The Basement: Nerdrotic | From Folsom Prison to Millions of Subscribers

Today I'm talking with Gary Beekler, you probably know him as Nerdronic. Gary is built a media empire around pop culture commentary. Friday night tights, forbidden from tier, and a YouTube channel at Hollywood Studios now quietly track. "Yes, so Hollywood finally figured out how to read the room, and the room says, 'We hate everything you make, nice.'" But before any of this existed, Gary grew up in San Diego in the 80s. He spent years running from a trauma that he never shared with anyone. "Gah, 80 San Diego has top gun, beach volleyball, and endless amounts of party tada. He's running from it, but I'm a running to it." "Gary, are you the need?" "Gah, I feel the need." "Do it around sing, take my breath away." "I'm not doing it." "Gah, I feel the need." "Fine." "The need for speed." "The need for speed." Gary eventually ended up at Old Folsom State Prison, not New Folsom, Old Folsom, Johnny Cash Folsom. "I didn't know there were two Folsoms. You're not going to like it." Well, today we cover all of it. The second grade teacher who changed his life, what it's like to share a cell with a double murderer, and how he went from sleeping in his car to building a YouTube empire. Let's go down to the basement. "Gary, welcome to the basement." "Well, thank you. That's embarrassing." "It's all good. Before we get started, I ask everyone this question. UFO experienced researchers, physicists, and so on. Same question. Hypothetical. Desert Island. You get one choice." "What flavor toilet wine?" "Toylet wine?" What flavor? I would say. "Prinno." "Prinno." It would have to be "Prinno," which is made from oranges. "Oh, you go orange?" "Well, I have to." I mean, I would have to break my sobriety because I'm dead, right? "No, totally hypothetical." "I would rather grow cocoa plants. If I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out good." But yeah, orange, that's the one I'm the most familiar with. I never touched the stuff, but I certainly helped people make it and helped people hide it. "Oh, yeah. It's oranges. I believe it's yeast, and you let it ferment for a little while." "Why do you call it toilet wine?" "Oh, well, and sometimes you need to get your water from places other—they mostly get it from the sink. But I think that's just the term they use. Plus, it's usually hidden around the toilet, or under a bunk. It can only last for so long because they search the cells pretty regularly. And randomly. So it has to be—honestly, I don't know how they do it. They were able to switch cells and probably a guard tipped them off at some point, you know, some bribery. But like, it's in like bags. It's in trash bags. "It was the weirdest thing to learn about people making wine in the joint." "And apparently it's really strong." "Really?" "Yeah, it's like really, really strong wine." "Strong for wine. It's not like booze though." "No, no. But when you're—you've got a bunch of guys who haven't drank or anything for months, it'll probably hit them pretty hard." "I bet it would. And you've had alcohol before." "Yes, okay." "Yes." "Before we go into the origin story, I know you've told it a million times. It's such a good story. When I was reading it, I cried at the end, and I felt myself getting angry at you during it, especially because I know you, and you're a friend, I love you, so I know how it ends." "Love you too, man. Right, man." "And I just want to smack you in the head every step of the way which we're going to get into." "Before we do the origin story, let's kick it off positive. What's on TV or whatever movie that you're liking right now?" "Three things have come out this year." "What do you got?" "A night of the Seven Kingdoms was, damn near 10 out of 10, just a great adaptation of a great novella by George R. Martin who needs to finish his other books. It is a really simple tale of heroism and what it means to be a knight and chivalry, and while it still has some of the Game of Thrones aspects of it, it's very linear and you can't help but root for both Dunk and Egg. It was a short series and it built momentum as time went on and I just absolutely loved every minute of it. I did too. I didn't start nights until it was like episode three and I started like this, just arms folded because it's just angry at everybody, angry at season six, all that dark night, angry at George. I don't know how many days we are waiting for the last book. Over 5,000. And of course, he's executive producer. So I watched, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes in the first episode and I was like, "Okay, they did it. This is really true to the books as I read those and I loved it." Number two. One piece, season two. Absolutely loved it. Never thought I would like this show. I'm not like the biggest anime fan in the world when I saw the trailer for season one. It looked like the worst thing I've ever seen. I love season one and I love season two. Really come on anime guy. That's interesting. In the same vein of the three things I like are a night of the seven kingdoms, Project Hail Mary and one piece and the one thing they have in common is a positive look at the world. I'm so sick today. I like nihilism. I did. I liked all that subversion stuff back in the 2010s when it was cool. It is so overdone. I am, it's just, it's cooked at this point as the kids say. Gen Z thinks they came up with that. Yeah, I know. They've just been around for 100 years. Okay. Just want to let you know. No, but seeing heroes with a positive outlook, seeing something hopeful is nice. It's just really nice and I love all three of those things and I'm, you know, it makes you, makes you wonder if they can turn things around. Probably not, but, you know, was your number three Hail Mary? Hail Mary. Love Project Hail Mary. That could, that could save Hollywood, at least for a while because that brought everybody back to the theaters. Top Gun Maverick did the same thing. That's what I was about to say. Three years ago and they learned nothing from it and they thought it was just this jingoistic patriotic movie. It's like, no, it was just a feel good heroic story. And the reason we go to the theater or you have to make this distinction for, for popcorn movies, for tent pole movies is to escape, right? I don't need to be lectured to. There are certainly spaces and times for those movies. You can make them all day long as independent films, but when it comes to, I want to take my family or I want to just go and have a good time and turn off the rest of the world. That's when Hollywood is doing their best and that's when they actually put good in the world. They really love to think that they're changing the world and what they're not providing entertainment. They're a platform for influence, AJ. And we're going to teach those plebs out in a middle America how to think. You know, instead of just going, let's just entertain them and it brings people together and we've lost that with the division. I think some in Hollywood is starting to recognize that. The problem is it's it's like Twitter before Elon took over. The cancer was there and you have to cut it out, root and stem. And it's, I don't think it's possible in Hollywood. I think there will be some change, but I think the lesson we can learn from Project Hail Mary is this is what people want. I mean, it's just a nice, hopeful story with a really dark, you know, the world is ending in it. And it like, it made me want to watch all the space movies. I've watched 2001, which is amazing. Interstellar contact. Contact 10 out of 10. Contact still the best. Contact's the best. The ending. It's okay. Arrival if that was solid. Let me push back on one thing. Sure. And this is not going to be a political show because people are going to be surprised. You're not a political guy. No. Gene Roddenberry put his politics in his shows and we love the original series. So his politics are in there. Why do they work? They worked because they weren't that heavy-handed. And when they approached the audience, it was in a way. If you want to change somebody's mind, I would I would discourage you going, hey, big it. Listen to me. You know, that's that's not how you change people's mind. The defenses automatically go up. So what they do is they present to you the idea and it and they leave it kind of up to you in a lot of Star Trek. They leave in a lot of ex files. They leave it up to you to kind of see that stuff. And that's that's the mark of a good writer. And we certainly know where Gene Roddenberry's, you know, politics come from. But we also have to consider the time he grew up, the time he, you know, he went to not grew up. But, you know, he went to World War II. He he's a writer who lived the life. We have right none of the writers, not most of the writers in current Hollywood have not lived the lives of the writers of even 10 or 20 years ago who were veterans or had careers before writing. Now they're just they're knowledge of the world is other TV shows and riffing other TV shows. Right. And I think Roddenberry was always story first. So his politics were there. He wanted, his politics were just, let's all get along, make the world a better place. But it was always about the story. And that's flipped a little bit with some properties. - Particularly with Star Trek. - Yes. - Star Trek lost its way, and that's why right now, for the first time in 10 years, there's no Star Trek in production. In my humble opinion, there hasn't been any Star Trek in production in that time, except for Picard season three. I like it, but. - Hashtag bring back Patallus. - Yes. - I was the same way, and I was all in on Star Trek, all of it. I'm a 9er, DS9, that's my favorite. - It's good. - So I stuck with discovery for a long time, and eventually I was just out. I was so disappointed, and I never came back, except I heard you talking about Picard, which I started, and it was terrible. And season three, it was like that, they finally figured it out. Now, how did it happen that we got the story that we wanted to Star Trek fans? - Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman, Akiva Goldsman's one on Academy Award, right? But he's not really, and he wrote Constantine, which is actually a good movie. Not really good at Star Trek, in my opinion, at all. And Picard, season one or two are the last Jedi of Star Trek. They're so, just Picard is a broken old man. So it got better, 'cause Kurtzman went off to go do the man who fell to Earth. And it was obligatory that they owed Patrick Stewart a third season, so they gave him no money. Basically the entire series is a bottle series, and but he had no supervision, and he was able to do whatever he wanted. Word on the street is he was able to fire. Everybody wanted to except for one person. He made that one person work. I won't say who it is, but he made that one person work, and he brought back the crew, and he just, it was a bunch of fan service, and he had to do mental gymnastics to bring back the Enterprise D and it worked. It was, and the funniest bit at the end, well, they gave Star Trek fans something Star Wars fans didn't get. We had the crew of the Enterprise, on the Enterprise D, at the end of an episode, just together the carpet, the lighting, everything. That's all we wanted. - That's all we wanted. - It's all we wanted. And, you know, logic be damned, and the best part at the end was there was a virus from the Borg that affected only young people. It was a mind virus. (laughing) So that's how they worked it out, where the old people had to come in and save the young people, it was great. - Right, like, are you getting it? When Warf showed up, I was screaming, when Warf showed up, the fight scene, Michael Doran's just still bringing it. - It's my favorite. My outside of the original series, that is my favorite modern Star Trek character. He ruled his best. - He's the best. - The best moment in Picard season for me was when such fan service, so gratuitous, I loved it, is when they were at the shipyard, going through all the ships, and you just hear the theme song woven through. - Yep. - And I was, the tears are coming down, I was just, I was a mess. - You're like, I, I didn't know I needed this. - I, I knew I did. I knew I did, but I didn't know, it would be executed so perfectly. Oh, it was, it was just so good. - And it came from somebody who, like Terry Metallis, you can't deny the man loves Star Trek. Like, loves Star Trek, and probably, I don't know, David Ells, and if you're out there, 'cause of course you watch the Wifiels. That's probably the guy you should hire. - That's the guy you should hire. - To run Star Trek, right? - No. - My, my suggestion. - I think he might do it. I don't know if, if Cursman's gonna get another project after Starfleet Academy. - I, I, I, if he does, Paramount Warner Brothers are done. They're done, they're done as a company. 'Cause that really tells you what the path is. I don't think he's coming back. I, I think he's not there. - I'll think so, either. - And whenever I hear you or drinker or people saying Star Trek is over, I know you don't mean it. I know that if it comes back and they give you what you want, you're coming right back. Of course, of course, of course. - I'm a fan. I, I love, Star Trek is part of your life, part of my life. We didn't have a lot of TV, not the ages too much, but we had what, three channels to choose from. - Three. - I was lucky, 'cause I was in San Diego. So I had six, 'cause we had the San Diego, and we got the LA stations. - Oh, okay. - But they all played the same stuff. You know, but it was just Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Gilligan's Island, like on heavy rotation. - It's so weird to say Gilligan's Island, 'cause I was just thinking that, as you said, what we watched, we watched Gilligan's Island all the time. - All the time. - That's why. And Rijal Batman was always on. - The first superhero shows I watched were George Reef Superman and Adam West Batman. - Yes, same. - And I thought it was, you know, I was a kid. So I'm like, this is totally a serious show. This is an earnest show. - I forget the name of it. The book is running here somewhere. It's a story about George Reef and the terrible life that he had. It's really worth reading. He's a tragedy, but he was a great Superman. So we've been friends for a long time, and I've been a fan of yours. I probably, probably during COVID, so a long time. And I know you've told your origin story a million times. You've had a lot of fans here at the studio, and I was talking to one of them just the other day and I said, "Oh, my Gary's gonna tell his prison story again." And she goes, "What?" - He was in prison. So apparently people don't know, some people don't know that you did real time. - Yeah. - And comparatively. - Yeah. - Reading your memoir, there were times where it was actually scared, because you're so honest in it, about you're really honest in it, which we'll get into really surprisingly honest. So when you establish that honesty very early on, like with what happened when you were a kid. - Yeah. - Now I never know what's gonna happen. Like it's like a George Martin novel, right? You never know. He's gonna die next. So it's established. So when you're in prison, I'm just waiting for the tragedy and eventually things do happen. So I wanna hear about the beginning, even before talk about you're adopted. - Yeah. I was my birth mom, who I am in contact with this very day, who was a lovely woman. Got pregnant with me when she was 16. She was a partier, back in the '60s. And I don't hold this against her at all. She's a wonderful Catholic, good Catholic woman now, and my sperm donor dad who I've never met, don't know what he looks like, don't care. - Are you angry about him? - Not at all. - Okay. - No, I mean, I understand he was young too, but I figured if he wanted to find me, he could find me, right? I had a dad though, so in the dad department, totally taken care of. So I was adopted. - So when I got young, if you met your birth mom, you didn't ask about your father? - I've asked about him, but I've never really-- - What did she say? - She doesn't know. She once he was gone, so he promised to stay with her. The only thing I know about him is his name, and he was a seven day Adventist. So. - Okay. - Okay. - Wasn't practicing very well, I guess. - Was he good to her? - Up until the end, yes. - Okay. - Yeah, up until the end, and he said he'd stay, and this would be a quit. She doesn't really talk about it a bunch, and I don't push, but he had promised to stay, and then he took off. - Okay. - And he was at the time, I think, 18. So it's like-- - I kind of get it. - Yeah. - That's why it's okay. You know, I kind of get it. I'm not, was I angry about it when I was younger? Absolutely, but I'm not now. - When did you find out you were adopted? - Very early. I think my parents told me when I was seven? - When you were seven, oh my. - Six or seven, yeah. - How did that conversation start? - Ooh. What little I remember of it, my mom and dad both just wanted, like they sat down and go, we love you. The same is Terry, you know, but we have to tell you this. That's, it's foggy, that conversation, but I remember it tripping me out for a listen. If you're adopted, it, it, I'm sure it affects people differently, but it affects you, it does. It's like, you don't feel wanted, and you're always thinking about that person who, like, who just dumped you. - What does she look like? - Right. - Why did she do this, you know? - Why were you rejected? - Yeah, and you're trying to deal with stuff like that when you're like seven years old. So I used to, yeah, I used to have a little fantasies about it when I was a kid, but like honestly, I never got mad at my parents about it and other than feeling the abandonment. - When is a good age to tell an adopted? - Boy, I don't know if there's ever a good, I think, girl. as possible is the best way to do it. - Seven feels really hard. - Yeah, but if you wait too long, true. - It's true, I don't know. - Honestly, I don't know a good answer to that question, but it softened the blow with me, 'cause again, it's gonna affect you no matter what. So do you affect them early or late? That's on the parent to do that. I don't have a good suggestion for that, but for me, it wasn't terrible. - Well, you were kind of a little asshole. - Yes, for a long time. - Long time. - Do you think some might argue I'm still on? - Some might. I wouldn't, but you're kind of an asshole. Your poor parents, man. Reading the book, I'm like, they're still sticking with this kid. If they had told you a little later, do you think you would have been a little more chill? - Maybe, 'cause there's an undercurrent of anger in your origin story. - Yeah. - Really against the man, authority, all of that. If the anger is coming from somewhere, 'cause when you're 11 or 12, you don't really know anything. So what are you angry about? So if they waited. - If they waited, I don't think it would have helped my anger. Maybe a more mature 12, 'cause I wasn't super mature. But that was because of the things that have, if anything that made me angry, we can talk about what happened to me in school. - Let's do it. - This is way worse than finding out I was adopted was I was molested by a teacher, by a school teacher. So I was in second grade. So whatever age second grade is. - Six or seven? - Yeah. So right around the same time. Right around the same time. - That's a busy year. - Were you singled out by that teacher? - I don't know. It felt like I was. But I honestly don't know. And he was brazen about it. Like he would. Like during, we were watching a Disney movie. Maybe this is why I hate Disney. (cat meows) We were watching a Disney movie and he pulled me in the back. And while the kids were watching and did stuff. Right. I was about to say nothing horrible. But no, it was horrible. - Of course it was. - It was all horrible, right? So this, if you want to like put a finger on my deep distrust of the government, the system. My, I don't like teachers unions because they protect. This is not AJ, this is me. They protect people like this. - Yep. - And it's been proven that they do this. And they don't do anything about it. So it really set me up to completely fail in school. Not trust any adult, not trust any authority. - So there's definitely anger there that you're carrying. - You didn't tell anyone about what the teacher was doing, right? - No, parents, no. - No, it didn't tell, as a matter of fact, I got, when one day was particularly bad, I bailed on school, I just walked out of school. - Second grade? - Yeah, and second grade. So there's a little second grader walking home on this busy, the Costa Avenue. You're familiar with Southern California. Little second grader and people started noticing that. They called the school. Bus driver came and got me. And I got in trouble, I got in huge trouble for it. - That's interesting. - And I couldn't say what I was, you know, they're all wide to leave. - That would make any kid angry. - Yep. - 'Cause I hear you are taking the heat for it. And you have no idea what I've been through. - Yeah. - I was angry at that teacher the whole way through your book. I know you were through your sobriety. We'll get to that and how you got through that is amazing. I don't know if I could. So second grade, when did you start becoming a delinquent? - Not far after that. I broke, I wanted a toy. And knew where the spare key was and broke into my friend's house. He got caught by his dad, you know, like all this, this is at a single digit. - Single digit. - Broke into my first house. - I mean a theme. - Just 'cause I wanted something. - Throughout your book, you're just the worst criminal. You're just not good at it, Gary. - No, I'm not good at it. - Stupid as hell. Still I am by the way. But yeah, I just, you know, I just, my, I remember, I remember getting caught. - Of course. - And, you know, I went home and they told my dad, and I got in a huge amount of trouble, but it never discouraged me. - You know what I did, you kept going back. - I kept doing it. - What about substances, booze and stuff? When did that start? - That started, oh God, 11, 10, 11, 12. - How is that even around in 11 year old? - Well pot was around. - Sure. - Pot was around, but first time I really got drunk was at Roscoe, South Dakota. They had a centennial or, yeah, centennial. And there was like half drinking beers laying around and I'm like, oh, I just wanna try this. 'Cause my dad would let me sip a beer. - Sure. - So I saw everybody else getting drunk. I'm like, ah, let's try it. And I loved it. I was like, oh, so I'm drinking like people. I don't know what the hell's in this can. I didn't care. - You love the drink or you love the feeling? - I love the feeling. - The drink tasted like crap. - Yep. - I've never liked the taste alcohol. - But the escape is pretty good. - Yep. That's where it all started. I'm like, oh, this is for me. This is for me. And then it went to pot and not too far after that. A friend of mine laid out a line of crystal meth, which is a lot, I guess, a lot different now than it was back then. It was called crank back then. How old do you know when the-- - This is junior high. - Are you holding now? You have anything decent? - Yeah. - Is it good? - No, not the good. - No. I've got some nicotine things that, there you go. - No. (laughs) - How does that go? Yeah, I have one bad habit, still. I vape. - That is not your only bad habit. But that's fine. That's fine. - Well, right now. No, so, okay, so I'm my friend. - So where's your crank? Who are you hanging out with? - I didn't see, I hardly saw a plot growing up. And it's not like-- - Oh, this was just my friends in junior high. And I was a jock early on. So I was hanging out with the jocks. - Football. - Football. Basketball. So I played tied in, I played linebacker, I was also a punter, I was back of quarterback. So I was pretty good, you know, for a white boy in like all white boy county. - Yep. - But yeah, so he lays out a line for me and I did it. And then I'm like, what's it do? I had no idea what it did. - He's like, you'll get your homework done today. And I got my homework done. I'm like, this is great. It makes me excited about everything I hate 'cause school never really worked for me. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who feel the same way. It just, I was, I think the best, at best I was a C student when I paid attention. But it never captured my attention. This is before drugs. It just never interested me. - This is basically Adderall. - Yeah, it's, I mean, people, they called it hyperactive back then. I was considered a hyperactive child. - Yep. - And it did, I mean, it did focus me for a little while. It did, but. - Look, I'm on that stuff. I've used that stuff. I struggle with drinking too much. I go sober on and off. I struggle with it on and off. I totally feel all of this. You just went, you went harder, but I totally get all of it and that feeling of just clarity of all the chaos and the ADHD mind is very, very intriguing. Of just like, oh my goodness, I could be productive. - Yeah, and it's, it was the first time, like maybe there's something wrong with me. Like, I've heard that before, but I was the first time, I'm like, oh, if this stuff works on me, that can't be good. I even knew that. - You knew that. - Yeah, but the fact is, it works. And it makes, it makes me focused for the first time. The thing is though, that's not exactly true because I would focus like crazy on stuff I was interested in. Like, I would focus on comics and entertainment and all this stuff, my dad and my mom said, wasn't important, and then we're wrong, you know? They said it wasn't important. And it wouldn't pay attention to anything I was supposed to. And it eventually got me out of the things I did love. Sports, it got me out of those. And then I started hanging around with all the bad kids. 'Cause once I started doing the drugs, I'm like, well, I need to hang around the people who are doing the drugs. - Yeah, well, I have the drugs. And you're not really going to school anymore, right? - No, no. I started ditching in freshman year. And I managed to squeak out sophomore year, but then that was it. I got kicked out of San Guido High School. Hang on one second, hey, hey, get Jen in here. Started using, when the meth started when you were what, about 13? - Yeah. - 14? How are you getting the money for that? - How am I getting the money for that? Well, at first, it was, friends had the money and they shared it. And it was kind of like, normal. I had a paper route, but did you get the paper route saying I need drug money? No, no, no, that was that was normal. That was normal, but right away, stealing, like right away, I would get jobs. The jobs came later, like when I was 16. My first job was at Burger King. Come sit on my lap. Oh boy, stage directions. The Gary bounces around a couple of high schools. He's not, he's not doing, he's not doing well. Okay. He goes to, I guess the high school for bad kids, right? Yeah. This is, this is just a, just a quick scene. Have a seat. Okay. From Gary's memoir. Okay. Your stage direction. I'm the teacher. All right. And Gary's Gary will start with stage direction interior sunset high school. Okay. Oh God, sunset. Interior sunset high school classroom day. The last bell rings. Students file out. Gary Beakler, 17. Wiery, restless. Stay seated at his desk, but not by choice. He watches the other kids leave with the dead eyed patients of someone who's been through this before. The teacher, mid 40s, waits behind his desk, jaw tight until the room empties a long beat of silence. Then he stands, walks slowly to Gary's desk, and looks him dead in the eye. Beakler? I've had enough of you. Gary doesn't flinch. He looks right back. Yeah, is that right? It absolutely is. I've had more than my fill of you way more. You don't say? Yeah, I do. I do say. You're wasting my time. Beakler, you're wasting everyone's time here. We both know you don't belong here at sunset. You're never going to amount to anything ever. And as far as I'm concerned, I want you out of here. Gary stands up slowly. No fear, no hesitation. Really? Really? I've got the most amazing coincidence to share with you. I want the same god damn thing. So here's my idea. What if you go fuck yourself? The teacher's face goes red. He starts screaming, a full-blown, unhinged adult meltdown. Gary has never seen anything like it. Beakler! You cannot talk to a teacher like that. You useless piece of shit. They stir each other down, along electric beat. Gary thinks for a couple of seconds, then he makes his decision. He punches the teachers, squaring them out hard. The teacher goes down fast. He doesn't come back up. Gary looks at him on the floor, looks at the door, he walks out. Fade to black. Fade to black. That was the end of my school career. Wow. Punched him right in the mouth. Yep. That was a ten scene because I was waiting for him to punch you. I was whole, I wanted him to. I wanted him to punch you and that was the end of your school career. That was it. Press charges? No. No, no, nothing. I mean, dodged another bullet. And I was partying so hard if they could press charges of told my parents, it wouldn't have mattered. That was pretty much gone at that point. What are your parents trying to do? Are they trying to intervene? Are they just? My parents have given up at that point. How do you mean given up? They're still letting you stay? No, they booted me. Yeah, they booted me. No, the greatest act of love my father ever showed me. My father, Arvin Beakler, I passed away in the early 2000s from cancer and was a great man. And I didn't recognize that. He was a great man. Yep. Yep. And greatest act of love he ever showed me was to give me the boot and not look back and I'm sure it killed him inside. At the time, I thought he was a complete asshole and couldn't care less if he lived or died. My mom would enable. I was able to manipulate my mom and enable at times when I needed to, but mostly I was I was on my own. On the streets. We'll keep a chronological, but just aside for your story about your dad, I have the same story with the cancer and the internet. It sucks. It sucks to watch it. My dad was a superhero to watch him get cancer just kick his ass. Yeah. Did dad ever forgive you? Yes. Yes. We reconciled and we actually got really close towards the last right when I got out of a we won't get too far ahead, but after prison, we were the best of friends. Absolutely the best of friends. I'm so happy to hear that. Yeah. Because I couldn't believe they stuck with you. I couldn't either. All right. So your punch the teacher in the mouth. No charges. What happens next? What do you set 16 16 and it's just pure chaos staying mostly staying in my friend's house. I mean all the names were changed to protect the innocent and guilty. Right. To this Bobby. Yes. And we stayed at it was called the Crystal Palace. People from Edson, Edus will know it. So you'll know who I'm talking about at the time in the 80s. And it was just a party house. It was it was not unlike the Kras house in the UK. If you're familiar with the story of the Kras house except there's no creative while there was some creative. Sure. But it was mostly just drugs. His dad was a bartender and would be gone all day. And when he came back, he was just checked out and didn't care. So drunk drunk. Just lately drunk complete alcohol. So this is perfect. Yeah. Oh, perfect. Right. We had run we had girls over all the time. And we were not like the coolest kids in school. But we became that because we do the parties. And it was for a while it was like lots of fun. And that was my like found family for a little while. Of course it all went to shit. Pretty quick. You you seem to know pretty early on that you are making bad decisions that you're going to have to pay for one day. How early? How young? Did you realize this is a badness? I'm doing it anyway. But this is not going to end well. Yeah. I never thought I'd live to 30. So I'm like, I'm just going to I'm just going to ride this out. Now I was not ever like suicidal. But I'm like, you know, this. But I never really gave it a ton of thought about the con I knew the consequences were there. But I'm like, that's tomorrow. That's tomorrow. That's tomorrow. I'm going to get sick because when you know the worst one day at a time ever, it is. That's why they teach you one day at a time because that's pretty much how the addict goes about that is just today. I need to either have my drugs when I when I wake up in the morning. If I'm not up all night or I got to find my drugs. And it's it's it's like feeding. It's like a shark feeding you you have to have that. And then everything else can happen in jobs and French relationships, friends, girlfriends, none of that matters because the drugs are your god. And that's where the disease portion comes in. I think a lot of people fight back on this. And and I get it. I get it. It's not a disease in the sense of, you know, like Parkinson's or or cancer. It's it's a disease. It's a disease that requires a conscious decision. So I think if anybody ever use the disease part as an excuse to, you know, to relieve them of any responsibility, that's that's not that's not what it means. It just means that our brain chemistry is different. And not necessarily good. So we have an addictive personality to where, you know, there's just some people who can drink half a beer and leave it on the counter. I was never that person. And I don't think any addict is. And I drank till it's till it's till it's dark black. So it's gone. Yeah. Yeah. But I was like that with my my Halloween candy. Like I couldn't. I ate it all one night. You were instructed not to do that. Yes. So crystal palace 1617. I guess we can fast forward to Bobby's in the back seat. What way not baggies? Because you're because you're dealing a little bit, right? Yeah. Mostly using, but dealing a little bit makes him cash. Yeah. I was dealing to pretty much my friends or a couple of older people. But I knew everybody. I was dealing. I was never dealing to strangers or it was usually just my fellow teenagers. Part of the party. Yep. I was terrible at it. So Bobby's in the back. You're driving here. Is you? I think this is your old reveal. Yeah. 67 owes won't be ill. It was sweet 22,000 miles on it. It was a sweet car. Got it from a little old lady who was a neighbor of my grandma. Always the little old lady. Yeah. The good cars come from. Yeah. Didn't know for the old's either. So you're driving the old's. Bobby's in the back way not baggies. And you didn't get into it too much, but you knew this lady cop. Yes. How did you know her? She had busted us on enough times for like curfew and just little minor stuff, but little scraps here and there. But we used to hang out of a pinball plus. It was an arcade. It was in it. There was not much to do in Southern California in the 80s and San Diego. It is suburbia. So if there is an arcade, that's where every kid's going to go. And that's what we did. Same. So they started enforcing a curfew. So that's how we knew each other. And she really hated me. But I had to cheat you because of your attitude. Yeah. My attitude was shit. She had a good reason too. It's not like she didn't because this anti-authority thing goes through all this, right? She's and she's the man. So she knocks on the windows. Hey, Gary. Yeah. Yeah. And you. or my officer. - Hello, and well, there's the Batman handcuffs, right? So, that's right, is that why you got pulled over? - I got pulled over for Batman handcuffs, hanging off my rearview mirror as a instruction, but she saw me and found an excuse. And yeah, so we got busted, and-- - Yeah, hang on, she tossed the car. - Yeah, tossed it. - And you said she looked, she found the method, it was like she hit the lottery. It was the greatest day of her life. - Abs, absolutely. - Steve, been waiting for this all so long. - Scale! - Scale. - Intense distribute. - Yep, scale, I told him to keep it fucking home, but he didn't, and that was the first time I really went to jail. No, that's it. Yeah, that was, I went for a couple weeks, couple three weeks, 'cause one second. - You go in, you get booked. I come for a cop family, I have the job first. - Yeah, yeah. - You get booked, you get separated, and they want to know the story when they're writing you up. - Uh-huh. - Bobby fingered you, yeah? - Yeah, he did. - 'Cause you were just driving. - All right, that's it, I told the truth. I was just driving, but nobody's gonna believe that it wasn't mine, but it really wasn't. But he's all know, it was his. - So-- - Yeah, you didn't snitch. - I did. - Bobby did. - Bobby did. - And you go to jail? - Yeah, and this is the first time. So we're in San Diego County, jail, and it's down near Union Street, downtown. - Are you see street? - Are you nervous, you frightened? - Oh, totally, totally. Like this is like, what the hell's going on? And then we're, you know, you show it, or you try to be tough. - All right, try to be tough. Don't know how much I pulled it off. Luckily, the chaos of the place probably kind of hid that, because it was just a big dorm, right? And it was a big receiving dorm. - You didn't know at this point that this is nothing. - Oh, no clue. - Nothing. - No clue. Got out of that one. - How did mom and dad handle that? - Not very well, but my dad got a lawyer and said, this is the one time I'll help you. - If I remember correctly, you technically got the lawyer, right? - Yeah, well, yeah. We say through the glass. - Oh, the lawyer? - Yeah. - Well, I, do you know what I had to give up to get this lawyer, right? - I do, they don't. - Okay. I had to give up an Oldsmobile. - The Oldsmobile, the 67 Old, 'cause your dad said I'm gonna get you this lawyer, but you're gonna pay for it. - Yes, yes. - And you said, yes, sir. - Yes, sir, of course. Of course, for freedom. - I didn't even think twice about it. I mean, it hurts now, 'cause I'm like, maybe I could have stayed in an extra week, but I had to give up that, and the engine was, it was spotless, dude. Like the painting on the, you know, I'm gonna have to go off memory, but it said spit fire engine on. It was painted in red and it was all original and was all still there. - It was a 350. - Yeah. - Oh, yeah. It was a 350. So your dad must have been so proud. His baby boy found his way. All problems are solved. - No, dad was not happy about any of this, and they, you know, you got to get clean. They did all that stuff, and I just kept partying. I just, you know, once, once I was out. - And so, booze a math, right? - Booze, booze a math. It became more a math. I was way more in the speed, 'cause like, I don't know. I, I, I smoke pot, I, I, I drank, but anything that kind of makes you feel hired, I was never really into. What's funny is like, well, it's not funny. - You know what it got along. So yeah, I would have been a great customer. - Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, when, when, when I could find like alternatives, I never like in the early days, maybe did cope a couple of times, but that, that's later. But we found like Dexadream and the Diet Pills and stuff. Like, oh, yeah. - I'm familiar. - Oh, yeah. - Mm-hmm. - Love that stuff. - Me too. So now you start breaking into houses, right? - Yeah, yeah, pretty regularly. Cars and houses. - Cars and houses. And there was one that was so stupid, so stupid. It was so heavy. Can you, can you tell that story? - Well, is this, okay. Well, there's a lot of them. - You know the one with the pennies. Okay. So this is, this is so retarded. Okay. This is, this shows you the insanity of drugs. I can't remember who I was with now. Some guy who looked like he was in the Almond Brothers, right? - I think you guys all look like that. - Yeah, and I'm, I have the people I'm hanging with at this point. I don't even know. So I get this great idea that we need money I had none, but I know for a fact that my neighbor has this, the water bottles when they were glasses, like some of them still are, had one filled full of pennies. And I'm like, well, there's got to be a hundred bucks in there, a couple hundred bucks, maybe, you know. Didn't think very much about like how heavy it would be. (laughing) Right, right. So I knew how to get in their house. And I'm a genius. I cut a hole in the chain-like fence to thinking, - You're just providing a trail of evidence? - Yeah, providing a trail of, I might as well have just like left bread crumbs out and said, "This is Gary, I wish I could see your face when you go to grab the penny and you go, "Ugh." - Yeah, and I'm like, "Oh, shit." - This is really heavy. (laughing) And I wasn't like in the best shape of the world. So yeah, I get away with it for a little while, but then eventually I get caught. Yeah, but I got, I went and lost a year of my life. - You did a year for the pennies? - For the pennies. A water bottle full of pennies. - Still county? - Still county at this point. So we, yeah, I went to-- - Is this before the Porsche incident? - Yes. - Oh God, okay. - So it was, yeah, I did county jail and this is the fire camp and all that. So. - So you were, you're like almost a volunteer fireman while you were in there. - Yep, yep. - Serving the community, getting exercise outside and you still screwed it up. - Absolutely screwed up, almost immediately. I was in the best shape of my life. I got hurt. So I was able to manipulate that-- - You got to hurry. - How did you get hurt? - I broke my tailbone. - At the first time. - Yeah, yeah, I broke my tailbone. - How? - Fuck it around. I was walking down a mountain and I was like pretending I was skiing. I was like, my slipped and busted my tailbone. But I was able to like manipulate that into getting into a halfway house, right? So, you know, the last little bit of my sentence wasn't too bad, right? I got to, you know, go out once in a while. - So you get out, we'll fast forward a little bit. Like you go back to using, dealing all of that. And I forget how the chapter started. But it may, if the chapter started something like, you thought it would be a good idea to get a gun and I've got an idea how to get one. - Yes. - Oh, no. I never had a gun and I was like, this is how stupid it is. So I didn't need to do anything. (laughing) - You didn't care for your life? - No, no, I had a bunch of money. I had a bunch of drugs. All I had to do was get high and have fun. I'm like, you know, I know a good way to screw this up. - Sure, I need a gun. So I'm gonna go to an ex-girlfriend's house to where dad's got a gun collection. I'm gonna break in while they're there. Some board, you know, whatever was behind that. It wasn't like suicide or it was like, I'm gonna go to off myself. No, it was just like, I wanna gun. - Never rob a gun guy's house. - No, go on. - That's really, go on. That's really dumb. So I get into the garage, right? I get into the garage on the side door and go into the house and there's a little dog. So little dogs are the absolute best security. Big dogs, you can feed 'em or pet 'em and like some of 'em, not all. But little dogs will just bark and bark and bark and bark. But this little shit dog was barking like crazy. So I'm like, okay, I gotta pull the eject on this one. I gotta get out of here. - But hold on, just a quick second. A little bit of a real Gary shows through here 'cause in your book, you say you dog for a second about killing the dog. - Yes, I could have just strangled the dog and at that point it wouldn't have mattered 'cause I could have probably strangled and you would have stopped barking. But there's no way I'm gonna kill a dog. There's just no way in hell I was gonna kill a dog. So it's like, okay, time to go. And went through the garage door and this is where you start thinking about higher power and fate. - The door I just used to get on the side door for the garage, the door handle falls off. It falls off. - It's so cinematic, this story. Go on, so. - You're stuck in there. - And I hide under a Porsche. - Just not a lot of room to hide under. - No. - And her dad has got a gun, you know, pulls me out. - So you see the feet, right? - I see the feet. again in a movie. Yeah, and then well he can see me too. So yeah, of course he knows what's going on So I get out I see the feet. I'm like I'm just waiting to get I'm like I guess I'm not getting out of this one Right and then I've got a gun in my face. Did he say do you recognize you know? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, so hey Gary now there's a gun on your face That's a gun in my face and he's mad as hell and his hand is shaking You can see the bullets in the chamber and I'm like oh shit And I got my life saved by a cop, you know a cop they called the cops and I didn't get shot in the face And I'm sure you know the cop's like you know he's on the Navy pistol team like I could have shot you from 50 yards Right between the eyes. He probably wanted to probably wanted to and I ended up writing him a letter like later on so during your recovery. Yeah during my recovery That was like a mega men's thing. Yeah, never heard back when I'm sure he got it That's that's it's important. Yeah, yeah But that was when I went in for a long because I had the prior now you've got priors and now I guess it's It's a hot prowl so any That's a hot it's a first-degree burglary first-degree burglary. Yeah so I guess you go to county for booking, but you're not gonna stay in county. No, no, this was a I go in a county Until we you know sentencing and everything and then it's off to prison You get a little bit of time served From your time in county off to prison before you go to prison your in county and Just talk a little bit about that because I remember there was like there was a dude in there who gave you advice That was kind of interesting because there's also there's the fear of prison Then you're going to all these places, but there's also a weird brotherhood and camaraderie and kind of looking out for each other sometimes, yeah, and This guy gave you advice was I thought was very strange, but it worked out Yeah, maybe I was I mean I was 22 at the time, so I looked like a pup Yeah, and yeah, somebody Took sympathy on me and and just like hey, you're gonna go to prison Here's here's some rules You know pretty basic rules and I'll paraphrase what's in the book. I'll try to keep it You know, take your time politically correct, but it was well, you know, don't mess with gambling Don't mess with the gaze. That's not the word he used no hold on a second I think that advice is before you go in to false them. I'm talking about the guy who said you're gonna get a plea deal Take it. Oh, yeah, okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. So yes I'm gonna get a plea deal absolutely take it don't fight it because if you don't you will do end up doing a lot more time So he says go in there be cool. Yeah, and you'll get out Yep, just take take your time. There's no way fighting this. You're you're going to prison like and you know, I knew that and we were looking at It I got the mid-sentence so I got everything he said I was gonna get what you get I got I got four years, but you do too. How did you feel when you turned around at the courthouse to saw mom and dad? It's horrible is worse feeling in my life Looking at your parents in the face after you get sentenced to four years in prison and they Adopted you they raised you did your father look at you Yeah, it was it was Pretty shameful. They look crushed They look crushed. Yeah, cuz they stood by you through all of this, but it was Yeah, that was tough man. That was uh not not good and Then getting in that bus and Growing the bus for hours and hours hours and like Shackled up. It's just like what you think is in the movie is how this is just as bad as you think it is as how this is and When did you find out you were going to go to old Folsom? Oh, you're going to the you're going to the Johnny Cash So yeah, I got ahead of that. Sorry. Um, it was because you're not supposed to go there. I don't think no no no They were doing something they shouldn't have been doing but as a due to overcrowding so I stayed Donovan was a receiving facility in San Diego I got stuck there for four months. You usually stay there for like a month and they farm you out I was a level two so not considered even though first-degree burglary is it considered a violent crime. I was not considered violent in the sense of armed robber or murder or rape or any of the horrible ones Those were level three level four So I find out I'm going to Folsom and there's two Folsom's there's new Folsom at the time It still is is that first facility is that alcohol? Donovan so it's it's east of Elco. It's like a no-time mesa. No, but Elco home was a facility you ran, right? So Elco home was a county jail. Oh, yeah, right? Elco home was that's the one where there was the breakout. Oh, yeah, you were there for the break out quick a little Story here. So out there's a the biggest building in Elco home, California, which is the box Just which I mean that's what you know and it's and it's in Eastern part of San Diego So it's not well probably all the houses are or million dollar houses that are now but at the time Wasn't looked at as the nicest place in the world So the toss building was the jail And apparently the contractor like cut a little cut some corners and didn't reinforce the walls with whatever They're supposed to reinforce a concrete or steel or whatever. So it was just stucco and framing. Oh, no And somebody figured it out someone just knocked on it and said that feels pretty old Yeah, pretty old so let's let's break off the bottom of our bunk and just punch a hole in it and you can look it up It was in the 80s the big breakout that got it closed and you saw and you saw them escaping, right? Yeah, do you think hey, I'm gonna get in on that I thought about it for a second And I'm like well for one as a long way down. Yeah, and I'm like no, I'm just gonna Gonna do my thing that was that was first time around so I'm glad I did that you know, I'm glad I did I Listen, they caught everybody didn't they caught everybody and one of the guys busted his leg because they did the whole tying the sheets together Krab really yeah, they did because it was up there. Yeah, you know, it was like I can't remember the exact amount of stories But it was at least five right and they caught everybody Mm-hmm, and then they shut down the jail The problem was they locked us down after that for for two weeks and they weren't feeding us all the time So what is locked down really me locked lock down is you are in your cell. You don't get out without with with one cell No with like six so you're there with six guys for weeks being fed through the bars the bars one toilet Supervised shower like once we I think we got two right supervised show. Oh, it's just rank. It was rank So we were I was like I remember eating ketchup packets because that's all I had to eat and We had Uno You just played Uno just play Duno and had one book. So I think one book between it to us It was terrible. It was terrible. At least it wasn't magic. You know I get right It's gonna always be worse But yeah, so the put on the prison side. Yeah Go to Folsom and we find out that they're doing this transition thing so They're turning old Folsom into a level two and They're removing all the level four guys and they're putting them up to Pelican Bay. There's level four guys are the hardcore their murderers Rapists and they're gonna throw you pups in with them worst to the worst and they did and they did Yeah, so we had level two's in with level four's, which is you're just not supposed to do that Because the lot the last thing a guy with a life sentence wants to hear is The stories from a guy is gonna get out in a couple of years That's a recipe for disaster. Oh, you're walking in shackles chains And what you you've got your long hair. Yeah, and I guess is that your first prison taunt? Oh Yeah, yeah, this is just like that he's been in in Donovan never really got any shit I think everybody in the receiving part is just kind of like ins and needles waiting to figure out where to go so And it's way more supervised It's like max max max there because because you are mixing in all the levels because but it's it's you know You spend most of your time in yourself. It's not a ton of yard time And I never spent much time in the yard, but wait out when I walk into Folsom got my beautiful long blonde hair and shows you how much I've aged and Yeah guy goes hey Goldilocks you want my sack lunch? I'm like I need to cut my hair, you know, and it was right when I walked so I knew it was to me by the way Like I'm they were of course they were they had us in a line and then we're feeding them in and like there's this big Just wall of cells You're terrified and now you go up to 11 Yeah, yeah 12 because beyond terrified and like I don't know exactly stop, but it doesn't so balls balls No, yeah, okay So now you're going through the rules that you're that someone told you here You go you go gladiator school as you called it. Yep. Oh god, which he was So now you go through the rules Right and you got to get rid of the hair got to get rid of the hair Uh, where are some of the rules you're thinking as your as your so the rules that was told with that was referring to earlier are do not gamble - Bull, do not mess with gays, no problem. I have no interest in those. - Just be polite and leave a look. - Do not, do drugs, do not mess with any drugs. And at that point in my life, I'm like, you know what, I'm not gonna mess with any drugs. I already decided like, if I survive this, I'm done. I cannot do this. And then do not snitch, no matter what. And if you're gonna fight, fight. You have to fight. You can't back down from a fight. - Right, don't start trouble, but don't take it. - But don't take it, yep. But the most important one of them all is don't snitch. Or you will die. - Bobby. - Yep, yeah, yeah. - So, I don't mean to drag it out, but it's fascinating. - It's okay. - So sack lunch, how do you get it? You have to get your hair cut in like 30 yards. You have 30 yards as a problem. - I got this problem. Immediately, it was for a pack of smokes. It was a terrible haircut, but it did the job. It's like. - Didn't the guard help you? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Help you grab scissors or something? - Yeah, yeah. So it's, I mean, there is some humanity in there, right? Like, they see this little pop and it's like, this guy's gonna get shredded in here. So that's my best guess, but I got my haircut. I got help. Guards aren't always helpful though, okay? Just keep that in mind. They're humans, so there's some good ones and there's some pieces of crap in there. And I spend the next. I'm behind the wall for a good year, right? So I'm. - Well, one of the rules was, don't go to the yard, don't go to the gym. - Yeah, yeah, which I did not do. - But there were sometimes that you had to get away from your first cell mate, 'cause he, I mean, when you landed in the room with him, how does that go down? - Oh, it's bad, it's bad. - With Kyle. - Yeah, yeah, he's double murderer, he's a piece of crap. - What do you look like? - He was just a, like a kind of a flabby, but big white dude. It's brown hair, little grayish, but he was not old. He was not that old. - I'm just trying to see if you know how imposing he is - He's bigger than me. - He's bigger than me, for sure. - So has that first meeting go? - Scared to death, you know, and he just gives me the rules and pretty much tells me, you know, I don't wanna hear from you, you know. He has this TV, and I'm like, well, maybe I could just wait this one out, but it just, it didn't work out, right? - Well, he didn't like, he's a level four this guy. - He's a level four. - And he doesn't wanna hear about you getting out in two. - Nope, nope. So I was really good at being quiet when I needed to be. - What were you doing to kill time? - To kill, mostly reading books. - 'Cause there was another rule about staying same, wasn't there? - Yeah. - What was that? - Oh, find a routine. - Yes, fine, okay, yes, sorry. - Stay to it. - So the thing about, the best advice I heard is, and like people do this in prison all the time, so I didn't invent it, this is just passed down, is find a routine, you get up at the same time, you kinda do the same things every day, and what it does is it helps you feel accomplished, 'cause we as humans need to feel some accomplishment. So I found a little routine that worked in behind the wall, and then when I went on, and it really helps the time go faster. It keeps you busy, so you're not sitting there. You need to have that routine, so you're not sitting there just tripping all the time. You're talking about how Kyle was mentally torturing you this whole time, what was he doing? 'Cause he wasn't physically abusing you. - No, he was just always. - 'Cause you write about how it was just constant, he was just always just messing with you. - Always messing with my head, always. He would always question, everything I was doing, what are you reading, what's your problem? He would never let me have peace, right? 'Cause I would try to mine my own business and stay there. And he'd always try to start some weird conversation that would go to a weird place and ask me weird questions, and then bring up like his crimes, you know, and what he did. - And you knew he was just trying to torture you. - Yep, trying to fuck with me all the time. And then he'd be nice a little while, and then it would flip, you know, but you bring up the pruno, right? We can talk about when. - Go ahead. - I don't wanna get too far ahead, but. - No, I know when we're gonna take our break. - Oh yeah, so. - He's gone. - He was making some pruno and hiding it, and he was gone, and the guards are coming in to do an inspection. And I'm there 'cause I don't go out very much. - Right. - So I dumped it. - You dumped his pruno. - Yep. - Did you know that decision? Did you, how long, you know what you're doing. You know you're gonna have to deal with this. - Yeah. - But you figure what, you're saving him? Or are you like, this is gonna go sideways? - This is, my decision-making at the time was not really even a cover, it was covered both of our asses, right? - 'Cause you were going. - Yeah, 'cause I'm there, so I'm gonna get caught with it, and he's the cell mate, so he's gonna get busted too, and there's all this stuff going through my head, where, oh, you know, you think about the snitching thing. - Right. - It's gonna make me either way look like a snitch. So I'm like. - And you're watching them toss cells, getting closer as you're doing this. - So I'm like, I'm gonna dump this stuff. - And Kyle, by the way, is out in the yard, lift and wait. - Yeah, lift and wait. Lift and wait. So I got rid of it, and it's gone by the time the guards are saved his ass, my, well, his ass. - Yeah. - His ass wasn't exactly grateful about that at all, and wanted me to repay whatever it was owed, whatever that value of that pruno was, and did not let me forget it. - So. - Ever. - He wanted you to put money as a count, right? - Money on his books. 20 bucks for the pruno. I want it. - He did it. - Yep. - And thought it was good, and I don't know how soon after that, but he said, I need 20 bucks. - Yeah, it just became the, you know, I need 20 more. And then once you capitulate a little bit, you know, that's just the way it is. And that's, this is part of like, don't be a bitch. - That's right. - This is part of don't be a bitch, and I should have said, fuck you, you know, at that point, and probably fought at that point. - Well, you didn't give him 20 more, right? - No, no, and it got worse. - It gets worse, and you get back to the cell, and he's going through your stuff. - Yep. - What's he doing? - He's going through mom's, my letters. He's going through my letters. - And this whole time, parents are supporting you, they're putting money on your books. You're covered, you have support from the family. This guy's got nothing he hates you. He hates everything about me. He hates the books I read. I mean, like, he gave me shit for books I read. - He wanted you to fight. - Oh, he'd been trying to top me to fight the whole time, and I finally got what he wanted. So he's going through my letters. My parents and I, by the way, are contacting, and they're sending me like little care packages and making sure I'm okay. They're worried to death, because they know I'm in this full-some prison, so they're trying to work outside with a couple of other people trying to figure out what the fuck's going on, right? To no avail, by the way, right? And yeah, he's like, I like your mom's handwriting. I like your mom's handwriting. I want to write your mom, and I just fucking lost my shit. Absolutely lost my shit, right? - He demands you to tell your mom to start writing him as well. And now, you feel it. You feel, all men feel this. Things go quiet. You hear the book in your ears, and you're not going to take it anymore. - No, to hell with it, whatever happens after this. Like this is, and it'd been building up, like you said, like just with the constant, like poking. And some of it would just, you know, an isolation, it wouldn't be that bad, but when you're living, think of the worst roommate you've ever had, but he's also a murderer. - Right, that's what it is. A guy who, like, steals your food, or, you know, like, I don't want to get too crass in there. Just, when you're in a cell with somebody, and they're going to the, it's just the worst. It's the worst. And. - So you, the blood's in your ears, and. - Everything's going. - And it's going to go down. So we're going to take a quick break. - Yeah. - We'll find out how you handled it. - Okay. - You're right back. It's the standoff now. - Okay. - Not going to take any more. He's going, Mama's not going to write him a letter, right? - No, no, over my dead body. - Mm-hmm. - So, and that's where I was at. Had a little walk man. - Yep. - Yeah, 'cause you were allowed, like, believe it or not. Even a max prison, you can have a TV, you can have a walkman, you know, you were getting comics and stuff. Yeah, you can get comics and books Uh, and and cigarettes and stuff They don't allow people to smoke in prison anymore. I don't know. That sounds terrible. I don't know. Why would they would do that? I don't know smoke For the safety of the guards. Oh god. Uh, so yeah, I I Go hysterically off on that. So it's not like some heroic moment, you know Avengers assemble. You know, it wasn't. No, no, it was This this was fighter flight panic fighter flight panic spazzy fighting Uh, think um Uh Ralfina Christmas story, you know, like uh toe to toe. Could you take this guy? Um I mean, I did so well, how did you I mean? I had well, I I I had a A walkman in my hand and I bashed his face in So it's a very genx with the Sony products. Yeah, very genx. Well, it was what was in my hand at the time, you bashed his face in The bashed his face and and bashed it in pretty good and he go down. Yeah, he went down down and out down and out Blood everywhere and I'm like I'm going to the hole. I was just gonna ask the adrenaline comes down and you know you're going to the home screwed Going on the whole you're gonna get more time. Don't worry. Just what do you want it? Yep And uh that didn't happen, which is insane, right? So uh, I did a little time But as far as getting extra time added to my sentence doesn't happen Why not doesn't happen. We why not the whole where'd you go? It's a missed it's a well It's a mystery Why uh because my biggest concern at the time was it's uh It might I think I snitched that was that was my biggest concern um so uh My guess is a the guards knew what was going on or another and I never knew the answer to this at all But it just kind of got a new cellmate, you know Got a new cellmate a little crazy still but not as but not violent not necessarily. Yeah Did you ever run into that guy again? No Never did it probably was Someone was like we got to get these tear twos out of here man No, and he was supposed to go to Pelican Bay anyway like he was like all the level fours were supposed to go to To Pelican Bay, right. They're still kind of going through that transition. Yeah. So you get placed with with a new cellmate and he's tear to right Yeah, okay, so are you able to relax? Relax a little bit and then um You know, I took a a printing class in there and I never really went to the yard or did anything after that and then it was Finally over When I went to the minimum security part of well hang on a second. Okay. This guy was a big part of You recover. I'm getting way ahead of myself. So I mean I go who was he Uh, he's violent. What what was he? What was he like? Uh, he was actually a really like a nice guy. He was a nice guy There are nice guys in there. I believe they're wrong. Yeah. I believe it Yeah, I mean just made a bunch of mistakes in his life like I did They only put the ones that get caught in there and Me needing to get out of the other of the cell like and I didn't really want to go to church I tried it a couple times. Well, it really didn't do it. We're church come from what why you even think about church Oh, I I needed to get out of the cell for one, but I also needed to Not come back here like well, and and I was didn't he tell you yes here Here's some things you can do to make this go a little easier for yourself Two options right church and meetings. Yep So what happens? Uh church doesn't work for me Um, and he does for a long. Yeah, yeah, he was a religious religious guy and I um started going to the meetings Uh, and it wasn't like this is a yeah, this is a a Um, they did do NA ones in there, but I just gravitated to the AA and The reason and and it's the same reason I gravitated to it outside is there's just more time in AA You could still the principles are still the same people are talking about alcohol. I could just I could just apply it to drugs and it's fine So it starts kicking in I go to these meetings and it kicks in for the first time right because you've been through crash You've been through meetings. It didn't take you it didn't take Now it finally starts to take because you didn't go to those meetings Initially for any other reason than to just make it easier inside right or you said I'm going to get clean now I'm gonna share it was just self-preservation self-preservation I wish it was something bigger than that, but it started That's when it started kicking in like oh and you know when you're in the meeting and you're hearing people tell the stories and Like half the people in those meetings were there just to get out of their cell But the guy leading the meeting you know from H&I hospitals and institutions from AA They're there because they're serious right and especially to volunteer Takes a special kind of person to volunteer for H&I To want to go inside a prison takes it very good person. Yeah better than I am. Yeah When did it click? What was the what was the conversation what was going around the circle um suddenly switched It started clicking it was just through time, but um just hearing over and over again the like life can get better Like it's not necessarily over you know, I don't know if I fully believed it at the time, but it started clicking Really just over time uh and and it stayed with me I'm not gonna say I was like ready to be a sober warrior at that point, but I had decided like I told you um earlier on like I do not want to come back here. This is horrifying. So the best way to describe prison is um uh It is Really it is boredom occasionally interrupted by moments of terror Just complete terror, but there's always an underlying like You sleep when I open you got to worry about absolutely everything if somebody gives you a dirty look in there It means something and that's probably gonna you know because you are trapped with these people and That will probably come into a head at some point and that's always Rolling around in the back of your head But once again Some people looking out for you always have a routine so you don't go crazy and then this new cellmate says you need a plan You need a plan What does he mean by that? Um, you need a plan for life like you can't just get out and think Everything's gonna be okay, and this is something like a father would tell a kid, right? You need to have a plan and But she's what what's your plan and my plan was Really simple? To get sober to get a job and then implement I don't think I verbally said this but the the or or implement the routine In in life, so that routine I was learning in prison. I actually applied it afterwards. You did Really fucking helpful. It was really helpful What kind of routine was it? It was just a day-to-day that so the day to day this carried on from From when I went on to To the minimum security right you got moved finally. Yeah, I moved finally and in minimum security I would I was doing a lot of work it out I was either playing racquetball because we had a racquet handball We had this big track you can walk or run laps on And it and I also had a job I had this crazy job that taught me how to work and it like this is where the rehabilitation of prison actually worked on one person So I had this this gig at procurement in the procurement office. What does that mean? Basically, we did all the purchasing Okay, or the prison Particularly in my area was just writing up all the drug orders We're just funny right you do the drugs again So I'm writing up all the drug orders because the new Folsom Wing had a psychiatric wing, so I was Doing all the drug orders for them and I worked for a lady. I should say a real name. No, no It's what she was she always wore purple. She always wore freaking purple um And I was a little boy toy by the way like she she's like oops. I dropped something, you know Okay, it's stuff like that I used to be young and pretty, but um, yeah, it was it was Get up Get up 5.30 in the morning get my breakfast Uh, either walk a lap before I go to work or walk two laps before I go to work go to work come back Go play some racquet ball or handball with the guys and it was just do that every day. Were you behaving or at your job? Yes, you were yeah getting along with everybody getting along with everybody. Oh, yeah Counting down the days now counting down the days. They're still long. I mean, you know There's still like a year out. This is why you're so good at counting George Martin's days. Uh-huh. Yeah, you're you're you're counting days. That's what you do. I do. That's what I do. I keep track George. So, yeah, and what are the last few days like, isn't it, you know, 60, 59, 50, I mean, it's torture. It's torture, dude, is absolute torture. And the anxiety of am I going to fuck up again? Right. Is it really getting out? Yeah, is something is there going to happen? What's going to happen? You know, that that and that. It really starts messing with you towards the end. I bet it does. Like, what if some charge is found, you know, because I listen, I didn't get caught for everything I did. Of course not. Yeah, eight, seven, six, you still, parents are still supporting you. Parents are still supporting me. I'm on my routine. I'm starting to like lose it a little bit towards the end though. I'm starting to get away and just anxiety, just pure anxiety. How did you cope? Not well. I, I, I didn't sleep very much, but I tried to work out more. So, and by workout, I mean, just exercise. Do some sort of like, you know, but it was obsessive. I got really obsessive. But it was like, you know, running laps or playing racquetball or playing it by myself. So, this is a very different facility than you're coming from. It had to feel like vacation. It, it, it did. Like, we'd, um, yeah, we, there was like a little garden where we grew chili peppers, um, we were, we'd sit out in tan. It's, it's, it's, it's near Sacramento. It's right near Folsom Lake. You were supposed to be there the whole time. Yes. I was not supposed to be behind the wall at all, ever. And, uh, or maybe for a couple of weeks. Did you run into other tier twos at, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were like, what the hell? That was terrible. That sucked. Um, but for the, for the level two's, I, I had a, usually had more time than they did. So they were all getting out before me. Yeah, I was kind of sucked, but watching them, hey, have fun, buddy. But yeah, like, but you weren't a dick about it. You already saw what, how that worked? No, no, not at all. I was just alone. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But then we, uh, yeah, we, I mean, we'd, we'd have this thing called spreads where you're, we make a bunch of food. We'd steal some food out of the kitchen or the, the cook would just give us some food and we make these big things of ramen and chop every piece of meat we could figure out. And it was just this gobbledy guk of, of stew with top ramen that we, and that was our like party night. We watched football and yeah, it was kind of smoke cigarettes and it, you know, when you heard like Bola Brown at King's Landing, you're like, I, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bola Brown, yeah, singer stew. Yeah. So the day finally comes, they finally comes. And my parents picked me up. And they, so I go out the main gate of wholesome. There was a beat. I liked in your book about the guard who, who came to get you, because he was the same guard that badass guard who let you in. Yeah. He was still there. Yeah. Little smile at his eyes. Yeah. He did it, kid. Yeah. You made it. You made it. You made it. And it was, I wish I could bottle like the feeling I had that day because I wanted for nothing. No material thing had any value to me. It was, it was pure freedom. So that was the first day I understood what like Liberty and freedom is. It's something I completely took for granted and never thought about as a kid. How soon did he kick in? Like the minute I walked out and just open sky in the wall. Sky, no walls. I'm all my dad smiling to see me. And you know, you just, you don't have to sign very much paperwork. You just sign a couple of things. Get your stuff back. Got my, got my clothes back. That I went in on and I'm like, wow, I actually lost weight in here. I'm, you know, so yeah, you weren't doing well for a while in there. No, no, I was not, not doing well. And I got out pretty much in shape. But yeah. So back to that feeling of gratitude, just pure gratitude of like I am free. My life isn't over because I, I was convinced for the longest time, even before I went into prison, we talked about it earlier that my life was just over. Sure. Just, it's done. Like we're going to play it out. It's going to be a sad, pathetic ending. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, wow, I have a chance to do this. And I don't want for a bunch. I don't have any lofty goals. Just one. Don't go back in there. Don't go back in. And don't go back in. Yeah. So I just had the best meal in my life, which was, you know, an omelette at Denny's. Denny's, I mean, your home. It was America, greatest food, greatest meal I've ever had. And yeah. But what's the conversation like at that breakfast? Are we laughing? We're crying. We're laughing. We're talking about just what's ahead. You know, my dad was not like a real sentimental guy. So we were just like, yeah, we talk about the chargers and Padres and Happy Daywear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's funny because it's right before they went for their first super bowl. Oh, that's right. But there was like Bobby Ross had come around and they've been to the playoffs for the first time in a long time. So we had stuff to talk about. But it was really light. Right. And, you know, they were pretty a matter of factly like you got to find a job. You can't like stay with us forever. I'm like, OK, fair. No talking back. No attitude. Nope. Just I was being a good kid. Right. And with it with a new lease on life and a new attitude towards life and waking up every morning was frickin great. I could just, and I do things like just take a walk and ride my bike to the beach. You know, in between looking for a job. But yeah, I didn't need any money. Didn't need any of that stuff. I had a place to stay. But eventually I would need that money. We pray the drugs. No, who's anything? No, went to start going to meetings immediately. You did. Yeah. Immediately. There was no none of that. And wasn't seeking out my old friends. That's that's usually what gets any addict in trouble, especially after they get out of a rehab. Or anything. It's what I got in trouble. It's like I immediately sought out my old friends, which means let's party. I did not. I didn't let anybody know I was back. Didn't know if anybody knew I was back or gone or anything. And just kind of did my own thing. I hung out with my parents and eventually contacted a couple of friends. But I knew who were outside of the like an old childhood friend. And he eventually gave me a job. Well, before that, you said don't run into old friends, but you did. I did. What happened? It was sad. But I. I'm also talking about that meeting. Oh, okay. People from the neighborhood. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When it was kind of surprising to when we ran into each other. What happened? Who was there? I'm trying not to use. I had a couple of older friends. Yeah. Yeah. I got one. That's cool. Seeing ball sack there. So these are old guys. You party with drugs. It was a shock. But I'm sure they were just a shock. See me. We've frightened a little bit. Like, oh, no, relapse. Here we go. At that meeting. Yeah, that's always that. I mean, the fear is always in there. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it was also now that I look back on it a little inspiring to see some of the old course old people come through and and make it. And we, you know, there's there's some I ended up staying friends with forever, you know, and to this day. Some who didn't make it. But yeah, like seeing that. That was like, I guess the first test. I guess, you know. And one of those one of those guys became your first sponsor. Yeah. Did you know that sponsorship at that time? I did. I just never like really took it seriously. Right. Eventually learned how important it is. And then you learn how absolutely necessary it is. So he was clean a while. Tell me about that conversation. It was, I mean, he's knew what I've been through. Right. And then like more than anybody else. I honestly don't know if it was the best choice for sponsor to be honest with you. Maybe not. Maybe not. But it's, I just didn't want to go back. It was, it was really simple. You know, I was, I, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to die. So he asked you to make a commitment. And you agreed to it. Yes. You just keep your word. To my commitments of him. I mean, I know how it works. You're there for each other. Yes, pick up the phone. You show up. You do the work. You come back tomorrow. You call. Did you do all that stuff? I did all that stuff in the beginning. And I did it when I relapsed to the thing. And like, I don't want to get ahead with the relapse. But there is, there's a commitment you need to make that. I'm just trying to stress what a big decision it is. Once you take on become a sponsor, it's, it's a big deal. It is. Usually it's 90 meetings and 90 days, and you have to write gratitude lists, like both sponsors maybe do it, one was way more hardcore than the other. So you have to do a ton of homework, you have to meet, you have to basically do your own book study. So we sit down and we go over chapters of the book, and this is on top of going to meetings that are book, because there are book specific meetings, where you just go through the chapters. And you're now like working the steps and doing the work. Working the steps, and it's not just once, so I thought it was just once you did the steps, now you just recycle and keep going through and through until it really gets ingrained. Well, step four is never over, is it? Never over. That's inventory. Yes, the personal inventory, and we're always making new mistakes, right? And it's worked. That's never done. It's a very important step, that self-awareness. Yeah. So you work in the program, things going good, you get a job at the warehouse. At the warehouse? How's that? How's that first day feel? It's crazy. The warehouse is what, music, videos, that's a West Coast, I'm from New York, I'd never heard of it. Okay, so the warehouse is, yeah, it's a record store, that's also a video store. This is perfect for you, because you're a pop culture junkie going in, right? Yes. So are you like, this is perfect? It's heaven. Yeah. It's absolute heaven, and I've always wanted, well, I've worked at the warehouse before in the past. Oh, you did? I did, but for like, I never worked very anywhere long, because that was a drug addict. Right. So this was like, well, now that I know how to have this thing called a work ethic from prison, I'd learn that from prison. Yeah. I think going up, getting up, five in the morning every day, going to work, it was amazing work in there. The pay was great, but who cares? It was enough. Your parents had to be so proud that you were going in every day. I think they were probably always waiting for, always waiting, always waiting, and it didn't happen. I went to work, took extra shifts, had tons of fun, met a bunch of friends there, had had some rough times, you know, like they're still the adapting I had to get used to. Yeah, there is that story. Yeah. So they altercation. Yeah. I just, some old guy and I got into it and, well, he's it out. He walks in, he's waving the thing around. He's waving a video around and I, he's giving me a bunch of attitude, like what? It was over a return and it was late or something. It was some violation, whatever. And once he started getting disrespectful to me and he was angry at me, I have the prison defense mechanism comes in, so I feel like I'm being disrespected. So this is like, you know, still early on. This took me years to get rid of this stuff because I was, I wasn't, it wasn't like I was floating on cloud nine the whole time I was out. I was, there was, there's certain things that would, you know, I guess trigger is your lack of a better word, trigger the defense mechanisms from prison. I definitely had, I had trouble sleeping for, if you want to call it PTSD, sure, I mean, for a decade, I had trouble sleeping. No, it is PTSD. Yeah. It's not, it is PTSD. That's a thing that Xcons have. Yeah. You come out of war, you come out of prison, you have PTSD and you did. And so you felt your disrespected, yeah, what happened with the guy? I, I shattered him down and I had to get, I was, I got written up. And my friend had to, you know, the friend who gave me the job, you didn't put hands on, right? No, no, no hands on. Okay. We were just yelling. We were yelling at each other. Pretty good. Like, this is terrible customer service. It's horrible customer service because like, it's retail. Customers come in and yell. You just go, yes, sir, I will, it was really easy. All I had to do was just give him the tape, just give up what he wanted and walk away. But I took it as a personal. So I get, uh, written up and, you know, but I love the conversation you have with Don in the back room. Yeah. Because he asked you what happened, but it wasn't a casual thing because he's like, no, seriously, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like what happened with the, uh, right with the situation is like, what's going, it was like an actual caring because he's in the program. Mm-hmm. And, uh, would you set? What did you set? I just told him exactly that I felt disrespected and just everything just clicked, you know, um, my defense mechanism, I just lost my shit, you know, and it's just, and, uh, it was, it was understood, but it was also said that like, you, this cannot go on, like, you gotta, did you get fired? Uh, no. I got written up. Okay. I got written up, which was, I should have brought, I should have been fired. Uh, maybe, I don't know, uh, he was going to fire me. He wasn't going to do it. No, but like, it, I felt terrible if you did again, maybe, and the thing is, like later on, like me and that old guy got along famously, of course, of course, so I, like, I just treated him nice. Person rules are actual, yeah, rules of life. So, and then he, we actually got to the point where like, he'd come over and we chitchat for 20, 30 minutes while he's at. So it's like, that's the cool part of the story is, uh, we became like buds after that. Neutral or spent. Yeah. And like, it was way down the line. So I'm like, you know what? I'm really sorry. You know, the day I was having a bad day, so I don't worry. Of course. He was a sweet, sweet old guy. So, yeah, um, it was, but that's, that's where I also recognized like, this might not be that easy. Like, it was like, you know, once you get past your cloud nine and you, you're, you're, you for ya. You know, there's, there's the work that has to be done. And I was, I was super angry, like, and he's at full. Um, are you feeling the calling to go back to drinking your drugs? Um, not, not at that time, but it, it, that eventually does come, um, but I think that's just being fresh, being out of prison, right? And you just, you know, you got your guard up all the time, of course, you don't need to have your guard up. Plus, you know, prison rules aren't real life rules. So if somebody is respects, you, you don't like punch them in the face. Right. You know, it's simple stuff like that. So what happened next to, after warehouse, after warehouse, um, well, okay. So I meet, uh, first wife, need the first wife. Right. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And, yeah, she's, so when you, um, when you meet somebody in recovery, right, she was in the program, uh, it's, it's cool, uh, but you understand each other, yeah, understand each other on that level, but you also have to have like more and common beyond that. And, uh, we, we never really did. So when did the fights start and why, uh, I mean, it was, it, it, it, it was just later on, and it was, it wasn't like a ton of them, you know, it was just, I always, she, I don't want it. She's a nice person. So, I don't know. She is. Yeah. She's a nice person. There's always two sides to her story. Yeah. And she had to put up with me. Right. Long story short, I, I was like, I was, I was still kind of a magpie, um, I was still collecting stuff that she didn't like, like book comics, uh, comics, yeah, I just didn't like the comics and toy collecting, like, at all. And, uh, yeah, yeah, and, and it just wasn't going to work out. You guys are not getting along, not getting along, um, dad gets sick. Dad gets sick. Dad, um, gets cancer. And, uh, we kind of, we kind of, like everything is kind of kind of put to the side. We're dealing with dad's cancer, how are you guys dealing with it? Um, that was mom taking it. Mom's being a caregiver and trying to be the strong caregiver. And at the time, we, I, you know, we thought there's a possibility he could fight it off, right? Mm-hmm. And, but mom's, my mom had just been a caregiver for her mom who died. And then she had to be a, immediately a caregiver for my dad, uh, long story short on this one. He, um, got colon cancer, it, uh, it went away, uh, whole remission, and then it comes back immediately and it's, he's got, uh, weeks to live, weeks to live, um, gets into a stomach and, yep, all this, and, uh, we have a, a last, our last, like conversation where he's like not just on morphine. Yep. Um, our last real conversation and he sits me down, he's in the hospital and, uh, the last thing he wants to talk to me about is my relationship and my wife and that, uh, cause he sensed it over a long time. Yeah. Yeah. That it's, that you're not happy. It's not working. - Life is too short to be with somebody you're not happy with. And you deserve happiness. And we were really tight. And we rarely talked about relationships. So it was such a. It was like, why is he bringing this up? But he was right. He was right. And again, no fall to hers. I was a massive pain in the ass. - Of course. - Yeah. And so dad passes away. And that is just a huge change in my life. That's like an anchor gone. - Mm-hmm. - And at that point, I see that as like, you know what? It's just, I need it. I need to change life. I don't even know if it's the best decision in the world or not. And I've reconnected with some friends, including Melissa. - 'Cause you knew Melissa from back in the day. - Yeah. - Melissa, my wife Melissa, I've known for 41 years. So she was at that Crystal Palace. She was party in there, so she's seen it all. She's seen it all. So we're friends, reconnected through classmates.com. - Oh yeah, yeah. - So we, I get a divorce and moved to San Francisco, move away from, never thought I'd leave San Diego. I love San Diego. I moved up to San Francisco. - What attracted you to San Francisco? - It was just, for back then it was cool. And I needed, I needed a change. I just needed a change, a scenery. I didn't wanna leave the state of California and I didn't wanna live in LA. So San Francisco was the next best choice. - Well, I mean, you were weird in San Diego in San Francisco, your home, everybody's weird. - Yeah, everybody's, that's part of it, you know. It's certainly changed for San Diego now, but San Diego back then it was pretty much a normal town. And San Francisco back then was a different city than it is now. But yeah, I was up there and, you know, I just, I was selling auto parts. So I went from working at the warehouse to selling auto parts and I thought, the reason I bring that up is I like, well, this is my life now and I'm totally happy with it. Like, I like this job. I never, when you have realistic expectations of, well, I was gonna go nowhere and life and die. But now I've got this job 'cause I had no skills. When I walked out of prison, my, one of my biggest fears is I have no skills. - Yes, you did, yes you did. - Well, I mean, you were organized, you learned a lot in prison. So auto parts, but you're still collecting comics and doing, yeah, still doing all that stuff, right? - And listen school with it. - Yeah, yeah, like totally cool with it. Oh yeah, she has to, you know. She's as much of a collector as I am. So there you go. So yeah, I got the normal job and I'm super happy with it. And I'm like, if this is the job I work on at the rest of my life, I'm totally cool. Like, it makes enough money. I like it enough. But I always kept on like finding something more, right? That's when the comic shop comes up. We're in San Francisco and this is before Melissa and I are married. - Were you living together? - Yeah, we were living together. And like, within a year I bought the comic story. It just landed in my lap. - But how did you make that decision? - It was really quick and probably not smart. - I mean, just suddenly it's available. You have the money? - Well, I'm working at Oakland Acura. - Okay. - And I hate working at Oakland. Like I hate Oakland. Like, hate Oakland, like a lot. So and hate going over that baby bridge every day. So I'm looking for something. And I'm out lunch and I open the paper and there is an ad for some comics for sale. I answer the ad 'cause I'm like, well, I'm gonna buy this big chunk of comics. It was affordable. And I'm gonna save it for when I open a store someday. - And you do? - And retirement. So that was my plan. - When you retire, would you open a store? - When I retire. - Okay. - So when I'm making this deal with the guy, the guy's all well, I mean, there's a comic shop for sale right now. You wanna buy it. And it's just so happen to be the shop I shopped at, the comic outpost. So it was my comic store. - Blah. - Oh my God, I'll just talk to the guy. I never thought any of this would go down. We talk, we agree on a price, we go to a pizza place, make a handshake deal. - You guys had the money? - I had the money. - Okay. - I had the money. I post, yeah, post divorce. Made a lot of money off the condo. We bought a condo for like next to nothing and the housing market went crazy. - Yeah. - So the money was there. - The money was there. So I bought the store and it was just like that. It was within two weeks. I had to quick read, half read, small business for dummies. And then I was owning a comic store, which was kind of was like a lifelong dream. - Did you feel like this is a dream come true? - Yes, at first. - Yeah. - And it always was. It was always a really fun job. But then, I always said to myself, that this thing becomes a job. Like if it starts feeling like work, I'm out. And it didn't for a long time. - Well, you got into comic books as an entrepreneur to very good time in our culture. Very good time. - Very lucky. - Because this is MCU is getting hot, right? Spider-Man's rebooted and it's good. - Yeah, so, right? - Nolan is reboots Batman and it's great. - It's all, yeah, it's kind of weird how the timing worked out. So I took it over in 2003. - Kind of weird. - You're the luckiest dude I know. (laughing) - Yeah, I, X Minute come out in '99. Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 came out the year before I opened my store. - Right. - And it's, yeah, we're just a couple of years before Nolan starting Batman. And the MCU starting, you know, in the meantime, there was like, since city came out and, you know, - How's the story going? - And it's just creeping up. It's doing better and better. When I got there, it was still like recovering from post-9/11 post '90s stuff. - Yeah. - Not a lot of it. It was very specific. - No, Batman Hush was the best-selling comic. - Ooh. - So it was out, right, when I started my store. - Right. - And then it just started revving up. The competition between Marvel and DC got a lot more serious. - That's good for you. - Oh, it was great. In the beginning, it was absolutely great. And it was kind of a Renaissance time for comic books, for independent books too. And it was kind of the last hurrah of American comics. Now they'll look back on it, it's just kind of sad. - It was. - But the storytelling was getting much better. The art was getting better. The comic book sales were going up. - What were the people like coming in now? - It was Normies. So like we got, it was a, Hollywood was bringing in a lot of Normies. But what helped was the comic books were story driven. So we still had great writers like Mark Miller who were out there working with, you know, either wild storm in the early days, but then they like Marvel plucked him. And you know, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and Grant Morrison, you know, all these old judge dread people coming in and writing American comics and kind of turning it on their, turning it upside down. - You won Best of the Bay. - I did, 2009. - Why, why, how did you differentiate yourself? - Oh, so San Francisco is very San Francisco, right? So most of the comic shops are going to be independent book oriented, you know, because it's such a hippie independent town. Like, I am going to be the Normie superhero family store. Is that the one thing that isn't here? - Where are you drawing your own comics back in the day? - Oh God, yeah, I don't know. Yes, I was. - Art school? - I drew, we did what kind of became the precursor of the book, we did a comic called Horror Show and I did another superhero comic book. - People don't know that you write and draw. - No, they don't, and I'm going to keep it that way. Well, not anymore, but, yes. - Not anymore. - Yeah, I did a superhero comic book that I might revisit like after YouTube, but yeah, I was drawing and writing just for fun. Like, no expectations and I don't consider myself anything. - And the store is growing and then-- - The store is growing? - Then you get a certificate for video production? - Yeah, so when, we went Best of the Bay in 2009, but this is like 2008, 2009, economy's going to crap. So the store is breaking even. - Oh right. - Yeah, it's just breaking even. So I need, I'm like, I'm going to, I want to do something fun, possibly to make some more money. I don't want to, but we need to like figure this out. So I take a video intensive course. It's called a new media intensive course or digital video intensive at San Francisco State University. It was four months, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, and it's like basically film school with no theory put into four months. - That sounds awesome. - Like, it was great, great. First day, we had cameras in our hands. Second day, we're editing. We learn how to light a scene. We learn how to write a script, you know. - This comes in easy. We used them. - Matt Locke's script, and I'll never forget this. - Nice, yeah. - And yeah, it was people who all worked in the industry. And it's all practical, it was all practical. So by the end, all of us had shot like four little short films. - And how did this apply to the comic book store? - We were able to, I was able to like shoot podcasts, do podcasts, do ads, but it was always gonna be like, I wanna do a podcast and I wanna do some kind of live show. And I was thinking, we live streamed, God, what was, what did Joe Rogan used to use to live stream? - Use stream. - Use stream. We used to use stream. - The tiniest window. So we live streamed in our store way back when, during free comic book day and 24 hour comic day where people were, you make a comic in 24 hours. - So the store starts doing good again and you kind of become hot shit. You become the mayor, mayor of the nerds. - Yeah. - And ego Gary comes back. - Yeah, big time. I'll go to my head. - Why? What happened? - Stopped going to meetings. - Why? - You were cured. - I was cured, no, I was, I mean. - I mean, what do you, what's your rationality? And what is your rationality? - My rationality, I was too busy. I was too busy at work. - You're too busy for me, oh. - Too busy. - You know how that goes. - Yeah. What's the wife thinking, doesn't, you guys? - She's busy too. - So she doesn't know you're missing meetings or? - Doesn't, doesn't necessarily know. She's, like we both, we had the two kids, right? So. - And you're learning to get pretty good at lying at this point. - Yeah, very good. - Yeah. - Very good. So say I'm going to meetings when I'm not, you know? So that was just a recipe for destruction. - So it's going to your head and what's going down? - Well, no sponsor, no meetings. Going to my head, things are going really well at the store so that I can mask a lot of stuff, putting up a banner one day. - Yeah. - Yeah, superman returns banner. If I still own, no, I'll never get rid of it now. - What happened? - A ladder, a folding ladder. Flattens my thumb, stupid injury. Well, my thumb was like this thin. Flattens my thumb, they have to drill a hole in the nail and the blood comes up like Monty Python. But at the emergency room, excited to drive myself there because my employee didn't know how to drive. - San Francisco. - Yeah, San Francisco. They gave me some, like it is. - Ooh, daddy like you, like you. - Yep. And it was pretty much off to the races to that point. - Yeah, you suddenly in a great mood and don't feel any pain. - Yep. - So you just get a script. - Get a script? - And you're just taken as prescribed. - Yeah, it's normal at first, then the thing is, when you have a comic store, a lot of people offer you stuff, you know? - Like what? - Advice. - Advice, that's it. Just through time, through, I mean, basically the attic mind kicked in again. Like absolutely kicked in again. - They're coming in with Coke is what they're doing. - They're coming in with Coke. So it jumps really quick. So it goes from like getting prescripts and at that time, it was the viking and opiate epidemic. It was really easy to get scripts. Just make you could just say, I spray my ankle and it's my back hurt. And yeah, and then, you know, I've always been offered weed, you know, in the store for trade or whatever. And a guy just like one day just, yeah, it comes in, talk, offer some Coke. I'm like, sure. - So you go from saying no, though? Going from no to, let's go in the back and get dusty. - Yeah. - What shifted? The relapse just kicked it. The disease just kicked in at that point. The shifting point was probably, I mean, obviously the not going to meetings, not having a sponsor and realizing that I had already relapsed. 'Cause for a minute, I had it in my head that I hadn't relapsed when I was taking the pills. What were your, 'cause it was just doctor gave us. - It was doctor? - The doctor gave us, just doing it. But I had stopped doing the prescribed amount. So I just said, okay. - And you weren't talking a sponsor at all? - Nope. Did you feel ashamed or did you feel? - Yeah, totally, totally. And that's what fed the addiction was. The shame behind it. And the difference this time was, I was doing all of this in solitude, right? - She didn't know it was going on. - Are you sure she didn't know it? - Well, I thought she didn't know. - 'Cause I think they always know. - They always know. - We can pass forward to the Melissa method. - Oh, the Melissa method, yeah. - Because you're on and off. There's the story of you going down to Comic Con. - Oh yeah. - If you want to tell that cool. - So Comic Con. - But you're basically out of control. - So it goes, it goes, well, 'cause the coke habit is pricey. - It's very pricey. And it's a progressive disease. So when I quit, I'll use my statements here, when I quit, it's like you kept, I've kept doing drugs to the point where I pick them up again. So if that doesn't make any sense to anybody at home. - It makes sense to addicts. - If I was doing rails this big back in '89 when I quit, it will mean I'm doing rails this big when I pick up within weeks, with in days. - Yep, same with booze, say everything. - Yep. And the thing is, your tolerance is not the same as it was in, so it's very dangerous. But yeah, in a very short amount of time, I was doing big old rails, like huge rails. - How are things going at work? - Insane, slowly going insane. My employees are like, what the hell's going on? My wife's like, what the hell's going on? - You have your son and a stepson at this point? - Yep. - You're good dad? - I mean, I was never bad to them, but I wasn't a good dad when I was high. No, it's terrible dad. Just getting high, yeah. - You're thinking about them at all when you're doing your rails? - All the time. All the time. And it just made me want to get more high and not think about it, about how much I was failing them, like constantly. And maybe I had it in the back of my head that, oh, I can get around this, but then there was a point that kicked in. It's like, now that it's probably it. - I did it once, I can do it again. - Yep. - And then you probably can't. - No, but just through the grace of God, nothing bad happened to him. Now, I didn't take any unnecessary risks with them or do any drugs in front of them or drive them anywhere completely incapacitated or anything crazy like that. I still had enough, I guess humanity left in me to not do that. - That's why Coke is very tricky. - Yep. - Because it's not like you're all cloudy and slurry. You feel like I can control this. I got this. - So you're up for like four or five days and it gets a little crazy. I couldn't believe that you didn't crash on the way back from San Diego. So just quickly, what happened? - Okay, go to San Diego. I'm like just completely out of it on Coke and there's video of it somewhere. - There it is. - There it is. - Oh my goodness. - I'll find it. It's bad. - Do we have the Coke-Dup podcast? - Coke-Dup. Yeah, we were doing it. I wasn't involved. I had hired somebody to do some interviews, but we had like my plan, my Coke-Dup was actually, sounded like a good plan at the time, but it was very hard to get internet there was to use the booth to sell stuff and also as like an interview, like podcasting interview on the floor. - Great idea. - The con, this was back in 2013. So it wasn't easy to do that. But we did it and we got, you know, Dave Gibson and like we got some big names to come in and yeah, but I was like losing my fucking mind. So I get home, Melissa finds out what the hell's going on. And I mean, she finds the biggest rock in Coke. - She did. And how does she confront you on the, oh my goodness. - She, while I'm gone, she's planning an intervention. - Oh no. - So she just plays it cool and then all of a sudden there's a bunch of people coming to my house. I might. - Empty chair? - Uh-huh, oh shit. - You know exactly what it is. - I know what's going on. Now this is where people make a choice. - Yep. - To sit or to be an asshole. - Yep. - And I decided to not be an asshole. I, I mean, I still love my wife of course and I still love my kids. It's not like that ever changed. I just, sick, I didn't like myself very much and I made a lot of mistakes. - That's a very important decision that you made. That's kind of like the real Gary coming through 'cause I'm gonna sit 'cause you didn't have to. 'Cause you were verbally abusive to Melissa. - Yeah. - I mean, some of the stuff you said to her is out of hand. - Yeah, absolutely. - She very easily could have left you anytime. - She should have. - And probably should have. - Should have. I, I, I, I. - I can't even imagine speaking to anybody that way. - No. Not someone who do loves you. No, and saying call your sponsor go to meetings and you're telling her to go fuck herself. Yep So this time I didn't and We sat down a good friend of mine is there, you know who was a customer at the store, but he was also instrumental in bringing me back to recovery. He's kind of a recovery guru And we sit down we have the specialist there for the rehab and he's like we got to go right now and At that point I could have said no But I was done. I was like you know what? Let's go so we go to rehab and You know I get cleaned up for 30 days and it's really nice one of the best things about it was they took away your my phone To and this is like 2013. So it's not as bad as it was. Yeah, that was so nice not be around For 30 days try it now Gary. It's still nice. Yeah, try it now Not maybe not for 30 I don't know if I can't for 30 days for a week. I'll be nice every once you put it away for a bit For a bit. Yeah, sure. So how did it go in in rehab? The rehab was was good because it got me Reconnected with a but I wasn't ready yet, right? So get out of rehab nice and healthy. I get out of rehab and just Immediately right back in right back at it. Did you have the store still? Store is still around. He's running it while you're inside. We have I have a I have a partial business partner Okay, and then I have the employees and they're holding it together and the store was like kind of Doing its own thing didn't really need me there at that point. It might have been even better without you if probably would have been Give them a break so I get back Go right back to the store stores doing pretty good But then things go downhill for me like fast so like we're in We're in rehab in August. So we're in September of 2013 and the store went from doing okay to like Absolutely done by the end of the year that fast that fast it was like it just fell off a cliff is yeah, and it was my my Like the store could have survived, but I was I went back out again. You were back on doing coke Yeah, and just like burning through money. Sure. Absolutely burning through money So I have to make the decision to close it but before I close it somebody else comes in and says like I'll give you a song to buy it and I'm like You know, you the customer still have it. I'm like I'll find whatever, you know, I need I need to And all this time you're selling collectibles to feed your habit. Oh god. Yeah stuff this one of a kind. Yeah, I laugh. So I don't cry John burn had I can send you the copy. It's still out there. You can find it on the internet, but John burn had done a Commission for me. Mm-hmm of Batman spider-man on a double date with catwoman Uh-oh and black cat and Alfred's like barbecue on the top. So good. It's so good It's like he drew it for a comic book like the guy took so much time with this commission one of a kind I'll never see it again for two days worth of coke maybe two days worth of coke and I had Frank Miller original art from amazing spider-man 100 a spread page were spider-man Wow, the fantastic four what's going through your mind when you're letting it go? Are you thinking about this is gonna hurt is gonna hurt But um, you know, that's I need to get high. Yeah, yeah, and it hurts like a cut. There's a couple things like some stuff I've sold it's like what like there's a couple it's like oh those were those you know how much that Frank Miller Spread would be worth right now that's like oh and Considering how much I sold it for it's like But so you have to you have to you have to sell the store or you want to We have to because I am I'm banker. I'm going bankrupt at this point. She's carrying you guys and Melissa's not gonna carry me like this the shop has to carry itself or it's done and It could have but I burned through all the money so it just got tiresome I had to have a check ready when the shipment came and it just like it just wasn't sustainable at that point and It was a choice of do I continue to to keep the store or do I try to fight to get my sobriety and my family? Back and it was it was an easy decision so it was shut it down then it gets sold so it stayed around for a little while and I Melissa kicked me out of the house What do you mean? So she ride around Right around Christmas. She found some more pills and she's like you're out. Yeah so And initially it was that I went to sober living so At first nowhere and then it we we set up sober living sober living is urine test though. You're in test. Oh, yeah I'm not good. Oh, I did so much could see the thing is though. I didn't do coke I can tell I can tell you the truth right now I didn't do coke but I had done so much coke that it was still in my system like days after so I failed to test I'm like I for real didn't do any coke, dude They all say that. Yeah, they all say that so they they're like the deal is you got to just go You get kicked out for a day and then you go to one like a different house You still got to pay for that day still got to pay for that day. Mm-hmm so that's what happened and I'm alright because you can't go home. I can't go home, so I slept in the car slept in the car hope slept in the F and car hoping for tomorrow hoping for tomorrow So this is 2013. I am a 43 Just lost everything and I am sleeping in my F.ing car right so I get into the the next The sobriety house. It's off off a slope in San Francisco. You're familiar with that area and I'm going to give it another go I Got to find a job first. I just wanted to get like I had enough enough money set aside and didn't need a lot It's just like let's just get the sober thing going right now. Let's go to meetings meetings meetings. Yeah, and there's meetings in the house and the people in the house. It was a nice house people were pretty cool You didn't still in touch with Melissa at this time a little bit. Yeah, I'm a little bit enough Yeah, a little bit which is like I'm alive. I went to a meeting just checking in but she's not being like You know what the time that you're Risking more than you were at Folsom like it's a more dangerous situation now. Yes You knew that yeah, like this is way more dangerous than when I was younger you got boys at home No, dad got Kids I've abandoned basically. I've let down and that like that sticks the most right is What really motivated me to to turn my shit because I didn't know if she was gonna get I figured she wouldn't and I'm like oh my god Is a tation with my kids and I know other people have to go through there's people out there going through it right now And it's not to look down on them. This is a completely different situation, but with What motivated me was like? I don't want to have I don't want to I don't want to be that dad I don't want to be that dad. There's so many dads out there that they've done that. It's like I don't want to be that dad You sitting circles with that dad every time you're at a meeting. Yep. There's one of those guys is there. Yeah Yeah, can't be that guy. I can't and and you know it sucks To be in that position as that guy and I'd like if I had to be in it That's fine, but that my main motivation was I am not gonna be that guy Not gonna let my kids down Period, so whatever I'm feeling I have to I have to deal with it. So I Did I that was it. That was the thing that clicked for me and Past my next piss test. No problem. Nice. And Listen, yeah, it was quick. They were all like this. This is the guy who failed So I think they were ready to like boot me out and I passed they're like okay We can move if you could you could feel kind of like attention leave and we can move on and and that guy who Technically threw you out that first night, which he should have I don't know what the quote was, but it was a great moment in your story where you're kind of Negotiating almost fighting with the guy to stay. Yeah, and whatever the quote was he said what you're doing right now is your Angerate external forces trying to get someone else to make a decision for you. We're not doing that here Yeah, yeah, you got it. You got to do this on your own But he's all this on you. This is on you come back tomorrow. Like these are rules, you know and and He was right. He was right. It's a 100% it sucks to hear at the time though You're like it does but it's a but I make had me thinking about my own life Everyone should think about that when you're angry external thing You're looking for someone else to make your decision for you. Yeah, don't do that Man up make the call man up and and and I did and Yeah, so Through this through the sober living it starts to come together and I have to go through like just swallowing a lot a lot of pride along the way. This is, you know, is going back to auto parts jobs, but not to the, like, I was a, I'm a journeyman in that field. I had to go work at O'Reilly for $12 now. That's where I started, but that's what you have to do. And I wasn't super happy about it. I was bitter, but it's like, I understood that, like, this is me getting a job. And in the meantime, I started podcast. Just because I miss the store, and I'm like, I need a hobby because I know how important one of the things about recovery is going to the gym is really important. And it's not to, it's for this, yes, more than anything. It's part of that routine, right? And having a hobby, like having a hobby you enjoy. So I'm like, I like, we did the podcasting thing at the store. Let's just do one for shits and giggles. And me and my friend, and we did our first show in a Starbucks at West Portal in San Francisco. What'd you name the show? Well, the show was named Sutro Watch Tower in originally, which is a terrible name, but it was just a place or name, right? Because we were like, literally, because the shop, the Starbucks is under Sutro Tower, which is a giant antenna in San Francisco. OK. And we thought Watch Tower, like, you know, Watch Tower. So it's a terrible name. All creators have a terrible name for their first channel. But it was just a placeholder, right? And yeah, we do this show. I think we talked about Batman versus Superman and like the Arrowverse and, you know. And how are you handling being away from the comic book store and going to job day to day? How are you just the drudgery, the regret? I'm handling it by going to meetings and talking about it and getting myself a sponsor and temporary sponsors and whoever would have my ear. But it's tough. It was really hard. How long does it take Melissa to trust you again? Hmm. A while. A while. We-- once I got-- I think I moved on. We were just about to move on. I went through a bunch of jobs. So I started a Riley and then I just-- whatever would pay me more, I was gone, you know. Tesla? Yeah, and ended up at Tesla eventually. But between that, I worked at a German car place and-- Few Acura's, right? Acura and Dodge. And eventually ended up at Tesla. But I'm back home within a few months. I'm back home. And yeah, so I'm doing the podcast thing. I'm going to work every day, especially when it's up in Marin. So I'm going to Tesla. I work for Tesla. I finally get a job at Tesla. I work my way up. And-- What do you do in there? Oh, well, Tesla found me for some-- I'm freaking LinkedIn of all things. I'm actually-- I'm the one person on Earth who got a job on LinkedIn. They sent me a message, and they were in the process of trying to not be a tech company and be an automotive company because they have service centers, right? And they were treating them like tech centers. And it's like, you can't do that. So they needed to bring in automotive people. And this was in 2017. So they found me, and they offered me all the money in the world. And I'm like, OK, well, they're like, what would it take? And I'm like, I'm going to give them a stupid bike. How did you become talented and wanted? Why are you being recruited? What skills did you have? I was on LinkedIn already, but I just had a lot of experience in auto parts. That's it. And it's probably just as hard now. But it was hard to find people-- it's a generational thing. But it was hard to find people who were-- My boy can't change an alternator. Yeah. Doesn't even know what it is. Yeah, so finding people who had skills in that field was getting tough, was getting tough, and they had the money, and they were just kind of bullying, and I think it everywhere to see. But the fact that they found me is so weird. And I found that email when I was at work at Toyota. And I'm like, I'll just answer it. And then they shot me back. And I'm like, OK, I'll just show them. I'll just tell them how much money I want. And they said, yes. And I'm like, OK, I guess I'm working there now. It was fine for big corporations. They're actually probably the best I've ever worked for. Will you turn your wrenches? No, I was working in parts. So I was helping with the parts department. That had no focus and when I left it didn't have any either. That's the problem. But working at a Tesla parts, I won't bore anybody. It's just really different than working at a regular car. Because Tesla's-- you're pretty much just changing tires. That's about it. Door handles, tires, and screens. And that's where you discovered YouTube can kill some time? YouTube could kill a lot of time. So I was watching a lot of YouTube. And I was still doing my podcast and doing like a little-- a little bit here on YouTube. I was telling you earlier, we got kind of inspired by talking dead. But we were going to talk about walking dead. We would find about-- Great Chris Hardware. Yeah, we cover Ash versus Evil Dead, Westworld, Counterpart, just any weird show. And we just do a live stream afterwards and American gods. And we get a little traction there. And it was through expanse. We started getting a bunch of traction, which was great. Which was great. Before any culture nonsense started going on. So this is all going on in the background while I'm working at these parts jobs. And yeah, people I'm friends with now, I'm all watching at-- I'm at Tesla, and I've got my phone down here. Who are you watching? Jeremy from Geeks and Gamers. Yeah. So Jeremy from Geeks and Gamers, and in the early days drinker-- Sure. Yeah, I was watching Eric July, young RIPPA. Can we give it a shout out to Yellow Flash? Yellow Flash. Hell yeah, Yellow Flash. Well, it was in his streams a lot back in the early days. Yeah, it was-- And eventually, a couple of videos took off, right? The first one that took off for me, like big time, was like 30,000 views, was the expanse getting canceled. I did a video on that. Let's take a break. OK. Yeah, take a break, because now we're getting into neurotic. Before we take the break, how's Melissa doing with this podcast thing? She's watching you do it. You're having a wall. She thinks it's stupid. No, she actually-- she-- she's part of the operation now. She's the brains of the operation. This thing doesn't happen without her. Does she think I'm stupid all the time? [LAUGHTER] No. No, she's really supportive. And we could definitely get to the part of the story where she was freed up to have all that time. But I think she's proud. She's proud of me. In her way, they are back in. Yeah. So you have a video that takes off, right? Yes, relatively speaking. Oh, no, I get it. 30,000 views took me two years to get to. So that's a lot. Three years to get to that. And when I saw it happen, it was awesome. I was like, wow, 30,000 people. Like a baseball stadium. Yes. Watched my video. What video is it? It was the expanse getting canceled. It was for a bummer. It was a complete bummer. But it was just reporting that it was canceled. And I had never really done a video. I was a live stream channel, purely not thinking-- I did everything wrong. Right. When I started live streaming, it was just to back up podcasts. It was just to record the podcasts. So I had no idea people were watching. So I'll never forget one of my first-- I consider my first sub because he was the first one I contacted. Brian Smart, I love you. He emails me, he's all, I have been trying to talk to you for the last three weeks. There's a chat right below that you're not paying attention to. I'm like, there's a chat. You didn't know? No. I had no idea. Your fans are there. And we start doing them, I'm like, oh my god, there's four people in here. So it was total success. Total success. This is all I ever wanted was just to talk nerdy stuff. And I had another co-host, it's a friend of mine. He's a good guy. He used to work for Netflix, help build Disney Plus. He's kind of a brilliant guy. It's not his fault, what happened over there? No, it's not his fault. But he's the one who's all, you know, we can make money out of this. I'm like, get shut up, get me money off YouTube. I'm not gonna make any money. I'm not doing this for money, I'm happy. I like it. And- Were you aware of like monetization and all of that? Not super aware and at the time I wasn't even monetized. Right. So I'm like, that's not gonna happen. So you're making zero money. Zero. Do it for fun. For years, just doing it for fun. Doing this exact same thing I do now, but just, I just did it as a hobby. Because it was a chance to hang out with my friends and it kept me out of trouble. Yes. And it was doing something I truly loved. So every morning when I get up since before the comic shop I get up and go to entertainment website. So back 20 years ago was the Forrest dot net, the one ring dot net, you know, just looking at all my nerdy stuff that made me happy. That's it. So why not make a show around that? And then once something hits 30,000 views and actors from the show contacted me and they're like, hey, thanks for the support and my, hey, thanks for the great show. You know, like it was really a great show. Seeing it get picked up by Amazon was awesome. So big. It was huge. And then, you know, we kind of kept doing, I never thought to make videos still. So you still not thinking about, I can make money this. Yeah. So the first video that took off was technically a live stream. I did it live. But then once it hit VOD, it took off. And it didn't really click right away, totally understand and eventually I just started making videos because I was told, well, that helps you get subscribers. I'm like, well, I can do a video. I can edit a video real quick. And what I'll do is I'll just riff off my last live stream, you know, because I mean, even to this day, my channel has more live streams than it does videos. I think I've only done 600 videos because it says 1700 on my channel, 600 of those of videos, the rest are live streams. I live stream way more and I didn't think about it because now I think of myself more as if somebody who makes videos, but I honestly live stream all all the time everywhere. I love it. What were the monetization requirements when you were getting close? Oh, those were back in the days of you got 1,000 subs? 1,000 subs and that was it? I didn't even think it was 1,000 subs. That's before me. You needed like 4,000 watch hours. It was 4,000 watch hours and 500, I can't even remember. It's not the requirements that you have today. No. Do you remember when you hit it? I remember when I hit it and somebody gave me $5 in a super chat amount. That's awesome. Thanks. You made money. I made money. I remember transferring the first $50 out of my account and just going, "Pride on." That's like, "Absolutely." Easy money right there and I was happy with it and I didn't need anymore and to this day I haven't asked for a super chat. I've never asked for a super chat. You have it. No. No. And it's been brilliant. The support has been brilliant. But yeah, once that took off, Dr. Who happened, right? Now is the first time. What do you mean, Dr. Who happened? Dr. Who's been happening for a long time. All right. So I guess I got to frame that. Well, things were happening within this particular segment of pop culture. Yes. That made you angry. Yes. That I couldn't believe what was happening because if you, like, well, okay, so let's go to the expanse. You love the expanse and I love the expanse. The expanse kind of showed where entertainment was going at the time. It was prestige television. It was done right. The expanse season one and the first two seasons are 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10? 10 out of 10. The inspection really a great take on the world, a pretty even take on the world. It was. And it was a diverse show that never said we're a diverse show. It was going that way naturally. It was kind of matching the demographics of America and the UK and nobody was making an issue out of it. Well, it felt like this is where things would go. Yes. And it's hard science fiction. Like, this is how things would happen. Yep. Especially. So we're talking about going to Mars, the Belters, and they're, they have a unique culture and a language. Yeah. The Belters were the teamsters. Mm-hmm. Mars was military. Yep. And Earth was the welfare state. Was the welfare state that was run by the United Nations and I thought it was a really accurate look at the United Nations. And everybody was on basic income and everybody on basic income sat around their house and did nothing. Right. They got high. Yep. And then you had the wealth gap. Giant wealth gap. And it was a problem and that's why people were leaving. That's why people would leave to Mars. You know, and Mars was militaristic, but they were goal oriented and they were, it's complex, but there was a lot of, a lot of Martians were just good people. You know, and then they had like the space Mormons, which was funny. But I thought it was a relatively objective look at life for the most part, kind of changes later in the books, but it does, I stuck with them. I have the books memorized. I did too. I did too. I think they rallied at the end. The books rallied at the end. I, there's a couple of books I don't like. But what parts of the story they experienced bother you? Meet you a pa. You don't like pa, huh? I hate pa. I hate pa. Pa was instrumental in destroying the earth and face no consequences for it. Totally agree. And I would skip her scenes, no offense to the actress, skip her scenes in the book. Yep. But I was okay with drummer. Yeah, drummer was fine. With bull being kind of in there. Yeah. All right. I see you're coming from. And then they went away from holding in the later books. I just, that was completely, I'm like, what are we doing? But it rallied at the end. And really, unlike the show, answers the proto molecule, like tells you what's going on. Right. So if you watch the show and not read the books, there's, you just got started. You just got started. It's basically Game of Thrones, you know, like ending at a dance with dragons or a song of ice and fire. And except you can read the books and find out what's going on. I forget which run, whether it's tie out of forget, but he was in his Georgia's assistant for a while. Yeah. Yeah. So both Ty Frank and Dan Abrahams were, are like, proto jays. Right. They're like the two people who could probably go and finish a song of ice and fire on the planet. Ooh. Yeah. So they would, they were making like an RPG. And so this made a good novel. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It started out as a, as a game. I wish they hadn't gotten super political a few years ago. They haven't seen, well, not that I've seen since, but I was, yeah, I was a huge supporter of the show and I still say, still watch it. I still think it's pretty good. So what, how, how's that track with Dr. Who and what you were doing? So Hollywood drastically changed post, well, there's a couple things. The first Trump administration and me too, kind of coincided 2015, 2016, 2016, something radically changed in Hollywood. What are the origins of that? I can get really in the weeds with that. I think a lot of it was dictated from the Obama administration and on. You don't have to get into the weeds on that because that's an opinion, but it's my opinion. It is. Yes, my opinion. But what happened to the storytelling is kind of fact, yeah, whatever the origins were. Right. Right. I have my suspicions, which I've gone over a lot of my channel. It did change and we saw characters like Luke Skywalker turned into broken men who tried to kill their nephew because they had a bad dream and sit on an island drinking the booby milk from a giant space manatee and while they were trying to introduce new characters in a Star Wars franchise, that everybody would have been fine with. It was the treatment of Han Solo. It was the treatment of Luke Skywalker and it was clearly not creatively driven. All of that was not creatively driven. It was social and political motivations behind these decisions. A lot of channels were born with the last Jedi and the Force Awakens and the rise of Skywalker. I got into the mix. So are those bad movies because it's a female lead? No. No, they're bad movies because they weren't planned. They were poorly written and the female lead was propped up basically. She was propped up by degrading the legacy characters. So that's where the frustration comes in. Now you will hear the excuse from the access media and even people who work on the show when Luke is film that people just hate women. Every Star Wars fan would have been completely fine with a female lead and a female Jedi. And Finn, who was actually the more interesting character out of all of them, who they made a clown, not the fans. The fans were mad at them for the treatment of Luke. What we have been waiting for is to see full powered, full Jedi Luke, who could like a dark empire, who could bring down a Star Destroyer with the Force. We just wanted to see that. That's all we wanted to see. I heard them even Mark Hamill. He didn't love the way that character wrapped up. He was not happy. He was clearly not happy and he was showing that throughout the press. Now they told him to finally shut up. I don't think he ever fully did and you can get mad and mark for other things he said. You can, but I don't care about what he said. I don't care about his political positions. I care about the story. As far as the story of Star Wars, he was clearly not happy about it and neither with fans. You mentioned a phrase, "access media." You coined that, but that's a term that is used now in media. What does that mean? Access media is the corporate media that essential, and not all corporate media. It's also some independent media that will basically throw softballs as far as interviews go and be toxic negativity. There's also toxic positivity. They will gas up, gas light, things that aren't very good so they can maintain their access. It's not for money at all. I've said it before. I'd almost respect that more if you did that for money because that's something of value. No, it's just to maintain your access and what they get is early access to movies or TV shows. They get screeners. When you're watching them, they've got some giant watermark thing over them. Instead of being authentic and honest all the time, they're really soft on their criticism and really crazy and absolutely unbelievable with their over-praise with things like Iron Heart or the Marvels, which are just objectively bad. So they have to review these positively or they don't get the next interview. Or at least think that way. This is not your opinion. This is how it works. This is how it works, and it's not like the studios tell them that. The studios don't tell them that. They do it on their own, and what happened is people like yours truly or anybody else who went to them normally, like I used to go to a CBR screen rant for my news all the time, or Anacole News. Honestly, Anacole News back in the day was the most real. They were absolutely the most real, especially Moriarty. He was like a drinker prototype. He would shred stuff, and that's why I love the guy because I knew this guy's honest. I didn't agree with him all the time, but you started seeing these giant sites and these critics who really, they went out of their way to, I mean, just to call movies that are obviously a lot like, you can like, we can have a difference of opinion of like, Shane Chi, right? Yes. Some people could think it's good. I think it's terrible, but it's not the worst thing Marvel's ever done. I think it made money, yeah? No, it didn't, it didn't, yeah, I got called out, that's how they should decide. That's how they should decide, but where their gaslighting people is saying these things are making money when they're not. The year that Shane Chi came out and the eternal's, and I think it was Black Widow, Marvel wrote down $65 million dollars in studios, so they didn't make money. If you're writing down money, you're not making any money. So if a movie makes, we hear the numbers all the time, a movie makes $300 million, that's not really the number, is it? No. It does box office, $300 million, that's. That's the money. Okay, so if a movie makes, if they announce it, right, that is the money generated at the box office. So that's free split, and that's not including the marketing budget. It's not including marketing budget, that's not including anything. You're paying the actors afterwards, that's not including the theaters take, which is about half, which is about half. It averages out half, internationally, it's a little more, China gets a huge amount of the money, and then it evens out here, particularly with Disney, which can kind of strong arm the theaters and have been for a long time, so Disney gets 60% of the domestic in a lot of cases. So it's just, we're just semantics, it's parsing words, and it's bullshit. And then they're not calling out, so the press is supposed to call this stuff out, so we started calling it out, and listen, I didn't know anything about it. So I just researched it, and I talked to people, I talked to people who work in Hollywood, I talked to people who had knowledge of the box office and just learned what they taught me, and it's pretty easy, like theaters don't show movies for free, right, so when I went out and called Chang Qi a flop, it was a flop, it did not profit, and I got called out by Simulu, which is fun, it's fine, but called out for what, for criticizing it? Calling it a flop, and he said it wasn't a flop, but it was a flop, it was, it did not, it was the technical term of a flop, the technical definition, which is it did not profit at the box office. We had the same battle over Superman, now I wouldn't call it Superman a flop, but it certainly didn't perform as well as it should have, but that's where the access media comes from. It is just this divide and this disconnection, and they just became a PR firm for the studios. So independent people like myself and others, Jeremy from Geeks of Gamers, Yellow Flash, Rinker, Mueller, just started doing their own thing, right, and none of us have ever said like our opinion is the be all end all, it is just an opinion. But people started gravitating towards it because it was the truth, and sometimes I get things wrong and sometimes they get things wrong, and the cool thing is we can go, I got that one wrong. If we go way back, there's movies I was way hard on, and like for Dark World, I think I was a little too hard on that movie, I actually, it's not that bad, it's not that bad, but when you can see, the Star Wars prequels, have they not benefited the most from the Disney trilogy? Those aren't that bad, is that a hot take, I don't mind those movies. I hated them when they came out, I have very much softened my opinion on them, I don't think they're great, but the Hobbit trilogy, I hated it when it came out, and I watched it all the time now. It won me back, so anything recent that I can't say, I can't say, yeah, nothing, it's not like I've gone back to Doctor Who, if we want to get back to Doctor Who going, I wasn't that bad. I wouldn't know what attracted attention to you, so what, why you were dead. No, I just came out and said the doctor's not a woman, so when they, the changes of Doctor Who were happening even before Jody Whitaker came along, and it was getting filled with just political nonsense beforehand, even with Capaldi who did a great job, I wish he would have gotten better scripts because he's one of the better doctors and one of the better actors to play it, and I have a lot of respect for that guy. But when they have a lot of respect for Jody Whitaker, she's a brilliant actress, and a lot of this is not the talents fault. It's not. The only thing, as far as her taking a job, I don't criticize her for that. It's when she took the job and what she said, then I'll criticize her. Fair enough. Then I'll criticize her because if she had just gone, I'm going to do the best I can as the doctor, like to come out with. That's fine, I'll criticize the show, but I'm not really going to get on her, and I use the term, the first female doctor played by Jody Whitaker because that's how the access media referred to her all the time, so that's why I used it in all of my videos, but- They became a label culture. It did. It did. When they showed the transition from, you know, that she was going to be the next doctor, I kind of knew it was Doctor who pressing the panic button, a little bit, something Stephen Moffitt even said prior to, he said, if they changed the doctor into a female, they're pressing the panic button. Well, they did. Too soon, in my opinion, and my opinion was at the time, and still is, that the doctor's a male character, and the only reason you changed the doctor into a female character, it was not a creative decision. It was one to grab headlines, and it was one motivated by social and political. It was, it had social and political motivations, it was not a creative one. They don't know where to go with this, and if they're going to do a female doctor, are you going to really, are you going to explore the real differences between a male doctor and a female doctor? And they didn't. They didn't. They just treated it the same. For first episode, record breaking, but I was, I was there reviewing it, and I just said, the doctor's not a woman. And it was at that time, that could get you suspended on Twitter. I remember. Yeah. It was crazy. So that's all I said. It wasn't anything crazy. Why do you think you're labeled far right? Are you far right? No. No. I think I'm labeled far right for the same reasons. A lot of people get labeled far right is you don't agree with one extreme political sex on 100% of everything. I mean, look at how they treat JK rolling is is progressive as they get. She's up. She goes off the reservation for one issue. And look at look at like what she goes through. So I don't know. I'm not a hyper political person, but as far as I mean, we've had the discussions about it. It's far as like whatever criticism or flung at me. I'm on the internet. I understand. I'm on the internet. And I don't really care what people think. I'm glad you don't care. I don't think they know you support Amnesty International. Gay rides, gay children at risk, all that. They don't think they're aware of that. Nope. Do you think by changing these beloved, I pay, are the intentions good? Are they trying to do something good for society? Hmm. Uh, yes, I think some of them have that in their mind that the intentions are good. But we all know what gets what gets paved with good intentions. We do. We do. Um, I think there are some true believers in there that feel like you're, you're getting to a modern audience and you're, uh, accessing children with certain messaging. The problem is I, I disagree with a lot of that. But beyond that, it's, there's no such thing as a modern audience. That's the thing they're always chasing. It's just, it doesn't exist. Well, okay. I'm going to reframe that. It does. But there's not enough of them. What you want, there's always the audience. You want, if you're making Doctor Who or Star Trek or Star Wars, you want that to have the most mass appeal as possible. Sure. And as I said earlier, if you have a message you want to get across to get people to think about, don't answer the question for them. Present it to them with respect, which is not, not spoon feeding it to them. And, and that's what a talented writer does. A talented, like even Alan Moore, we know where Alan Moore comes from politically, uh, thinks he's a wizard. He's, uh, he's a brilliant writer. But even he can write a really good Superman story, like whatever happened to the man of tomorrow, you know, he doesn't let that get in the way of telling a good story. You know, Jay Michael Strazzinsky, you know, I loved Babylon five. Of course. Yeah. And I think Babylon five actually goes into some stuff that eat sometimes a story can go beyond the writer. And I think it really, a lot of stuff that happened during COVID, you can look at some Babylon five episodes that, you know, there was no intention there, but they really say a lot about it. So that's, that's what good storytelling does. And, and it doesn't, it doesn't drive people away because if you are, if your intention is like, I want people to think about this. Well, you want the most people to think about it as possible. So you don't talk down to them. You don't, uh, like I said earlier, you know, like start a story going, listen up, bigots. That's not the way to, it's not the way to go. It's not the way to convince somebody. And it's really, it really divided fandom in a way that I've never seen in my life. Now, fandom has always been crazy and critical. Um, and they're like, like you thought you could change the doctor into a woman and people wouldn't speak up. That's kind of crazy. Uh, thinking about it now, how many arguments did you see at the comic book store about this comic first, that one, this character everyday? It was great. I loved them because there were good spirited debates. And, uh, like, and I'm an idiot. So I'm sitting there arguing with customers and we're like yelling at each other, but we're cool afterwards. But, um, yeah, and I had to hear some crazy stuff. But I, you know what? I listened to them. I sat there, uh, art, art, bell, greatest interviewer ever. Um, non-confrontational. Like you kick back a little bit, but I listened to a lot of art and he will let people have their say with respect, right? And part of, uh, I think being on a, on a live stream in particular is your, you are kind of running some customer service. And you got to kind of let people talk, let people do their thing and listen to it. And if it's insane, you can kick back a little bit, but there's still a way to kick back without, you know, calling the guy in a hole. Why do you think, um, nerd culture, geek culture, which I come from, you know, reading your book, it's almost like reading autobiography at some places. The way I came to Tolkien is the same way through the 70s cartoons. Star Wars, I remember waiting online as a kid, changes me. Why do you think Hollywood went after these, this particular beloved IP with hardcore fans. And want to change what, what, why is that target? Uh, the, well, I mean, my opinion on the matter is Hollywood went after it because they wanted to, they felt they were going to force the change that was needed, uh, consequences be damned. Because this is what we, we know better. So we're gonna, I mean, with Doctor Who, we're going to take something away. That was the whole, because with Doctor Who, you can make a separate series with a female, their time ladies, they were called, you could have done that. Uh, and Doctor Who fans want to watch it. You could have had a Doctor Who show and, and a time lady show. You could have, you could have done that. And they didn't do it because they wanted to, they felt like somehow you're being inclusive by taking something away. And we still see it to this very day, right? And it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't add to anything. Has it worked with any of these? Um, no, honestly, none of these worked. You could have some like, uh, side characters where it works. And like, I'm not militant when it comes to race or gender swaps when it's with a side character, like in Harry Potter, if you make Susan Bones black, I don't care. Uh, but, but Snape is a problem. Snape is a problem. Snape is a problem. And Doctor Who was just as big of a problem. It fundamentally changes the show. It fun, it changes the past. So, and then what they did, knowing with Doctor Who, like what a problem it would be, instead of just having the female Doctor show up and leave, which they could have done. They're like, no, we need to reinforce her in the story, but we need to change the origin. So when they went back and changed the origin, and I heard way in advance, I had a friend who was working with, uh, with Doctor Who, who I knew from the comic shop days was telling me what's going on. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. It's all down now. They're going to change the origin of Doctor Who. I learned a lot of this stuff from your videos. And I would say the same thing. You know, Gary said, this is going to happen. I'm like, there's no way they're going to do that. It's been 40 years. I'm not going to do that. They're not going to read comma 40 year. They, but they did. They did it. And they did it to reinforce the female Doctor. And they thought it was, they thought it was going to get to the new modern audience. Did any of this bring in women did it bring in any of these? No, it didn't. No. So it's still the same people watching this, this IP in generally. It's the hard core Doctor Who fans who are hanging on. And what Hollywood has failed to learn that is, you know, you buy a really expensive IP for that built in audience, that built in audience are the ones who are, they shepherd new fans in. They are the custodians. They, you, the company own it, but Star Trek fans are the ones who make more Star Trek fans. My wife loves DMC you. My wife loves Star Trek because she would sit there. I would watch it. As, you know, as the nerd who knows everything, she doesn't know anything. She just knows it's a fun, good story. Yep. She hasn't really watched any of that anymore. No, because they're not fun. They're not fun. Doctor, who she became a fanatic would back to Eccleston, she became a fanatic and when, when Tana came on, that's it. We, we were done. We were in, but we're out. It's, oh God, it's such a shame. You know, I was just, I'm going through some classical now, right now. And it's like, it's a show it was made for nothing. And it's, and it's, it really is just carried with its acting and its storytelling. Because you've got, you know, Tom Baker talking with a paper mache dude, like, it's tinfoil. It's terrible. I loved it when Tom Baker. I loved when I was a kid. I didn't notice. I don't know. Some of the themes are really, like, really dark and like, and magnificent. And I know that there was a lot of criticism in the UK about that, but I loved it as a kid. You think things are coming back. The pendulum always swings. I think so, but I think it's because, I wish it was because, you know, we see the error of our ways. We are villainizing and demonizing. the paying customer, our audience, the people who got us here, and constantly saying we don't need you by we're hunting for a modern audience. We're looking for a new or new or audience, right? And it's like, you know where to mouth is still the best marketing there is. Telling a story is still a pretty good idea. It's a good idea. And you forego that because you're searching for potential, right? I've never understood that. There's nothing that there's no there's no data out there that says Gen Z was going to get into Doctor Who if you change change it to a woman. There's no data. None. There's zero. But they'll show up for a good story because they will. The audience is still the audience. So you went from being ignored to being attacked. And now you have influence. I got attacked. And it was. Well, you're still being attacked. You're going to be attacked. Yeah, as will I. Yeah, you will. I will. Sorry. I care so much. Uh huh. Um, that was my friend. If that's a problem by Felicia. I don't care. Thanks, brother. I mean, I feel like I'm in a coma somewhere. I don't want to wake up. This is we do this for a living. So who cares? Yeah. It's, it's really kind of the greatest gig in the world. Isn't it? So when, uh, when you get attacked on the internet, like, not everybody's going to, and this is no judgment on nobody wants to get the emails I get or you get or nobody wants to get that stuff. But you know, if you keep it in mind, like, I don't know, I've got the grading curve of life or the stuff I've been through. I'm like, this is nothing. Like I'm not worried about it. That's why I spent so much time with your story because, um, a lot of the hate you get really isn't warranted because there's no, you, there's no misogyny to you. There's no racism. There's really no political leaning. You just want your stories told properly. Mm hmm. And, and beloved IP just left alone. I think that's okay. I think it's okay to adapt something properly. And it doesn't mean you, they have plenty of room and original material to do whatever messaging they want. Well, you're influencing studios now. Do you feel that's, that power is earned of, of having influence in Hollywood because they know who you are. I know that for a fact. Oh, I talked to studio execs of all the big studios and they know who are curious and will and everybody. Um, and they're making decisions based on you guys. Oh, wow. That I, that doesn't hit my mind very much at all. I try not like because of, uh, where the relapse came in last time. Mm hmm. So I try to keep things very much in check that I expect an idiot with the microphone. And because you're back where you are, the comic is your hot shit again. You can't let ego Gary come back. No, no, because you'll lose it all. No. I hope they listen to the people in the comments section and the people on the chat. I hope they, you know, it take a good look at that and see what people, because, um, you know, during a live stream, we'll have people rewrite, uh, the last Jedi or the last episode, uh, a Starfleet Academy, or we'll have a Robert Mara Burnett on Friday night tides who pitched a better Starfleet Academy than the one they, like, one I would watch. You know, so they're, they're, it's not all, um, them slinging, you know, whatever they're slinging. So tell me about Friday night tides because that's a year of what hundreds of episodes of that. How did that start? Uh, 400 episodes. And what is FNT? FNT is a shit show. It is, um, it's, uh, it's a live stream that we do every Friday. And it is climbed up to nine co-hosts. And we talk about pop culture every, every Friday. We've been doing it for, uh, this version of it for six years. I've been doing a Friday show for eight years. And it's true, you've never had, uh, anyone black or female on there. That's true. Never. Not once. No, not, nobody gay, uh, no, never being sarcastic because you have. Yes. A lot. You have a lot. And, um, and what we learn is fans or fans and the labels don't even matter. Nope. So what makes FNT different because I, but there's the zillion of these shows. There is, um, I think it's the good mix, the chemistry of personalities and no filter at all. And what we really try to lean on like making you laugh, that's the whole point of the show is to make you laugh. And it's, it's just a bunch of people who like each other genuinely, um, shooting the shit for three or four hours. And it's, it's no different than any other conversation of fans anywhere else that you have with your family or at a diner. Um, and there's no plan to it at all. We kind of throw it. We bullet point some subjects. We get to about three of them. We go off on tangents. Uh, so there isn't any real structure. Please don't, don't create any. Just leave it chaos. I don't even think we know how. I don't know how. I don't know what I'm doing either. So what, for, for Bidden Frontier is something I came across accidentally and didn't know that Gary did this. What is that show? It is, uh, another passion of mine like you. I like, I listen to Art Bell. Have you ever heard of Art Bell and Dr. Demento? Oh, yeah. Dr, Dr Demento is, uh, I listen to Dr Demento before Art Bell. Like years and years. Same. Um, 70s. Yeah. Back in the 70s. And this, this is how I grew up. But, um, yeah, with UFOs and Bigfoot and ancient civilizations, Eric Von Daniken, uh, Charles, Charles Brilitz was like the gateway drug for a lot of people with the Bermuda triangle. For me, it might have been Graham Hancock in the 90s was the gateway to that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The pre-flood society, the fingerprints of the gods. Graham, I think, graduated the subject to something. Yes. Way more legit. Yes. Like, I always, you like, all respect to the late Eric Von Daniken, Jerry to the gods. Then we go back to Villacoski, who honestly I didn't know about till later. Yes. We're all of this, uh, we're all of this comes from. And in search of, I watched in search of all the time. Sure. And ex files and remember the show sightings. Of course. That was the, uh, so I've always been into this all my life and listen to art. But when, yeah, when Graham came around, he took the subject of ancient civilizations and made it more palatable, right? And, and did it honestly. Uh, and as a real journalist, as a real journalist who actually goes places and looks at these things and, and paid for it with his own money. Because Art Bell was the best to ever do it, but some, a lot of it was wacky, man. He was always very respectful, but a lot of it was just wacky. But you read Graham's work and said, he's, this is serious stuff. And, you know, Robert Chock and the Randall, Randall Carlson, these are real scientists. This is real stuff. It's real stuff. And, I mean, you can't undersell when Randall and, well, Graham and Randall were doing them separately. But when they got together and did that on Joe Rogan, that really launched it launched it. And that's why we have, um, a lot more legitimacy. And this, including a, and, and Netflix special with two seasons or Graham handcuffed, which I never thought I'd see. Nope. Um, and they tried to cancel that. They did. Ancient apocalypse. Yep. I defended him hard on the channel when he was attacked for being a racist. It's like, that is a most ridiculous thing. I like, it's like, you don't know anything about this man. You, you obviously haven't seen his wife. Right. So, it was very nice. Right. So is he, here we go again. But I'm always frightened. Like, I was just getting started. I'm not really controversial, but I am a, I go pretty hard against government and all of that. Um, so when, when, when, when Joe Rogan, when they, when CNN tried to cancel him, and they were going after Spotify, I was terrified because I was, I was making a few bucks. Yeah. And it was like, if they cancel Joe, this all goes away. Yep. And Spotify stuck by him. And then everything started to relax. It's like, everything started to change. I think it was that moment. That was, uh, surprising. Yes. But they stuck by it because I know a lot of employees in there didn't want to stick by him. Yep. But I think they saw the investment and saw that that Joe isn't what, what CNN was trying to make about them. It was just ridiculous. He's not. No, no, he's just a regular guy. Like, he's just a guy. He's just a dude. And he looks at things from a very dude perspective. Uh, and I think that, that, that, that, I think it's really endearing. And that's why he's the best podcaster out there. And all the things he criticized back in those days, you criticized, I did, turns out we were right. Yep. Which I knew the whole time. We were right. And now we were allowed to be right. And, uh, he, Joe kicked that door in by, he did by sticking to his guns. Spotify sticking with it. Um, Elon coming in and buying Twitter and changing that, which absolutely changed YouTube. Yes. I mean, and, and Facebook and everybody, everything else. YouTube is, uh, it ain't perfect. but it's wait, I'm, I haven't been gonna break the streak. We haven't been demonetized on FNT in a long time. - Well, they're not gonna work out. - Yeah. - I don't dodge that bullet every week, but I try. - I'm used to not doing, I was fine with it, but it's just, what you can get away with now on YouTube aside from a couple of things. - What do you think happened? - What? - I think when Elon exposed through the Twitter files when they exposed all the government interference because if they were interfering with Twitter, they're at Google right now, they're everywhere right now. They are, they still are. But that had to get loosened up. And I also think advertisers, we can't discount the money factor in, nope. So advertisers were losing it by acting, you know, clutching their pearls and saying, we cannot show ads on this stuff. And they saw how much they were losing. How much money they were losing because you could advertise on all this YouTube stuff. And-- - Joe was demonetized the whole time and they woke up one morning and it was just on. - Yep. - I didn't say anything, just quiet, just. - Because the advertisers loosened up a little bit. - Yeah, they, I would like to have 30 million people look at my ad. - Yep. - It's the same story. It's just about people and audience. It's not about point of view, really. - No, and it was, and it's not like it was, we look back at it and go, that was really common sense. And that was considered highly controversial. That's how we get caught up in this stuff. - It's one of the darkest times in our history. I'll never forget the day Jen walked in and said they're gonna lock down the, see we were in LA at the time. They're gonna lock down the city, close all businesses. And I laughed at her. I said, "What do you, they can't do that." And they said, "They're gonna do it for two weeks." I couldn't believe it. I stayed open. I broke up. - Good for you. - Bro, curfew stayed open. Had the studio just went to hell. No one would come in. No masks. They wouldn't come in. And we're out of business during the riots. That was the end of that. - The riots. Lovely riots. - Which weren't really covered on the news, but LA burned. I've never seen police cars on upside down on fire before, but I do. I did that week. And then that's where we left LA. So for Vitten Frontier is a great success. You guys really know your stuff. Like I look to you. 'Cause I don't know anything. I'm just an entertainer. I look to you guys. You're the reporters kicking in the doors, following the stuff. I watched you live stream. A congressional hearing, I think. - Oh yeah. - What do you think's going on with disclosure? - Oh God. I think we're in a worse shape now than we ever have been. So, and it's just because I've been following this as a hobby. So I know lots of bits and pieces, but you'd have to definitely go to the Richard Dolan's of the world to put the expertise. Yeah, we covered that one and that was frustrating. Just all the stuff that has to go on in the skiff and I do believe, and it took me a while to get to this. I believe there is a faction in the government that really wants to let us know. Why? I don't know. I think there is some danger involved. I know there's the Stephen Greer point of view where the aliens, if they're out there, if they're us, whatever they are, they're nice. I don't know if I can buy that. Maybe it's a possibility. They could, if they had the power to wipe us out, they could have wiped us out. There's certainly that. - Do you think they're out? Do you think it's extraterrestrials, aliens for other worlds? Was it interdimensional? Is it future time-traveling humans? - Yes. - Yes to all of that. - I think it's yes to all of those. I haven't decided yet. I go back and forth. It's definitely something. I just, I think interdimensional, maybe is what I'm falling on now, that I've been here for a long time, that they're in the water, that they're alienation, that's where I'm leaning. But I can change, that can change. But with that last government hearing, where we just heard nothing and the same stuff over and over again, it just, it was discouraging. So if we, I don't know where the UFO topic goes now. I always thought if we get disclosure, it won't be from a government. And even if a government came out, Trump or whatever president of another party came out and said, "Yep, we talked to Zorg from the Pleiades and we have a half of the country's not gonna believe it." They're not, just because of the politics of it. So it'll have to be something insane like the Phoenix lights. A UFO flying slowly over a big city where we can get multiple camera angles and then still have the population, I don't think it's AI. - Yes, they will. - It's in a bad place right now. Don't know where you go. - You've been, you're into the ancient stuff. You've actually gone into the field. - Mm-hmm, yes. - Where have you been? - Been a Peru in Egypt so far and we're gonna go to Japan. We're gonna go check out Megalithic Japan. - What Yanaguni? - Yeah, well, no, I'm not gonna be diving. But no, basically where the palace is, just so the polygonal stones, we're gonna look at, there's quarries, there's giant stuff on there. But going to Saxiwamon for the first time, I don't know if you've ever been there, it is mind blowing, utterly mind blowing. And it really, you know, I can hear all this stuff all day long and I can read all the Graham Hancock, but when you go there and you see, like how in the hell did they do this? And, you know, I don't think it was aliens. I always think it was humans, we were pretty industrious. I don't think it's that crazy to think that there was a civilization that was maybe as advanced, let's say as the Romans were. You know, 10,000 years before the Romans, or 8,000 years before the Romans. They got wiped out during a apocalypse, basically, during a cataclysm that's looking like actually happened. - It is looking like that. - Yeah. - We'd go back to Tepay and Mukukutarla. It looks like they were here. Great pyramid, Egyptians built or found. I think built from direct from plans for lack of a better term, from blueprints from a previous culture. - Interesting. - Previous culture. - So maybe there was a foundation there already that they, I think the pyramids have been, have been rebuilt. - There's some evidence. - Probably multiple times. - Kind of like, well, the Sphinx, for sure. The Sphinx has been put back together. We were just there in Egypt and we saw the erosion evidence that Robert Shock and John Anthony West had exposed many years ago. Yeah, they're putting a wall over it. - They're putting a wall over that? - Yep. - So you went hard after Zahe was, after he was on Joe's show. - Yeah, he was ridiculous. - Do you think, he's gatekeeping or do you think he's protecting his culture? - There's a national identity to Egypt, to Egyptians that they're proud of and should be. - Yeah, I think that is the motivation behind some of the road blocking we're seeing on some of the archaeology is they're trying to protect Peruvian. Peruvian's a lot cooler about it than Egypt is. I gotta be careful. I don't trust the things Zahe Hawa says. I think he's a complete, I think he's shady as hell. - It wasn't a good look for him on that show. - And no, he did more good for Graham Hancock and Randall Nelson and Robert Shock than anybody could have dreamt after that appearance. - I always talking about his book, taking credit for stuff that he didn't discover. And some people who've met him said he's a complete nice guy but I just, the impression I get is he is stopping progress and maybe tell us why. I think the most exciting thing is the labyrinth. The labyrinth in Egypt, Ben Van Kirkwick. - This is the URL. - Yeah, has done some great work on this. Not that he discovered it but he's done some great work, uncharted X. He's done some great work and great videos on these. And I think that would be the most exciting discovery of the 21st century, and there's some politics behind it. It's getting flooded out. And there is because of the water is being diverted because they need to help agriculture. - Which they do. - Which they do, they need to find a way to divert that water so we can drain it and figure out what's down. there. And we don't have much time for that. No, we don't. And Lydar has shown that there are. We know there's structures down there. And that labyrinth has been discussed by Ovid, Pliny the Elder, all these great historians, Strabo, all visited and said it goes that they saw 3,500 rooms. It goes down three stories. It's there. Some have said there's a giant oval ring made of metal in the center of it. The exact same size. Well, not exact, but close to the same size as the tic tac. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. And I would love to know. And why not? But you know, Zahee seems to stop a lot of that stuff. And you would think you know, Egypt relies a lot on tourism. That would, that would be a. I'd love to see that. I would. I'd go back. I'd go back. It was definitely worth going for sure. It was amazing seeing some of that stuff. Egypt's an interesting country. But you got your media empire. What do we have? Oh, boy, we've got FNT for Ben Frontier. You got your videos neurotic daily. Yeah. What else are you doing? Oh, my God. I think that's pretty much refs. That's it. That's a lot. That's a lot. That keeps me busy. I've got a couple editors, um, X-ray girl, you know, cord black, Harry Chan. Uh, and well, we, uh, we do tours once in a while with Michael Collins from Wandering Wolf. Yeah. So we'll be doing the Japan thing. Uh, that takes up all my time. And you know you're living the dream now. Absolutely. This is the greatest gig in the world. You said daily practice gratitude daily. Yep. What's the, what's the mechanics of that? Because some days are shitty, man. That's when it's the most important. So what do I do? How do you do it? Oh, you catch yourself. Okay. I catch myself in a bad mood or feeling excessively negative about just like really mundane stuff in life. And I just, it's a mindset of turning it around by thinking of three, three things that you're thankful for. And the first one could be, wow, I've got, there's a wife out there who loves me for some reason. I don't know why, but she does. Um, my kids like me. That's awesome. Not every, not every kid loves their father. Uh, and with, you know, and we have this amazing job like that, that thanks to the support of so many brilliant people out there. Uh, it's definitely something we, we work at, right? But it's like, I've said it before. It's like winning a lottery that you work really hard to get to. That's a great way of describing it. Are you going to meetings? Yes. Go to meetings. So it will wrap up with this. There are people listening now, because I know they're out there that are addicted, that are struggling depression. They're in booze and drugs to cope. Can you tell them who the most important person in their life is? Oh, they are. They are. They are. They're the most important person in the lives. And, and, um, people love them. People care about them. And the world can still benefit from them turning stuff around. It's never too late. It's never, ever too late. Uh, and if you try sobriety, I can promise you it will not be easy, but I can also promise you it will get better way faster. Your life will get better way faster than you think. Uh, and just give it a try. Um, you know, people can try rehab. I don't want to discourage anybody from getting sober anyway they want, but definitely whatever you do, make sure you go to meetings too. Um, really, they're free. And you'll find some of the most welcoming for giving people on earth in there. And just make some friends. See what happens. You're an inspiration. You're the proof that it works. Gary, thanks for coming in. It's been awesome. Thanks everybody. That was Gary Beekler. I know his name is spelled wrong. Everyone calls him Boochler. Gary Beekler, the prison story, the comic shop, the relapse, the comeback, doctor who, the access media, we covered a lot. Gary's book covers the old Folsom story in full and it's a different kind of read than you'd expect from a pop culture guy. If you only know him from Nerdronics, buckle up. The book is wild. I was going to say in graphic. It's not that graphic, but it's, it's pretty intense. So there's not much to analyze about what we talked about here because Gary's my friend. But here's a few nuggets. The doctor who a situation he described tracks with what actually happened. Series 11 opened huge over 9 million viewers in the UK. Then the new showrunner retconned the doctor's origin in series 12, rewriting 55 years of canon in a single episode, ratings collapsed. The BBC eventually replaced everyone and brought the original showrunner back. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Gary mentioned Disney was racking up some serious losses. Well Disney did report roughly 1.5 to 2.5 billion dollars in content write downs in 2023. Gary's math is correct. Gary is controversial, but he probably shouldn't be. His grievances aligned with what a lot of people were already feeling. It was just one of the first people to call it out. The pattern he identified putting politics ahead of story showed up in Doctor Who and Star Trek and Marvel and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and now in Harry Potter. He called it every time. Before most people were even paying attention. Gary's memoir is waiting from prison to YouTube on Amazon and it's a great degree. His channel is Nerdrotic. Friday night tights goes live every Friday. For Ben Frontier, is where he covers ancient mysteries, UAPs, and y-files kind of stuff. It's probably better than the y-files. The links are down below. Until next time, be safe. Be kind. Another you. I appreciate it. There's a little mumbling. Do another take. Leave it in. I'm not a mom. As well as me. So I'm saying it like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth. My friends. And it never ends. I know it never ends. I feel the crack at it. I got stuck inside my old home with MK Ultra. I'll be in only two hours. Do you stand, look you've refaped the moon landing alone? On a film set, I wear the shadow people there. There's well-eating us just for the smiling man. I'm told, and his name was Cole. I can't believe I'm dancing with the fidget. Have no fissures. Thursday, next week, day, day, two. And when I have nothing, I'll do the night. All I ever wanted was to just see the truth. So the one falls on your feet all through the line. The mouth, man, side and side. The solar storms still come together to see the city underground. Mysterious number, stations, planets are phoned to. Rockets stockade, and what the dark watchers found. We're in a simulation, don't you worry though. The black night's at a light, it told me so. Have no fissures. Thursday, next week, day, two. Have no fissures. Have no fissures. Have no fissures. And when I have [Music] Yeah, girl, they love to dance, I love to dance too Because she is a camel, we can't love to dance When the feeling is right on the way, we're in time Yeah, girl, they love to dance, I love to dance (upbeat music)