Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #777: Elaine Chase

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Elaine Chase who has held many jobs with Magic over the years, including working in R&D, brand, and esports.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. So, we have another interview for you today. Elaine Chase is here, and Elaine has done a little of everything at Wizard. So, we're going to walk through all the stuff she's done. She's done lots of different things. And also, so, Elaine, hello? Hello. Hi, Mark. Hi, listeners. Okay, so I'm going to ask you the question I've been asking everybody when we start here is how did you learn to play Magic? Okay, so it was the summer before my senior year in college, which was 1994.

And I had a job, a summer job, like most people do. And I was the lifeguard at a holiday inn for the indoor pool weekday shift. And the thing to know about this holiday inn weekday is that it was a business clientele mostly in the weekdays. So like literally I would sit there from 10 in the morning till 5 at night and like maybe one person came into the pool like once. So I sat there and stared at an empty indoor pool for like 40 hours a week. And I was bored out of my mind. So I got a copy of Games Magazine. And in this issue of Games Magazine, which was probably like the, I don't know, May, June, June, you know, 1994 edition. There was a review of this game called Magic the Gathering

and an ad and an editorial, like an article about it. And it was just, it looked really interesting. And so my, my, my boyfriend at the time, now, now my husband of 20 years, we just had our anniversary very recently. Congratulations. Thank you. So we he looked at it and we looked at it and it's like we played a lot of games. We played a lot of card games and I was like, hey, this looks really interesting. Like this looks kind of cool. I wonder what we should do. So I come home from work the next

day and he just hands me, he hands me one of those starter decks and just hands it to me and says, open it up, pull out the rulebook and the rulebook was you know like this six point font like you know 100 page rulebook he's like read this whole thing cover to cover and don't ask me any questions because i have no idea and then we'll try and that's how we learned how to play magic just the two of us reading out of

a revised edition starter deck rule book. And we were just hooked, like, instantly. Like, we just fell in love with it instantly. Okay. So the first time I think we met was, in fact, this was caught on tape, nonetheless, is you were in line for the first Pro Tour, and I was doing the video for it. So I was walking down the line interviewing people and i interviewed you in line and that actually is in that there's a tape we made for the very first pro tour and me interviewing you is for the two seconds whatever it is in that

tape yes that is there it is in that tape it's you and me we were much younger then but that's the first time i i think i ever you, I believe. I think we might have met at maybe Origins 95. We might have met then. That was possible. Because that was February 96. So there's a chance that we met at Origins 95, or at least I saw you and knew who you were. It was funny, by the way. Funny story from that Origins.

Richard was there, and he was signing things. And so we were in line to get richard to sign some stuff richard garfield by the way for those that don't know who you mean oh sorry richard garfield um richard garfield was there he was signing some things um and he was there and there were like some artists that were signing things uh and so there's like this kid in front of us and like he had just been going to all the artists being like what do you draw and like you know pull that card out of his you know box you know because there weren't that many cards at that time he was like oh well this one okay sign this one then and he went up to Richard

and he goes so so what cards did you do and Richard just looks at him and blinks and goes all of them and he keeps like scratching his head and he starts flipping through his cards and he like what all of them he's like yeah all of them he's just flipping through his cards and he's like, what, all of them? He's like, yeah, all of them. He's flipping through his cards again and he's like, did you do the back? He's like, no. And so finally, like, Richard's just having a ball and I'm like, I just giddy on this kid and I lean forward and I'm like,

it's Richard Garfield, he designed the whole game and the kid's like, oh. Um, and he just reached out and shook his hand and then, like, walked away. Oh, um, and he just reached out and shook his hand and then like walked away. Okay. So you came to the first Pro Tour. Yes.

Um, and now with that, so for those that don't know, New York had a pretty big scene back in the, back in the day. It was one of the first cities that actually had regular tournament play, you know, cause if you go back to 94, that wasn't something that happened a lot across the country. And then, okay, so how did you get from playing the first Pro Tour to coming to work at Wizards? How did that happen?

Yeah, so I played a lot. And I played in two Pro Tours, including the first one, which was awesome. But my problem with playing in New York is that, as you said, it was a really hotbed for competitive magic play. Like so many future Hall of Famers came out of the New York area and, you know, associate areas like people come down from Boston, right? New people come up from, you know, Pennsylvania. So the competition was really, really hard.

And I was a good player, but like, I'm not, you know, nowhere near Hall of Fame material or even winning a pro tour material. So most of my play would be like, oh, I go like 4-0 and then I play against John Finkel and lose. And then I play against Steve OMS and lose. Right. Like that was my life. Right. Like just, you know, I kept hitting like I was in that, you know, constantly, you know, sometimes I hit top eight. But, you know, mostly in that 9-16 player because the competition was so, so tough. you know mostly in that 9 to 16 player um because the competition was so so tough um so one day Brian David Marshall um who who ran the events he said to me like you know Elaine you'd make a lot more money if you helped me run these things instead of playing in them and I looked at him and I said god damn you Brian because he was totally right um and so uh so I started working

um for Gray Matter um which was a kind of a sister company to Neutral Ground that ran all those tournaments. And my husband did, too. So I became a high-level judge. I was a level three judge. And, you know, he helped organize. And so we would run all these events. all these events um and so then uh in like january um 90 sorry december like 98 um uh the guy who certified me for my level three um he got a judge level three of your judging just yeah level three judging yeah um thank you for for telling me to pull things out my level three judge um uh jeff

donae um he uh he got his job at wizards in the organized play team um and i contacted him like hey congratulations um and uh you know what's happening with this other guy's job um who is jason carl who previously had been the the manager of like the dci um and he had moved into a job in dnd r&d um and so his job was open too. I'm like, so what do you do with Jason's job? And he's like, send me send me a resume. I was like, okay. So I was I was substitute teaching at the time I have a degree in elementary education. And I was just, you know, just, you know, a couple years out of college. So I was still doing my substitute rotation. And so like this job came up and like, we drove across the country with everything we owned in a U-Haul on the back of a car in January and got stuck in snow twice and came out.

And that was that was 21 years ago. OK, so the first job you had was working for the DCI. Yes. Yeah. So I so I was the DCI tournament manager. So I did things like the floor rules. So like I wrote like the definition of shuffling, like what that meant, like, you know, all those different things. And then the most fun part of that job, though, was I also investigated cheaters and cheaters and like people who did fraud for tournaments.

In fact, Mark, if you remember, I worked very closely with your wife, Laura, who also happened to be there at the time. And she would feed me like these sketchy tournaments. Like she'd be like, hey, Lane, I don't think this one looks right and she'd like you know feed over this tournament and like i give him a call and yeah okay so um you worked you worked in in events in the dci okay but then you moved to another department what department did you move to i moved to r&d and in fact i sat right kind of next to you, like diagonal across in the pit, like right across the same table from you. Yeah, you might be the only person that worked with both Laura and me at the company. Is that true?

I mean, I worked with both. I mean, we both were at the company, but we were in different sections. Am I the only one who actually worked directly with both of you? Charlie. Charlie Catino might be the other person because he ran events for a little while. Charlie probably did, too. But I literally sat like next to both of you. Yes, yes, you did.

Not a lot of people can say that. So, okay. So in R&D, what did you do in R&D? Okay. So I did a whole lot of stuff in R&D. So I did magic development. I was a magic developer. So I developed sets from Odyssey through 8th edition, I want to say.

So, like, I did Kamigawa, and I did Mirrodin, and Legions, and, like, a whole bunch of other stuff. I'm just rattling off some random set names. I was the R&D rep on Magic Online, like, for the first, like, launch, like, way, way back when. I worked on, like, the Xbox Battlegrounds game. Like, I was the R&D rep on that. I was on the Xbox Battlegrounds game. I was the R&D rep on that. I was in the rules committee,

so I actually helped design phasing. That was one of my claims to fame. Sorry, not phasing. Morph. Damn it. Morph. Morph. Sorry. Rules committee. We designed Morph. I remember. Yeah, that was probably the biggest

mechanic I had. We designed Morph because we were revising the rules to Illusionary Mask. And Camouflage. That's what happened. Right, and Camouflage. Yeah, and Camouflage. And we're like, okay, we're revising this. And we're like, hey, you know, you can make a whole mechanic out of this. So we did Morph.

And then I was on the Beginner Games Council um, because I was also, um, lead on a whole bunch of licensed trading card games. So, um, I did a whole bunch of magic work, but I also did, I did maybe more work, um, outside of magic, um, doing things like I was the lead developer for the Harry Potter trading card game and the Neopets trading card game. Um, and there's a European football game and there's a whole bunch a whole bunch of like cartoon network kids shows that we did. So there was just the Simpsons, right? Like there was just this huge number of licensed trading card games at the time. And I led or participated in most of them.

Okay. Can you, can you, I can think of one team that we were both on together. We were both on the Neopets team. Oh, we were on the Neopets design team. We made this awesome, awesome game, and then they just threw it away and made something else. Threw it away. We never used it. We never used it. It was this amazing game,

and it had all these little puzzles in it and everything. It was so super cool. And then we completely threw it away and went with a more traditional TCG battle game, which was still fun and good, but we had a completely other game. So what magic team were you and I together? We were on Simpsons also.

All I did for the Simpsons was I ordered the names of the creature types to be the funniest they could be. That's what I did for Simpsons. Oh, yeah, okay. That's fair. That is all I did on the Simpsons. It's funnier if it's Bratz before, you know. Was there another team?

Was there another game that we were on? No, I mean, I'm talking about Magic. What Magic team were we on together? What Magic team were we on together? I can remember one team we were on together. It wasn't Kamigawa. It was. Champions of Kamigawa Development.

It was like round four of Kamigawa Development, wasn't it? All I know is I wasn't on the design team of any of the Kamigawa sets, but I was on the development team for Champions of Kamigawa. And in that, I made Splice. Richard and I made Splice and the flip cards. That was the one where you weren't on design, because that was weird. Because that was one of the only sets that I was actually in on design for cards and you weren't on design because that was weird because that was one of the only sets that i was actually in on design for and you weren't in on design i didn't the whole block i didn't do design yeah so the the thing about kamigawa is um if you

remember i'm sure you do we had to read we redesigned it like i don't know four or five times like completely like redesigned the whole set like we kept designing it and being like this isn't working and we throw it away and like whole set. Like, we kept designing it and being like, this isn't working, and we'd throw it away and, like, start over again, and then we'd design it again and then, like, throw that away and start over again. Do you remember? I had a thing that I kept saying.

Do you remember the thing I kept saying through the whole? I had, like, a thing that mattered to me during the whole development, which is, what is this set about? Is it about a war? What is it about? And then, like, I i kept and then at some point we like it's about legends okay well it's about legends and we'll do this this this you know so yep i remember i remember two specific things about kamigawa development um one is we we

commandeered a meeting room and we put like the names of every legend on index cards and we like taped them all up to the wall and like how they were related to each other. Like who was related to other than who wasn't. That was a big wall and stuff kept moving. And at the end, I don't think it actually even mattered very much. But then the other thing is the thing I'm probably most proud of working on in Magic from a card standpoint was the whole development team. So you were there and I was there. So we locked ourselves in the danger room, which was a meeting room right offside the pit,

which actually used to be Richard Garfield's old office. But we locked ourselves in the room. Cause we're like, the set is like, it really needs like some oomph. And we just, the development team designed the dragon cycle. Like we just locked ourselves in a room for a day.

I remember that. Designed all the dragons. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted you to attack with them. I think the original design was like, you wanted you to attack with them. Yeah. I think the original design was like,

you could tap to do some effect and I'm like, you could attack with this giant thing or tap and do something. Like, what? What's that?

So, I remember that. But here's a real quick story. You mentioned the danger room just for fun behind the scenes. The history of the danger room is they gave Richard Garfield an office. But he didn't want an office. He wanted to sit in the pit.

He didn't want an office. But they said that he deserved an office, so he turned it into this meeting room that wasn't on the grid, so no one could schedule it. So we tended to use it, because you always knew you could use it. And a lot of playtesting went on there and stuff.

And it was right next to where we were all sitting, so it was super convenient. It was small, though. It only fit like four people um it was tiny and now every time we've moved we've had a new danger room the current danger room is one of those tiny little glass rooms and the third floor anyway is it really yeah the danger room has fallen in its time if it's two people it's a little tiny glass thing if it's two people the danger room has fallen it's not what it once was okay i. I was actually, sorry, I can take all the time with random stories. I was actually in the danger room when we

had that really big earthquake. Remember that really big earthquake that hit? Yeah, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, so we had a really, it was like a seven point something earthquake that hit in, I don't remember when it was, 2000 maybe, 2001. Yeah, but in the old building. What? In the old building. Yeah? In the old building.

Yeah, in the old building. Yeah. And I was in the danger room for some meeting. Maybe it was a comic-con meeting. I don't remember. And I just remember, like, hearing this, like, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. And it would, like, get faster and louder. And the first thought that came into my head was that Skaff must be running down the hallway.

And I'm like, why is Skaff running down the hallway? And then I realized, no, no, that's bigger than Scaf. And it was just, it was the earthquake, right? And so, like, you know, we're looking out the little door. You know, I braced myself in the doorway like I'd been taught on the East Coast for, you know, earthquakes that I had never been in. And I didn't realize until afterwards that actually that wasn't a real doorway. It was just one of those, like, fake, of those fake meeting room prop-up doorways. So that was actually not very safe at all.

And by the way, if you want to hear more from Scaf, I did an interview with Scaf. You guys can listen to Scaf Elias, one of the original play tefters, started the pro tour and did all sorts of stuff. Okay, so you were at R&D for a while. But wait, you moved on from R&D. Where'd you go next?

A long, long time ago. So because I did all that work on those licensed trading card games um i i had already had built up a whole lot of relationships with all of the business folks on the licensor sides right so like i was the person who was maintaining most of the relationships like with the folks at like wb for harry potter and like at neopets office and like at you know at, at the Simpsons office. Um, and so, um, an opportunity came up for me to go over into the brand team, um, as an associate brand manager, um, for the licensed trading card games. Uh, and it was, um, I'll admit it was super scary. Um, and it was a really hard choice because I, at the time I was like,

I was a lead, like I was a lead developer in all these products. And so I took this lead job in R&D to kind of take a step sideways and backwards into an associate brand manager position. And for those of you who aren't really in the corporate world, just so you know, like kind of the levels of like brand management and other roles, like you start like assistant is the low level. You're like assistant and then associate. And then you're like a normal brand manager right and then you're senior brand manager so it was a low level brand job um and not magic originally yeah yeah come coming from a lead in um in r&d um and uh it was the best career move i ever made um because i mean r&d was the best job for the time in my career and the time in my life that I've ever had. You're playing games all day and you're making magic, which I loved and has become such an important part of my life.

It was amazing. But I really wanted to get a bigger scope of the business. You can't just stay in R&D for years on end. Who would do that? What, like you? You could do that. But I didn't do that.'s not for me I moved around um so I moved into brands so I did um so I I was the brand so I moved I moved very quickly up that

ladder though by the way um so I went from associate to brand manager within like a year and then to senior brand manager um like within another like six months or something um but I started running brand for all the license games um And then, as I said, very quickly moved into taking over the Magic brand. And I did Magic brand for well over a decade, all the way up through I was vice president of global brand strategy and marketing for a little while. So what kind of stuff does a brand manager do? So the audience might not know what that means. Yeah, so the brand folks were generally responsible for, I'll just put in quotes, like the business of magic, right? So it was everything from planning out like, you know, kind of, you know, long term strategic planning to, you know, what actual SKUs are we selling? SKUs is the term um like the actual individual products

um like what's the configuration of the products um and i don't mean like set like not cards like that's rnd's job but this at the time um it was really things like like like one of the first innovations i brought into the brand team um was uh dual decks by the way um because um before dual decks um wizard had kind of stopped doing anything that wasn't a normal booster pack or like a starter deck right um like there was a couple things we had tried before like like the anthologies collection and like a couple little things like that but we had kind of gotten off of that um and so um one of the things i wanted to do was like was try to figure out like what are other ways we could package together magic cards in ways that are fun and exciting and, like, let people play out of the box and, you know, let them really enjoy things. So, like, the elves versus goblins duel decks, like, that idea, like, that was one of the things that I brought in on that.

And then shortly after that, it was, like, the, now I'm losing the name of it, the 15 card edition with the dragons. From the vault? Yeah, from the vault. And like from the vault, right? So like I didn't design the decks or like what went into it, but the idea of like, how do we configure these products?

Like that was one of the main things that the brand team did. And so it was, what was the configuration of these products? And then how much do they cost? And like, how many do we print? And then how do we market them, right? Like, how do we tell people about them? Like, what's the configuration of these products? And then how much do they cost? And, like, how many do we print? And then how do we market them, right? Like, how do we tell people about them?

Like, what's the preview campaign? Like, how do we bring it to market? So that's the main job of the brand manager. So, by the way, very recently I interviewed Rachel Agnes, who is the current Magic brand manager. Yes. And so, anyway, if you want, I mean, they work for the job at different times, but you get sort of sense of different people.

Rachel's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So, but being brand manager, Magic, was it enough? You had to go on to do yet a different job. So what was your next job? I did. Okay.

So, so in fall 2018, the beta of Magic the Gathering Arena came out. And it did way better than we thought it was going to, quicker than we thought it was going to. Like we had been working, you have to understand, we had been working on this next version of digital magic for like a really long time. A long time. It was a long, long time. A long time. It was a long, long time. And we had finally broken through.

A big reason why we broke through was we got in kind of the right people to do the job really well. And so we brought it into beta. And we had always known that competitive play was going to be a really big part of what Arena had to offer. Because competitive play had been part of a kind of heart of Magic, you know, way, way, way back, right? Way back since, you know, the first Pro Tour was in 96, and even before then. So we always knew that was going to be one, that going into esports and, you know, taking Mag, competitive play, making the leap into bringing that into the digital space was something we always intended for MTG Arena. And we expected to do it when the game was out in full and set up a really nice transition and pull it in.

But the beta did way better than we expected, way quicker than we expected. And we decided that we should capitalize on the momentum that we were getting and we should really push forward quicker than our original plans were. And so in October 2018, I formed the esports team, which the core of the esports team was really the previous organized play team. We brought forward everybody who had spent so many years becoming experts in Magic competitive play

and really industry-leading terms of, you know, competitive gaming. And set out to, you know, hire a bunch of people in from the digital gaming space and really create a robust esports program. So we started the team in October 2018 with the charter of, okay, you're going to announce the program at the Game Awards in December, on December 6th. And then the first big event is going to be at PAX East in Boston on March 28th. That was the timeline. So the audience understands. The original plan was like, we'd have a year or so to flesh things out and figure it out.

And then it's like, oh, did we say a year and a half we meant a couple months we meant six months yeah yeah we've had six months do it now do it now i was like oh okay all right um so that was and so and and i had to do it with um like i was like i had to hire 10 people right like so like i said like we had the you know that that team um but then i had like 10 headcount to open to bring people in. And it was pretty crazy. I didn't sleep very much. And the team worked so hard, really. They just they worked hard. It's such an amazing job. And so I ran the esports program since, you know, from October 2018, program um uh since you know from october 2018 um until just recently um and i have to say i am so proud of that team for pulling together so quickly and on such short notice um like really we were

just running and like kind of laying floor if you're running it um and i mean that that the consumers could could tell right they're like we don't have all the answers we want and it's like no we don't have the answers that you want um we'll get them to you before before the events actually happen um or before you need them but it's not on the timeline they were used to because the players were really used to you know knowing like a full year in advance like what the full schedule is and like how everything's going to work and and um we just didn't have that luxury of time um so um did a really amazing job um and really led up to um that last worlds that we just had earlier this year in Hawaii, which I think hands down was, I really think it was the best Magic competitive event that we've ever run.

Like, it was just spectacular. The quality of the competition, the quality of the broadcast, the ability for people to watch and cheer, the fact that we had a live audience for it um it was uh it was it was a really spectacular and special show okay so paulo told me i was like go ahead paulo told you sorry i was gonna say paulo told me afterwards he was like you know elaine playing this game a long time um i've never felt like you know like a superstar like as much as i did for the entire like lead up and, you know, conclusion of this tournament. Like it's just, it was, it was a different,

it was a different level and a different kind of elevation. Um, and it was really great. Um, and, uh, and then of course, um, very shortly thereafter, um, COVID hit. Um, and so I spent, um, you know, March through June, um, just, you know, shutting events down around the world. And that was really super painful. It was really sad. So before we move on, do you have any fun stories from your time of running esports? Oh, I have a lot of fun stories. I will say that Paolo, actually, he owes me um a a uh a shave ice um one of the early nights um in the in the weekend um i i'm out um for some shave ice at the end of the night um and i get in line at you know the shave ice place and in front of me there's happens to be um like like a bunch of magic

players were there so like andre was there um and paulo was there and i think i think it was matt nass was there um and i was like oh hey i'll I'll pay for your guys' shave ice it's fine I'll put it on the Wizards cart and Paolo was like what I paid for mine okay he's like well that's okay Elaine though right he's like if I win this thing like I'll owe you a shave ice I'm like oh okay so he won and I'm like hey Paolo you owe me a shave ice. And I'm like, oh, oh, okay. So he's like, hey, Paolo, you owe me a shave ice. He's like, that I do. So at some point, I'm going to need to contrive for Paolo and I to get some competition in Hawaii so that he can pay me back.

Okay. Okay, so I'm not too far from work here. So we're not done yet with your jobs. No. You have, uh. I'm not too far from work here. So we're not done yet with your jobs. No. See, I started 25 years ago. I'm like, what have I done? Yeah, that one thing. That's what I've done.

You keep changing it up. Okay, so esports was not enough. So you move on. So what are you doing now? Yeah, so I just started a brand new thing. It's way too early to really talk much about it um but i am the new head of studio um for a new wizards studio um so uh so what that means is i mean right now it's the studio is one um it's me um actually it's one and a half because i got um uh one of our wonderful art directors who works on dnd um emmy tangy she came in for um

she's doing a swap opportunity with me for like halftime as an art director to help me get started. So I've got one and a half people in the studio right now. And we're setting out to make some kids games for kids six to 12, which is exciting because that goes to my roots a little bit back to when I was at R&D

and when I was running all of those licensed, mostly kids games and, you know, my elementary education degree and things like that. So it feels really nice. Kind of like how when I took over esports, it made me feel like I was kind of coming home to my roots in organized play. Starting at the kids studio is making me kind of come back to my next set of roots, which is doing kids games. I know. So it all comes full circle to... It really does. So to wrap up here,

so you have worked in events. You've worked in R&D. You've worked on brand. You've worked on eSports. Now you're working on a brand new thing with kids games. When was your 20th year? You just hit your 20th year last year? Yeah, I'm at 21 and a half now.

21 and a half. Okay. Youngin'. Youngin'. So what is your, I just sort of a final takeaway from all your time at Wizards and working on Magic. What is your thoughts to wrap up? What is your thoughts to wrap up? So my thoughts are that, to me, Wizards is a really special place. It is a place that is filled with people who are the most passionate and intelligent and good-natured people who really are motivated only by making the best possible experiences for our players, whether it's Magic or D&D or Duel Masters or any of the other things that we've worked on.

Just the fact that I'm surrounded by everyone virtually now, but mostly in person for the last 21 years, who really care about making awesome experiences and game experiences that much. It's inspiring. And it's why I've been here for so long. And I don't really see myself, you know, I'm not looking to go anywhere else. It's all it's also special because, like I said, my husband worked at Wizards for 16 years before he became a stay-at-home dad. My daughter went through the daycare, just like your kids did. And so we spent the first five years of her life driving together as a family into the office space, right? Driving off the daycare, coming back together. And so really having you know, having, having this full family experience, it's, it's, you know,

magic and wizards has just been so much a part of my life. Well, it's, I've, it's been great working with you all this time. I mean, not that we're stopping or anything, but it's been great working with you all this time. And it's kind of fun. One of the things that's been a real joy for me doing these interviews is I get to just reminisce with people that, you know, from, you know, all through the history of, of working at wizards. So. all through the history of working at Wizard. In one of your podcasts, do you ever talk about the Mad Farmer in any of your podcasts? I have. I have.

I know who the Mad Farmer is, by the way. And it's not one person. It's multiple people. Really? Yes. Yes. So for those who don't know, I have talked about this in my podcast, but real quickly for those who don't know, there was a series of things in R&D where people would do crazy things. One, Henry's desk got dressed up with hay bales. Mine got dressed up with all these eggs.

There's one with all these goldfish, like bowls of goldfish. And for years we've talked about the mad farmer because it was all farm-related things, and I recently learned, so Brian Schneider, I did an interview with Brian Schneider. He owned up to doing one of them. I talked with Mike Donais. He owned up to doing one of them,

and we think Selinker did the third one, so you have three different people. I always expected Selinker, but yeah, okay, all right. So anyway, for different people. I mean, I always expected Selinker. But yeah, okay. All right. So anyway, for those, by the way, whoever's been following me, I've talked with Matt Farmer in my articles,

on podcasts. So anyway, this is evolution. But the funniest thing was I had Brian Schneider on. He admitted to doing one of them on the podcast. So anyway, so. That's amazing. Yes. Peter, man.

All right. But anyway, all the fun. See, guys yes you should listen to my interviews all sorts of fun things that can happen so anyway I I am now at work so we all know that means means this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic so thank you Elaine for joining us thank you for having me Mark I really appreciate it it was super fun to reminisce and everybody else I will see you next time bye-bye