Soder - 44: The Man behind the Fun with Lazlow | Soder Podcast | EP 43

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

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People don't understand how influential you are. Video games, in a lot of ways, have taken the place of movies for people's childhoods. Because now with video games, how good they are, you play along with it and you like live out a movie, but you actually feel like you participated in it. Especially when there's multiple decisions Yeah, you can make and that affects the outcome of the storyline specifically an open world where you just go and do it and It when we became friends. It was crazy to me because I knew you a from Opie and Anthony I knew you Secondly from Rockstar Games because when you would talk about Rockstar Games on Opie and Anthony

but what I remember is you were the reason that Jim Norton and Bill Burr and all these comics were in Grand Theft Auto when you would listen to the radio station or Bill Burr was the biker. Bill Burr was a biker. Yeah, he was the biker in Grand Theft Auto 4. Yeah. Yeah. And which as a guy who got famous from a Russian joke, I loved

it's just doing my Russian accent playing that game the whole time, but it was like Insane to me as someone that was like a comedy fan, but like at that time Comedy wasn't cool. So like knowing Bill Burr and knowing Jim Norton all that stuff was a kind of niche You're like, yeah I'm into Opie and Anthony and I'm into this or whatever. But then you'd hear him in Grand Theft Auto. And you're like, it kind of meant like, oh, someone else is a fan of this guy and put him in a thing that I'm a fan. It was worlds colliding. It's like when a character from a sitcom shows up in another sitcom.

And you go, what the fuck? What the fuck? Like Perfect Strangers and Family Matters. You had to go on Opie and Anthony at least once a month. And all the comedians that were part of that show, I ended up putting in the games. Yeah. And my favorite was Patrice. Yeah.

So, you know, we had studio booked, I had other union talent booked. Yeah. Which means I gotta pay him regardless. Patrice calls me from downstairs and says his truck is too big and the parking garage won't take it. Can we do this tomorrow? That's so funny.

I was like, bro. Yeah, you're like, this is a major operation, Patrice. I mean, he's treating it like a podcast now. He goes, no, I can't film, man, my truck's too big. What was the role for? You remember? Was it Grand Theft Auto 4? I think it might've been in 4 yeah they start to all blend together the other day somebody

asked me how many Grand Theft Auto's I shipped and I said nine and then I counted them in my head and it was actually ten because it was GTA 3 Vice City San Andreas yeah Liberty City stories PS PSP, Vice City Stories, PSP, Chinatown Wars, which was on Nintendo, on the 3DS, and then Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned, Baldigay Tony, and GTA V. Yeah, and Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Right, and then there was Bully in there, and Midnight Club, and Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Right, and then there was Bully in there and Midnight Club and... I mean, dude, Warriors. The Warriors was so good. I have it. I have it on my... by the way, this is the man... you're the reason I have a Steam Deck. I brought mine with me. Dude, I have my Steam Deck. I thought of you. I read this article in the Wall Street Journal on the train here. Yeah.

That sales of the Switch dropped 47%. Well, Steam Deck. It's brilliant. It's unbelievable. Also, and I'm not advocating this, but I had mine jailbroken by my friend Joe. So now I have PS2 games, but I immediately asked for Warriors. I was like, no, I want to play Warriors because it's so fun. You go back and you play it and you're like, it's still honestly one of my favorite games.

I'm in a real rock star kick. I'm playing Max Payne three. Dude, a lot of people didn't play that game and it was so good. It is Max Payne three. And I saw it on a sub Reddit for a steam deck where they were like, what's your favorite level to play on a steam deck? And someone was like airport scene in Max Payne three. Yes.

And I was like, I haven't played that in. I played it on my PS four, but I never not on handheld. So me and Sagalow both downloaded it when we were in Addison doing the Addison improv and both of us were like waiting for the shows to finish. I was up to like four in the morning, one night playing it and Sagalow was like, I'm going to stay up too. And the next day we got breakfast and he was like, how late were you up? I was like four. I played to like chapter five. He was like, dude, I didn't even get the chapter two. I was like, I was in it.

I was steam deck. So you called me. I remember I was in the road in Buffalo and we were talking and I was like, yeah, I got my switch. And you were like, nah, I get a steam deck and it skips for people that play video games at a certain level. There's a jump that's scary. We are like, that's too much. I don't know how to do that. But you were like, no, no, no. Trust me. This is what you want to do. And that's what I got. Katie got me one for Christmas. It's the greatest life changing. It's the if you

play video games, the steam deck will change your life. I don't even turn my console on. I take that thing everywhere I go. I mean, and also you get to play games that maybe if you're like I'm a PlayStation guy that were exclusive to Xbox like Mad Max. I played Mad Max and I was like, Oh, open world just like GTA and in the story of Mad Max. It was unbelievable. I like that there's so many indie developers making killer games and I am not my days of PC gaming where I'm sitting in my office chair, you know, with the like mouse and the keyboard and the carpal tunnel. Those are long gone and I'm not going to, if I'm going to do it,

I'm going to have a super beefy machine. I'm just not interested in that but to be able to play all the games that are on Steam By the way, this is not the show is not endorsed in any way. Yeah steam has no idea We're even talking about right there kind of like get off our nuts God, you guys are jockein us, but I remember I mean The hours I've spent playing Grand Theft Auto, all the radio stations, it's so funny to know like, oh, yeah, Laszlo was like, in charge of picking all the crazy radio stations and all the DJs and shit. And I used to love circling through and hearing comics. Because to me, that was more important than like a comic showing up in a movie or something.

Because it was something I'm going to spend time with. More than a movie. Yeah. After GTA 3 we knew that we were onto something because people were just driving around the game listening to the radio and not doing missions. And killing hookers and then getting money for it. And so they would spend, you know, like two hours driving around listening to the radio and they're like, oh, yeah, maybe I should go Yeah, do a mission. Let me go to that yellow dot

It was also a bit if you remember it was a bit more punishing back then games changed They used to be really punishing so you could complete a mission and be driving back to your safe house to save and Get killed. Yeah and have to do that mission again. Katie and I were talking about this because on the Steam Deck, now that it's jailbroken, I have all these Sega and Nintendo and SNES specifically and 64 games. So I'm playing through a bunch of games that I used to play. And I'm like, these are so much harder and they don't save. So when you fuck up, you got to go all the way back now with the ps5

You finish and they go join go right to where you died and then you can just pick it back up But like old school video games are like no fuck that bud. You're going back to the beginning They also put some clever tricks in games now where if you failed a mission several times They'll start to change the mechanics where like the bad guys don't aim so good you know it's so funny is that's what makes me spaz out is when they like will tell you I was playing ghosts of Tsushima and I was dying on one level and I was playing on hard and they go at any time you can adjust the difficulty level and it's like I get so angry when that pops up fuck you dude don't fucking play Kate me.

I'll play this at the hardest level. But I mean, GTA three, you were at rockstar for GTA three. And that was, I remember, I mean, it was 2001, 2002. 2001. But 2001, it really took off. I mean, word of mouth. I was in college and I remember coming home for Thanksgiving and people being like, did you play Grand Theft Auto three yet? And I was like, and I remember coming home for Thanksgiving and people being

like, did you play Grand Theft Auto 3 yet? And I was like, is that, that's that game? Cause Grand Theft Auto 1, you're just in a car. Right. Well, and it used to be top down. Yeah. So you just drive a car around from the top. So it was weird. And I remember being like, that doesn't interest me. And they're like, oh no, no, no, that's not what the game is. And I remember being at the university of Colorado and my friends, I was visiting, I was in my friend's dorm room and his roommate was showing me Grand Theft Auto 3 and I was like, this is the greatest game of all time. The craziest thing was I worked on the game, you know, doing all the radio and stuff and directed a bunch of the NPCs, which they didn't have that much dialogue back then.

But I never actually saw the game. Really? And then I saw it sort of in the distance in the office. Would you, you like, you weren't curious, you wouldn't go over there and be like, hey, can you show me a couple? We had, we had a limited number of weeks to make all that radio.

And so it was basically like, I would come into the office, Dan Houser and I would have a meeting. We would go to his apartment and eat anchovy and onion pizza and crushed diet cokes and packs of cigarettes and write that stuff. And then I was furiously recording all of that and directing it and editing it. And so the day the game came out,

Terry Donovan, who was one of the founders, drives by my house. And the only reason I had a PlayStation 2 was because Rockstar gave me one. Really? Dude, there was a while there where getting a PlayStation 2 was really hard. Dude, you're talking to a guy that got high,

drove to Boulder from Aurora. I didn't know where I was going. I just knew that there was a, I called a GameStop in Boulder that said, we have a PS2. And I said, can you hold it for me? It was like almost impossible. And this was no GPS.

That was the last time I used the map. That was the last time I actively remember being like, okay, you drive up to Boulder and you take this street and then you go. It was like getting that PS two was a treasure. It was a treasure hunt. Yeah. And so he dropped by and I, I put the game in and you know, it opens up and there's that like sort of accident on the bridge. You get in that car and the first thing you hear is head radio. Yeah.

And I was like, yo, and then I'm driving. I'm like, yeah, I can go anywhere I want. Yeah. This is amazing. Yeah, dude. It's that, that was the beginning of what we know as video games now, but that moment didn't happen that open world. Oh, I'm going to, I can decide what I want to go do. I can also bring a three star police presence and not be able

to shake it. One of my so Dan Hauser and I because he left Rockstar Games then I left a bit later. And one of the things and we started a new company. And one of the things, and we started a new company, and one of the things we love doing is burying stuff in the games for people to just discover and find. So, um, in GTA four, there were internet cafes. If you remember that you could drive to an internet cafe and you go in and you sit down and we wrote an internet, which is not a small process to write an internet so we had all these websites and

Different spoofs of social media and stuff and you could just get lost in it like you can the real internet and there was this In a previous game we'd come up with this fake brand Called little Lacey surprise and it was a spoof of underoos. Yeah, so when we were doing vice city I Watched a ton of TV commercials from the 80s Well, you can say it's all it all takes place for those of you who aren't up to date and you lived under a fucking rock place for those of you who aren't up to date and you lived under a fucking rock Grand Theft Auto Vice City was basically a parody of Miami Vice Scarface the 80s 80s the Miami 80s nostalgia which let me tell you right now I remember how excited I was to go to GameStop to get that I remember the commercial you guys

played with and I ran from flock of seagulls, right? And that shit got me so fucking hyped that I remember being like I got a blunt of swag I got my fucking vice city. I'm just I'm playing for like 12 hours So there was a commercial in there that we did was a spoof of underoos because I watched these TV commercials these underoos commercials, which they put superheroes on little boys and girls. Yeah, I had them, dude. Watch the commercials, go on YouTube, watch, they are pedo central. It's like, oh, look at the little girls

in their underwear jumping up and down on the bed. Dude, pedophiles were eating good in the 80s. So we, this is just on basic cable. I know, they're so upset now, like the obesity epidemic. It's really screwing up my vibe with the abs. Well, I wanted kids that were doing flips kids were ripped. Yeah. These fat kids can't even do flips jumping on their beds anymore.

So we had a radio commercial in that. And then in GTA four, when you're surfing the internet in there, it said, uh, there was a link that said, click here to see more of the little Lacey surprise children's beauty pageant, right? Yeah. So you click on it and instantly you get a five star wanted level and the thing comes up and says,

you know, the FBI has tracked your location. So you jump up from the seat in the internet cafe and cops are swarming the place. And we love putting stuff like that in there. What I love about this is what I love about you telling us this right now is someone's watching this podcast that might have done that and tried to tell a friend, but that didn't know how they got there. But they go, I want to say, I really wanted to check out a little lacy under roof surprise,

but then I got fucking five stars. Oh shit. You might've stopped someone from being a pedophile because of GTA or they're like, dude, that's five stars. I don't do that shit. Well, you're boxed in, you're in an interior location. So that's so crazy. Well, if you have the unlimited ammo and gun thing, you just pop that code in and then you make those cops pay for coming to get you. That's what I would do. I'd get so frustrated that I had it written down in a notebook you know like the unlimited ammo unlimited guns and if I was failing a mission I'd be like fuck this I just pop it in and just have one of those what's the gun that you hold like that oh right Jesse Ventura from

Predator right right just like just, just mowing everyone down. Dude, Vice City and all that, I mean, I remember how excited I was living in New York. I'd finally moved to New York when Grand Theft Auto IV came out, and now it's a common thing that I do in video games that are open world, where I want to explore, Spider-Man 2 came out. I wanted to see if we could find this building.

Because we're kind of close to the Flatiron. And so I told Katie, I was like, right when we got Spider-Man 2, I was like, we're trying to find our building. And it's like, and Grand Theft Auto 4 was the first time I did that. You guys had the Astoria beer gardens. You guys had a pretty accurate New York City.

And if you drive into the Queens part of it, which is called, it's called like Kings or or something there's a beer garden that's based on the Historia beer garden and I went down the street and I showed Vecchione who's an old you know he's always had old man brain so he's like what is this video games but I'm like dude this is our apartment it's under the train and he was like, that's pretty cool. So for GTA four, I went to Miami to do press. Yeah. So I went to go do press on these radio stations. And I'd never been to Miami and but I worked on Vice City. Right. So me and this guy that worked at Rockstar Sean are driving and I go,

this is starting to feel really familiar. And I go, I bet you if we go around this corner, there's a strip club. When around the corner, strip club. I was like, yo, I know how to get around town. That's so funny. They're like, have you ever been to Miami? I play, I made Vice City.

I'm good. I don't need a local's help. I don't need, I don't need the locals help. I have to say, so during the pandemic, I, or when was the pandemic? What was it? It was four years ago. I know, but I know that. Yeah.

I experienced it, but I'm, but I'm, dude, I was just doing press in the UK and I said, did you guys have the pandemic over here? It was pretty crazy. And they're like, oh yeah, we had it. I was like, bro, it's a joke. Yeah. But so I went out to LA so we, you know, could start this, this new company.

And I'd worked in LA a lot, but actually being on the ground there, I'm like, man, there's a lot that we could have done. But like, first off we didn't have enough, in GTA five, we didn't have enough homeless NPCs. Yeah. Yeah. You guys really slacked on the homeless and San Andreas. There were not enough San Andreas also is the first game where your character

could eat and exercise or not or not. And you can get super fat or incredibly jacked. And then you just, just be a jacked gang member riding a little bike around with the arms out here just being like and I love that um you know in meme lore the ah shit here We go again is one of my favorite things I bought the package when it came out to replay them on my switch And I was like these are still fun as shit you also forget that you it's very hard to drive in Grand Theft Auto Yeah, cuz you just like swerve all of a sudden.

But it's so much fun. Red Dead was the thing where I was like, I love Grand Theft Auto, but I think Red Dead Redemption one and two might be my two favorite video games of all time. Up there with Ghost of Tsushima, there's a couple of games that are up there. But Red Dead Redemption two was like a masterpiece. And I remember you making that and you were like like that was a pain in the dick to make well yeah it's when you're when you have a virtual New York City or a virtual LA

yeah it's it's easy to fill it full of content because it's so dense sure but if you have a game where you can literally get on a horse and ride into the distance you've got to figure out clever ways of Entertaining people and having things happen that don't feel forced. Yeah, and so That's when we we put in tons of tons of what we call random events, dude I bet I replayed it recently. I started getting into the serial killer. I never got into that, because I was under a bridge one time,

and I was like, what the fuck is that? And I looked up, and it's a torso. And then you see the clues, and you're like, oh, there's a serial killer in this game. And I beat the game. But I never found that before. Where I was like, did you? So we wrote tons of little things like that that you

would discover and kind of like your pedo bust. Yeah there was did you ever find the shoes on the edge of the cliff where the guy killed himself? No. So I had a huge list of stuff that I needed to write and I would go up to Massachusetts and hide in the woods and turn off the internet. And while there was no internet up there at that time and write this stuff. And so you find these boots at a cliff and there's a suicide note, right? So I think I was barely able to get internet through my phone or something. And I looked up famous suicide notes,

sure. Read through a bunch of them. Cause I had to, I've never written a suicide. Crazy. If you were like, I got one. I so got this. Listen, did I went through a goth phase and a lot of Smiths? I saw it is hot as balls here in Manhattan and I saw a proper goth and I'm like dude that's dedication. The Venn diagram of people wondering where goths and thugs cross over like street dudes it's the summer and what they wear because I'll see goths in like long black all black and it's like the heat index like 96 today and also I'll

see black dudes in hoodies and I'm like how How are you doing this? Are you cutting weight for a wrestling? It's nuts. It's insane. I went through a goth phase I grew up in Oklahoma. Yeah, I went through a goth phase and it's a tough place to go through all phase I was just there four days ago Yeah, a hundred and five degrees at eight o'clock at night with a hundred percent humidity. Life is pain. It's bad. And so at some point I go maybe not wearing all black and chains and like chains and leather and mesh and Smith's and here. And so that's a winner look. So get sad sad get that seasonal depression go

Yeah, I transitioned from that into a deadhead for a while That's that's the way to go because then it's a lot less clothing Let's deodorant better drugs way better drugs. What are golf drugs? I've never thought about that. I'll tell you what they are You go to Walmart and get a can of freon they are. You go to Walmart and get a can of Freon. Nice! You whip it with Freon? And you put it in a trash bag and you stab it with an ice pick and you hold the trash bag and then you and the girl down the street huff it and your voice gets really deep and then you make out. And that's how you come up with your demon name too. You go, my name is Ossobel, that's,

and you know what? I don't feel bad for you saying that because you can't get free on anymore. No, you can't. We, sorry, polar bears. I went through a phase. It's called polar bears, polar Baron. You guys want a polar bear free on good. Every can we have one more ice flow for those fat bastards. Yeah, you're the reason those fucking Those polar bears are falling into the water now off it. Oh sweet October how I love you October I'm on the road specifically October 10th through the 12th. I'll be at the Houston improv doing five shows I love that club So if you're in the Houston area come on out and. And then the week after that, October 17th through the 19th, I'll be at Wise Guys in

Salt Lake City. Best sound system in any comedy club I've ever been in. I love that room. So those are two great weekends. Go to DansOtter.com to see my full tour schedule. But Houston and Salt Lake City, I'll see you in October. November 8th, New York Comedy Festival. I will be at Town Hall. 9.45pm show. November 8th. Tickets are moving. We're getting there. I'd like

to sell it out. Go to DansOder.com and get tickets for the New York Comedy Festival at Town Hall. November 8th, 9.45pm. I'll see you there. Oh, tushy, dude. You know what? Sometimes they like tell you when when they when you have a sponsor They're like here's what you need to talk about. Here's what you should talk about Let me tell you what I'm gonna tell you about with Tushy how clean my butthole is it's nuts, dude Getting a Tushy but days used to be for French kings and the wealthy now It's for everybody. As long as you got a water source going to your toilet, you can get a Tushy bidet.

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New customers get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code SOTAR. That equates to over 40% off your starter pack. Use the code SOTAR at shopmando.com. That's S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com. A N D O dot com. You know, I love New York and I still come here, uh, quite frequently. I was here for 25 years being in LA. The place is lawless. Yeah. It is between the street takeovers and stripping all the copper out of the streetlights and go get those catalytic converters, bro, go get something. So converters. Bro, something. So there's this new meth. I don't know if you tried it.

No, but I've, I actually, for real, have heard about it by listening to a couple of podcasts with bands on it. Really a couple of bands were talking about how there's like super meth out there. So this meth that let's go back a few years. Do you remember when- Take it back. Do you remember when people were making meth the old fashioned way? Yeah, and they're exploding little fucking, well-

That we get pseudo-fedrine. Yeah, I lived in Tucson, which it was- Yeah. Tucson was, and I don't know if it was the first city, but it was one of the first cities to make pseudo-cedrine behind the the counter because people were cooking it. So if like I just got over a head cold, the stuff that I'm taking. So I don't thought like the right now is pseudocedrin.

It makes you it stops you from being it's it's cold medication. Right. So they were using that and they said, we got this, we're going to solve the meth problem. We'll just make it so that people that have a cold can't get that shit anymore I wrote my senior journalism thesis on on pseudo Cedran on the the city level the city of Tucson I did go to a bunch of like city council meetings and listen to them made pseudo Cedran by the way I was like high off my ass and probably after them isn't it pseudo fed ring so? So it's pseudo-fedrine, yeah.

That's probably. You wrote an entire thing about some shit you can't pronounce? No. Fantastic. I also cheated to get my French credit. What am I doing with a degree? Right.

It's for my mom. So, these brilliant Mexican chemists figured out a new formula for meth that also allows you to make it in bulk. Oh cool. Yeah. And so the, the, and using more readily available chemicals and the price per pound went from 10 grand a pound down to a thousand bucks a pound.

Everything you want, more cheap and stronger. But the problem is that You know when people are like why are there so many crazy people the streets now? The the old meth people would go nuts over a longer period of time sure right It had to be years of doing the stuff the new meth These cops they were interviewing said that literally within weeks to just two or three months people are completely cooked and out of their out of their tree it's just making their because of the chemicals that are in it

just yeah absolutely nukes their brain but one of the things that's cool that's great about LA is the the fentanyl oh yeah with the quinoa and the acai. Acai and little, also it's like sleepy time, cubby wubby sleepy time and like insane. I can, it's crazy that they took meth and they're like, can we get it more like PCP? I just feel like they're not as indestructible as angel dust users. This is weird. I was just thinking about PCP yesterday. Yeah. Don't think I've ever said that before. Yeah. But you don just thinking about PCP yesterday. Don't think I've ever said that before, but you don't hear about PCP anymore.

No meth out. Like PCP was PCP, uh, crawled so meth could jump through a window. Right. Like PCP was always the stories of the six cops shooting a guy. He didn't go down. When you heard those stories growing up, made you want to try PCP. Not me. I heard all the other, all the other drug stories like, Oh, that sounds, that sounds like a good time. I'm a Marvel guy. So I was like, Oh, dude, instant superpowers. Have you ever seen someone on PCP? Probably not

known it. So I was at a music festival and up in Connecticut and there was this naked guy is running through the festival screaming his head off with cops running after him the cops tackle him and whatever it is about that drug makes you want to fucking throw haymakers at cops damn it's so weird. Punch cop police. Punch, punch cop powder. It's what they should call PCP. This guy's swinging to the cops and they tase him and he hits the ground and pops right back up and they tase him again and it gets good. And people start yelling, just stay down.

I got one more in me. I got one more in me. It's crazy to think that, like to be a cop, the first cop that saw someone on PCP, where he's like, this guy's acting nuts, I got it. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and then he just gets back up, he's like, what the fuck? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, he's like in the superhero movies, like the weapon is not effective on him.

I can't, I can't, what do we do to him? He's like, ah! I mean, that's gotta be the scariest moment of a cop's life when you're dealing with someone on PCP for the first time I mean even these meth heads that are going fucking nuts because you're like, I don't know what they're gonna do They're crazy. Like you see people here on the street and you're like that there's zero Sanity in that person like you just see him and now you know, it's cuz that new meth Yeah, the other thing about LA world-class shoplifting. It's Sanity in that person like you just see him and now you know, it's cuz that new meth. Yeah The other thing about LA world-class shoplifting. It's the best I mean I got family from San Francisco. So good luck competing with them

They shut down all of Union Square because people were just like hey, we'll just run in and grab everything we'll can and no one will stop us You know when we were growing up if you went into a store and we're stealing and got caught, a big beefy guy grabbed you, threw you into a back room, maybe like roughed you up a little bit, and then the cops come. Yeah. And then you go to jail and then you call your parents. Yeah, they're Something changed. They passed the law, I think. Well, it's like something under it's like a certain amount of money is it's under a felony. So they don't really care under $950. But the other thing is these big corporations, they've got security at the front door, but they tell them, do not engage. Yeah. Cause they don't want to pay for, if one of those security guards gets stabbed or hurt,

then the cop goes, well, I was at work or the security guard goes, I was at work. And then Walgreens is like, we're not paying for that. But if you gave every one of those guys, a Billy club and a stun gun, let him go, just let them go. It would shut that shit down immediately. I saw a video, you know, and I'm not condoning this, but I'm saying, it's satisfying to watch. There's a guy Going through bodega and he's like taking the cigarettes which I get that first move I would he's behind it and he's like got a trash can and he's like putting it and this guy's like don't do it

Don't do it. The guy's like you ain't gonna do shit and this guy I think he's like either from Bangladesh or India He pulls out a fucking billy club and just the dude goes warm and he just beats the shit out of them and the guys like And the guys like nah And you're like this is very satisfying to watch because the guys like talking shit to him as he's stealing the cigarettes And you just see the guy click and go yeah, I own this store. It is like I had this very New York versus LA moment when I was I go into this liquor store and it's a pretty big liquor store and I'm in a hurry and I'm walking

around a corner quickly and nearly run into this proper Mexican cholo guy with the bald head and the bandana across and the high like Fuzgon Wild Sox. And you're like what's up what's up Vato? And so he's like yo are you Lalo? Yo you do this dirty in San Andreas homes? You fucking made the cholo's look like fucking pussy. You made us look like Mariposa in the fucking video game. So my gut reaction, and from hanging out with my friend Big Wayne here, who was a proper Queens guy construction dude, he would say buddy a lot. Yeah, he's a Queens guy, so he says buddy a lot. So you say, sorry buddy.

So I nearly smack into him and I go, hey, sorry buddy. And he goes, he gets up in my face and he goes, buddy, I ain't your buddy. That's terrifying. He goes, I'm a man. Yeah. And I'm like, bro, he goes, a buddy's it's a little kid. You don't call me a little kid. And I was like, dude, I'm that's I'm New York.

We just, sorry, guy. Sorry, Pepito. You know, and he kept going, I'm a man. I'm like, I'm not doubting your manhood. I just... Well, he clearly is. He's going through something. He's like, damn, why did you have to snap like that?

You know you're a man. You're talking about it in therapy. Yeah, dude, it is. What happened? Did he just get in your face? No, I, I, a poet, I groveled and he like went on about his, about his business. When I recognized his manhood, I mean I had to blow him.

But I just shot. You go, you're a man, you're a big strong man. That's how you get gay with it. I just start. You go, oh you're a fucking. See on his muscles. You go, ooh you are, you're a big strong man. Big strong man that could have his way with me.

He goes, man I don't like the way this turned. I'm fucking out of here bro. He's a little weird. I got feelings I don't understand. No, man, you're making shit bubble up inside of me that makes me feel strange and shit. No, you're a big man. You're a big fucking strong man.

Well, I told the story. You wanna get some Adelos? Yeah. I told this story on the bonfire, but I had a similar incident with a giant Vato. When I lived in Tucson, I used to come home from class and college and Comedy Central would rerun Conan.

Like that's how you would watch all the Conan's, because I wouldn't stay up late or whatever, or I didn't have DVR. So I'd watch Conan reruns in the afternoon and I got high, I got like resin high. Ooh, resin high. I was just smoking the bottom of a pipe and then I was like just real red-eyed and giggly

and they did the sketch in the year to So with the things on there and I ran out of milk and I was like, oh shit I was eating cereal and I was like I gotta go get some milk I'm high as fuck and I want another bowl of cereal. So I go to the fries where That congresswoman got shot. Got shot, yep. That was that fries parking lot. Not at the same time, that happened

like a couple years later. And he went there because you like it because someone got shot in the parking lot? I was like, I only buy milk where people almost die. Right. This was before she got shot, but I go to the fries and I grab a, I'm like walking in and I'm fucking resin high

and I'm like talking to myself and I go, in the year 2000, like that and I start laughing and I just hear this dude go, the fuck you laughing at white boy? Like that and I look over and it's just this giant in a long white tee Black dickies. He's got the bandana like headband kind of like that over his eyes and he's holding just The littlest baby he's holding just this tiny baby. He's like what the fuck you laughing out white boy like that

And I was like, oh And I kept walking and he hands his baby to his girl and he starts following me around the store he's like half an aisle behind me but he keeps me like what's funny what's funny bro like that and I'm like oh shit and I'm high I'm paranoid I'm like is this really happening how does really happening I get the milk and I turn the corner and he's still following me so I cut this lady off in line and he gets like behind her like he he still Acknowledges the line which is weird that he didn't just like come around But he's like yo you think that shit's funny, and he's like yelling at me while I'm buying the milk, and I'm like

Fine and I it was like three bucks for the milk And I was like keep change and I took the gallon and I fucking Bolted and I ran out of the parking lot like through the milk of I was like, just keep the change. And I took the gallon and I fucking bolted. And I ran out of the parking lot, like threw the milk in my car and fucking peeled out. And I was like, did that just happen? But it was so scary, all because of a Conan bit. I was, you know, we wrote a-

Just don't disrespect Vatos. We wrote a lot of spoof jingles and things that we put in the games. And I remember we wrote a country Western one that the lyrics went, last night, I think I shit the bed got so drunk, I gave a dude head. And so I was working in the in the studio recording that. And I was walking down the street of Manhattan, singing it aloud, because I had a few drinks, singing it aloud, like to myself,

and this guy goes, excuse me, excuse me. I was like, oh, terribly sorry. Sorry, sorry, it's a country ditty I'm working on. Oh, how sweet it feels to say this. Summer's over, guys. Sorry, but it's true. Fall is upon us. And when that weather gets sweet, sweet, sweet, chilly and a little crispier, your wardrobe

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Soder20 that's Soder20 at checkout at ChubbiesShorts.com That's 20% off your order with the promo code Soder20 Support our show and tell them we sent you this fall make the most of every moment with Chubbies Shop now and fall into comfort one stylish piece at a time That is I mean that is a weird thing if you're working on these games And you're so immersed and you're putting so many hours into it that it must bleed into your regular life Yeah, absolutely it gets stuck in your head

Well, like the research that you had to do for like Vice City, but you live in New York. So Grand Theft Auto IV, are you like doing research or are you kind of like, I can still wing this? Full research team of six people that, you know, cause the art team needs to know what are the manhole covers look like? What is the different bodega, you know, the different bodega art?

What areas are people of speaking Russian or, um, and there's other video games that I've played where they'll have NPCs that they're not really speaking that foreign language. They're speaking sort of a weird gibberish. Yeah. And I, my policy was always why not Why not go the extra mile and just write and have translated and record some people in that language Well, cuz it may if you do speak Russian and you see that you feel like oh fuck

This is they put the time into this they made this thing like these people are speaking Russian Yeah, and then you that, one of the things that always bugged me in, in video games was you're, especially in some shooters like back in the day, you're like it's a level and you're in Russia or Chechnya or wherever, and you're storming a place and shooting and they start, the guys are yelling to each other, I'm going to reload. It's like, why are you speaking in English?

Why would you say that? In English. Yeah. Oh yeah. I knew what you mean. Wouldn't you yell to each other in your native language? I don't really. The other guy's like, I don't speak the English as well.

I think I have been shot. They shot me in the arm. He goes, I leave the shooting is real. I think I have been shot. It shot me in the army goes, just speaking Russian back being like, we can speak in Russian. This is fine. I, uh, do you go back to Arizona that often? The place is a mess. Yeah. The place is a mess. I tried to go back. I usually work Phoenix and I've tried to go back to Tucson to do like a one nighter at laughs comedy club where I started,

but the guy who books it wouldn't email my agent back, which is hilarious. Cause you're like, I just want to do like a Wednesday there. Like I don't want a whole weekend. I just wanted to go do a show at the club I started at, but they like wouldn't get back to my agent, which you're like, all right, that's kind of weird. That feels personal. Yeah.

Yeah, I was reading these, the homeless epidemic in Arizona, for some reason, now listen, I understand why people come to California. Sure, San Diego specifically. It's fantastic. If you're a homeless guy, go to San Diego. But in Southern Oregon, in southern Oregon Medford Medford, Oregon I drive through there at least twice a year that the

Place is completely methed out. I'm like Why are you if you're gonna sleep outside go someplace that doesn't rain? Yeah rain in in cold when you're sleeping outside. It's it's um, it's the same way. I feel about New York I New York. New York homeless, you get the heat in the summer and then you're getting the snow in the winter. It's like, you're not, go to Florida, go to San Diego, go to somewhere where there's like nice climate.

When I moved out of Oklahoma, my parents could not understand why I wanted to leave. And I was like, you know, entertainment industry isn't really thriving, not thriving here. If I wanted to castrate bulls, could do that all day long. Well, then you landed in a gold mine. Right. But so I was there for the I hadn't gone back to Oklahoma since 2018. Okay.

So I went to go see my, my folks and my my my mom moves into one of these retirement villages. Yeah, and It's it's a really Bizarro and they're not like the ones in Florida where there's at least some swinging going on. Yeah more of a Christian retirement Oh, yeah, this is they're all doing Bible. They're not doing they're not trading partners right in verses and You know, she's like I want you to meet all my friends and they've all got this sort of like, we love it here, we all came here to die because you know. That's what they did though.

Because they've got their own little apartment and it's like, and then pretty soon I'm gonna get so sick that I'm gonna move to the building over there is, well there's memory care, you won't know that you're there. That's so funny. And then there's sort of the hospice-y thing when you're shitting your drawers. Yeah, when you have renal failure.

But you want to be able to meet all our friends, people that still use the word like, we up, I'm gonna go to the commode. I'm like, we call it a toilet now. It's like, you want anything out of the icebox? I'm like, we don't actually buy it. A man doesn't come on a wagon anymore and give you a block of ice to put in the ice

You would shit if you saw a twin sub z You have no idea that thing is no since she wants me to like meet all of her friends and they're all named like They all have like hurricane names like Sandy Irene Something about that generation, they have the least sexiest names, like Gertrude, Beatrice. Yeah, because they had to make the names unfuckable

because everyone was so horny. Everyone was so horny and there wasn't porn, and there wasn't an outlet. So they're like, I just know dicks are going to be getting thrown at her. Let's call her Dorothy. Dorothy seems pretty unfuckable. Why are hurricane names so like trapped in time? Well I think it's like, I don't know whoever picks it. Whoever picks it must have like an old person fetish. Yeah.

Where they're like, well, the new one coming through, what's it called? It's like the hurricane that's hitting now. Yeah, I just, it's Debbie. Debbie, that's what it is. Nobody wants to fuck a Debbie. Yeah, well, we're watching it and Katie goes, call her by her full name, Deborah. She goes, Debbie, we're not friends with a hurricane if you had a if it was a hot sassy Oh my god, oh that of course it comes through and flattens

Oh Ashlyn came and fucked our shit up and you go. All right. Hey hurricane. It's like hurricane Molly. It's all sexy Molly hey Natasha came through and burnt down your whole house It's like Hurricane Molly. It's all sexy. Molly. Hey, Natasha came through and burnt down your whole house. Well, back to Red Dead Redemption 2, the suicide letter. Whose suicide letter did you base it off of? Well, I read several. I couldn't base it off of Kurt Cobain's.

Have you ever read his suicide note? No. He is a brilliant lyricist. I gotta say, suicide note sucked. Really? Suicide Note sucked. Really? Suicide Note sucked. Really? Because I could argue.

I wanted a suicide note that I could strum and it's like, da-da, da-da-da-da. I get it. You know why? If it would have been good, he might have not killed himself. If he's like, I want to kill myself, he goes, it's actually a pretty good song. This is pretty good.

I don't think I can do it. You know what? Let's make this the first song on our new album. Takes a shotgun from under his chin. He goes, it's actually a pretty good song. I think I'm going to use that. Hunter S. Thompson's is a good, his is well written. He was a brilliant, brilliant writer.

This is called Football Season is Over, which is great. My favorite title of a suicide note. When he started. Cause he said he got depressed after the Super Bowl. He's like after the Super Bowl, I know there's not football for eight more months, and so I want to kill myself. It could also be the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol

that you're shoving in your system as an old man. Like you're supposed to be fishing. Yeah, but he said in his letter, he's like, I live too long. He's like, I should have died somewhere around 40 or in the documentary They said that he planned on dying at 30 and then ever and then when he went past that he was kind of just like Bucket I didn't think I was gonna live this long. So I'll just do all the drugs I can well and he did that planning get shot out of a cannon. Yeah, he knew he what he wanted to do

He also killed himself with his family in the room Or in the house Wow son and grandson and his son's the room or in the house. Wow. His son and grandson and his son's wife were all in the house when he did it. He just like finished it. He was at his typewriter. He pulled out his favorite gun and fucking did it.

And they said it sounded like a book dropping on the floor. Did somebody's got to clean up that mess. That's what's fucked up. Just like go in the garage, start the car. That's the cleanest. Roll down, it's clean. I would even Just like go in the garage, start the car. That's the clean roll down. It's clean. I would even say like I'll half zip the body bag. I'll like get in the body bag and like zip up and be like, all right, well when you guys find it, all you gotta do is that. It's like when you said,

you know, when you buy something online and they send you the return label already where you're like, Oh, I just got to, if I want to return it, I just send it back. That's what do is do that with suicide like make it easy for them before the before the web you had to really hunt down gross shit like that oh yeah to get faces of death yeah bad from TV I spent a lot of time on my weekends as a kid at the police station because my old man was a cop. OK, right. And so he was in charge of the computers and stuff because he before that he was

an undercover drug narc and that got a little got a little heavy. And so I would wander around the police station and I would go into the homicide office and they had all these Polaroids of suicides and homicides. How old were you? Like seven, eight. That is crazy to see at that age. That is crazy to see. Cause you're also, that's, I would say the height of curiosity in a child is around eight years old. I mean, and you know, for crime scenes,

it's not like they just take one Polaroid and they're like, yeah, it's like lots of closeups. They need to know where the bulls cause it's not like they just take one Polaroid and they're like, yeah, it's like lots of close ups. Yeah. And they need to know where the bulls because it's also back then before the internet, they need to know when the bullet went in, where the bullet went out. They didn't like they couldn't do the stuff and plug it all in in a computer and be like, oh, it's all in the data.

My favorite, they had a stuffed buzzard in the homicide office with a sign that says, when your day ends, our day begins. Oh, that's fun. It's fun that they have work, the office humor with, with murder cops where they just go like you have to, or you'll bless this mess. And it's a guy's head all over the sidewalk. And we got them. So my dad was on the SWAT team and I would, I would go to trainings with them.

Right. So, uh, I would play a hostage. Sure. And so I would, these cops who were dressed in civilian clothes would like snatch me from someone and then we would be holed up in this abandoned house. I don't know how they found this like abandoned house in the woods and somebody's like,

yes, use my place. Yeah, dude. You know, you wanna throw off some flash bangs, whatever you need to do. Yeah, dude, fire off some fucking dummy rounds. And so, so we're in this house holed up and the other members of the SWAT team are outside and are trying to figure out.

How to get you out. How to get me out. And I'm sitting there and a guy that, you mentioned Jesse Ventura from Predator, a guy that looked exactly like that. I mean, beefed, jacked, he's got 8,000 rounds of shit on him, bowie knives and stuff. He pulls out, now I'm like eight or nine years old

at this point. Now maybe I was 10. He pulls out a pack of Redman chewing tobacco. Hell yeah. And he's like, you want a plug? And I was like, oh cool, that'll make me... That was the definition of manhood. Especially in the South. If you had that ring on your back pocket, which meant... Yeah, the dip.

Yeah, that means that you dip that it made you cool. Yeah, that's why I don't like all this All these news the sin the sin and the snus is and stuff. You're like, no, that's half-stepping dude. Get some cha Get a cheeky cha going. Did you ever go through a phase? Yes Yeah, I dipped when I played football in high school because I smoked cigarettes and then when it was football season I was like, well, I can't I gotta run. So I dip. Copenhagen or Skoll? I would do Kodiak. Ah, I went through a Kodiak phase.

Or Skoll, like whatever was around. Can you still, the can? Yeah. Well here's my, here's my favorite story. Shout out to Cammie Sweet. I was at her house my junior year around football season. She had a very white living room and I was trying to impress people. I know where this is going. And I went, and the can went everywhere and I was so mortified,

because she was a senior, I was a junior, and you're like, you don't do that. I thought you were gonna say that you spilled the spit cup on the white carpet. Worse, the chew went everywhere and I wanted to clean it up fast, so I grabbed a vacuum cleaner. Well, it's wet, it's wet up fast, so I grabbed a vacuum cleaner. Well, it's wet.

It's wet on carpet. So you put a vacuum cleaner on it and it starts burning. And it just brushed it in. And it just starts going, brrrr, and everyone was like, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, I was like panicking. I was like, I'm so sorry.

I'm so fucking sorry. Yeah, but I used to, I mean, I dipped when I couldn't smoke because I love smoking. But there was times where at a party, I accidentally drank my own spit, but you keep going. Like nothing in you goes, this habit's revolting. Yeah, you know what it was is,

what's interesting is a lot of people don't know there's a difference between dipping in Chow and like chew Like dip you put it in your lip we pack it down Nate used to dip all the time Nate and Shane were my two friends that dipped all the time and you'd always see him just Having like a Mountain Dew 20 ounce being like Yeah, that's fucking crazy And they'd be like yeah, and then they fish it out and put it in so now when like Shane uses zins I'm like, yeah, we used to you used to chew so I like give him credit for that. But

Dude, I remember Like Chaw like red man. Yeah, that's a plug that that shit's like you put that in your cheek and you go like And you and then it goes it is that's like billion Milligrams of nicotine in about ten seconds. A lot of people will wrap it in gum. So it like baseball players do that. Well, they'll take like, they'll take some gum and mix it with the red man. So it like, it's like easier to chew. It's like more chewable, but you get like this, the juice.

I don't know that that guy gave me some and the world turned sideways. Fuck. Yeah, I did. Red man, old school red man chew like that? Oh, fuck. I was in a convenience store the other day, well, when I was in Oklahoma, because there, there's about 8,000 kinds of chewing tobacco because everybody's still going at it. There was a guy my first year of college in Missouri

that was, he was clearly off the farm and did not want to be getting a college education. Sure. My first semester he would come into class every day and open up a can of Copenhagen and he would take half the can and put it in there and then the entire class goes by, doesn't spit. Guts it. Doesn't spit once. And so I, after a couple of weeks, I said, hey, you know, I sit behind you a lot and used to like a little pinch of, you know, every now and then. I was like, why, what do you do with the, with the juice? He's like, I just swallow it.

Yeah. And I go, can't be, can't be good. It's gotta be horrible for you. It's gotta be. Can you imagine what Copenhagen shits are like? Dude, it can't be good A little bit of a cold so I have I felt the the running of my nose. Oh Yeah, hold on we'll get back to that because I Speaking about guys that were gutting

Yeah, hold on, we'll get back to that because I, speaking about guys that were gutting tobacco, when I lived in Alaska and I worked at that fish cannery, our dock boss, Lou, Copenhagen, would take it out in the morning while he was giving us our chores for the day on the dock and he'd put it in and he would gut it, but he wouldn't even take it out at lunch. In fact, he'd put more in and he would gut it, but he wouldn't even take it out at lunch. In fact, he'd put more in and then he would eat a meal.

One time I was in the office talking to Lou about something and I mean, when he would talk, he'd see it. It would just be like up here in his lip. He would take the candy hot tamales. He was eating hot tamales and he would spill them in his hand and he'd be like, well, I need you to go down there and make sure the Arapaho's gassed

and toss in a handful of hot tamales and be like, and I would see as he was eating, dude, I wonder if I saw that picture on my phone of him. You have a picture of his mouth? You can see the chaw in his mouth from, dude, it is I'm telling you right now homeboy is wild words Did you ever have a moment during your drinking days where you had a dip in and you were smoking a cigarette simultaneously? I

love smoking I Didn't like dipping that much I dipped because I wanted the nicotine I Loved smoking so like my version of that would be going back to back Do I have Lou damn I thought that's the other thing that's the difference between New York in LA Everybody here smokes. Yeah, everybody in New York is in something about the misery of Manhattan where you just want to

stand outside and crush butts. I mean not a lot of people smoke anymore. But still a lot more here than LA. Well now it's all, LA's all, LA's like, I don't have the picture, I gotta find it, we'll find it and I'll send it to you. They're, LA's all, I don't have the picture, I gotta find it. We'll find it and I'll send it to you. They're, LA's all zins now. Well, not just that, but everybody's high.

Everybody is high. And when I tell you the number of times in one week that the light turns red and stoned people are surfing Instagram on their phone, I'm sorry, the light turns green. And stone people are surfing the internet and Instagram on their phone. They're like, Oh, that's right. I'm in the, I'm in the car and a light. Dude, that's, I don't know. I want cigarettes to come back. I want cigarettes back. When did you quit smoking cigarettes?

Well, I've had a, I've had a weird relationship with Nicotine my first cigarette was in the walk-in cooler at the buy for less grocery store It was a cool mental nice And then I switched it oh and I switched to Benson and hedges.. Oh, mental. Dude, B and H were so smooth. Well, I worked at it. So I worked at a pizza at Godfather's Pizza and a lot of the staff were black. And so I would smoke camel lights, but I would be I would bum menthols off of them. Yeah.

And I was like, these are awesome. Yeah, they just taste great. I never got full into menthol, but I never got upset when people had menthols. I had friends that'd be like, ah, fuck a menthol. I'd be like, all right. And also, my boss, this big fat dude, and my boss at Godfather's Pizza,

his name was Willie Pink, and he would crush Benson and Hedges' menthol. And you know, there was, there was, there was the people that would smoke the regular link cigarettes. And then there was the hundreds and then there was the one twenties. I didn't even know that one. But it, he was so manly that he could smoke long cigarettes

I still look cool. It's still look cool. That's wild. That's wild to me that you can look That's like someone smoking Virginia Slim's and still being tough. So I and then in college My stepdad he'd served in Vietnam and Korea and he went on He was a Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma all the time and he would pick up 10 cartons of camel lights, five bucks a carton on the base and mail them to me. And so I was,

I was the guy in college for all four years that if you were partying at our house and you ran out of cigarettes, you knew that I had, I would have been at your side the entire time. It was nuts. I was like, Laz let me get another pack of cigarettes. He's like, Camel lights? Dude, our entire house was full of shit we bought with Camel Bucks. Camel Bucks rule. Camel Bucks rule. Honestly there's still a bunch of Joe Camel stuff that I want to find and get. Joe Camel was the fucking man. My dad worked at a liquor store and they would send when the carton sometimes they'd send a free t-shirt And like one of it and he just opened it up and gave it to me It was my sleeping shirt and I wore I wore a camel light Joe Joe camel camel light shirt

Until it was see-through because I would sleep in it every night. And my mom was like, we could see through this. I gotta throw this away. Everything we had was branded with camel stuff. I love it. My dad was a Marlboro guy. So when he died, it was like a Marlboro jacket. There was a Marlboro cooler. And you're like, all right, Gary,

you were fucking spending them bucks. You weren't saving them. He was getting active with it. It was such a great promotion, because you're like, if I smoke faster, I can get a camel dart board. I might get a, get a goddamn pool table. Um, we have to start wrapping it up, but, um, the, the suicide letter. So you just took an amalgamation of everyone. Yeah. And then, uh,

so if you find those shoes, there's a letter there, and you wrote that letter, if you're playing Red Dead Redemption 2. Yeah. It was fun working on that stuff, like filling, making virtual worlds and filling them with content. You know, our new company, Absurd Ventures, Dan Howser and I started it, and we loved, he and I made the radio in GTA, you know, in Red Dead Redemption 2, there was old timey cartoons you could watch, and there was the, you know,

the newspaper and all these discoverables, and we loved making media. So when we started the new company, we thought, well, let's make new IP. You know, we worked on legendary legacy IP for him for 22 years, me for 19. So we've been working on three different universes, two of which we've announced, the third we haven't. But, you know, we're working on games, graphic novels, animated TV, live action. We just released an audio fiction series this summer

that is available now. Available now. All the games that you and I have been talking about were set from 1899 to current day. We never did anything that was set in the future. So, a better paradise is that was set in the future. Sure. So a better paradise is our universe set in the future. And it's about, uh, a video game company in the 20 thirties that's making an open world game and they develop an AI agent that will make it that helps create the world but also psychoanalyzes you and

changes the gameplay based on you. Yeah, kind of like we're talking about when you couldn't beat a level and they're kind of like the bad guys start missing and stuff. So put more to your personality and manipulating you. Oh, cool. So that's terrifying. The video game company implodes for mysterious reasons that get revealed. And the people that work there that aren't dead are on the run in the 2040s. Oh, that's fun.

And so we have 12 episodes and it's monologues from the people that are on the run being pursued by the AI and other things that are after them. And then flashbacks to the 2030s. To what happened? To the game development. I love that. And when things started going off the rails.

And we created this AI, the AI character also does monologues, his name is Nigel Dave, because the two engineers that hated each other, that made him were called Nigel and Dave. Yeah. And so he just renamed himself Nigel Dave. But he goes on these long monologues trying to figure out what it means to be human. Yeah. But his perception of it is by watching the Internet of Things and reading social media. Oh that's crazy. What AI is actually doing right now. Right. And so. that is nuts that you I mean you guys are taking from real Life and and how AI like chat GBT and all this stuff takes all the stuff from the internet and then regurgitates it

You know, but it's got that comedic tone sure that well that way that we're known for yeah And so the audio fiction it's kind of meta the audio fiction series is about a fictional video game team that's making this game, while we're also have a team that's making the game. Oh really? So we have several things in production. I love that. That gets me excited knowing that I like when you find out people do several different levels to their creations.

You know, it's kind of like with the Mad Max universe, like I played that game on Switch, but then I found out that his original intention was to make Fury Road, the video game, and an anime Furiosa all at the same time, and Warner Brothers was like, no, we're not gonna do that and Fury Road got pushed back as the schedules So they made Mad Max the video game without Miller's Sign-off they just took his like notes and they went and developed the game He was pissed about it But it's crazy because I wish they would have let him do that because then he tells the story in three different

mediums where you can watch the movie play the game then also watch the anime about where Furiosa's from. Yeah, we wanted to, we have multiple stories planned for that universe as well as the other universe, but doing the audio fiction thing, let us get a story out there and establish our characters. Yeah. And can you download it like a podcast? Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's released like a podcast so it's on Apple podcast

Spotify called a better paradise a better paradise and and this is the introduction to that world. Yeah, that's fucking sick So any plans on when the game's gonna come out? Oh, I've that's I'm not in charge of yeah You know that you do that's such a headache if everything you're talking about with Red Dead 2 like I don't want to fucking good luck. And Red Dead Two, I mean, it's such an amazing, I mean, I think it's a masterpiece, but biased. It's unbelievable. We worked on that for seven years. You know, it's crazy. It was a, it was a ease. Bonnie McFarland named after the comedian. No, it's not in fact. So Dan names the characters.

Okay. I mean, there's a lot of characters that I named, but all the main characters he names. And I said to him, I was like, you know, there's a com a comedian named Bonnie Farlin. And, um, he'd never heard of her. Um, despite her being world famous. Yeah. And we decided not to change it.

That's fine. It isn't sort of an old, we're talking about old lady names. Sorry Bonnie. Sorry Bonnie. I didn't say that. That's an old west name. It's just.

You're gonna have Rich Voss coming after you. I'm just saying. I didn't say it. That's all I didn't say Bonnie is an old lady name. It's an old. I'm an old West. It sounds like a lady you'd like. She's not that old. Okay. Bonnie. Yeah. That's that was I think Red Dead 2 is is the greatest video game ever made. Wow. That's great. Thank you. Because it is. It's so immersive. I mean, I was so excited for it when it was because it got pushed back. And I remember, and I've

told the story before, but when Shane and I used to be on the road together, we do this. Shane was always like, you're too nice. Like, what's your like thing? Like, what's your fucked up thing? I was like, I don't know, it'd be fun. And then we started joking around. What if my fucked up thing was I jerk off homeless guys and I just go under a bridge and I jack them off and we do, Shane and I would do this voice where we go, hold on mister, oh, you're about to make me pop.

Oh God, you got good hands. You're about to make me come in my britches. And we like, just do that, just say like, Shane walks under an underpass and I'm like fucking beating off a homeless guy. And then I was over, I was like out of town walks under an underpass and I'm like fucking beating off a homeless guy. And then I was over, I was like out of town. I think I might've been in like Italy or something.

And Shane calls me and he's like, have you played Red Dead? I thought you were gonna say, Shane calls me and he's like, I just beat off a homeless guy under a bridge. Yeah, he came so fast. But Shane called me and goes, have you played Red Dead Redemption 2 yet?

And I was like, no, but I've, you know, I pre-ordered it. I'm gonna play it when I get home. And I was like, no, but I've, you know, I pre-ordered it. I'm gonna play it when I get home. And he's like, dude, the main character is our jerk off homeless guy voice. And I go, no, it's not. And I put on it when Arthur Miller, the first time Arthur goes, will I be Josiah? We're like, I was like, dude.

He's like, I gotta come over and watch. He came over to my house to watch me watch it for the first time, because he was like, it's our voice that we do We go. Well, hold on a second mister. You're about to make me bust Yeah But you you know growing up you ran into those Type of characters with that with that sort of cadence

Especially in Arizona it it was hysterical when making that game You know, we have to we have to record fifteen hundred sixteen hundred people to sure fill that universe and so we would we did all these auditions in in in New York in LA and We I I went through them and because coming from the south I know what a southern accent sounds like and I know when... You also know what an Oklahoma accent sounds like, what a Texas accent sounds like. Correct. I mean the difference between the two. And so we did a bunch of recording in New York, we found more decent southern accents in LA, but then we ran out and we had hundreds more NPCs that we needed to do and I said, we're

going to Georgia. Yeah. We're going to Atlanta and people from Mississippi and all we got auditions from from all around surrounding Atlanta. But I think that's one of the reasons that so many of the accents and characters in that are legit. And then for Sandinese, which is sort of a spoof of New Orleans, there's no way you're getting a New Orleans accent in New York or LA. There's no way an actor can pull that off properly. We got a casting director down there that got us proper Creole.

Oh yeah. And you had to pay him and stuff like cans of peaches. He said, oh, he gonna work for you if you give him a fresh can of peach. But it had to be good peaches. Well, then there we go. I would introduce myself, I'm Ham Laszlo, I'm gonna be directing you today,

and shit would come out of their mouth. I had not a clue what the fuck they were saying. Dango, you like the man that Jesus raised from the dead. You don't know who that is. Nah, you don the man that Jesus raised from the dead. You won't know who he is. Now you won't got a biblical name. You know, and so I would be going through all this stuff because for each character, you have hundreds and hundreds of lines that trigger based on the player's behavior.

Sure, what's with you going with that horse? And, oh, you look tired. So some of the lines the Creel guys would read and I didn't understand it at all, but I was like, that sounds awesome. That's so funny. You being in the booth going, and we got it. Yeah.

I'm not gonna play, no man, no parrot going all swim. Great job. Thank you so much, Remy. I'm gonna go back onto my windboat. Dude, that's fucking great. I can't tell you how much it meant you coming by, hanging out when you said you were in town. One of the coolest people I've met being in this business,

you're just such a good dude. You've always stayed the same. And yeah, I remember going to hang out at Rockstar office with you and hold that fake gun that you got from Red Dead Redemption 1. And it was like- I was thinking about when you and I first started hanging out, it was very romantic.

Because do you remember the first few times- Oh yeah, we went out and got like oysters. Yeah, we got like oysters and shit. We went out and just like looking at each other and like- We were sucking oysters, dude. I was like, am I being groomed? And then we would walk out. That's how. I love video games. I'm like, I think I'm getting groomed by this guy, but these oysters are yummy.

And you know, I was still drinking too, I think. Did I just quit? I think you might've just. I'm still smoking cigarettes. I know that. Yeah. But we, and we would, you'd pull out a vape. Oh yeah. That's back when you had to smuggle vapes in from other places. Colorado. Colorado. Like 2013, 2014. Oh, yeah, that's back when you had to smuggle vapes in other places from Colorado Yeah, like 2013 2014 and you'd pull out a vape and we were sharing it walking down the street together after having oysters Yeah, there's definitely people who thought we were a gay couple Yeah, I know we were hanging out knocking back a dozen oysters talking about stuff and then sharing our vape which now everyone vapes

But back then they're like look at their look at their gentleman cigarettes we're like oh this is hot but that was like wax dude we were getting fucking wrecked it was fantastic balling up the wax and putting it in there and then you'd hear it crackle like you