The Morning Stream - TMS 2932: Undead Driveway Chicken

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Smoke Salt Everyday. Drive by chickening. I Don't Like Chickens That Are ZOMBEEEEEEES! I don't BEEPING like BEEPING Beach BEEPING Balls. Big Milky Film... Plate tester. One Plastic Button Too Tight. Little Nib Nibbler. Busted for Being Dipshits. Brian's Budgie Smugglers. Welcome Home Larry. The Stink Of Dairy. Doctor Smeary Who. Crappy Copies of Everything. Fat Squirrel Fall with Bill and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They say every time a chicken farts, a turkey gets its wings. They also say that the best use of your extra cash is a sub at patreon.com slash TMS. You must do what they say. Coming up on the morning stream, smoke salt every day. Drive by chickening. I don't like chickens that are zombies. I don't beeping like beeping, beach beeping balls. Big milky film.

Plate tester. One plastic button too tight. A little nib nib nibbler. Busted for being. DIP shins. Brian's budgie smugglers. Welcome home, Larry. The stink of dairy. Dr. Smeary Who. Crappy copies of everything.

Fat squirrel fall with Bill and more on this episode of the Morning Street. If you worked in one of my companies and kept me waiting the way you did this afternoon, I'd warn you once, if it happened again, I'd find. Whoa, ho. Hey now, Hondo. Just a second here. Those goddamn Mason sons of bitches. The morning stream. I live. I love. I slay. And I, I am content. Hello, everybody, and welcome to TMS. Yes, that's right. It's the morning stream. Once again, in your face on December 9th, 2025. I'm Scott Johnson. That's Brian Ibitt. Good day.

to you. Good Tuesday Day to you. Yep. It's a hot, wet Tuesday. Not really. It's cold. It's freezing here. Do you still have snow or you guys all clear it out? It's just like a little tiny bit of traces on the ground in certain places. Like where the shade from trees

and sides of houses and things like that are, you get some snow. But for the most part my lawn is about 95% snow free. It's weird because you guys are getting at least something that sticks. We're just getting nothing. It's little flurries they hang around for a minute they might stay and they may stay in the pot

the pots my wife has out or something for a hot minute and then poof gone and then you can kind of wear shorts not that it's warm like this we went walking this morning and it was like gosh i don't know let's see what is it now it's probably about 38 that's it's not warm but it's not cold you know yeah no it's we're in the same boat 47 here right now currently it's freaking December, man. It's supposed to be cold by now. It's supposed to be cold. And there's no like the 10-day forecast just shows

40s, low 50s even. It's crazy. Shee. You could bike ride in that stuff a little bit. I could bike ride. Totally could. Yeah. Are you going to? Do you feel the pole? No. No. No. All right. Nope. 60 degrees is my cutoff for outdoor cycling. But I've got the indoor. I've got the

spin bike perched nicely in front of a giant TV screen for entertainment purposes. is so we all need boundaries 60 degrees a good boundary i like that 60 degrees is a good boundary i mean i do have if i want if i had to if i wanted to i've got a um it's funny it looks like a onesy um bike gear and it's padded and it's warm you know it's good of keeping me warm but um i don't know it's also i don't think it's the most flattering here's the deal i don't have the most flattering body to put in that weird shaped

sausage casing they call a bike ones. So it's a full like zip up in the back kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. I would not I would not dare either. I would be like yeah. I don't even want to show. I don't even want to show my wife that. You'll get ideas about leaving. Right? Exactly. It's like

yeah. Yeah. It really shows off the problem. The guy at the checkout line and the King Super is sure. I think he I think you winked at me. Sure. Pursue that. Sure.

Why not? Speaking of which, I took the garbage out last night and it wasn't that cold. So I thought, this is fine. I like taking garbage out when it's not cold. So I'm trucking it out there. And I found the weirdest thing. The neighbor directly behind us who is normally, they're fine. They put their garbage out on time.

We do too. They're clean. They have a nice little driveway area. They keep it all in the rear there. They keep it all really nice. They have these nice dogs that don't bark. They're good people, right? good people yeah yeah uh the best people anyway it's hard not to do it uh it's hard not to

on the driveway as i'm walking over there and it's kind of dark so i wasn't exactly sure at first what i was looking at but there is a full-sized de-feathered obviously and headless but a full-size uncooked chicken laying in their driveway sprawled out kind of you know like not so not in its plastic container like they're thawing it somewhere I mean, it's still a weird place to thaw that it's like out in the middle of the driveway. Oh, shit. You just suggested something that I may have really royally fuffed up here. Okay.

Because you just said maybe they're thawing it. What if that's true? Because I threw it away. I picked it up and chucked it in the can. Oh, you did. Yeah. So if they. I didn't even consider this until you just said, that's a weird way to thaw your chicken, but who am I to judge?

Yeah, I didn't get to the part where you picked it up and threw it away. was like yeah i wasn't even to me that was like i wasn't even sure i was going to tell you about how i threw it away because of course i threw it away it's a piece of meat i don't think somebody i don't think somebody with thaw chicken out on their driveway with like wild animals and stuff like that i mean that's that's yeah there's a there's two dogs that run that alley space that do that for exercise there's no way you'd leave a chicken out there right no it's an accident i mean god you know if their dogs are running around where they

can get to that that's going to be a salmonella situation yeah so i I put on dog bags, poo bags. Yeah. Because I don't know what's with this chicken. I'm not going to touch it with my bare hands. And I picked it up and grabbed it by the legs or the wings, I guess. Yeah. Took it over to the can.

Blanc put it in their trash can. Okay. And left it. But now I'm wondering if that was on purpose. Maybe I just don't understand. There's a tradition in some cultures where you leave a chicken out in the thing. But it was just rod-dogging it on the thing. They're just laying there going, eh.

is such a weird, like, why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they put that in a garbage bag, first of all? Agreed. Maybe it fell out while they were taking their trash out. I don't know. That's an awfully big thing. Like, you would think if there's a whole big enough for a full-sized chicken to fall out of your garbage bag, other things would fall out with it. I agree. I agree.

And if it was the only thing in the garbage bag, you'd probably notice that it just got really light all of a sudden. Yeah. Yeah, none of it, all of it doesn't make sense. And the camera I used to have out there that was a security camera above our driveway is no longer working. Oh, shoot. So I don't have any video footage of when it happened. It made me so mad. It made me wish I'd have gotten a new camera sooner because I really, now I really want to know.

You want to know where that chicken came from? Was it a prank? Like, did somebody do a drive-by and threw a chicken on there? Yeah, it may not even be their chicken. Yeah. Some teenage a hole. We used to do that stuff growing up. Sure.

If we found a chicken, if we found a chicken, guaranteed that chicken's going to see some business that night. Yeah. You know? We're going to take it somewhere. We're going to throw it somewhere. I mean, we got up, I shouldn't say we. I went with them, but I didn't actually heave it over the edge. But I went up to the top of an overpass over the freeway.

Oh, no. With some friends, we all worked at an ice cream place. And then the ice cream place made its own ice cream. And the ice cream would come in the form of these giant bags full of ice cream mix. The form of ice cream mix. And then you would pour it into the machine and it would freeze it. And then the other flavors and stuff. And then you'd poop out fresh.

It was really good ice cream. Like, that's how you make the good stuff. And these guys thought it'd be funny if we took three or so of those bags with us, which were expensive. So we were basically stealing from our employer. It's got to make like hundreds of cones of ice creams worth of ice cream. Oh, easily. And the bags themselves weren't cheap, which, you know, of course is the point.

You want good ice cream. And therefore you sell them for at the time, probably three bucks a cone. And then you make. I don't know if I'd say that good ice cream is made from powder, but please continue. Well, no powder. all liquid. So these bags are full of... Oh, it's liquid. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Okay. I don't know. I thought it was powder. It's going to make this worse for you because when we take those liquid bags and they're heavy and they'll slosh all over. I don't know how heavy, probably 30 pounds or something. And they, and they're just a tight nozzle on them. But they're really unwieldy. You try to carry them and they're trying to like the weight of the goo. It'll go on the one side. Right. What do they call it dead? You know, a dead weight kind of thing where it's just it keeps shifting on you while you're trying to carry it. Yeah. So you got these dumb teenagers.

wobbling around. We climb up to the top of this overpass. Now, I didn't throw one over, but I still participated, so I'm not totally relinquishing my responsibility. A bag was thrown over, but you were, you were not behind, you were not touching the bag when he got thrown over. Like when my brother, my brother agreed

to putting a cherry bomb in a bag of chips at the 7-Eleven that burned down, but couldn't go that night last minute. Sure. It's like that. He's still kind of culpable in a planning way, right? It feels like you were there, like more of an aiding and a betting kind of level, isn't? That's true.

That's true. Just didn't just called out sick. If we'd gotten caught, 100% I would have been as much trouble as they were. For sure, yeah. But I do, I will admit to having serious second thoughts up there. Because once we got up there and this kid heaved the first one over and it's just oncoming traffic, it's nighttime so nobody can see anything. He drops this huge bag.

It hits the front windshield and just goes, bloosh. And just creates like a big milky film on the front of this guy's car. and of course he's and it's on this freeware this highway we call Bangor which is weird because it's got it's not end to end like there's there are lights there stops

in it but it's it's not full on interstate where you might stop at a light it's yeah Santa Fe Santa Fe Santa Fe Drive down here is kind of like that where yeah it's fast long stretches of 55 miles an hour but then you've got lights there you go it's exactly the same as that and so we're at a stretch

where there was an overbridge and it's numerally one of those bridges where you put Welcome home Larry or whatever They put in you know cups or whatever It's like that up there So we're just a heave, heave And these cars are going

And nobody crashed Everybody kind of stopped Swerved move came to a halt We stopped traffic for sure Nobody got hurt But when that first one hit I went Ew what are we doing This is bad

We're all dead We're all gonna die What are we doing? Oh my God No kidding. Or somebody's going to die. I'm just visualizing, all right, here's a car going maybe, let's say, 50 miles an hour. Let's say they're going a little under what I assume the speed limit is, 50.

Even 50, all of a sudden, you cannot see anything because you've got a delicious film of melted ice cream all over your windshield. Yeah, and it's not, you know, if it was water balloon, at least the water's translucent. Right, exactly. And it's small. Yeah. You know, a water blue. and it's like, oh, darn, that's inconvenient. Now I have to use my windshield wipers.

But this is like, you know, if he used as windshield wipers, he's probably getting a thinner film of opaque. Yeah. It was also middle of the hot summer. And when you have a bag full of a cool liquid, that can be bad for windshields where they'll shatter and stuff. That didn't happen far as I know. But we ran.

We don't know. We may have done that. We just ran so hard. And the stink of dairy. Oh, yeah. In the vents. your engine block area thing. I mean, some of that you can hose out, but it's terrible.

My point with this story is, A, I regret it terribly. But B, teenagers are just so stupid, especially boys. Yes. Yes. They're just so dumb. So whoever did the chicken, I don't know what your idea there was, but I drew it away. You didn't see a big chicken size dent on their garage door or anything, right? No. Well, I mean, it was night and I didn't look that hard, so maybe, but.

Oh, I should check that today, because they could have hurled it. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, like somebody doing a prank, chicken, you know, an uncooked chicken prank. Oh, like you did when you're a kid, right. Everybody had the undead, undead, um, dead chicken prank. Zombie chickens. Anyway, fun stuff, Brian. What did you get up to? What's going on?

Well, I was looking for a book to help me with a certain puzzle on Rock Puzzles Monthly. and we'll say what the book is because it might give things away. But as I was looking for it, I found something that we talked about a few weeks ago. I had mentioned that in 1985, my dad took me on a trip to the UK. Start in London and then we went down and saw my Nana, my great Nana, Ethel and the Witterings. That's awesome. Then back up to London and then up north to Scotland. and Ness and the Isle of Sky and all these sort of things.

And one of the first things we did is I stopped in a bookstore. Like it's probably a bookstore in the whatever the big, at the time your rail station was in London that had, you know, chip shops and souvenir shops and a bookstore. And I picked up a book that I picked up only because it seemed funny. I had zero idea. It was based on anything, any TV show or anything like that. And I found it. It is the Young One's book, The Bachelor Boys, The Young One's book. Oh, look at that.

What's in there? Just like with Viv, Neal. It is like a, it's like a variety of jokes and articles each. Basically, it's made to look like, oh yeah, who, Made the T is this page right here. And it's like a little cartoon. So it's like screencaps, or not screencats, but like photos. Yeah, like photos of them and stuff.

Like, you know, here's some, here's them teaching how to cheat at exams. I'll bet he can't make that position in the new Alien Earth movie. Oh, probably not. No. Yeah, probably not. But it's done like each section or each page is written by a different character. Like here's the, here's the who farted, uh, uh, comic strip. I don't know if you call this comic strip.

That's great. And then you've got like, you know, Neil is the one that turns out that farted and there's the sound of him farting with everybody behind it. Isn't Neil always the one that got thrown under the bus? Felt like it. Yeah, Neil was like the scapegoat for everything.

And it wasn't until I love that show. Years later. Here's Vivian doing fun with firearms. Oh, shit. Couldn't do that in a book. Oh, my gosh, dude. Comedy book these days.

Holy crap. Yeah, 1985, I picked this thing up. And it's funny that, that I got such a kid. You had some question you couldn't. What was the deal or something with trivia where you, oh no, you were trying to make, never mind, I'm confusing it.

I was thinking it was something at one of your trivia nights, but no, this is for a rock puzzles monthly thing that you were doing. Yeah, I was looking for a different book, which I found for Rock Puzzles Monthly. And when I was looking for that, I came across this thing and was like, all right, cool. That's awesome. I don't know what I'm going to do with it now. It's not like I get anything out of this now.

So if there's a big fan of the young ones out there. Yeah, do we have a mega fan? She'll be a message and all. And this is yours. Merry Christmas. I like this. Here's Neil's Ten Commandments and on it is written. Don't bother with this.

bit signed VIV. That's great. They leaned into it. I love it. They really did. Yeah. I have a Letterman book like that. That's just full of Dave stuff.

Like here are a bunch of top ten lists. Here are some behind the scenes. Here is what Dave would say about it. It was a weird thing. Like a thing I would never refer to, but I had to have it. That's just how it was back in 1985. Yeah. We had to have these things.

Yeah. And I had no idea there was a TV show. I'm like, well, this looks funny. I'll just buy this. And I read it cover to cover on your rail. like traveling all over the English countryside, but, you know, it wasn't until years later that I found out there was a TV show that this was based on. Now you've got to collect them all.

You've got to get the Faulty Towers book. You've got to get the while you were sleeping here. There probably is. Yeah, the, are you being served? There you go. Yeah. I like, are you being served? It's trash TV, like British trash TV, but I really liked it.

There's also something about the. The video style felt like it was just right out of soap opera, like American soap opera style video style. Like Dr. Who of the era with that crappy video smeary. When Tom Baker moved too fast, he left a trail behind him on screen. Yeah, every time the Tom Baker ones would happen, it'd be like, do we have lights in the scene? Because that's going to be a problem.

If the camera moved and there was a light facing the camera, heaven forbid you got burnout on that section. Yeah, it was really ugly. Yeah. But also there's something about it that I kind of like. I don't know. I can't pay my finger on it. Think of its time.

Take comfort in that. I do. All right. We're going to do some news and try to inform you guys at home about what's happened overnight. All right. Actually, this is a very old story, so that's a dumb thing to say. Anyway, here you go. It's time for the news, and it's brought to you by.

Brought to you by Rock Puzzles Monthly. There wasn't a very good story today to call out for Daily Music Headlines, so I switched it to Rock Puzzles Monthly. There you go. Currently, middle of working on. the puzzles for December. The first one has already gone out to my first level playtester to make sure things work, and then it goes out to the other playtesters. But it's a great time to sign up if you go to Rock Puzzles Monthly or you go to Patreon.com

slash Rock Puzzles Monthly. Sign up. Get these monthly puzzles. So far, everybody has been loving them. I've been getting these comments in the Discord. Great puzzle set, brilliant design on this one. et cetera, et cetera. Like, people are loving them, and I'm so, um, I'm so happy that you guys are digging

and trying to find some, some quick, uh, yeah, right now it's, right now it's questions about the November puzzle pack, uh, which people got at the end of, uh, end of last month. Oh, yeah. But, um, yeah, join up. Get some fun stuff. Yeah, why not? Uh, you either get them in the mail or you get them via digital and they'll be in your inbox waiting for you to play.

Rock Puzzles Monthly.com. Jack Puzzles Monthly.com. Who says there's no domains left? I think that's a good one. Yes, right. There we go. Here's the story about the biggest idiots of the month. Is there a competition?

Is this like the Darwin Awards kind of thing? It feels like it. These guys are so freaking stupid. Two North Texas men, no offense to Texas. Lots of friends there. I love everybody there. You guys are fine. These two ding-dongs were arrested and indicted in an alleged plot to invade a Haitian

Island, kill all the men, enslave the women and the children. Oh, God. Okay. Now, I don't want to shock you guys. But this is a couple of gen alpha slash Z 20 and 21 year olds who are chronically online. Okay. Who spend all their time listening to what Andrew Tate has to say. Sure.

Sure. And these two chuckleheads think that they could go. go to a Haitian island, kill all the dudes, enslave everybody else, and then now that's their island. They really thought this. They think that's how things are going to work. Yeah.

Watch too many 80s action films, and maybe they're little red hats or just are the, are tightened just one plastic button too tight on their red trucker hats. That what those are called little buttons? Is that what we should call those? I don't know what those are called.

I like it. I've never had a term for it. Yeah. The adjustable strap. Yeah. No one's ever been able to tell me a name. I think you're the first. They're like little nibs.

Not like a nibs. They're like little nibs. Yeah, yeah. Not like the nibs you used to eat. I used to love nibs. Remember nips? The licorice nibs. Lickrish nibs, those are the best.

And I was fine with the black licorice nibs. I love black licorish. I know. I know that some people feel like it's cilantro. They hate it. Yeah, you're like, it's me. I'm one of those. Although I like cilantro, so I don't know what's going on there.

There we go. Maybe there's, who knows, maybe there's something. I'm not a supertaster either, according to, deucey when I did the paper test. Oh, right. Yeah. So I don't have a good excuse. I wasn't on the supertaster list either. Well, anyway.

I ate five of those strips and I didn't taste a damn thing. Was I not supposed to swallow them? No, I don't think you're supposed to ingest them entirely. Oh, maybe I did it wrong. Okay. I could take a paper machete dump about an hour later. Anyway, so here's what the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of Texas described. These men are now facing these charges, they say, because they were going to go and do this

and turn all the women and children into their slick slaves. U.S. Attorney J. Combe announced on Thursday that Gavin Rivers, Westenburg, age 21, and Alan, Tanner, Tanner, Tanner, Christopher Thomas, age 20 of Argyll. Argyll, Texas. Argyll, Texas. That's in a movie or something. Argyll. I mean, there was a movie called Argyll about a cat, but it didn't have anything. anything to do with Texas.

Maybe hell or high water I'm thinking of. Maybe they've mentioned it. Yeah. Oh, could be. Yeah. I mean, Allen, Allen, Texas, I've heard of Allen, Texas. And I'm trying to think of maybe we drove through it when we went from

Austin to Dallas or when we drove down through Dallas. I don't know. Do you think that's just a dude who was just named after a guy named Allen? Do you think that's what that is? Might have been. Yeah. Such an odd thing. It might have been a last name, too.

Just it could have been a Larry Allen found of the town. We're calling it out. That's right. Better than Larry. He wears a lot of Argyles. We're sending them over there. Yeah, the guy with the socks, we're naming that town after him. Right, right. They have been charged with conspiracy to murder, maim, or kidnap a foreign country, which is the thing you can say, I guess, kidnap a foreign country.

A foreign country. A foreign country. Oh, in. You're right. I read that as of or something. And production of child pornography. The two count indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District, Texas. and this happened between August of 2024 and July of 2025. They were going to do this thing like a mercenary force. They had all these fantasies about how they were going to do it. They were going to purchase a sailboat, firearms, ammunition,

as well as recruit homeless people from Washington, D.C. What? Okay, that's a pretty... They're in Texas. How are they doing this? Yep. They were going to make a quote-unquote mercenary force and invade the island of Gonave.

Gnave. of? I don't know. And stage a coup d'et ha. And they got busted because they're dip shits. Yeah. Total dipshits. Yeah. Not that, not that they're, look, I don't think anyone should do anything like what they're talking about doing. Well, no, of course not. But what are you doing? Like, are you on 4chan at 4 a.m? and you go, I got an idea. Like, come on. The good news is that idiots like this do this sort of thing, but they make the stupid mistake of telling people they're going to do it. So it gives people opportunity to say, to report them and stop you know yeah um and not not that they would have had any success i feel like these guys probably

would have you know gotten uh killed somewhere in the water by by an errant wave on their sailboat full of ammunition yeah really hard to say whether they had gotten close yeah i feel like uh there was so many problems uh beforehand that they would have even made it to this island i tried to go back like when i was 20 21 what was what was i like what was my life like sure sure when what situation would I have to find myself in to think like this? And forget about like the sex slave stuff. Just the idea of like, I'm going to, we're going to be

mercenaries and go take over an island and rule the place. That's not even, that's not normal 20 year old fantasy stuff. That's like. You watch a movie like Commando or or something, right? Like, you know, some sort of Sylvester Stallone masculine action film from the 80s.

And he's, he's stopping people from doing this sort of thing because it's ridiculous and fictional and and dumb yeah and an excuse to get Arnold all painted up that's it that's so stupid um all right I bet we touched on this before we're going to bring it back around to this Campbell story remember the Campbell's guy who said all the food I think it was here we talked about it all there he basically got caught on tape this Campbell CEO saying our you know basically our soup is shit and it's for cheap poor people you don't remember us we I couldn't tell you what stories we talked about yesterday or Friday. So I forget him too.

So I do not remember this. But the guy got fired. So follow up, if this is truly a follow up, and we talked about before. Martin Bailey, a vice president in Campbell's Information Security Department, was named in a lawsuit filed this week by Robert Garza,

former Campbell's employee who said he was fired on January 30th after being, or sorry, after he reported Bailey's comments to a supervisor. So he got fired for telling people about what the dude said. but he also is now on there's tape there's audio with this good good and he was just a jackass who says that about their own company

and the people who are their customers my God what a dumb ass yeah and he goes they cut out all the F bombs here but he sounds like it's just a huge douche he's on tape he's like our stuff is so effing highly processed food we sell it for poor people

with poor people food and then he in the lawsuit there's some other stuff about racist comments toward Indian workers He called them idiots, a bunch of other stuff. They also supposedly smoked weed while he was at work. Anyway, that guy got fired, so. Did you, you hear about the Shirley Manson thing, Shirley Manson from Garbage?

No, I happen. So apparently last week, and if it would have happened during the week, we would have covered this on Daily Music Headlines. But she, you know, Garbage is doing a concert, and she looks out and there's a beach ball getting bounced around. and she's like, oh, can you send that lovely beach ball right up here to me, please? And the crowd, like, you know, honors her and, like, pushes, gets the beach ball up to her. And she grabs it and I guess she pops it. Just stabs it and pops it. Just stabs it and pops and says, I'm just a, I'm just an effing buzzkill.

Hold on. Let me, let me, hold on. Let me find, let's see. Here we go. I'm just a fucking buzzkill, aren't I? But then she went on a ranch. She found the guy in the audience who brought the beach balls. and I'm going to read the direct quote. Okay.

But I'm going to bleep out all the F-bombs because it gets to the end and it is glorious. This is why I love Shirley Manson. She says, big guy with your big in beach ball. What a f-ding douchebag. You're a little-aged man in a fucking ridiculous hat and you're a f***ing face. I want literally to ask people to punch you in the f***ing face. But you know what? I'm a lady, so I won't.

Wow. Wow. That is the best quote. I love all those like eight F bombs or 10 F bombs right in a row. Then it says, but you know what? I'm a lady, so I won't. So our beach balls at a concert that's, they don't like that because it's distracting or something? No, exactly.

The way she said, let's see, it was basically like we're up here trying to perform for you and you're, here it is. We're fed up of not getting effing paid properly and fed up having to play for douchebags like you. Oh, shit. She says, I make no apologies whatsoever for getting annoyed at Beach Balls. It shows I joined a band because I hated the effing beach. I joined a band because I wanted to listen to Susie and the band. She's in the cure and be dark and beautiful.

You know what? I like her even more now. I do too. You know what? I agree. It's like how annoying when you see you're like working hard to put on a show for people. And they've got a beach ball and they're just being distracted by that. She truly is only happy when it rains, you know?

That's right. I think that's what's going on there. She was telling the truth about that. She was telling the truth, yeah. Well, Icewarm, if you hear this, I hope you're excited about this story as well because we know you have garbage. All right, we are going to swing the mic over and talk to a pal of ours, a friend, a good friend, and talk about making shit. So here you go. There's still something wrong, isn't there, Bill?

Bill Duran joining us on PunishPropes.com all the way up in the Pacific Northwest. Hello, Bill. How are you doing? Hello, good morning. Good morning to you. She would be happy here because it is raining and it's going to rain for the next forever. Oh, man. Cold, cold rain, warm rain. What does it do up there?

I don't even know. It's a seasonal depression. That's what that's... I mean, she's the rest of her bands from there. Like, that's a Seattle band with her, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought they were all from... Butch Vig.

No, she's Scottish, and the rest of the band is... I mean, it's Butch Vig who produced Nevermind for Nirvana. Right. And then two other guys, but I think all from Seattle. Or at least the band was formed in Seattle and she... My brain always thought Butch Vig sounded Scottish. It's such a great Scottish sound named. Butch Vig!

What are you doing? Suck a hooligan, Butch Vig. Well, that's neat to hear. and are there because today we're talking about making stuff and I hope that during the rainy season, Bill's figured out a way to make some cool shit and tell us about it. It's been a, it's actually been a slow fall

in the shop. We've been calling it fat squirrel fall. A lot of fat squirrels in our backyard. Yeah. But it's been a busy time for all our video stuff. And I wonder if you guys are down for a little content creator inside baseball.

Yeah. I'll do it. Inspired. Our buddy Brian Brushwood was in town last week, and we got to have those conversations with him and learn a lot. So kind of pushed all this. We have been really slow to adopt short form videos. But we're doing it, and I want to talk about it because it's been really significant to what we do. Yeah, they're also, this is great you're bringing this up because they're doing really well for me as well. I don't know what's going on, but YouTube shorts are popping for me.

Holy crap. So Brian, a year ago, we got to visit Brian at his compound in Austin, and that was his thing. He's like, man, I'm editing a short every day and just doing that and seeing how the numbers do. So Brittany especially has been doing all the editing, trying to get a new short video out every day. And I noticed that Scott is too, and you're filming new stuff, aren't you? Oh, yeah. Every single day I'm doing something. Today's will go up after the show, but normally I do.

I try to have one out before TMS starts. And then sometimes two a day. I've got a workflow that's super fast. The only real beef I have with it, like I'm super glad because what's happening is I'm seeing rollover. I'm seeing people come to podcasts from this because they're just like, wait, who is this guy? Let's go listen to other stuff.

So there's lots of pullback and that's good. If I have really one beef with it, it's that their YouTube's payouts for shorts is abysmal. Right. You've got to get into the millions before you make any cash off it. So it's real benefit, less monetary, but more that it just brings people to the rest of your content. So far. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy because I'll do like, I don't know, an episode of TMS, we have about, I don't know, if you count everybody that's listening live right now, some aren't there are, you know, three different streaming places. It's like 500 people or something. If you then count the podcast version of the show, it's like 25,000 people a day. but it's all just listeners mostly yeah but if you look at the YouTube video it's like by the end of tomorrow today's video will maybe have 300 views it's like not a big deal but then over on the

shorts thing I may do a short of me and Brian cracking up at a joke somebody told and that thing will get like 68,000 to 100,000 views yeah yeah it's weird that's amazing that's so wild yeah so so you hope they come back you know it's like it's a percentage game I guess right right yeah So what we've been doing is, and this is kind of what Brian was doing, Brushwood, is Britney's been editing our old long videos into short form videos. And I think part of the reason is why it's working really well for us is all of our YouTube videos, our long form videos, they took so much work to make. Right. But they are dense. They are so dense with good information, with interesting things.

So the shorts that we can make from them, a lot of times a single video can yield several short form videos. And those shorts are, like I said, nutrition rich. They're not vapid. It's not like someone, not this is what you do, Scott, but it's not just someone hitting a record and talking at the camera for a minute. Right, right. President Clumpity included. No, of course not. No, I mean, my, so for those you know how my bag, the way I'm doing these, I'm actually writing my own scripts.

Yeah. And then it's usually about something of interest. I don't know. Sometimes it's breaking video, gaming news, or it's like nostalgic this or that or retro something. And then I write up the script, try to make it punchy and funny, try for a minute or under. And then I do this thing. I'm not using a teleprompter. I'll read.

And then I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, read it, know it, then do my line, and then I'll pause and I'll hold really still, move my eyes down, reading the next line. So you can cut it really well to the next piece. Yeah. So it doesn't even look at my head moves. And then I collapse them all down to this thing and it ends up being, you know, 45 seconds of what looks like just a raw, me talking. And we could, I could talk about this for hours and hours and hours about what we learned so far. And I'll get that in a second. But it really does feel like you cannot give people a moment to breathe. they will leave immediately.

That's smart. It's smart to do it that way. I think like I said, one of the reasons, though, why we're seeing so much success is I think our shorts stand out because they're so dense with things happening. And we post them everywhere. Our main focus is YouTube and that's usually where we see the most traction because we have the biggest viewership there. But we've been posting to Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook and I even started a TikTok. I just started TikTok like two weeks ago. yeah and just by posting a video every day we're over a thousand followers there already yeah your stuff's perfect for that this quick cut i'm making a thing like this is a massive yeah massive part

of it people do it with cooking people do it with makers like this is a huge subsection of uh short form video it's it is weird though how how the different platforms will perform strangely so it's like on youtube i'll get like 800 000 views for the starcraft one and then on tictock it's like 9,000. I'm like, well, what's the difference? And then on TikTok, me, you know, saying, making a complaining about something, we'll get huge views and on YouTube, hardly anything. It's like, it's just a different audience, I guess. Right. Exactly. Different content for different platforms just. And this is where, yeah, this is where posting something every single day has an effect because

every single platform has its own algorithm that's testing what you are putting out versus what other people are putting out that day on that platform. And all you can do is put stuff into the algorithm and see what comes out. No one, there's no one you can ask to say how those decisions are made. No one really knows. Right. That's what we're doing.

And since you do it every day, you get that repetition, that iteration. You can make small changes over a long period of time. Versus with our long form videos, like some of our projects took a month or two to make. And the video took that long. it's not fast enough cycle time to adjust how you're making your you're formatting everything for the platform so we've been doing a lot of that but your stuff does seem to work really well for that because yeah you know to make that shield or to make that sword or that helmet it's 58 different steps and now your short videos can be like all right here's the step we used on masking things off exactly yeah paint them or here's how you send the edges of something or how you glue to pieces of

foam together. Yeah. So, in fact, if we show too many steps, people will start to bail. Yeah. Yeah. The process is too complicated. And we're finding out now that, like, if I'm doing a molding part and then a casting part, make those two videos.

Do the molding and then the casting. Well, you can look at their attention and see as soon as you swap to a new technique, people are gone. Yeah. No, they bail. You're right. And what, so what you guys have done is you basically said, here is a tiny bite. and that may be some of you this is all you're going to want you're just going to go oh neat this is cool

and then move on some of you're going to go where's this guy's channel I want the full I want the full meal deal because there are long form people clearly you know YouTube isn't dead in that regard so it's the perfect kind of cat it's like a net it's like it's good yeah it's widening the top of our funnel so yeah I like so this has worked out pretty well for us but before we started focusing more on this Our YouTube channel was actually losing subscribers, which is a real bummer position to be in. Yeah. It's the sort of thing where every time you post a new video, it reminds people that they've been meaning to unsubscribe. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He always worried about that. And now we are up 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers every month. That's great. It's working. Yeah. And in fact, Facebook, which has been stagnant for a decade.

We've been at like 80,000 followers there. for 10 years. In the last three months, we've got 20,000 new followers. And you're just doing these. It's completely resurrected. They're, are you putting them on Instagram and then farting them over there as well? Or how you're doing that?

They get posted as reels individually on Facebook. Okay. I was just curious. And you're right, though, like sometimes a video will go crazy on Facebook and not on YouTube or Instagram or whatever. It's wild how each platform is slightly different. Yeah. And it's hard for me to say, whether the audience is the driver of that

or if it's the algorithm purely doing that. I assume it's because of their audience that the algorithm is different. So what have we learned? One of the main things is that shorts or reels or whatever they are, that is a completely different algorithm, completely different audience than whatever your long form thing is.

YouTube is two different YouTube's now. Shorts and longs are two completely different audiences. When we started posting short form video on YouTube, the response we got from people was new people. So if you're looking to grow whatever it is you're doing, that's where you're going to find new people, which is exactly what we're doing. Yeah, the people you haven't tapped yet that haven't heard of you.

And in some cases, I get, what's weird? I get people like, oh my gosh, I used to listen to the instance in 2007. I can't believe you're still making content. This is cool. I'm coming back. Yeah. Yeah, and it's nice. Unless they're a turd, I don't know.

Maybe they left for a reason. You never know, right? So the first couple seconds of your short is like your thumbnail, like a YouTube thumbnail. It is the most important thing. And the way people are viewing shorts, it's like their channel flipping, right? They are on a rhythm to flip to the next channel every moment, right? And your first couple seconds of your video have to interrupt that. You have to prevent them from scrolling.

And then you've got to keep them around for like 30 seconds. The story needs to be simple. they can't change too much throughout because again it's like people have their thumb on the clicker ready to change a channel and the moment you do something even a little like kind of out of what they were expecting bam they're gone yeah they're out of there yeah yeah momentum and you know keep it tight it's all those things and look at your attention data all these platforms have a graph that'll show you exactly where in your video people are dropping out and it's unfortunately sometimes it's whenever the camera cuts to my face yeah I mean, that's when I stay for you, dude. Yeah. I see your face and go, oh, hello. You know, what that is just saying is that they want to see the process of doing something. Yeah, they want to see the work, not you're talking about it.

Yeah. It also, if you end up, if they end up doing stuff that ends up in a, I call it, it's not the right term, but I've called it a current of interest, meaning maker, a maker current in the algorithm. Then you've got the people that are that love that stuff and are being fed that because the algorithm is feeding them what they want. Then you're in like this really nice place of expectation. They're like, oh, I love when this guy's that videos come up. Because nobody's going, like TikTok in particular, nobody goes to someone's channel and then starts looking at their shit. It doesn't work that way. Yeah, you got to find a way to get the feed to feed your thing into other people's faces.

That's right. Right. Yeah. Well, look at you conquering one thing at a time here. As slowly as possible. Yeah, slowly as humanly possible. Well, that's great. Well, I'll remind people that Punish Props is the channel on YouTube, but if you're, if you're into this, if you see one of Bill's shorts show up, like it and double click it and look more.

And I'll tell you what, too, it's been fun for me because a lot of these videos I've only watched once. And now it's like our greatest hits in a little bite-sized pack. So if you're on TikTok, you want to get fed some of that stuff. Well, that's the other things. You've got a treasure trove of old stuff you can now farm and put up there. so that's awesome usually bring us a little bonus link before you go what do you got see I can throw that in the YouTube chat there excellent yeah uh corridor crew we love these guys they do visual effects type stuff they did a video on the forced perspective effect from the

lord of the rings films and they re created it and it's like the one in jaws kind of the um oh yeah right where they see it on shiter's face yeah and the background like moves toward you while you move away, or no, the other way around? Is it, like, do you zoom while you back away or something? I might have posted the wrong corridor of video. Oh. Okay. Oh, no, that's the end of it.

No, it says, it says, is this the greatest thing? It's got a timing thing. You did start it at the, at the end of the video. At the end of the video. But I think that's when they show them doing it, right? Yeah, I don't know. Let's see. Trying to find a.

So they're covering the, the, uh, force perspective effect. And the Lord of the Rings video or films did a great job. But what else they did was have the best behind the scenes videos of all time. So the behind the scenes from the, especially the extended Lord of the Rings, just everyone I know who works in effects and props and costumes had that box set and watched the behind the scenes. There it is. Including me and Brittany. So now this guy looks tiny. This guy looks huge.

Oh, there you go. You got to have a hobbit and you got to have a, you know. know, Gandalf. Yeah, I get it. That's awesome. They built a whole moving rigged for the table scene. It's just really, really cool. The video itself is fun. The ending is really cool. They get a bunch of their piles involved. So I recommend everyone go check that out. Nice. Corridor Cruz, what that is called that channel. So go like and subscribe. Bill, have a fantastic Christmas. All right. You got it. Yeah. Get whatever you want. I hope your wife gives you all the stuff you want. Your parents should give you everything you want. It's all, this is Bill's time. That's what I'm saying.

piece. That's all that way. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I wish we could all give that to you. I really do. And a steam deck. It's Bill Duran, everybody. Let's see you next time. That was great. That's cool. Yeah, there's two things they're showing there. One is that thing from

Jaws that they're doing both to create the sense of scale. Yeah, that's the, like the vertigo. They did a lot with vertigo with Hitchcock's vertigo where they zoom, they pull the camera back, but they zoom in at the same time so it keeps the focus on the person but um it's really rad yeah uh but then also yeah the like honey i shrunk the kids where they've got a little tiny kid yeah bigger than rick moranus

walking around yeah it's a better way to do it than have green screen edges and all that stuff i guess right right exactly i guess lord of the ring is a mix of things but still it's pretty cool it is uh guys couple uh couple text couple emails i guess one's an email one's a text we got one from Keith D. Keith D. And I put the header as a, uh-oh, and here's why. He says, hey, Brian and Scott, I know who Sieb is. And I can tell you that he is 100% a real person.

Love the show. Now, all I'm left with there, Keith, is that, are you Sieb? Is that what you're saying? Right, do you really know this person? And we, you know, we didn't doubt that Sieb was a real person. Yeah. I guess what was our question? Because remember, he gave us the option to ask him one question and get a,

a full-on answer from him, right? Which we've never gotten, by the way. We've never gotten it. Which doesn't, I don't know what that doesn't mean anything, I suppose. I mean, we know a real person is typing and sending this to us, but wasn't suggesting it was robots or anything. I just, what we want to know is, is it one of our usuals having taken the piss, as they say in. Right, right, right.

And I guess maybe that's it. Keith is saying he's not, he's not somebody that we know otherwise. He's somebody that we only know as Sieb in this. And that Keith knows him as whoever he really is. Well, then Keith spill the deaf and beans there, buddy. Yeah. One of you, please. This is getting, it's getting tedious.

I court says Seabiscuit, which has a Seab in it. Seab. I don't think that helps us, but I like it. No. I like that Seab is in there. Seab biscuit. Here is a follow up on a Roblox conversation we had. Hey, Scoot and Boogie.

I get a name? No, name on this. I don't think. Sorry about that. I don't think they left it. Anyway, on episode 2888, during the pre-show, you briefly mentioned Roblox. As a parent of a 10 and 12-year-old, it's the bane of my existence. All parents who are paying attention say this, because Roblox is a freaking insidious. My son, age 12, is permitted to use it as he only plays one game for the most part. And for those who don't know, the way Roblox works, it's kind of a creation platform for making mini games inside. the game, kind of like, kind of like it became for Minecraft, sort of, yeah, game modes and stuff. Roblox is all about that. So you may even play a game that you're used to playing in real life, like, I don't know, uh, I can't think of going off top of my head, hide and seek or kick the can or kind of, like, even like, kick the can, but even like other video games, like if you're going to, they have a, like a version of a thing that sort of plays like Battlefield 1942 or, okay, they, they rip off a lot of IPs and stuff like that. And, Anyway, users do.

Users create it all. Anyway, so he says, he only plays one game within that environment for the most part, and he only talks to people he knows in real life. He has no online friends only. I had to block my daughter from playing it, and she also likes it for socializing, and I can't keep her safe enough where I'm not constantly worried about it. I explained to her thoroughly and even drew up a gaming profile for her

to show her games on iOS and Steam that she enjoys that are safe for her to use as well. Eventually, I want to steer my son away from her. from Roblox as he gets older. I'm going to install Hollow Night for him and see how he likes it. Nice. I mean, Hollow Night's a great game, so it just depends on how they glom on to it, you know. Nothing wrong with moving them over to something like that. What may surprise kids, if you can wean them and get them onto an actual game,

is they're going to see the actual game and go, oh, my gosh, this is in Roblox. Like, Roblox has crappy copies of everything in it. So name something popular, and there's a Roblox version of it, kind of a knockoff. Yeah. And then a bunch of freaking Predator A-Holes hiding out and they're looking for kids. Yeah, that's the, right. That's the only thing I've heard about. I haven't heard about the mini-games or the, you know, the crappy

versions of other games. I see what you're saying now. The whole thing's the ban. It just sucks. And then the CEO's kind of a dick. Everything around it is just like yicky. Skeevy. Yeah. I don't like it. Thanks for that. Appreciate to follow up. If anyone else has any parental

advice around Roblox wants to help anyone out, including our listener here, us know the morning stream at gmail.com or you can go to our voicecast.com slash tms line leave a voicemail or a text and we'll be happy to play it here a couple things to mention frogpants.com slash tms is our website uh later today carter and i at 4 p.m. tonight will continue our run through split fiction which is uh adding up to be at least in my top three games of the year it's so good that looks like so much fun yeah it's so good those guys never make poopy games, but this one in particular.

It's real strong. It's cool. The split screen cooperative deal. It's really cool. Yeah. It's really something else, really creative. So we're going to play that live on stream later today. Brian, you got anything today you want to mention? Recording a soundography

with Hammond about Kip Winger. Kip Winger, all right. Kip Winger, yeah, Colorado. Lakewood Colorado native Kip Winger. we that'll go out to the patrons right away and then he's going to do the edited version for the uh for the the subscribers and then um recording another show that i hope to be able to talk about soon with uh amy and Travis and Phil Keating and I think you know about that I don't know what it is by just know you're doing it yeah I don't know what the I don't know what the topic is what the name is I'll be surprised like everybody else when I hear you will yeah Yeah, yeah.

Nobody's leaked it yet. No, wow, we've been good. I'm impressed. You guys have made a bunch of, you pulled Johnsons, but nobody's shown their Johnson. I guess so, yeah. Yeah, good. Good job.

I think that's it. Everything else you need in your life can be found at frogpants.com slash TMS, and we'll be back tomorrow with a regular Wednesday edition of the show. Brian, let's play a song and get the F out. Sounds good. And I'm trying to find, did I not, um, did I not highlight? uh there it is right there okay i just didn't put a highlight on that row in the uh spreadsheet so i could

find it um bio cow rodin said hey shell and bottoms it's my birthday and i need to request a song i'm going to see colin hay in san diego in april thanks to brian announcing tickets we're going to go on sale so to get me in the mood i'd love to hear a call and hey cover of your choice thanks for all you do and love the show though by a cow p s shell and bottom are the last names of the lead actors from the movie The Black Hole. Oh, yeah. Maximilian Shell and Trophy bottoms or something. Something like that. Yeah. That movie, dude.

Weird. I know. I'm still a little scarred from where he put the drill one in the chest of the guy. It is a Disney movie. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've been scarred for life. Anyway. Yes. So, happy birthday. Sorry it's belated. This also

came in yesterday, which was also Amy's birthday. But I'm to see Colin Hay as well, bought my tickets, and I'm seeing them the night after I see K-pop band twice. So it's like one right after the other. Could not pick two performers further apart, if you ask me. But it should be, it's going to be a blast. I'm looking forward to it. Colin Hay a few years ago, 2021 released an album called I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself, I'll tell you about the Dusty Springfield song, which he also covers on this album. It is an album of all covers, but one of my favorites on here and the one that even made the Coverville Countdown in 2021 is a cover of the faces, Ula, La, that's the band that Rod Stewart was in before he went solo.

This is a song you probably remember from the end of Rushmore, if you're not already familiar with it, being used in several different movies and TV shows. Here is, Ulala, La by Colin Hay. Poor old granddad laughed at all his words I thought he was a bitter man He spoke of women's ways The trap you And use you And before you even know

The love is blind And you're far too kind Don't you let it show I wish that I knew what I know now When I was younger I wish that I knew what I know now When I was stronger

Cancancet says It's a pretty show Steal is your heart away Backstage back on us again The dressing rooms are great They come on strong and it ain't too long For they make it feel a man Love is blind and you should will find

You're just a boy again When you want her lips, you get her cheap, makes you wonder where you are. If you want some more, it makes you fast asleep, you need your twinkling with the stars. Oh, young grandson, there's nothing I can say. You have to learn just like me, and that's the hardest way. Ooh, la, la, la. Oh, la, la, la.

Oh, la, la. Oh, la. Oh, la, la. Oh la la la yeah I wish that I knew what I know now When I was younger I wish that I knew what I know now When I was stronger

I wish that I knew what I know now When I was younger I wish that I knew what I know now When I was stronger I wish that I knew what I know now When I was younger I wish that I knew what I know now When I was stronger

This show is part of the Frog Pants Network Yes, get more at frogpans.com So is this an early hovercar? Oh.