
So, so I was working as an overnight Jander at Planet Fitness

[01:30:32]
in Middletown, New York.

[01:30:34]
Make it 300.

[01:30:35]
Can you imagine Zach being like a late night?

[01:30:38]
Absolutely.

[01:30:39]
Yes.

[01:30:40]
Absolutely.

[01:30:41]
Rolling around like fucking Charlie Day.

[01:30:44]
Yeah.

[01:30:45]
Absolutely.

[01:30:46]
No, so I was working overnight at Planet Fitness as a

[01:30:50]
janitor, making a whopping 300 bucks a week.

[01:30:54]
Big money.

[01:30:55]
Yeah, for real.

[01:30:57]
And I was binge watching a binge listening to a bunch of

[01:31:02]
different podcasts and all that.

[01:31:04]
And I was just like, you know what?

[01:31:06]
I'm listening to all these video game podcasts, but there's

[01:31:08]
none that are like dedicated to Metal Gear.

[01:31:10]
Let me just hop on the fucking the Apple podcast thing real

[01:31:14]
quick and type in Metal Gear.

[01:31:16]
And wouldn't you know it?

[01:31:17]
Metal Gear Mondays pops up.

[01:31:18]
Was it even Apple podcasts back then?

[01:31:21]
It was just the podcast app, whatever the fuck.

[01:31:25]
Yeah.

[01:31:26]
And so I'm like, huh, there's an actual Metal Gear podcast.

[01:31:31]
Let me look into this.

[01:31:32]
And I looked and you know, it had Metal Gear Solid 1.

[01:31:34]
And you guys were right around the mid to late point of

[01:31:40]
season two when I started listening.

[01:31:42]
But what caught my eye was the fact that there was a

[01:31:45]
Ghost Babble episode.

[01:31:47]
And I was like, oh shit, not a lot of people who have played

[01:31:51]
Metal Gear know about Ghost Babble.

[01:31:53]
Let me listen to this and see if these guys actually know what

[01:31:56]
the fuck they're talking about.

[01:31:57]
Or if they're just a bunch of idiots and I'm going to write it

[01:31:59]
off.

[01:32:00]
Zach was already gatekeeping from the outside.

[01:32:03]
He was already in a fucking fight.

[01:32:05]
Zach was already like, what model of fucking Game Boy did you

[01:32:08]
play this on?

[01:32:10]
Yeah, exactly.

[01:32:11]
I swear to God, it wasn't a classic.

[01:32:13]
You're fake fans.

[01:32:14]
So you have a fucking NICO plug-in light to play it with.

[01:32:19]
So you can actually see the screen.

[01:32:20]
You don't have the fucking magnifying glass.

[01:32:22]
You're fucking plebeians.

[01:32:25]
Super Game Boy or bust.

[01:32:29]
Metal Gear Mondays, you sons of bitches.

[01:32:33]
But only true fans know it's at Metal Gear Mondays.

[01:32:38]
Why didn't we make a fucking Metal Gear Mondays sons of bitches

[01:32:43]
poster?

[01:32:44]
We could do it.

[01:32:48]
We could do it.

[01:32:49]
We could do a limited edition.

[01:32:51]
Like that's amazing.

[01:32:53]
Anyway, sorry.

[01:32:54]
We do a limited edition.

[01:32:55]
But it's finally done.

[01:32:56]
So I listened to it and that one was interesting because that

[01:32:59]
was one where it was just Alessio and Cameron and they got

[01:33:01]
fucking blitzed about halfway through the episode.

[01:33:04]
But you guys, you guys were on point with what you were talking

[01:33:07]
about.

[01:33:08]
And so I went and I just jumped in and started binging it from

[01:33:12]
episode one all the way to, I forget which episode it was, but

[01:33:17]
it was right.

[01:33:18]
It was coming near the, I think it was like one or two episodes

[01:33:21]
before season two ended.

[01:33:24]
And I got to that and I was like, you know what?

[01:33:27]
These guys are fucking cool.

[01:33:29]
They're talking about a game that I love, loved now.

[01:33:34]
And we'll get into that later.

[01:33:37]
Well, yeah, we'll get into that later.

[01:33:39]
And I was like, let me reach out to that.

[01:33:41]
I was like, maybe, you know, maybe just shot in the fucking

[01:33:43]
dark, they'll respond.

[01:33:45]
And so I sent it an email and I think like the next day,

[01:33:49]
Alessio responded.

[01:33:51]
That is the through line of every round table is, yeah,

[01:33:55]
and Alessio wrote me back at two in the morning.

[01:33:58]
And then what else I remember was I was like, holy shit.

[01:34:01]
I think Alessio would like CC'd Sam and Isaac on the email.

[01:34:05]
And so I responded then like two or three days after I just

[01:34:09]
get a random email on the thread from Sam going, sorry,

[01:34:12]
I took so long to respond.

[01:34:14]
I had a dentist thing.

[01:34:15]
Yeah, that was when I got my fucking wisdom teeth out.

[01:34:18]
I think no, I got my root canal, my root canal.

[01:34:21]
Oh yeah, no, it was the root canal.

[01:34:22]
Yeah.

[01:34:23]
Yeah.

[01:34:24]
And yeah, so then season three came around and you guys had

[01:34:30]
on, you guys had on Cole Ross, I think for the first episode.

[01:34:34]
And then after that, you had me on for a couple episodes.

[01:34:37]
And I think I was on two or three episodes, like mainline

[01:34:40]
episodes of season three.

[01:34:42]
And I was on one episode of season four, I believe.

[01:34:46]
Good ol' MGS four.

[01:34:48]
Oh yeah.

[01:34:51]
So please see aforementioned season for all of the things

[01:34:55]
wrong with Metal Gear Solid 4.

[01:34:58]
So Zach, he was a fan from the way back and he expressed

[01:35:04]
interest several times being on the podcast.

[01:35:08]
And of course he was a guest on several episodes.

[01:35:11]
Oh, so start to interrupt, Sam.

[01:35:13]
There was, it was the second episode you guys had me on

[01:35:16]
for Metal Gear Solid 3.

[01:35:18]
Oh, you were in your fucking car.

[01:35:20]
I recorded the podcast from the front seat of my car,

[01:35:23]
somehow on the phone with these guys and with my iPhone,

[01:35:27]
recording my audio because I was at drill.

[01:35:30]
It was my first drill with the new unit at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

[01:35:34]
Yeah.

[01:35:36]
Hell yeah.

[01:35:38]
So Zach had been a fan for a while and he had expressed

[01:35:46]
interest in being on the show.

[01:35:48]
And so it came to this point where Alessio was getting ready

[01:35:55]
to step away and we've talked about Isaac kind of like

[01:35:58]
shadow stepping out of the fucking podcast too.

[01:36:01]
And so I was just...

[01:36:03]
I just used shadow step.

[01:36:05]
So it was just me.

[01:36:07]
I was just like, fuck, what am I gonna do?

[01:36:09]
And so I thought about, I was like, well, well,

[01:36:11]
Zach might be interested in doing the show.

[01:36:15]
But also what about Cole Duncan who at the time was our

[01:36:20]
Discord mod?

[01:36:22]
So now I want to ask you the same question, Cole,

[01:36:25]
is how did you get into listening to the podcast?

[01:36:28]
And then do you remember what the journey was getting from

[01:36:34]
listener to Discord mod?

[01:36:37]
No, it's similar to Zach's, honestly.

[01:36:40]
Because I was working as the night manager slash beer buyer

[01:36:45]
for a liquor store chain in my hometown.

[01:36:51]
There was just a couple of them, but I was working as

[01:36:54]
the night manager for one of them.

[01:36:56]
And so same kind of thing as Zach is like,

[01:36:58]
I would just listen to a shit ton of podcasts while I was

[01:37:01]
restocking the store or cleaning up or trying to fix

[01:37:05]
something with the Growlers station.

[01:37:08]
And it was similar.

[01:37:10]
I listened to like...

[01:37:12]
What was it?

[01:37:13]
Video game book club.

[01:37:14]
That was a college humor thing.

[01:37:18]
And I was like, they did like a Metal Gear thing.

[01:37:21]
That was kind of cool.

[01:37:22]
And then I found like a Metal Gear like audio drama,

[01:37:25]
which was not great at all.

[01:37:27]
But it was cool.

[01:37:29]
I listened to that too in like quest for fucking

[01:37:32]
anything Metal Gear.

[01:37:33]
Yeah.

[01:37:34]
Yeah, I found that and I was like, oh God, this is...

[01:37:38]
This is bad, bad man.

[01:37:42]
I still have yet to listen to it, but I've definitely come

[01:37:44]
across it like a bunch.

[01:37:46]
Yeah.

[01:37:47]
It's the voice acting is superb.

[01:37:50]
Let me tell you.

[01:37:51]
Because it's still like, and we've talked about this too.

[01:37:54]
It's like it's still, when you look up Metal Gear on

[01:37:56]
Apple podcast, you've got Metal Gear Mondays,

[01:37:58]
you still have under the cardboard box and then you

[01:38:00]
have the Metal Gear audio drama, which I don't think

[01:38:03]
under the cardboard, well under the cardboard box

[01:38:05]
published something in June.

[01:38:06]
They were not regular on publishing shit.

[01:38:08]
Yeah.

[01:38:09]
I feel bad like bashing them.

[01:38:11]
I feel bad bashing them.

[01:38:12]
So I'm sorry if you are someone who listens to this

[01:38:15]
and you were part of that drama, my bad.

[01:38:18]
But yeah, then I saw Metal Gear Mondays.

[01:38:21]
I was like, okay, let me check this out.

[01:38:23]
I listened to it.

[01:38:24]
I think you guys had done, you were either in like doing

[01:38:28]
Metal Gear Solid 2 and I was like, it was either two or

[01:38:31]
three and I was like, oh shit, like they're actually

[01:38:34]
going in depth on like the games and everything else.

[01:38:37]
And so I just listened to it while I was at work and

[01:38:39]
kind of went back to the beginning and listened like

[01:38:41]
going forward.

[01:38:46]
I'd had like a couple Twitter interactions, I think,

[01:38:49]
with Sam and Alessio before you guys had like started

[01:38:54]
the Patreon.

[01:38:56]
Yeah, because I remember I think Sam and I were like,

[01:38:58]
yeah, Cole, the Twitter guy.

[01:39:00]
Yeah.

[01:39:02]
Cole Twitterman.

[01:39:03]
Cole Twitterman.

[01:39:04]
Cole Twitterman.

[01:39:06]
But then, you know, you guys started the Patreon.

[01:39:08]
So I hopped on there because I like supporting like stuff

[01:39:12]
that I enjoy.

[01:39:13]
And then you guys had the Discord and you're like,

[01:39:16]
hey, we are looking for a, you know, someone to moderate

[01:39:20]
and I was like, I'll fucking do it.

[01:39:22]
And you guys are like, yeah, Twitterman will do it.

[01:39:26]
So I did that for a little bit.

[01:39:28]
And I think the way that I got to the show was because

[01:39:34]
my, like one of my best friends, Grayson Black,

[01:39:38]
his birthday is four days prior to mine.

[01:39:43]
And so we always try and like do something for each other.

[01:39:46]
I bought him a shirt from like his favorite podcast.

[01:39:50]
And he was doing, he was going to do the same thing for me,

[01:39:53]
which would have been y'all at the time.

[01:39:56]
And I think he reached out to you guys was like,

[01:39:59]
hey, I'm buying the shirt.

[01:40:00]
Cause I think he thought you guys all live together.

[01:40:05]
Or like living in the same city.

[01:40:07]
So he would get together for to like record.

[01:40:10]
So he didn't know cause he was like, hey, if I buy this,

[01:40:12]
will you sign it and send it to me?

[01:40:14]
It's for my buddy.

[01:40:15]
And they're like, who's your buddy?

[01:40:16]
And he's like, he was like, it's cold on can they're like,

[01:40:19]
we have an idea. Hold on.

[01:40:23]
And we all said cold dick pigs.

[01:40:25]
It's true. It's true.

[01:40:26]
I've, you, I've held them as blackmail or I tried to and

[01:40:29]
they were like, I do, we don't care.

[01:40:31]
I was like, dammit, I have nothing anymore.

[01:40:33]
This was my like retirement fund.

[01:40:36]
How weird would it be?

[01:40:37]
And we'll so first of all,

[01:40:38]
Grayson black is like the greatest pirate name of all time.

[01:40:42]
But how weird would it have been if he was like, hey,

[01:40:45]
can you guys sign this shirt?

[01:40:46]
And we were like, oh no,

[01:40:47]
we don't live anywhere near each other,

[01:40:48]
but we'll, we'll do something better.

[01:40:50]
And then we sent a whole a dick dick,

[01:40:52]
but it's all three of our dicks.

[01:40:56]
Like a three musketeers swordcraft.

[01:41:00]
All for one and one for cold.

[01:41:06]
So why, why are you guys, that's funny too,

[01:41:08]
that he brought up the fact that he thought you guys lived together.

[01:41:12]
Cause do you guys remember that long ass thread back in the slack days

[01:41:15]
where we talked about how fucking chaotic it would be

[01:41:18]
if everyone lived in the same house together?

[01:41:20]
I do remember that.

[01:41:22]
Man, that might be like, we saw Nick Frada was on a round table

[01:41:28]
that the listener will be hearing at a later date.

[01:41:31]
But Nick was talking about the slack as well.

[01:41:35]
And I was having a really hard time remembering anything.

[01:41:39]
I can't envision the slack in my head like at all.

[01:41:42]
I forgot we had a slack for such a long time.

[01:41:44]
Well, so, but then Zach saying that just like unlocked something.

[01:41:50]
So also speaking of Nick Frada and the slack,

[01:41:53]
Nick Frada was the one that did that excellent fucking Photoshop

[01:41:56]
of Sam Porter bridges holding me instead of maybe.

[01:42:00]
Oh, was that me?

[01:42:03]
No, no, it was it was it was you as Sam Porter bridges holding Chris.

[01:42:08]
No, that was that was the one that.

[01:42:11]
No, that was Sean.

[01:42:12]
Sean, that was the one that Sean did years later.

[01:42:14]
This is back when there was only one deaf stranding commercial.

[01:42:17]
Oh, that's right.

[01:42:18]
And you were in your you were in your military gear.

[01:42:21]
Yeah, it was me.

[01:42:22]
Oh, yeah.

[01:42:23]
And he photoshopped me in as the baby.

[01:42:29]
God bless.

[01:42:30]
Nick talked about how the slack was like a real formative experience for him.

[01:42:33]
And I felt really bad being like, yeah, for not.

[01:42:35]
I can't remember.

[01:42:38]
Too many memories.

[01:42:39]
All these memories will be like tears and rain.

[01:42:41]
Oh, no.

[01:42:43]
And on that note, guys, everybody has a cyanide capsule on the back molar.

[01:42:47]
If you want to just buy down the same.

[01:42:49]
The day is the day.

[01:42:53]
So, so I remember I remember.

[01:42:57]
So I asked we asked for first to be on the show.

[01:43:01]
Unless or Zach, you were around this time you were still in Moonbase Alpha.

[01:43:06]
No, no, no, this was all right.

[01:43:08]
So we could I forgot about Moonbase Alpha.

[01:43:11]
Well, it was the way you're getting your MBA.

[01:43:14]
Is that what that's code for?

[01:43:18]
Damn, no, but that's clever.

[01:43:22]
Well, it was the perfect timing because I had moved to sector C of Moonbase Alpha.

[01:43:29]
I was in Cuba.

[01:43:30]
So the fucking Cuba.

[01:43:32]
The time the time zones actually fucking worked out again as opposed to Afghanistan.

[01:43:37]
We talked about you being in Cuba on the on the Patreon right?

[01:43:41]
Patriot. The Patriot.

[01:43:42]
Yeah, because because I had that had like the funny story about sending you like

[01:43:46]
a Tommy Bahamas shirt.

[01:43:48]
It was a Roosevelt.

[01:43:52]
Roosevelt. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:43:54]
On the main feed, it was always Moonbase Alpha, but we did we did say Cuba on

[01:43:59]
on the on the Patriot.

[01:44:01]
I remember his campaign alpha.

[01:44:06]
That started when I was in Africa the year before.

[01:44:09]
Right. That's right.

[01:44:10]
When you guys have like mentioned me or something like that, and you're like,

[01:44:14]
he's at Moonbase Alpha.

[01:44:18]
Why? And it's weird too, because you were in Afghanistan, Africa and then Cuba.

[01:44:22]
And so we were like, yes, he's playing Metal Gear Solid 5 in reverse right now.

[01:44:27]
Well, that was the thing about it, because the fact that you were in Cuba was like,

[01:44:31]
I think we could ask Zach to do this, because if you were in Africa, Afghanistan still,

[01:44:35]
you wouldn't never be on this fucking podcast.

[01:44:37]
No, just because of the time difference.

[01:44:39]
Yeah, because it was I was seven hours ahead in Africa and eight and a half hours ahead

[01:44:44]
in Afghanistan.

[01:44:45]
Yeah, I'm trying to logistically make that work would have been a disaster.

[01:44:48]
Obviously, it wouldn't have been as bad because I worked the night shift, which

[01:44:53]
during the day when you guys were up.

[01:44:57]
I like to imagine that given what we talked about earlier and now what we're

[01:45:01]
talking about that there's a listener somewhere who does not understand and

[01:45:04]
thinks that Zach was the night janitor in all these different countries.

[01:45:09]
There's a planet fitness and cobble that was very popular up until about

[01:45:15]
two and a half months ago.

[01:45:19]
They still only pay him 300 bucks a week.

[01:45:22]
It's weird.

[01:45:24]
I got paid.

[01:45:25]
I got paid Jabush in France when I was in Africa.

[01:45:29]
Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[01:45:31]
The exchange rate was garbage.

[01:45:33]
Where's that?

[01:45:34]
Where's that money from?

[01:45:35]
East Africa.

[01:45:36]
But like, is there more specific?

[01:45:38]
Yeah, can you be a little more specific?

[01:45:40]
No, don't try and get his position in the Horn of Africa.

[01:45:43]
And then we're where within the whole there's multiple countries, right?

[01:45:46]
Yeah.

[01:45:47]
Yeah, the one that's north of Somalia.

[01:45:49]
And and that one is called.

[01:45:53]
It borders the Gulf of Tajira.

[01:45:55]
No, I know what you're I know what you're talking about.

[01:45:58]
It's just a box.

[01:45:59]
I'm going to fucking no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I feel like it's like on the tip of

[01:46:02]
my tongue.

[01:46:03]
I just I just need some.

[01:46:05]
I just need to refresh.

[01:46:06]
Yeah, I need just something.

[01:46:07]
Yeah, we get what's bordering it.

[01:46:08]
But like, what is it called?

[01:46:10]
Is it a Jane?

[01:46:11]
No.

[01:46:12]
Oh, are you talking about Djibouti?

[01:46:14]
Yeah.

[01:46:15]
We're talking.

[01:46:17]
Djibouti.

[01:46:19]
There.

[01:46:20]
There.

[01:46:21]
Djibouti.

[01:46:23]
No, no, no, no.

[01:46:25]
I'm getting every fucking bit out.

[01:46:28]
Every every bit we can do.

[01:46:30]
So in that case, Bobby, we got a breakout.

[01:46:33]
We got a breakout.

[01:46:35]
We've got a lot of people hated for some reason, Bobby.

[01:46:41]
I literally don't know why sociological like I'm doing an anthropology project.

[01:46:48]
Unless you've got to get a fucking spiral, no, just this.

[01:46:52]
Booty underlined.

[01:46:53]
You know, to Bobby, Bobby Mark, three times.

[01:46:59]
Another arrow profit.

[01:47:01]
Yeah.

[01:47:03]
And underneath is just Sigma mindset circled for.

[01:47:07]
And then a planet fitness logo sketched in the type rate.

[01:47:10]
Stick, zipper, Tyranus and quotations with a big question mark.

[01:47:15]
$300 parentheses plus question mark.

[01:47:22]
It's just it's just a lesion was just one big like Pepe Sylvia board.

[01:47:28]
So, so actually I misremember the timeline a little bit because I didn't,

[01:47:33]
I didn't realize that Zach would be able to record because he was in Cuba.

[01:47:37]
So I reached out to Cole first.

[01:47:40]
We had that lesson.

[01:47:41]
I had that phone call with him.

[01:47:42]
He was like, yeah, cool.

[01:47:44]
And then he said, yeah, that's exactly what he said.

[01:47:48]
Yeah, Cole.

[01:47:49]
I'm a poker.

[01:47:50]
I've been hiding.

[01:47:51]
I'm a little bit of an accent.

[01:47:53]
Yeah, Cole.

[01:47:54]
And we never quite know if he's saying his own name like a Pokemon.

[01:47:57]
I thought you guys are both.

[01:47:59]
Is it not cool to do this?

[01:48:01]
We're never ready to do this.

[01:48:03]
This is what my life is like.

[01:48:04]
This is what it was like then.

[01:48:05]
This is what it's like now because I'm still doing shit with these.

[01:48:07]
I'm so sorry.

[01:48:08]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:09]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:10]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:11]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:12]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:13]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:14]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:15]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:16]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:17]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:18]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:19]
I'm sorry.

[01:48:21]
So this was, we got everybody, we got our team together for the death stranding season.

[01:48:28]
Chris was part of that talk.

[01:48:30]
And so Cole and I recorded a couple episodes of like pre,

[01:48:36]
pre death stranding, like, theory.

[01:48:38]
And then Zach and Chris joined us for.

[01:48:42]
Fun anecdote about that.

[01:48:45]
Oh yeah.

[01:48:46]
Yeah.

[01:48:47]
Yeah, I was going to get there.

[01:48:48]
Yeah. Oh yeah. I was gonna get there. Are you talking about the apartment stuff?

[01:48:51]
Yeah. So I was gonna get there. I was gonna get there. Hang on. Hang on.

[01:48:55]
Yeah. Yeah. So so Zach and Chris would join us for like the actual gameplay

[01:48:59]
stuff. But Cole and I, you know, we were kind of getting more acclimated to each

[01:49:03]
other and chatting and getting getting ourselves scheduled. And then I'm

[01:49:07]
leaving work to go home to get ready to record the first Death Stranding

[01:49:13]
Theory episode with Cole, just me and Cole. And I get I get a phone call. I get

[01:49:20]
a phone call and Alessio, I have the voicemail saved and I will send it to

[01:49:24]
you. Do you really? Absolutely do. It's in my Google drive because I needed to

[01:49:28]
keep it. But I gotta I get a voicemail from Cole and Alessio, I would like you

[01:49:36]
to cue that here. Yeah, we're out. Yeah. Yeah, we're all out. Hey, buddy, if you

[01:49:44]
can hear me, um, there's a fire at the other apartment right next to mine. So I

[01:49:51]
might be late to record this podcast or all my shit might have been destroyed. I

[01:49:55]
don't know. Hopefully not the latter. But it's raging. So I'll keep you updated.

[01:50:05]
Yeah. So Cole's apartment was on fire. Yeah. Yeah. I literally I literally

[01:50:12]
maybe moved in. I don't know. Not even a month into this place. Like I just got

[01:50:19]
back to Chattanooga. Um, and like I think all I had in that apartment at the

[01:50:27]
time was like my TV, my like switch, a box of books, an air mattress and a pillow.

[01:50:36]
And that was it. It was quite possibly the most depressing looking living

[01:50:40]
situation known to man. So but it kind of worked out as like if it burns down,

[01:50:49]
I'm not losing a ton. Yeah. But I'd say the most valuable thing you would have

[01:50:54]
lost would be the box of books. Probably. Probably. But what's funny about that is

[01:51:00]
like that was the first time, well, not the first time, but like the first like time

[01:51:04]
that I was actually like a like member of the cast for the show. Um, and I'm

[01:51:11]
actually like my final, final day, like like the walkout, turn the keys in to

[01:51:17]
that place is Monday. Yeah. Like this month, this kind of actually Monday is

[01:51:23]
amazing. Yeah. It's actually really funny because, um, because, uh, when I went to

[01:51:28]
Tennessee, uh, I actually got to see that apartment and where the fire was. So that

[01:51:34]
was a cool full circle moment. But yeah, that's how. Cool. That's how like, God damn

[01:51:39]
it. It was a cool moment. Now I can't unhear it. So so it's actually really funny

[01:51:46]
because like this, he was, he was like, uh, yeah, I might be a couple hours late

[01:51:51]
and I was like, let's just fucking reschedule. What the fuck are you talking

[01:51:56]
about? I didn't want to, I didn't want to like, you know, mess up the flow. I didn't

[01:52:01]
know. So, so when I, when I asked Zach, I actually was also leaving work. I was

[01:52:07]
driving, um, I was driving home from work again and, um, it's actually, I was, I

[01:52:12]
actually live on the street that I was driving down when I called Zach now,

[01:52:15]
which is, which is interesting. But, um, uh, called Zach and was like, Hey, we're

[01:52:20]
doing this for death stranding. Do you want to be a part of it? He was like,

[01:52:23]
yeah, and we were talking about like, you know, his plan to potentially go back

[01:52:27]
to school, which he did and all this other stuff like that. He's like, yeah, the

[01:52:31]
timing works out that I could do this. So it's like, fucking, fucking awesome.

[01:52:34]
And so, and so we did. Um, uh, and yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of like how

[01:52:41]
we got started. And then we played play fucking death stranding.

[01:52:45]
Hey, before we, before we get on a downer note,

[01:52:50]
no, no, no, we're, um, I just want to say that like for, for, for me, the shift

[01:52:54]
over, um, I think the very last thing that I did, um, like with Sam for the

[01:53:01]
podcast was obviously record, we recorded our like death stranding first impressions

[01:53:06]
or whatever. Yeah. I was like, we played the first like couple hours of it and

[01:53:09]
like really, yeah, the weekend or the week it came out.

[01:53:12]
Mm-hmm. But I just want to plan a flag for the listeners that like, I took the

[01:53:17]
day off. So like the only time I've ever taken a day off of work for a video

[01:53:20]
game was I took a day off work for the death stranding release.

[01:53:25]
And like 100%, uh, one of my favorite memories of this show all together was I

[01:53:31]
think I just stream death stranding for like eight hours.

[01:53:34]
Yeah. For the, for the, for the YouTube channel, right?

[01:53:38]
You stream. Yeah. Yeah. And just like interacting with people, like interacting

[01:53:41]
with people who I didn't know I would become friends with through the

[01:53:45]
discord like two years later.

[01:53:48]
Yeah. Was super fucking cool.

[01:53:50]
So I just wanted to, just want to give a shout out to anybody who

[01:53:52]
chatted or watched way back by that.

[01:53:54]
It was a lot of fun.

[01:53:55]
I think, wasn't I like in the opening minutes of one of those for you?

[01:53:58]
Yeah.

[01:53:59]
Before I had to go to bed.

[01:54:00]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:54:00]
I think you jumped in just to be like, what's up?

[01:54:03]
I gotta go.

[01:54:04]
I hopped in there for a little bit, but then I was like, okay, I'm going to

[01:54:07]
actually go play this game now because it's finally done downloading.

[01:54:10]
Yeah.

[01:54:10]
Actually, that reminds me too.

[01:54:12]
Sam has a video somewhere.

[01:54:14]
I don't think I haven't saved anymore.

[01:54:16]
Where I was in a chat with him while he was playing.

[01:54:20]
And oh, Sam, it was the one where you got fucking stuck in the crevasse.

[01:54:24]
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[01:54:25]
I have those.

[01:54:26]
I have those.

[01:54:26]
I think and I think I uploaded this to YouTube.

[01:54:29]
I just don't know.

[01:54:30]
They're in there somewhere.

[01:54:31]
And it's Sam's like, uh-oh, uh-oh, I'm stuck.

[01:54:34]
And then you just hear me over the check on, oh, no, I just lost all my fucking

[01:54:39]
cargo.

[01:54:43]
Amazing.

[01:54:44]
Yeah.

[01:54:45]
Oh, no, my bike.

[01:54:47]
Well, I'm in your bike.

[01:54:48]
Oh, no, I just lost all my fucking cargo.

[01:54:51]
I didn't realize that stream was that deep.

[01:54:53]
Oh, shit.

[01:54:54]
Um, yeah.

[01:54:55]
So we, we, we, we, we all around in that clip.

[01:54:59]
Lots of chaos.

[01:54:59]
So we, so we started playing, playing Death Stranding, um, uh, in with, it was,

[01:55:06]
it was me, Zach, Colin Chris that were playing Death Stranding.

[01:55:09]
And it was kind of like a weird, weird like journey because like it was,

[01:55:15]
it was weird because like, okay.

[01:55:16]
So as the game started and so we were all like, okay, let's get into this.

[01:55:21]
This is, this is good.

[01:55:22]
Zach very quickly was just like, this is bullshit.

[01:55:25]
He's like, I don't like this.

[01:55:26]
I hate this.

[01:55:27]
Zach was the first one of us that kind of like trended that way.

[01:55:30]
Oh, well, let's see who knows full well because I would text him.

[01:55:33]
Oh yeah.

[01:55:35]
He like, I think at one point Zach called me and was like, what the fuck is this?

[01:55:41]
Hey, for the record, I, I, and like for some reason I enjoy playing this dumb

[01:55:46]
fucking game, like from like, uh, from like, uh, position my box.

[01:55:52]
Well, here's the thing that I think we all agreed on was that like the gameplay,

[01:55:56]
like actually there's like walking and like delivering stuff was actually pretty

[01:55:59]
cool.

[01:56:00]
That was, that was nice.

[01:56:01]
With the exception of the unnecessary fucking slow mo.

[01:56:06]
Oh, right.

[01:56:07]
Right.

[01:56:08]
Oh yeah.

[01:56:08]
Every time you got spotted or like the rain, every time you got spotted,

[01:56:13]
every time you picked up a fucking bug.

[01:56:15]
Well, they let you, they let you skip that apparently in a patch.

[01:56:18]
Oh, good.

[01:56:19]
Good.

[01:56:23]
I remember the patch came out like right after I finished the game and I was

[01:56:26]
like, yeah, it's like, well, not, not to get on too much of a tangent.

[01:56:30]
I've just got one point.

[01:56:31]
So I saw, I think James not getting on a tangent for a,

[01:56:34]
shut the fuck up, Cole.

[01:56:37]
For the director's cut, they added a thing where they're like jet thrusters now.

[01:56:42]
So if you fucking eat yourself off a cliff, you just float to the ground.

[01:56:47]
Yeah, I actually don't like any of the things that they added with the director's

[01:56:50]
cut.

[01:56:50]
I agree.

[01:56:51]
They like it kind of like, I was reading that somebody was complaining that like

[01:56:55]
now you just can't play the original game on like modern hardware because like

[01:57:00]
if you want to play on a PS5, you're like, you either have to just go by the

[01:57:03]
original or you're fucked because you can't, you can't turn off the new shit.

[01:57:10]
It's just like woven.

[01:57:11]
Oh, what?

[01:57:11]
Oh, God.

[01:57:14]
Yeah, pretty shitty.

[01:57:15]
Don't like that.

[01:57:17]
But yeah, so, so like I said, Zach was very, very quickly, like this is this is

[01:57:22]
bullshit train.

[01:57:24]
I don't remember when it clicked for me, but I was the second to join that train.

[01:57:29]
I was holding on.

[01:57:31]
I was holding on hope for a long time.

[01:57:32]
Holding on hard.

[01:57:34]
So for a long time on the show, if you listen to the hard man, it call hard man.

[01:57:38]
It was it was it was like me and Zach were like, this sucks.

[01:57:42]
And Cole and Chris were like, this is fine.

[01:57:45]
And then the end, Cole was Cole finally shifted over and I don't remember.

[01:57:51]
I remember when it I remember when it was.

[01:57:53]
Well, it was the like the bullshit.

[01:57:56]
Like you finally got to the like other side of the country and it's like, oh,

[01:58:00]
dude, oh yeah, by the way, Mario, your print, your princess is in a different

[01:58:04]
castle bullshit.

[01:58:05]
They pulled us like Mario and Princess Beach fucking up.

[01:58:10]
Are you fucking kidding me right now?

[01:58:12]
I have to walk back.

[01:58:14]
I have to fucking walk back.

[01:58:18]
And not only that, but hey, every third way, we're going to take away more of your

[01:58:22]
shit.

[01:58:23]
So you know how you like to sort of streamline yourself to not need all the

[01:58:26]
shit because you're going to rely on the chiral network.

[01:58:28]
Oh, we just took that away.

[01:58:30]
Oh, yeah.

[01:58:32]
So I honestly don't think Chris ever like flipped over.

[01:58:37]
I think I think the real death training was the friends we made along the way.

[01:58:41]
Stop fucking stop.

[01:58:43]
Chris, not only Chris, not only never never flipped over to the dark side,

[01:58:47]
but he also fucking played through that game twice pretty much because

[01:58:51]
his file got corrupted.

[01:58:52]
Remember? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[01:58:54]
And so he was a complete he was just he was a trooper

[01:58:57]
and just completely went through.

[01:58:59]
It was like, I guess I got to play it again.

[01:59:01]
Hell, here's what I'll give to him because I would have fucking quit.

[01:59:06]
I'd like I'm watching on YouTube.

[01:59:07]
Fuck.

[01:59:10]
Here's what I'll give it.

[01:59:11]
I think that I think that the nature of the show kind of because we had it like

[01:59:16]
we had some pretty like tough.

[01:59:17]
Yeah, I 100 percent don't think you guys should have slammed through it as

[01:59:21]
fast as you did.

[01:59:22]
Yeah. And we we sland through it.

[01:59:25]
We slam through it pretty fucking quickly.

[01:59:27]
And I think we were doing like seven to eight hours worth of game for.

[01:59:34]
Yeah. And I think and and I remember the reason why we did that was because

[01:59:37]
we were getting close because like we were going to be encroaching into

[01:59:41]
like Christmas time with it.

[01:59:43]
And yeah, like I was going to be out of town for like two weeks.

[01:59:47]
Christmas.

[01:59:50]
That's good. We're going through all these bits.

[01:59:52]
Yeah, I was I was I was going to be gone for two weeks.

[01:59:56]
And so it was just like, we need to fuck it.

[01:59:57]
We we this is something like this is a topical thing.

[02:00:00]
We need to get through this.

[02:00:02]
We don't want to wait until the new year to like start death stranding or

[02:00:07]
finish death stranding.

[02:00:08]
So let's just crunch it before the end of the year.

[02:00:10]
And then we also folded in the Tommy Earl Jenkins interview into there too.

[02:00:14]
And like it was just still so angry at my computer about.

[02:00:19]
Yeah. Well, I mean, I didn't even get to that one either

[02:00:21]
because I had to work that day.

[02:00:24]
Yeah, I just remember.

[02:00:25]
I just I just remembered one other thing that I I think I texted Alessio about

[02:00:30]
just filled with rage was once I finished the game and there was not one,

[02:00:35]
not two, not three, but four fucking credit sequences.

[02:00:39]
Yeah, there were so many and credit sequence.

[02:00:40]
So it's a code game.

[02:00:42]
You have to get your expecting that.

[02:00:44]
Well, that's not even like I there's not been a Metal Gear Solid game

[02:00:47]
that's had that many credit sequences.

[02:00:49]
I don't think there's a I don't think there's a Metal Gear

[02:00:51]
that's had more than one credit sequence.

[02:00:53]
Yeah, I think you're unless you count all the fucking opening credits in five.

[02:00:58]
Yeah, yeah, that doesn't make you sit there on a fucking beach.

[02:01:01]
They can't do anything on for 45 fucking minutes.

[02:01:04]
So I've never had an avenue to vent this, but I just need everyone on the planet to know.

[02:01:10]
And I think is what I told Zach, as soon as we I think we hopped on a call.

[02:01:14]
I was so angry, but like never in my life have I gone from like,

[02:01:20]
oh, this is a B minus.

[02:01:21]
Fuck it, man. This is an A plus.

[02:01:22]
I have a tear in my eye.

[02:01:23]
Holy fuck, this is an F.

[02:01:26]
OK, OK, OK, it's a C. OK, it's a B plus.

[02:01:30]
Motherfucker, it's an F.

[02:01:32]
I remember that.

[02:01:33]
I remember that exact conversation.

[02:01:35]
I had this confusion, too.

[02:01:36]
I lost my mind.

[02:01:38]
I think that, like I said, I think for the show,

[02:01:40]
I think we wouldn't have been quite as like abrupt with our this is bullshit.

[02:01:44]
If one of these that was because that was very quick to realize it was.

[02:01:48]
He didn't like it because there was like, it took away so much player agency.

[02:01:53]
And and the and you guys, I am on record of saying that I can't fucking stand

[02:01:58]
artificial padding and that's eighty five percent of this fucking game.

[02:02:03]
Well, it was just it was a two hour narrative spread out across like a fifty hour game.

[02:02:07]
And again, and we were very clear about this in the in the episodes for it.

[02:02:12]
Like Cliff, all that stuff with Cliff.

[02:02:14]
Awesome. Doe.

[02:02:15]
Yes, I want to say I would gladly watch a fucking movie about that.

[02:02:21]
Well, they could have knocked it out like no joke.

[02:02:23]
That entire story could have been knocked out in like a forty five minute TV show episode.

[02:02:28]
Like absolutely.

[02:02:29]
And you want to know you want to know something, too, is like, I think if like it would have

[02:02:33]
like so you get to the other side of the country, I think if if Higgs was actually

[02:02:38]
like the big bad that was like the end of it.

[02:02:40]
Yeah.

[02:02:40]
I I'm on record.

[02:02:42]
So that stupid fucking whale.

[02:02:44]
Oh, my God, the fucking whale.

[02:02:46]
I I I really like the Higgs chapter.

[02:02:49]
I really like the battle with him.

[02:02:52]
And then it just kept going.

[02:02:54]
It reached like this weird catharsis and it kept going and it didn't need to.

[02:02:58]
I'm also I will also say I'm on record is like the the performance that Tommy did

[02:03:04]
at the end. I was fine.

[02:03:05]
I'm crying. Yeah.

[02:03:06]
Is is is really.

[02:03:08]
And I think they could have kept that in there if they would have ended it where

[02:03:12]
like ended it like sooner.

[02:03:14]
But like they just shoved so much more in after that.

[02:03:16]
Like it was just like it was like a sigh of relief and it was like an emotional

[02:03:20]
catharsis, but they just they they it didn't feel like a payoff because they just

[02:03:24]
kept fucking going.

[02:03:26]
Well, I remember the two other things that I that I mentioned to Alessio was

[02:03:32]
was the fucking just the overbearing use of the fucking imagery to the point where

[02:03:37]
it wasn't even an analogy anymore of like your San Porta bridges.

[02:03:41]
You weren't for bridges.

[02:03:42]
You have to connect the country.

[02:03:43]
This is your fucking strand.

[02:03:45]
It's got.

[02:03:48]
Well, and that's why prior to the game

[02:03:49]
releasing, I was on a fucking tear being like, dude, if it's not some like post

[02:03:56]
apocalyptic, we don't have any names anymore.

[02:03:58]
So we're just going to call you what you do.

[02:04:01]
I'm going to lose my fucking mind if he's named San Porta bridges.

[02:04:05]
And then he was and I was like, fuck everything.

[02:04:08]
And then the other thing that fucking just I was like, I'm so fucking done with this

[02:04:13]
game was at the very end, when you have to take B.B. up to be incinerator,

[02:04:18]
have the potential to be this beautiful.

[02:04:21]
It was great.

[02:04:22]
Don't send off where it plays B.B.'s theme as you're walking.

[02:04:26]
But the timing was all fucked up.

[02:04:27]
So it like because I like started getting emotional.

[02:04:30]
Yes, walking at his play and then it ends.

[02:04:32]
And I saw like five or six minutes to just walk with nothing going on.

[02:04:37]
Yeah.

[02:04:39]
I was like, this is beautiful.

[02:04:40]
This is a perfect send off.

[02:04:42]
Oh, what the fuck?

[02:04:45]
I also will say, too, is I think I mentioned this in the episode, but like I

[02:04:48]
actually did.

[02:04:50]
And again, it plays to that whole like they had a chance to have a really

[02:04:54]
emotional like sigh of relief catharsis ending to it.

[02:04:57]
Because I remember when I was going to connect the last point that you

[02:05:03]
needed to do before you got to Higgs, the Higgs chapter.

[02:05:07]
I remember going like like sneaking past some like some some mules

[02:05:13]
and like getting through the hill and then like going and cresting a hill

[02:05:17]
and like it's downhill and you can see the water and like there's your goal

[02:05:21]
and like you can see it.

[02:05:23]
And then I remember low roar comes in and it's just playing and I got like

[02:05:26]
I started I started tearing up like I was like, holy fuck, I'm here.

[02:05:31]
And this is the best thing that came out of this game was fucking

[02:05:34]
known about lower or yeah, seriously.

[02:05:36]
But like I remember just like tearing up.

[02:05:37]
And I remember like this was after the point where I was just like this.

[02:05:40]
This is this game is bullshit.

[02:05:41]
But like I like like I had hit that point and then it hit me with this

[02:05:46]
like beautiful visual and it like hit me with this like, oh, the finish line

[02:05:49]
is right there.

[02:05:50]
And I got emotional because it deserved it deserved that.

[02:05:53]
And then you just like I said, it just kept and then there was an hour

[02:05:56]
and a half left before the end credits, the first of the end credits.

[02:05:59]
I got I got a lot of drivers.

[02:06:01]
Also really good to you.

[02:06:02]
Yeah, controversial hot take.

[02:06:05]
Higgs fucking sucks.

[02:06:09]
I think I don't.

[02:06:10]
And I don't mean because he wasn't implemented the best way he could have.

[02:06:13]
Well, yeah, like I don't I don't mean like Higgs sucks is in like, oh, man,

[02:06:17]
he made me carry all this bullshit.

[02:06:19]
I learned more about Higgs by finding the entrance to his little hideout.

[02:06:25]
Oh, my God.

[02:06:25]
That's another thing about that game.

[02:06:27]
Yeah.

[02:06:28]
Oh, yeah, I learned more about that character there.

[02:06:31]
So like when he died, I was like.

[02:06:34]
OK, like what like what like what the fuck is this?

[02:06:38]
Like I don't know.

[02:06:39]
I don't know.

[02:06:39]
Zero. I felt zero connection to that character.

[02:06:42]
Like it was like cartoon villain.

[02:06:44]
Well, again, because he wasn't in.

[02:06:46]
Honestly, what Higgs should have been was Higgs should have been

[02:06:49]
an ever present fucking malicious force.

[02:06:51]
Yeah, we talked about that.

[02:06:53]
Well, listen, you look at he was like G-man from Halfway.

[02:06:57]
Well, that was I was going to bring up because

[02:06:58]
of the line or something because you remember because you remember in

[02:07:01]
Chapter three when he was the the the employee that gave you the fucking bomb.

[02:07:06]
That was he was the employee.

[02:07:08]
Yeah, I didn't know he that was him.

[02:07:10]
It wasn't obvious at all.

[02:07:12]
Yeah. What do you think?

[02:07:13]
Well, that's the thing like here.

[02:07:15]
Well, here's what I'm saying.

[02:07:15]
Like that was I thought that was cool.

[02:07:17]
And I know it was obvious, but that's fine.

[02:07:20]
Because if they would have kept doing shit like that or if he would have been

[02:07:22]
like watching you the entire time or like like like you said, like G-man,

[02:07:26]
that would have been a great way to play him off and play him.

[02:07:29]
It's like this like you said this.

[02:07:30]
Well, that or like how cool would have been if he had like a voice modulator

[02:07:33]
so he could sound like one of the other characters and be like, oh,

[02:07:36]
you need to make the liver here and then you end up in like an ambush or something.

[02:07:40]
Yeah. How fucking weird is it that this game?

[02:07:42]
Sixty hours. There's only like two hours of cutscenes.

[02:07:45]
And yet somehow nothing got developed.

[02:07:48]
Yeah. Well, well, here's the thing.

[02:07:50]
Things got developed in the fucking emails.

[02:07:53]
Yeah.

[02:07:54]
Voice messages that you couldn't listen to while you were walking.

[02:07:57]
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, we're going to make this fucking long ass game about walking.

[02:08:00]
What should we do to do our world building?

[02:08:02]
Should we do audio logs like we did in Phantom Pain?

[02:08:05]
No, you fucking idiot.

[02:08:06]
We're going to give him emails.

[02:08:08]
What are you stupid?

[02:08:09]
And that's the thing is like audio logs like that.

[02:08:11]
Phantom Pain did audio logs cool because like they're again,

[02:08:14]
that was another that was another game where I was just like you were doing

[02:08:17]
a lot that didn't involve cutscenes for a long periods of time,

[02:08:19]
but you could fill your time with the audio logs and like right.

[02:08:22]
Listen while you were going.

[02:08:23]
And if this game would have done that, it would have been that much better.

[02:08:26]
You know, you know where audio logs would have been good

[02:08:28]
during the three real life hours it took me to deliver mama to the fucking.

[02:08:38]
Oh, my God.

[02:08:40]
So, yeah. No, it wasn't amazing.

[02:08:44]
It was a fucking waste of time.

[02:08:46]
I like that we just had like a mini postmortem.

[02:08:49]
Oh, yeah, we really just we just kind of let everything everything go.

[02:08:54]
I've got a fucking stress headache now.

[02:08:56]
Well, well, could you see you guys though for real?

[02:08:58]
Because like I know so for all intents and purposes,

[02:09:00]
I know like every time we've had a configuration of hosts on the show,

[02:09:04]
eventually everybody kind of falls away.

[02:09:07]
And I have been sort of like, I guess, like executive producing

[02:09:10]
the last like two years on and off of the show or however long it's been

[02:09:15]
without any of the four of us.

[02:09:18]
And I will just say like the number of people that were super active

[02:09:20]
in the discord who like.

[02:09:23]
Discovered the show because of Death Stranding and really liked you guys's

[02:09:27]
season on Death Stranding, but then also the season afterwards on

[02:09:32]
like Blade Runner and all the other stuff.

[02:09:34]
I mean, they really dig it and they really dug it and they really enjoyed listening

[02:09:38]
to you guys. So like, appreciate the kudos to you guys for doing a really good job.

[02:09:42]
Well, thanks, man.

[02:09:45]
And so I'm really, that's really cool of you to say.

[02:09:49]
Fuck off.

[02:09:51]
And they hear I'm going to start calling you ruining the moment, Duncan.

[02:09:55]
I love that we started a new bit on the last one.

[02:10:01]
This is our legacy.

[02:10:03]
Only the past on our genes will pass on this meme.

[02:10:07]
Only the coldest kids.

[02:10:12]
That's that's the final T shirt.

[02:10:13]
Just a black T shirt, white text.

[02:10:16]
The coldest kids.

[02:10:17]
Yeah.

[02:10:19]
Everybody's going to think it's a type.

[02:10:21]
And you did.

[02:10:23]
But it's not fuckers.

[02:10:26]
So, yeah, so that that's that.

[02:10:28]
I do I want to get us I want to get us

[02:10:31]
kind of close to wrapped up now.

[02:10:34]
But I have because I texted Zach.

[02:10:37]
I texted Zach and Cole a little bit earlier.

[02:10:38]
I was like, I don't want.

[02:10:41]
It could be too negative because.

[02:10:44]
Look at Monday's and blah, blah, blah.

[02:10:47]
All sorts of stuff like that.

[02:10:48]
But I'm going to do a thing for the both of you right now.

[02:10:51]
I'm going to give you some I'm going to give you some some some nice.

[02:10:53]
This I I'm going to give each of you

[02:10:56]
a minute to rant about a specific topic and I'll give it.

[02:10:59]
I'll give you the topic.

[02:11:02]
Amazing.

[02:11:02]
Oh, God.

[02:11:03]
Start with Zach.

[02:11:04]
I'm going to give you exactly one minute.

[02:11:06]
I'm a tiny.

[02:11:06]
Exactly. Exactly.

[02:11:09]
One minute to rant about your I'm going to start the timer.

[02:11:13]
When I say when I say go is when your your timer starts,

[02:11:16]
I'm going to give you one minute to rant and say whatever the fuck you want

[02:11:19]
about your shoe feelings about Hideo Kojima, Zach.

[02:11:23]
And that I'm going to say three, two, one, go.

[02:11:29]
Don't do it.

[02:11:29]
Zach, I mean, he's he's a terrible storyteller

[02:11:33]
as evidenced by fucking Death Stranding and retrospective retrospectively

[02:11:37]
going back to Metal Gear Metal Gear Solid one is OK.

[02:11:40]
Metal Gear Solid two is Metal Gear Solid three is a Wikipedia page

[02:11:45]
regurgitated by a fucking sixth grader.

[02:11:47]
Metal Gear Solid four is fucking terrible.

[02:11:49]
Metal Gear Solid five is fun to play.

[02:11:51]
But the story is good.

[02:11:52]
He he's terrible.

[02:11:53]
He likens himself to be fucking Quentin Tarantino because he thinks he's fucking deep.

[02:11:57]
But he's got a third grade understanding of fucking Nietzsche

[02:12:00]
and what it means to be fucking connected.

[02:12:02]
He should stick with making movies instead of fucking video games.

[02:12:05]
But he never made a movie.

[02:12:07]
That's what I'm saying.

[02:12:08]
He should make fucking movies instead of video games.

[02:12:10]
Don't push him. Don't push him on the.

[02:12:12]
Give him Tarantino together and make a fucking 16 hour epic.

[02:12:18]
And that requires 14 intermissions.

[02:12:20]
I need to fucking soda.

[02:12:21]
So better than Kojima.

[02:12:23]
What? Tarantino is like on a whole other like you're comparing

[02:12:27]
like a fucking sandwich that your mom made.

[02:12:28]
This is my finalist.

[02:12:30]
My finalist.

[02:12:32]
What a good time.

[02:12:33]
Time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time.

[02:12:36]
Thank you, Zach.

[02:12:37]
Call chairman of the floor will recognize my 14 seconds.

[02:12:43]
If you want 14 more seconds.

[02:12:45]
No, no, no.

[02:12:46]
I want 14 more seconds.

[02:12:48]
Personally. Yeah, I defer my 14 seconds to call.

[02:12:53]
No, no, no.

[02:12:53]
I'm saying I want 14 more seconds of what he was yelling about.

[02:12:57]
Yes. OK. Cool.

[02:12:59]
Yeah. And Alessio, I'm going to need your your assistance in this

[02:13:02]
because I'm going to need you to to bleep a name.

[02:13:05]
Are we double gaming?

[02:13:06]
Call. No, no, no, no.

[02:13:10]
I was like, oh, we're in the stairs.

[02:13:12]
Hold on. Yes.

[02:13:13]
You you need you need to give call my extra 14 seconds for this one.

[02:13:18]
Because I think you see all I need is 14.

[02:13:20]
Oh, I so call.

[02:13:21]
I'm going to I'm I'm going to give you a minute and 14 seconds.

[02:13:24]
So you're going to you're going to get to claim Zach's 14 seconds.

[02:13:27]
But he did not he did not utilize.

[02:13:31]
So like I said, Alessio, I need you to believe if he says

[02:13:34]
if he says this person's name, I need you to bleep it.

[02:13:36]
And I will people.

[02:13:40]
But just for some context, some history about this show

[02:13:44]
on our on the Facebook page a couple of years ago,

[02:13:47]
somebody commented on that page in call this.

[02:13:50]
I think it was Kojima Cockright, his podcast.

[02:13:52]
Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.

[02:13:55]
Yes. One of the one of the goofs on the Patriot Club

[02:13:58]
for such a long time was that we were just rant about this person.

[02:14:02]
Let me drink.

[02:14:03]
Flo no, like that's how we that's how we close it.

[02:14:06]
Yeah. And I would always get so fucking mad at you

[02:14:08]
because I'd have to bleep it every time.

[02:14:10]
You know, and.

[02:14:12]
But did you guys write his cock?

[02:14:14]
No, I sound like someone that would ride fucking Kojima's cock.

[02:14:19]
Is that my one after my head?

[02:14:22]
Because he has to downplay the stereo.

[02:14:27]
In my detailed response to this person, I definitely I

[02:14:30]
illustrated that we actually talk a lot of shit about Kojima

[02:14:34]
a lot in the podcast historically.

[02:14:37]
And so so I want to give

[02:14:40]
Cole his minute and 14 seconds to rant about.

[02:14:43]
And I'll see I'll ask you to bleep this because I'm going to say the name.

[02:14:47]
I'm going to give you a minute, 14 seconds to run about.

[02:14:50]
Colts in three, two, one, go.

[02:14:55]
You can ride this dick, you Georgian.

[02:14:58]
No mustache, have an Abraham looking dumb fuck.

[02:15:02]
Fuck you. Fuck everything about you.

[02:15:04]
You fucking suck.

[02:15:06]
Your haircut looks like it was a fucking two pay from the 18 goddamn 60s.

[02:15:12]
You realize that I know where you live.

[02:15:14]
You're like maybe two hours away from me.

[02:15:17]
If we want to throw hands, it can fucking happen.

[02:15:21]
You shitty little fuck. Fuck you.

[02:15:24]
Oh, my God, you are the slimy

[02:15:28]
est, lowest, smallest human being on the face of the planet.

[02:15:34]
I literally said to my girlfriend today, I'm not going to fucking lay it lay into him.

[02:15:39]
I'm not. I'm not going to say it because he's nothing to me.

[02:15:41]
And I've got so much going for me.

[02:15:43]
But you know what?

[02:15:45]
You know what?

[02:15:46]
It's just the fact that you exist that hurts me.

[02:15:50]
Just you're stealing not only my air, but like plenty of amazing other people's air.

[02:15:55]
Fuck you. I yield my time.

[02:15:58]
Fuck you.

[02:15:59]
All right. That was a minute and six seconds.

[02:16:02]
So you didn't use all the time.

[02:16:03]
Oh, eight seconds. All right.

[02:16:04]
Give me give me eight more seconds about.

[02:16:06]
Could you? All right.

[02:16:07]
Hey, hold on. Hold on.

[02:16:08]
Hold on. You get your eight more seconds.

[02:16:09]
If you quit putting Tarantino's name anywhere near Kojima.

[02:16:16]
That's the caveat, Zach.

[02:16:18]
All right. I can do that.

[02:16:19]
Eight more seconds in three, two, one, go.

[02:16:23]
And another. I didn't actually have eight more seconds.

[02:16:27]
So I told I told these guys in the text messages that this wasn't going to happen,

[02:16:31]
but I wanted to get a little treat since we were getting sent off.

[02:16:35]
I feel like I just went to the fucking spa.

[02:16:37]
Jesus. Sam, you got something for me.

[02:16:41]
I was going to say, I don't know.

[02:16:43]
I was going to give you a minute to rant about whatever you wanted.

[02:16:46]
If you if you like to, because I have a specific topic for you,

[02:16:50]
but let's go free form jazz in three, two, one, go.

[02:16:56]
OK, so here's the deal.

[02:16:57]
Just because we've had a couple of episodes in the past where we have said

[02:17:00]
that we were taking a break break is the key word, motherfucker.

[02:17:05]
The podcast, the podcast has not ended four times before you son of a bitch.

[02:17:11]
It's ending in two weeks.

[02:17:14]
So please quit saying, oh, these fucking guys,

[02:17:18]
they're going to be back in a couple of weeks.

[02:17:20]
No, it's done. It's done.

[02:17:25]
You got you say, I got 15 more seconds.

[02:17:30]
Do we lose them?

[02:17:31]
The less you die, you lose me, motherfucker.

[02:17:34]
I'm going to rant about that now.

[02:17:40]
I actually don't have anything to rant about.

[02:17:42]
That's why I'm going to give these guys the floor.

[02:17:43]
So I want you.

[02:17:45]
I've got something for you.

[02:17:47]
Yeah, hold up. OK, go for it, Cole.

[02:17:50]
Actually, I don't know if I could say this.

[02:17:52]
I don't know if I could say it.

[02:17:54]
Yeah, I definitely can't.

[02:17:55]
Samuel. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:17:57]
I'm going to need you to rant about.

[02:18:03]
You got to go.

[02:18:05]
Oh, fucking.

[02:18:07]
Hey, I'm going to I'm going to.

[02:18:09]
I'm going to do you want to time me or?

[02:18:10]
Yeah, I'm going to.

[02:18:11]
It's great. Oh, shit.

[02:18:13]
OK, so here's the fucking thing.

[02:18:15]
I'm going to be honest with you.

[02:18:18]
Had like fucking like fucking fucking no.

[02:18:25]
Twitter fucking that made me.

[02:18:30]
I was perfect.

[02:18:33]
So yeah, so that is kind of like what let's kind of drive to a close here.

[02:18:38]
I am on this episode, this this segment is one point five segment

[02:18:43]
with three of three of my best friends on this earth.

[02:18:48]
And that is because of Metal Gear Mondays.

[02:18:52]
And so.

[02:18:55]
I'll always have that and I'm very appreciative for it.

[02:18:59]
Yeah, thank you, Alessio and Sam, for like making this,

[02:19:03]
because if you if you hadn't, I wouldn't have met any of you.

[02:19:06]
And my life would be impoverished without knowing any of you guys.

[02:19:11]
So thank you. Oh, guys, we'll always have Shadow Moses.

[02:19:20]
I I I wanted to take this opportunity really quickly to give

[02:19:25]
the two of you, because I'll I'll say my thing.

[02:19:28]
YouTube dot com slash Sam versus Sam, you can catch Zach and Cole on that channel

[02:19:33]
very frequently.

[02:19:34]
Alessio Alessio has been on several times,

[02:19:36]
will continue to be on as he will agree to do it.

[02:19:41]
Actually, this is awkward, but Alessio,

[02:19:43]
we need to get you on a big cast on there, too. Oh, yes.

[02:19:46]
All right. Yeah.

[02:19:48]
So that's so that's that I want to give

[02:19:52]
specifically Zach is called.

[02:19:53]
I don't know. I don't know if you have anything to pimp or promote,

[02:19:56]
but Zach has some stuff to pimp and promote for sure.

[02:19:59]
So I'll give you two.

[02:20:00]
I'll start with Zach and I'll give you two an opportunity

[02:20:02]
to promote your social stuff and what you're doing.

[02:20:05]
Thank you very much, Sam.

[02:20:07]
So you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at author Zach James.

[02:20:13]
And in the interim, since I've left the show,

[02:20:16]
I've actually finally accomplished one of my childhood dreams of becoming an author.

[02:20:22]
I released my first book, which is Deception.

[02:20:25]
It is the first book in the modern mercenary thriller series.

[02:20:28]
So it's very Tom Clancy Esk, or if you like Tom Clancy,

[02:20:31]
Brad Thor, Jack Carr, it's all in that line of military thriller espionage.

[02:20:37]
And that is on Amazon by Zach James.

[02:20:42]
So, yeah, I remember.

[02:20:44]
God, I remember when you guys first had me on, I was talking about

[02:20:47]
like the first draft of Persona, not Guada,

[02:20:50]
which I'm on the final fucking edition for finally.

[02:20:55]
But yeah, so I've I've I've accomplished that dream

[02:20:58]
and it's been awesome to to sort of keep these guys updated as it's gone on.

[02:21:04]
I remember back in like June, I think, Alessio,

[02:21:07]
I had like an hour and a half long conversation about the beginnings

[02:21:11]
of the arduous process of possibly moving it from text to screen eventually.

[02:21:17]
Yeah, it's like that.

[02:21:19]
That was a long, long discussion.

[02:21:22]
And I will say that was extremely informative.

[02:21:24]
And I apologize, Sam, go ahead.

[02:21:26]
No, I was going to say as somebody and I wrote this review

[02:21:28]
on the Amazon page for the book, but as somebody who does not typically read

[02:21:32]
or necessarily enjoy military thrillers, they're just not to believe my thing.

[02:21:36]
I read Zach's book and I really enjoyed it.

[02:21:39]
So I definitely recommend deception.

[02:21:43]
I have I have two copies of it on my bookshelf.

[02:21:47]
Zach, you also have a very handsome biography photo that looks like it's

[02:21:51]
drawn by somebody that we know.

[02:21:53]
Oh, yes, yes, that's that's Alex.

[02:21:56]
T.O. Alex, and actually, I just hit him up for to do another one of those for me

[02:22:01]
because I'm going to do a new one for every book release.

[02:22:03]
Nice. Because because book number two, I have slated for an April release.

[02:22:08]
So big shout out to that, too.

[02:22:10]
I still got that work like in my office, like looking at it right now.

[02:22:15]
Yeah. So there's so so we have so we've had a lot of artists.

[02:22:18]
Well, we've had a lot of artists that have done stuff for us.

[02:22:20]
So so T.O. Alex art on Instagram.

[02:22:23]
Big shout out to Sean.

[02:22:24]
Big shout out Sean.

[02:22:26]
Yeah, Sean Wilkins and also T.O.

[02:22:29]
TV because he's looking to the the shinkawa style bust of the four of us.

[02:22:34]
Oh, yeah, that's that's what I meant. Yeah.

[02:22:36]
And then and then Sean Sean and I'm sure they'll

[02:22:40]
shout out Sean on the two point over.

[02:22:42]
I want to give for sure.

[02:22:44]
Go give Sean some love.

[02:22:45]
Yeah, he's a member of the community.

[02:22:46]
Like that dude does amazing work.

[02:22:48]
That was in the scratch kid.

[02:22:51]
The scratch kid on Instagram.

[02:22:52]
And I believe that's also his twitch.

[02:22:55]
But it is. It is because it's funny,

[02:22:57]
because I'll sometimes catch him when he's on there and it just shifts to him

[02:23:00]
talking shit to me and me talking shit.

[02:23:06]
And then call.

[02:23:07]
Do you do you have anything you want to want?

[02:23:09]
Do you want anywhere you want them to find you?

[02:23:10]
They can find you for most of all of my socials are still there.

[02:23:14]
I'm not on most of them.

[02:23:16]
I know it's a fucking graveyard.

[02:23:19]
If you want, you can follow me on subparanian music, bruise on Instagram.

[02:23:24]
And you can you can watch his evolution

[02:23:26]
into a fucking rock climbing bro like Isaac.

[02:23:29]
It's really fun. It's really fun.

[02:23:31]
Yeah, come come watch me like you and I need to watch me climb rocks

[02:23:36]
and then post about like dumb industry shit.

[02:23:39]
So yeah, you and Isaac need to just like flex on a mountain together.

[02:23:43]
Yeah.

[02:23:47]
That picture to happen.

[02:23:48]
Yeah. And then I mean, it's doable.

[02:23:51]
I mean, it holds like two something hours away from my head.

[02:23:53]
Oh, really? If Isaac wants to go climb sometime, I'm fully down.

[02:23:58]
I am willing to get that money here that Isaac is willing to climb a lot of the time.

[02:24:04]
And then, of course, a lessio summerfield dot com.

[02:24:08]
Hey, for our friend, Alessio,

[02:24:11]
Zachary, I'll be real quick. Oh, hold the phone.

[02:24:14]
Yeah. Oh, wow.

[02:24:15]
For our friend, wow.

[02:24:17]
For our friends out there who want to give you the most amount of money

[02:24:22]
when they buy your book. Yeah.

[02:24:23]
What is the best way to buy the book?

[02:24:25]
Yes, make sure that you get a large portion of the funds.

[02:24:29]
So I get I get the majority of of the royalties from the Kindle edition.

[02:24:37]
And I appreciate that, but I did not write this to make money.

[02:24:41]
I just do it because I love it.

[02:24:43]
So if you want to buy the Kindle edition, I appreciate it.

[02:24:46]
If you buy the paperback, I appreciate that, too.

[02:24:49]
And the audio book should be out by the time this this is released as well.

[02:24:56]
But yeah, the most returned for me is the Kindle edition.

[02:24:59]
But just physical print.

[02:25:01]
Just any just any fucking purchase helps me out and it lets me know

[02:25:07]
that I'm doing a good job and I appreciate that.

[02:25:09]
So buy all three.

[02:25:12]
Well, and I was going to say, Sam, if you want to complete the trifecta,

[02:25:16]
the second edition of Deception will be out by the time this comes out, too,

[02:25:20]
with the glossary in the pack.

[02:25:22]
Perfect. Three copies.

[02:25:24]
Author proof first edition, second edition.

[02:25:27]
Feed it to me, baby.

[02:25:29]
Oh, my God.

[02:25:30]
So as we as we drift away from our final episode together, Melgar Monday's one

[02:25:36]
point five, I want to thank Zach and Cole for being a part of this with me.

[02:25:42]
I want to thank Chris for being a part of this with us as well.

[02:25:45]
I want to thank Alessio for for coming up with the idea initially as well

[02:25:49]
and kind of being my creative partner for the last decade plus and doing

[02:25:54]
all kinds of goofy shit with me the entire time.

[02:25:57]
And to leave us with kind of like a final sentiment,

[02:26:03]
this podcast has done a lot for us.

[02:26:04]
And I just I just it's just it's just like we have a connection or something.

[02:26:09]
Oh, God, I just want to go.

[02:26:11]
Oh, no.

[02:26:12]
What was me?

[02:26:13]
I thought you were doing like the old school send off.

[02:26:16]
Oh, no.

[02:26:18]
That's our send off.

[02:26:19]
That's our fucking legacy.

[02:26:20]
Stop the podcast.

[02:26:22]
Oh, God.

[02:26:25]
Oh, love it.

[02:26:31]
Do you guys know that Hideo Kojima is putting a book out?

[02:26:34]
Oh, fuck.

[02:26:34]
Two weeks.

[02:26:36]
Fuck this.

[02:26:37]
What have you got there?

[02:26:38]
A cardboard box.

[02:26:40]
Yeah. Remember that trick.

[02:26:41]
This is the conclusion of part one of four of the death of Metal Gear

[02:26:50]
Mondays. What is dead may never die.

[02:26:53]
And I have been your.

[02:26:55]
Uh, what's dead may never die.

[02:27:01]
They love that.

[02:27:01]
Cue the double bass.

[02:27:06]
Nice.

[02:27:07]
So what do you want the listeners to think about between episode one and episode two?

[02:27:11]
It's weird because covid and death and concluding.

[02:27:15]
I know it's we're not in a good headspace to be kicking that ball around.

[02:27:19]
But I do have one thing I do want to say, though.

[02:27:24]
What is what I have to say is.

[02:27:30]
Sam Bright.

[02:27:33]
I found it.

[02:27:34]
I found the fan fiction.

[02:27:35]
Oh, no, no way.

[02:27:37]
OK, I had to ask you.

[02:27:39]
You could read it.

[02:27:40]
You could share with Isaac.

[02:27:41]
Please do not share this.

[02:27:42]
I don't think anybody.

[02:27:44]
No.

[02:27:46]
You have to you have to bleep out the user.

[02:27:52]
No.

[02:27:54]
I have found you.

[02:27:56]
They make it really hard to search by date.

[02:27:59]
I had to fucking manually click through so much.

[02:28:02]
Yeah, for you was over for me when I started talking about the day.

[02:28:06]
Yeah, you kind of revealed a lot.

[02:28:08]
Yeah.

[02:28:08]
Well, yeah.

[02:28:09]
And as soon as I clicked reviews, I was like, they gave it away there.

[02:28:13]
Sam, it's 46 chapters.

[02:28:15]
I fucking know.

[02:28:18]
Dude, you went hard.

[02:28:19]
I did.

[02:28:20]
Please.

[02:28:21]
More ways than one.

[02:28:21]
Oh, my God.

[02:28:22]
And.

[02:28:25]
You got to finish.

[02:28:27]
I don't.

[02:28:27]
I really don't.

[02:28:28]
I was 14 years old when I wrote this fan fiction.

[02:28:32]
Here's my favorite line.

[02:28:33]
No, no.

[02:28:35]
I'm sorry.

[02:28:36]
Oh, God.

[02:28:37]
No, no, no.

[02:28:38]
It's not what you think it is.

[02:28:39]
OK.

[02:28:41]
Oh, Donald and Goofy, not an agreement.

[02:28:48]
That's the whole line.

[02:28:50]
What?

[02:29:00]
My secret shames come to me for all these fucking years.

[02:29:04]
And I love it.

[02:29:07]
Fourteen years old, ladies and gentlemen.

[02:29:09]
Yeah, I found it.

[02:29:11]
God damn.

[02:29:11]
I found I'm so happy.

[02:29:13]
All right.

[02:29:14]
This is all this is all I wanted.

[02:29:16]
Oh, boy.

[02:29:17]
All right, guys, this podcast was 100 percent just a ruse for me to get this.

[02:29:21]
All right, I'm going to go jump off a cliff.

[02:29:23]
No.

[02:29:24]
Why?

[02:29:27]
You should drop that link.

[02:29:30]
My favorite is that Sam's acting all bashful, but Isaac, you know, in like three months,

[02:29:34]
he's going to text us and be like, so what do you think of this story?

[02:29:40]
You're God damn right.

[02:29:42]
I am.

[02:29:45]
Fourteen year old me needs fulfillment.

[02:29:47]
Sam, what would you rather than think about?

[02:29:50]
That's what I like them to think about.

[02:29:52]
I would like them to think about.

[02:30:00]
You know, you know what?

[02:30:01]
Think about like if you could write a book about anything.

[02:30:08]
Anything at all.

[02:30:10]
What would you write about?

[02:30:14]
What would be your

[02:30:17]
piece?

[02:30:17]
There is this thought.

[02:30:19]
What would be your subject can be nonfiction, can be fiction.

[02:30:25]
What do you want?

[02:30:26]
What would you write about if you just were just down and write a book right now?

[02:30:31]
I'm just thankful that we don't have to say I would want the reader or I would want the listeners to consider

[02:30:37]
giving us money at patreon.com.

[02:30:40]
We don't have to we don't have to do that anymore.

[02:30:42]
So that's pretty cool.

[02:30:43]
You know, don't don't do that.

[02:30:44]
Don't give us money anymore.

[02:30:45]
We're not we're not making content for you.

[02:30:48]
I feel really bad.

[02:30:49]
There was somebody I was so I was posting the farewell promo on Patreon today.

[02:30:55]
And I felt really bad because somebody patronized in mid September.

[02:30:59]
And I kept joking like we should just throw their name around and be like,

[02:31:03]
yeah, because they patronized were shutting it all down.

[02:31:07]
But no, yeah.

[02:31:08]
So instead of patronizing us, I mean, you can be patronizing to us.

[02:31:13]
But these things that we're telling you to think about, send us a tweet.

[02:31:17]
If you thought about it, Isaac, what do you want them to think about?

[02:31:22]
Um, you want them to think about your tweet?

[02:31:25]
Are you going to tweet right now?

[02:31:27]
I don't even know how to.

[02:31:30]
I don't even know how to log back in.

[02:31:33]
I don't know.

[02:31:34]
I'm like, I forgot.

[02:31:35]
Forgot password.

[02:31:36]
Say I don't know what email it's tied to.

[02:31:40]
Oh, no.

[02:31:42]
Forgot email.

[02:31:43]
Forgot.

[02:31:45]
That doesn't have a tweet.

[02:31:46]
Should just feel like I never had a tweet.

[02:31:49]
Was it all a dream?

[02:31:50]
What's a song that really brings back?

[02:31:54]
It can be any emotion, but like some like intense emotions for you.

[02:32:00]
I'm going to yes and that.

[02:32:02]
Does anybody have a song that gets that that makes them erect?

[02:32:06]
I don't know.

[02:32:07]
Is that a human?

[02:32:07]
Is there a human somewhere that can listen to a song and be like, yes.

[02:32:11]
Right.

[02:32:11]
It's in.

[02:32:12]
Yeah.

[02:32:13]
Right.

[02:32:13]
Please let us know.

[02:32:14]
Tell us about your erections.

[02:32:16]
I guarantee you that's a thing.

[02:32:18]
Like I guarantee you 100% like like humans are like we are Pavlovian in nature.

[02:32:24]
You can be conditioned to have a reaction of anything to anything.

[02:32:28]
And I'm sure if you listen to a song enough times while you're doing

[02:32:32]
something that would cause an erection, he just hearing that song

[02:32:36]
and create an instant response.

[02:32:38]
I love the guarantee.

[02:32:39]
I love the idea of somebody being like, I can only pleasure myself

[02:32:42]
when this song is playing.

[02:32:44]
No.

[02:32:45]
Why do I always hear the boys are back in town coming on your bed?

[02:32:50]
I love that.

[02:32:53]
I'm really sad that nobody that nobody pitched this idea.

[02:32:57]
I respectfully would like to inquire that the listener please consider

[02:33:04]
that it's just a box.

[02:33:05]
Just a box.

[02:33:15]
Frank.

[02:33:16]
I can't.

[02:33:38]
We're

[02:33:44]
OK?

[02:33:45]
All right.

[02:33:46]
Let's go

[02:33:47]
Scram!