So... Alright - Back in the Saddle

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Geoff is back and finally able to talk about what’s been going on behind the scenes these last few months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So, we are back. Back in the saddle as it were. I am sorry for the delay. It I had. Hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to have one, but unfortunately, even with a lot of the rights transfers and everything happening fairly reasonably and quickly, some of the the back end stuff just took a little bit longer to to get sorted out.

So I just I I owned so all right for a couple of weeks there, but I just didn't have access to so all right. But now I do. And so here we are back. So my sincerest apologies for that break. But I use the time well, I use the time to help spin up the regulation podcast and get that off the ground. And it's fucking humming right now and overwhelmed by all the support from the regulation listeners and the comment leavers and all.

Maybe all of you, maybe some of you. I recognize that these could be two distinct audiences and I shouldn't assume that they're not. Anyway, my name is Jeff and I previously did this podcast. So all right. A sort of a shallow dive into rabbit holes and ramblings and musings under the umbrella of the Rooster Teeth production company, which has since closed, I'm sure unless you were living under a rock,

you know it's gone out of business. It's closed down. Warner Brothers saw fit to turn the company off. Can't say that I, heartbroken that it happened, but I can't say that I'm surprised. And you know, I've talked about it a little bit in the previous iteration of this podcast. I say previous iteration.

I'm going to separate things. I think we're just going to go with like volume one will be so all right. The Rooster Teeth years volume two will be the independent self owned years going forward, I guess, until who knows until who knows. Maybe there'll be a volume three someday. Maybe there'll be a volume 35. I have no idea. And I don't know that there'll be a volume 35. I have no idea.

And I don't know that there'll be any difference in the podcast between the Rooster Teeth years and the non Rooster Teeth years, but it just seems like a good place to draw a line in the sand and say things of things have fundamentally changed behind the scenes. And so we should acknowledge that in front of the camera as well. And by camera, I guess I just mean microphone because none of this is filmed. Anyway, I have, I've talked about it a little bit in the past, how I felt about Rooster Teeth ending.

And actually I mostly talked about how I didn't think I'd be able to talk about it for a while. There was a lot going on behind the scenes at the exact same time. And I have to be honest with you guys, I was I was holding some of it close to the vest. I didn't want to jinx myself. I had a lot happening all at once. It was.

Albert just growled, I guess he agrees it was a stressful time for for him as well, but stressful in ways that you may not know, because I kind of didn't want to. I didn't want to blow my own shit up. And so let me talk a little bit about what how this whole thing transpired. We found out that Rooster Teeth was going to close down. I don't remember when I found out about it right around the time you did, honestly. And. A lot of stuff happened all at once. That seems like if you if you look at it from a distance, it's it might seem like desperation

and reactionary moves, but it was it was all very precise, at least on my attempt was to be very precise. I've talked a lot about how I want to move to Michigan in the future. And let me stop right here and say that I have not moved to Michigan. That is not what happened. But a lot of things would have to happen for me to leave Texas someday. The main things that are keeping me in Texas right now were my daughter. My company.

And my wife's business. Now, my daughter just graduated from high school about a week ago and is leaving, spreading her wings, and flying off to a major city to go to an incredibly, incredibly prestigious college on an art degree scholarship. I couldn't be more proud of her. I would love to brag about exactly what she's doing

and where she's going, but that's her story to tell. And I'm not trying to dox my kiddo, other than to say that, you know, Millie's leaving, she's leaving Austin. And God, I couldn't be more proud of her and more excited for her. I remember, I've been so, I'm so heartbroken and sad for this emptiness day, because I'm'm you know, she's my whole world, you

know, and I'm going to miss her in ways that I don't fully understand yet. I think it's certainly what I'm told by other parents and I trust them. But I'm just so like it was such a liberating experience when I left home and joined the army and started to to really kind of come into my own as a human being as an adult and kind of get to Run down the path of the adventure of building

myself into a person and I just like it was like the greatest it's been the greatest ride You know and the greatest adventure and the greatest journey and I'm just so greatest ride, you know, and the greatest adventure and the greatest journey. And I'm just so fucking excited for her to get to do that. And my excitement for her eclipses, at least currently, eclipses any fear or sadness on my end. I just I'm so jazzed for her. But anyway, that was that was one of the things that was holding me back.

And. So that's no longer an impediment. And then Rooster Teeth was the other was another big thing. And Rooster Teeth went out of business. And so that impediment went away, too. And suddenly, you know, we were we're left in Austin with my wife's business, which is great and thriving, and she's in no hurry to. I mean, she she loves what she does, and I imagine she'll do it for a very long time. But, you know, there's been some talk of maybe someday

like splitting time between like Michigan and Austin or whatever. Anyway, I don't know. I don't know. I just know that the the walls were starting to to come down. And one of the the big impediments is the home that I owned. You know, I'm tied to a mortgage and the housing market's been up and it's been up, up, up, up, up. And now it's down. And it's it's not a foregone conclusion that if you just decided to sell your house that you would be able to or even get enough money to make it worth your while in twenty twenty four. You know, this is not twenty twenty two. So when I found out Roots Teeth was closing.

So when I found out Rooseteeth was closing, the day after I found out, I called my real estate agent and I just asked him what the market looked like. And he said, it's a little grim. It's become completely seasonal and it's difficult. And he said, you've got a great house. It's the guy that helped me buy it. And he said, I'm sure you could sell it, but you'd have to be pretty precise with how you did it. And I said, OK, well, when does the market

open? And he said it starts in about three weeks and it closes in mid-June. It's seasonal right now. Then you're going to go into this dead period through the summer. And then there'll be a little boost again in like September, October, but not much. And I was like, oh, so what would I have to do to get ready to put my house in the market in in three weeks is when the market was like right around Easter is is when the season began. And he so he came over and he said, you have a lovely home. I love all your furniture. I love all of the paintings on the walls. I love all the everything about it that makes you get rid of all of it. You have to get rid of half of everything you see. You think of this as a staged home

that nobody lives in. And I said, great, should we move out? Should we go? Because the idea was that we would sell this home, potentially sell this home, not to leave Austin, right? I'm not trying to leave Austin, but I'm just trying to continue to reduce the impediments to me leaving Austin someday. Like if I decided to move to Michigan or even fuck, I keep talking about Michigan like it's a foregone conclusion. It's not I could move anywhere. We could move to fucking Key West if we wanted to. We could move to Omaha, Nebraska.

I don't know. I could also never leave Austin and stay here for the rest of my life because I fucking love this town. But. The idea was that. If I didn't have to worry about, like, say, we find the perfect house in Michigan or circumstances change or some opportunity comes up that would require us to move,

we would then have to go through the process of trying to list, prepare and list and sell a house, and that would add a level of stress that I just don't want to go through. And so I thought, what if we just sell the fucking house now, if possible, and then just rent a house for a while and just kind of see what happens. You know, I mean, it's an uncertain period. My company just ended. I'm spinning up a new company. It's looking good, looking real good. But who knows what the future is going to bring. You know, having a little bit of flexibility is not a bad thing. Reducing debt is not a bad thing and bills.

And so he was like, well, anyway, if you want to hit the market, you got three weeks to get this house in shape. That meant getting my foundation fixed. That meant fixing every doing like every honeydew thing around the house that I had been putting off for a million years. It also meant going through and getting rid of, like I said, half of our stuff. Right. A ramble in there.

I said, should we move out? Should we just go rent a house now, move all of our stuff out, and then we can stage it and it'll be easy peasy? And he goes, absolutely not. I can't recommend any of my clients do that right now. Market's tough. I think we're gonna sell your house.

But you know, the worst case scenario is you go and sign up a year or a two year lease down the road somewhere and then this house sits on the market for a year and suddenly you're paying double. You know you're paying a rent and a mortgage. You're fucked and I didn't want that. So he said it's going to be painful and obnoxious and annoying, but hopefully it won't be that way for very long. I recommend you live in the house while we show it

First time doing that. Holy shit We'll get to that. So companies go that a business we're Scrambling to try to figure out what to do with the final month or two. There is you know, there's this idea You know that they're being very cool with us and they're saying listen We really only have to produce the content that has ads sold for it. If you guys are not are just, you know, feeling like you just got kicked in the dick, we understand. But I think everybody in the company, at least everybody in the company that I spoke to, which is just about everybody in the company,

really just wanted to end Rooster Teeth strong. And so we wanted to put out content till the last day. You know, I was recording episodes of So Alright that are probably now never going to come out because they were recorded in that weird gray period. And like, I know, like, you know more about my future now than I did then. And it's just, it's all weird. So I think I'm probably just going to eat all those episodes and start from scratch here. But it was just was such a wild time. But so we were trying to spin, spin Rooster Teeth down strong by putting out good content, wrapping up series,

wrapping up loose threads, really like doing the goodbye streams, all those things that we could do while also, you know, trying to lay the groundwork to prepare for the new business at the same time. So kind of doing, you know, double, double work, double effort. Probably not the best time personally to decide to sell a house and put it on the market. So so we did we make the decision we're going to try to hit this three weeks this window, we're going to try to get the house ready in three weeks. That meant

the storage shed at the same time, by the way, you know, I have that storage facility we always talk about it. It went up in price again, like to the point where it was like over four hundred dollars a month suddenly after it was more than double what we started to pay for it. So we're like, we got to get rid of that. And so I went through everything I owned and just. Got like through waves of like, get rid of this, get rid of this, save this, get rid of this, do another wave. You know what? Get rid of like, get rid of this, get rid of this,

save this, get rid of this, do another wave. You know what? Get rid of this, get rid of this and just paring down and cleansing and reducing. And it was awesome. It was exhausting going from room to room in my house. You don't realize how much stuff you accumulate, but also how good it feels to get rid of stuff,

to unburden yourself of all of these accumulations, and also to really get an inventory of what you actually own and need. And so I just went through, Emily and I both, just like, God, she worked so hard, guys, she worked so fucking hard from the day this started until, I mean, she's a hard worker anyway,

but man, she's been such a champion. And so we just did our best to get the house ready, get the foundation fixed, get the house repainted, get all the little things fixed here and there. And then also get rid of all of our shit and make it look like we don't live in a house, which was an incredible undertaking. It really was.

And I knew this was gonna happen, but by the time we got there, we got the house looking immaculate, looking perfect, looking brand new. We just like, we're busting our asses. So think of those early days when we're doing the goodbye streams and everybody's crying and all that.

I was going home and moving furniture and mopping and like repainting like window sills and just like fixing shit. And we were like power washing and doing all this stuff, going through the storage unit and just like, just getting rid of shit left and right, consolidating, consolidating. We get to the point where the house

is gonna go on the market. And then at that point, the house becomes like a, it becomes pristine, it becomes this capsule that you almost can't touch, right? So we put it on the market. Luckily, it was only on the market for a few days before it sold, but it was this period where you would just be sitting at home,

not wanting to touch anything in your home, and the real estate agent would say, hey, somebody's gonna come by the house in 30 minutes, can you clear out? And then you have to like grab Albert, who's just a poor little puppy and throw them in the car and then go to like a park or something and then play with him for like an hour. And then you're on the way home. And then the real estate agent says, Hey, that showing went well, but somebody else wants to come by like in 45 minutes. So be sure you're not home in 45 minutes. And you're like, Oh, you

go, you go home just enough to like take a piss and then give the dogs some water and then go right back out again. You know, and I was like, I did that for a while and it was surreal and exhausting and it was super uncomfortable and I never felt settled. And the poor dog and I spent so much of our lives in, in parks or driving around in neighborhoods in the air conditioning, listening to talk radio. It was kind of a nightmare. And if you've ever had to do it, I was talking about with Andrew,

he had to do it when he was a kid and he had even like more like just terrible stories of what they went through. Just, it's not terrible. It's just uncomfortable and it's just obnoxious. And you just don't feel comfortable in your own home, but also you see your home at its absolute most gorgeous And you're like why the fuck am I selling this it looks beautiful

You know I know and so it's like it does a weird number in your head But like we were like sleeping on top of the covers So that you could smooth the blankets out in the morning and make it look pristine and perfect and you like use a dish Immediately wash it or more realistically don't use dish, stop pretty much stop cooking altogether. And then you just live in this like pure discomfort. Did that. And basically, fortunately, somebody after a little bit put an offer on the house. And we went into I don't want to go into the weeds here on how

what it takes to sell or buy a house. Most of you probably understand this, but talked to the real estate agent and I said, can I move, now can we move out? And he goes, let's wait till the option period is over. The option period lasts about a week. Typically, it's when they come in and they have all of their inspectors tear the house apart and look for any, you know, problems or issues or anything that could arise, any imperfections, anything that needs to be fixed. And then they come back to you and they say, we found these like seven things that fucking suck about this house. We want you to fix it or lower the price of the house

a little bit or whatever, and you go through this negotiation period. And then if you both come out of that option period, at that option period, they can walk away for next to nothing, right? After that option period, they're locked in. And then you're just sitting and waiting to close. And the close is typically a month.

In my case, it was two months, unfortunately. So he was like, once you get past the option phase and we're in the contract phase, I think it's probably safe. So we're just waiting. We also, through this period, we're also trying to find a place to live. We've got another real estate agent. We're touring houses after work every night.

We're touring houses every weekend. We're looking for places to go. We finally find houses after work every night. We're touring houses every weekend We're looking for places to go We finally find a place and we're ready to pull the trigger, but we just can't until the stupid option period is over um and uh And then the day the option period ends the real estate agent calls me and he goes, okay We're out of option. You guys are good to move. They're gonna buy this house. You guys should be set We call the other real estate agent, we say, okay, we wanna pull the trigger on that house,

and he goes, somebody rented it an hour ago. And so we lost the fucking house. The ultimate joy of finding out, yeah, we're definitely gonna sell this house, probably. I mean, it is still possible to back out before the closing, when you're in the contract phase, but it's expensive to them, It costs them a lot of money. Hold on a second, Albert's eaten a rug for some reason.

Albert. All right, sorry about that. Anyway, so and I'm so pessimistic and nervous and I just don't want to jinx anything. So all this is going on and I'm incredibly uncomfortable and I'm still recording fuck face and so all right and Anima and we're trying to answer questions and assuage the audience about, you know, while we're also trying to build companies in the background to get all up. And we're also living in a fucking,

like living in a model home and not allowed to use our own bathroom essentially and not allowed to cook and not allowed to touch our stuff this whole period after like an intense three week period of cleaning and fixing and throwing shit away. And I have I took I made so many trips to Goodwill in that in that month of my life. It was insane. Anyway, so then we're like, OK, cool, we can finally move. But now we don't have. A place to move to, we lost the house.

So then we, a mad scramble comes to find a new place to live. Only took a couple of days, ultimately we found a new place to live, way better than the last place to live. Ended up being a blessing in disguise that we lost that place, but talk about an intense and stressful time.

So then we have to move out of the house and into a new house. And I hadn't done that in a long time. And you end up going through all of your shit again and throwing stuff away and, you know, dealing with turning off Internet and gas and electric and transferring it. And just like all the shit that goes into moving, I haven't moved in six years. You forget that stuff. Albert, stop. Man, puppies, right? And so all of this going into say, this is what we were dealing with in the background.

I actually, I didn't want to talk about any of this until the house sold because I just didn't want to jinx myself. I didn't want to dox myself. I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize this home sale because once I sold the house, we're good. We're in a new home. We're renting. We're limber.

We're loving Austin in a different neighborhood, getting a different flavor, really learning to enjoy my city again, but also knowing that if an opportunity were to arise, we could act on it without having to go through the stress that I've just gone through. You know, I don't want to jinx any of that.

So I didn't want to talk about this until I'd actually sold the house. But technically, I don't close for a couple of days, but I just can't hold off any longer. It's been months and months and months, but when the longer closings, it's been almost over two months, this closing, it's all said and done. And by the time this comes out, I will be closed. So if this comes out, I've sold my home and I talked about it. If this doesn't come out, well, you'll never hear it. I'll have to record something in a mad dash at the last second

and throw it up. But I'm just like, I'm just I'm feeling OK. Feeling OK here about talking about it. But this has been. The most insanely stressful time saying goodbye to Roosterteeth. Wrapping all that up, 21 years of of business and friendships and relationships and a career. Selling a house, daughter going off to college,

graduating high school going off to college, moving into a new home, starting a new company. Whew. Let me tell you, I'm tired. I'm so'm tired. I'm so fucking tired. I'm so fucking tired.

Oh, I feel good though. It's been it's been it's been insanity. It has been I hopefully it sounded OK on camera or on mic because behind the scenes I've been running around with my hair on fire. or on mic because behind the scenes I've been running around with my hair on fire 23 hours a day for the last, I don't know, since sometime in March, I guess. But I think as of as of this episode coming out, if you're reading this, what would you be if you're hearing this fucking stupid? If you're hearing this, that means everything worked out and we should officially be past it all and just move into the new normal.

I'm so excited to be into the new normal. Once this house sells, which should be in a few days, I'm in the new normal. And then it's just, there's no fires to put out. There's no great, the only unknown is if the company succeeds and the podcasts make money. And I can live with that, you know? It's all the other shit that goes into like,

oh my God, dude, checking on the house, trying to keep, you know, going, having two homes is also kind of annoying because for the last 45 days or so, I've been taking care of a home I don't live in because I still fucking love it. It's beautiful and I put a lot of work and sweat and love into it and so did Emily and

so we're still like going over and weeding and watering the plants and trying to keep the house up to date and you know everything keep it fresh inside so that it doesn't smell musty and just like you know air it out and keep it swept and clean and uh I went over there that about a week ago and the AC went out and so then we had to run around on the weekend and get the AC fixed and it was no big deal and it wasn't expensive, but it was next to impossible to get an AC repairman in Austin. It took 48 hours.

And the whole time I was like, this is why I don't want to own a home anymore. This is why I don't want to own a home anymore. I would much rather this be my landlord's problem. So in the end, it was a stress because it's like, I'm trying to sell this house to somebody. Would you please stop making it harder for me house? But it was also a great reminder that home ownership is a is a whole pile of problems.

And I'm just happy to take a break. I'm going to dive headfirst back into home ownership at some point, I am sure. But man, I'm going to enjoy the break for a while and the stress free live in because, who? Anyway, that's what I've been up to. That's been that's how I spent my spring. It was it was intense, but I I went into twenty twenty four in a different house with a different job. Yeah, that's crazy. And I'm coming out of spring, going into summer in a different home, literally living in a

different place, breathing different air, sleeping under different walls, going to work for a different, going to work for me, that's different. It's wild. A lot of change all at once. Glad I did it. A lot of people, I think, thought I was floundering and like selling the house as a panic move to reduce bills and stuff. And, you know, there's definitely some like when you lose your job, some uncertainty and some like, oh, shit, I definitely need to, you know, tighten the belt and get shit under

control and make sure I'm not being ridiculous. But also, I really just wanted to thread this needle because if we didn't sell the house this year, you know, and like my real estate agent was saying, if it stayed on the market till September, October, then you got to look at lowering the price. People start to think something's wrong with it. There's a lot of competition. A lot of houses are sitting around. In my neighborhood, a lot of houses that were on sale months before mine are still on sale now. I count myself very, very, very lucky

that we were able to sell it. And I think it's largely due to the work that Emily, and to a lesser degree me, but mostly Emily put into making it look like a fucking house that anybody would wanna buy, you know? And also looking at the market, not to get too grown up about it. But I don't think that that it doesn't let the housing market is going to improve in

the next year or two. And so if I am going to move outside of Austin or follow an opportunity or somewhere else, it's not going to be easier to sell this house a year from now than it is right now. I really do think that there's a window to hit. And so I was really just trying to be super fucking smart knowing how exhausting it was going to be and how much it was going to suck. And man, did it suck. But I am so fucking excited to be on the other side of it and to be able to talk about it. And instead of talking around it, for instance, there was a episode of Fuckface where Andrew wanted

to send a thousand clocks to my house and he made me think that he had sent. Well, he actively tried to send a thousand clocks to my house. And he's like, what's the big deal? And I couldn't really talk about what the big deal was. And the guys are laughing and they're like, Andrew, you know, the big deal. That was the day my house was going on the market, like literally the day it was going for sale and we were having our first people come to look at the house. That was the day he scheduled going for sale and we were having our first people come to look

at the house, that was the day he scheduled that shit to arrive. That's why I was losing my mind because I thought 1000 clocks were going to show up in my driveway while I was trying to sell a house. And so all that stuff at like, to give you some further context that if I've seen stressed out or said things that don't quite make sense, I think I caught myself talking about a dump truck recently in a video and how I was moving furniture and I wasn't I told myself not to talk about moving yet, you know, but that was a moment where I slipped and I figured nobody would notice. But anyway, that's what I've been up to the last

few months. Very excited to be past all that and able to just sit down in front of Wikipedia and Just you know explore some rabbit holes with you guys in well in the near future and in the middle future and then the long-distance future and Hopefully I'm not going anywhere anytime soon wanted to be completely and totally caught up and as transparent as I can be about what the last few months have been like and why it was especially hard to get ANMA and So All Right off the ground in that period with all this other stuff going. And, you know, Gus has been busy with Stinky Dragon and getting that thing spun up.

And obviously, Eric is busy with regulation and 100% EAT. And then, you know, I had been trying to keep so all right going. I even record. Like I said, I recorded a bunch of these, even though they weren't coming out. But it's just I just think they're weird and stilted. And there's probably no point in putting them out now. They kind of missed that window. Anyway, I should wrap this up.

Let me remind you. What am I reminding you for? Let me remind me to list the song of the day or the episode. I've been trying to keep up with that and I've been forgetting. So the song for this episode is Ted Lucas. Plain and simple, but sorry, it's Ted Lucas, plain and sane and simple melody. If you've never heard it, it's a fucking awesome song. I don't know why it it. I don't know why it, it,

I don't know if it was bigger when it came out, but it definitely is slept on now. It came out in 1975. It's pretty mellow, groovy kind of song. It's, by the way, 1975 is the year I was born. Kind of cool that this song came out then, because I'll be honest, most of the music I've found from 1975 sucks

But 1975 was not a good year for music at least in my eyes, so Listen to Ted Lucas playing insane and simple melody. That's a good fucking song from 1975 Thanks for listening to these ramblings Thanks for sticking through all the nonsense Thanks for sticking through all the nonsense. Thanks for the support. No Patreon on the way for this podcast. Don't look for that. I'm not trying, I'm just,

I just want to have an easy breezy conversation with y'all. I'm not trying to overcomplicate it. I'm not going to be asking you for money in that way. That's what the regulation podcast and all that other stuff is for. So, so just FYI, if you do want to support in some monetary way, I would love it if you could support the regulation podcast

or if Stinky Dragon is your thing, support those guys or 100 percent eat or Red Web or any of the new content that's being spun off from all the Rooster Teeth employees. I know Armando and those guys are doing stuff. I know some of the Funhaus people have been doing stuff. Or if you just want to support me directly, there's always the cameo, Jeff L. Ramsey. Been getting a lot of really, really sweet

and wonderful cameos from y'all lately. I really appreciate that. And you know, I did get the rights to the Jeff merch. So maybe we'll talk about that someday. But I don't have any kind of energy or effort to put into to anything other than just getting back to talking to you guys each week. So that's what I'm going to focus on doing. Thank you so much for listening. Give that shot a what that song a shot if you get a chance.

Who knows? Maybe I'll even go back and edit these in the future. So you don't have to listen to all of my stutters and stammers. All right. This is the end of the show. What?