Latest / The Whitfield Report / TWR Monday | "Exploring Joe's Atmosphere: Art, Comics, and Conversations w/ Joe Rivers”

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TWR Monday | "Exploring Joe's Atmosphere: Art, Comics, and Conversations w/ Joe Rivers” · The Whitfield Report

0:01
The right to offend is not some pesky little part of freedom of
0:05
speech that we have to put up with.
0:07
It is the heart and soul and lungs of freedom of speech.
0:11
It is the coursing lifeblood of human progress.
0:14
It is the instigator of liberty and modernity and science and
0:18
understanding. What a laughingstock today's
0:22
student leaders are that they can so casually dismiss the
0:26
right to be offensive without realizing that their lovely,
0:30
enlightened lives are the gifts of individuals who gave offence.
0:36
Offensiveness is not just something we have to
0:38
begrudgingly accept. Offensiveness is the motor of
0:42
human progress. Now broadcasting from the Right
0:46
to Offend media studios in sunny South Florida, bringing you the
0:51
latest in politics, current events, art and pop culture.
0:55
This is the Whitfield Report live with Sam Whitfield.
1:00
But giving offense is good. In fact, it's essential.
1:09
All righty, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to
1:12
today's Monday edition of the Whitfield Report.
1:18
I'm your host, Sam Field, recording here at right to phone
1:22
me to studio. And my guest today is Mr. Joe
1:28
Rivers, commonly known as Joe's atmosphere out there on YouTube
1:36
and the web. And I've been on Joe's, well, he
1:41
has a couple of shows and I've been on a few of them a couple
1:45
of times. But Joe is a he's a streamer, A
1:51
podcaster, and a comic book artist and author.
1:57
And we've had, you know, a few, we mostly have indie thrill
2:04
authors, and we've had a few indie comic book creators.
2:09
But Joe is someone who I've known for a while, so figured it
2:14
was time to invite him on the show.
2:16
So Joe, welcome to the Whitfield.
2:18
Of course, Sir, how are you? Thanks a lot man, I'm a big fan
2:22
of the show and I appreciate you having me man for sure.
2:25
I I appreciate you coming on especially, you know, the last
2:30
few months have been, you know, a bit morbid and you know what,
2:35
not kind of with the whole, you know, unfortunately the whole
2:40
Charlie Kirk thing has kind of overshadowed a lot of the
2:43
Internet. Yeah, it it has.
2:45
And I understand a lot of people covering that stuff, but me, the
2:51
only, the only show I have that I cover that kind of thing on is
2:55
the one that me and my brother do on Sundays.
2:57
It's called Brothers Hack the Matrix.
2:59
And we do like, that's the that's the show I worked the
3:02
hardest on. Sam I I put together about 40
3:06
articles for an hour and a half show and we just zip through
3:09
them. All we do is read the headlines,
3:11
maybe a couple of bullet points in there and me and my brother
3:14
comment on them. You know what I mean?
3:16
We got different sections for sports and all that stuff.
3:18
That's the only place we really talk about stuff like that on my
3:21
channel. So, but yeah, it's it's, it's
3:24
been, it's been a strange ride last few weeks, hasn't it?
3:28
It really has been. Yeah, it's it's certainly been
3:31
interesting, man. But you know, so just kind of
3:35
starting off, you know, kind of what's just your general
3:39
background. How did you you know, I know
3:42
you're big into, you know, kind of the whole, you know, geek.
3:46
It's not really been a subculture anymore, you know,
3:50
it's kind of, you know, taking over.
3:52
But you, you know, it certainly was.
3:56
So kind of, I guess, what is Joe's origin story?
4:01
Foundation in the geek sphere, right?
4:04
Yeah. Well, I, I just turned 60 this
4:09
summer, and I was a geek when it wasn't cool to be a geek when
4:14
you got beat up for it. But, you know, growing up, it
4:19
was I, I was 12 years old when Star Wars came out.
4:22
You know, I saw Jaws in the theater when it first came out.
4:26
I saw some great stuff in the 70s.
4:28
And my brother and I used to run home to watch Captain Kirk every
4:32
afternoon. It was in the syndication when
4:34
we were kids, you know. And so I don't know if you know
4:38
the history of cons and all that stuff, but it was the Star Trek
4:41
fans that started all that stuff, the, the guys that wanted
4:44
to bring that show back. And so I saw all of this stuff
4:48
and that and I dig video games. I grew up with video games.
4:52
I remember my first Pong set and now I've got APS 5 and a Xbox
4:57
Series X sitting right next to me right here where I'm sitting.
5:00
So, you know, I've, I've loved video games my whole life.
5:04
I've loved comic books. I was a Spider man geek when I
5:07
was a kid. My brother was a Hulk guy, you
5:09
know, and we, we knew all the Marvel lore and stuff.
5:12
So, yeah, I, I have a deep, deep, deep, deep love for
5:19
sci-fi, for for comic books, a little bit of anime, not as
5:24
much. I mean, anime's really blown up
5:26
now, but when I was a kid, it was Speed Racer.
5:29
And I do remember watching Star Blazers.
5:33
I loved that show when I was with the Black Tiger Squadron
5:36
and everything. Yeah, I do remember that 1G
5:40
Battle of the Planets was big too, you know, G Force, that
5:43
bunch. Yeah.
5:44
So yeah. I, I was never really, I was
5:48
never really into anime myself. I grew up, you know, kind of
5:52
more in the 90s and, you know, early 2000s and you're a.
5:56
Next man, kid. Yeah, yeah.
5:59
I'm of I'm of that generation and, and it's funny because like
6:05
I, I'm kind of of the generation where like, you know, like as
6:10
you said, it wasn't really, it wasn't really cool to be, you
6:13
know, a nerd when you were a kid.
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No, even even when I was, you know, in high school, it, it was
6:20
still kind of uncool to, you know, be a nerd.
6:24
And then like I, you know, around like my freshman year,
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year of high school, like that's kind of when the MCU, you know,
6:32
first started and you. Know when the comic book movie
6:36
started popping off, that's when it really relaxed and.
6:40
And people said, yeah, I've been doing this, reading this stuff
6:43
for years, and I just didn't talk about it, you know, stuff
6:45
like that, yeah. Well, and, you know, like it,
6:49
you know, on the one hand, it's great that, you know, nerd
6:52
culture is more accepted. But on, you know, on the other
6:56
hand, there is kind of the flip side now of, you know, you have
7:00
these, you know, activist types now who aren't interested in,
7:06
you know, really the the subculture at all.
7:08
They just want to insert their, you know, agendas and whatnot
7:13
into, you know, stuff too. And that's kind of, you know
7:20
that that's kind how. It's real comic book industry,
7:24
that's for sure. That that has really destroyed
7:27
the American comic book industry, that's for sure.
7:29
That's why anime's taken over as far as people buying new stuff
7:34
in that genre. You know, the paper visual
7:38
entertainment anime is kicking Western comics ass right now.
7:43
Yeah. And it's because that kind of
7:45
thing you're talking about. They, they just, they, they've
7:50
made this stuff for people that would never buy the books, first
7:53
of all. And, you know, and it's really
7:57
turned off people like you and me that would have collected all
8:00
that stuff. Well, the I collect Spider Man
8:04
right now just to support my local comic book shop.
8:08
I just bought. I don't even read them, Sam.
8:10
I buy them, I pick them up and I put them in a box.
8:13
That's what I yeah. Yeah, well, you know, you well,
8:16
you know, you're lucky that you, you know, still have a, you
8:20
know, a comic shop, too. Right.
8:22
We've only got one in town. We used to have a few and 1:00
8:26
left. And yeah, most of his business
8:28
is toys. It's it's sports memorabilia.
8:34
It's statues and stuff. It it, it's physical stuff that
8:39
you can buy that's not comic books, you know what I mean?
8:42
He's got an entire row of nothing but Funko Pops, you know
8:45
what I mean? He's had to adapt his business.
8:48
And his name's Chris. He owns Excalibur, comic books
8:51
and and comics, cards and games is the name of it here in
8:54
Shreveport, LA And he's great guy and he's really adapted well
8:59
with the business he really has. He's got a lot more role-playing
9:03
stuff in there now, you know, with a lot more people playing
9:06
Dungeons and Dragons now. So he's got a lot more tabletop
9:08
stuff in there for people to buy.
9:10
And. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
9:12
I am lucky. I do have a comic book shop with
9:15
somebody. A guy I went to high school with
9:17
is behind the desk back there. You know my buddy Mark.
9:20
Shout out to Mark Peck. Yeah, if you're watching Nancy.
9:24
So yeah, it's well. It's, it's funny because you
9:29
know, I, I'm originally, I don't know if you know this, I live in
9:32
Florida now, but I grew up in Colorado and, and famously my hi
9:40
comics is, you know, that was like one of the big, you know,
9:44
kind of comic book chains out West.
9:48
And, you know, I, I, I used to go in there every, you know,
9:52
Saturday with my, you know, parents and get comic books.
9:56
And, you know, I remember, you know, I remember talking to the
10:04
owner in like 2000 7. And I, I remember initially like
10:09
he was hoping that, you know, the whole comic book movie thing
10:13
would kind of get more people to come into, you know, comic book
10:18
stores. And then, you know, I guess kind
10:21
of the whole irony of, you know, the MCU and DC and all, you
10:25
know, all these big, you know, movie, you know, you know,
10:30
franchise now is. But you know, the the the two
10:34
big studios at least seem more interested in like, you know, in
10:39
making comic book movies as most making comic books themselves.
10:43
And, yeah, you know, getting, you know, people into comic book
10:51
stores, which is kind of like a sad irony almost.
10:56
Yeah, the, the comic books are more of an advertisement for
10:59
their Movies Now, aren't they? Yeah.
11:01
It's, it's basically the way it is.
11:03
And and that, look, the sooner they figure out that this is
11:08
where all the stuff came from. Let let guys that love the stuff
11:11
go back to making it, you know? But look, I think it was what's
11:18
her name? Is it, is it Justine Bateman?
11:21
Is that her name? She, she gave an interview not
11:25
too long ago and I think she hit it right on the mark.
11:29
The future of this stuff is these, these people are going to
11:33
these bigger things like Amazon and Apple and Disney, They
11:39
bought Marvel, right? And they're, and they're
11:40
scooping up all of this stuff just to support their other
11:44
products. It, it's advertising for their
11:46
other products. A clear example.
11:49
Have you seen the newest War of the Worlds on Prime?
11:54
I never. Heard of this?
11:56
Yeah. OK from what I understand I have
12:00
not watched it but everybody that I've talked to that has
12:02
seen it said don't waste your time it is just a 2 hour
12:06
advertisement for prime. They actually have stuff to save
12:10
the world delivered. By prime Oh, oh, oh, oh, of
12:15
course, of course they do. I just I.
12:18
Cracked up when I heard that I was like, Oh my God, but she had
12:21
said during this interview that that's that's what they're doing
12:25
with these things they're they're they're the reason why
12:27
they're letting you get you know these free offers for their
12:30
streaming services and stuff is to get you on board with buying
12:34
stuff from their from their other products.
12:37
You know what I mean, the Apple phones, the the, the deliveries
12:40
that prime does, you know, that kind of thing.
12:43
So. What?
12:44
Let's hope that they they actually let somebody that loves
12:49
this stuff get back to making it.
12:51
We've seen some examples of it. You know, Picard season 3 was
12:57
that's the only good thing that's come out of Paramount
12:59
really since they since they started their streaming service
13:04
here recently. And even that was just jangling
13:08
keys, which was exactly what, you know, the Deadpool and
13:12
Wolverine movie was too. But people loved it because it's
13:15
it's it, it, it takes us back to what we love as younger people.
13:20
You know what I mean? Yeah, Yeah.
13:22
Well, and you know, you know, it's funny you say that with
13:27
with, you know, paramount, because you know, like I like,
13:33
you know, I we we have like a paramount, you know, we have
13:37
like one of those, you know, Walmart, like, you know,
13:41
memberships and you know, you get, you get, you know, you get
13:45
paramount plus, you know, bundled with that.
13:48
So I mean, that's how that's how we have it too.
13:51
And I I don't and I know on you're.
13:53
Using the app to buy things, right?
13:56
Yeah, it's working just the way they want it to.
13:59
But but, you know, I, I kind of made the point to my mom.
14:02
I'm like, you know, I don't think I don't think people would
14:06
really like, you know, have I don't think people would really
14:09
like subscribe to Paramount if it wasn't an already like
14:12
included, you know, I would. I would now, you know, as far as
14:19
the streaming wars goes, if if you put a gun to my head and
14:23
said I had to get one streaming service, it would be paramount
14:27
because they're putting out the Taylor Sheridan verse.
14:31
And as far as I'm concerned, he's putting out the best stuff
14:34
in streaming right now. Yeah, you know, yeah, that's,
14:38
that's who I would get, you know.
14:40
I will. Say through prime it it's, it's
14:43
cheaper through prime. My wife is a prime nut.
14:45
So that's where we got it through, you know.
14:47
Yeah, I actually, you know, Speaking of Prime though, like
14:51
as far as you know, like I know that Amazon Prime does have like
14:55
some, you know, woke stuff too. But like they've got 2 of you
14:59
know, Jack Carr's you know, his book series has been adapted the
15:04
terminalist and kind the spin off and that's been like.
15:09
Reacher's been great as far as I'm concerned.
15:12
I love Reacher and yeah, yeah, they they're a mixed bag.
15:17
They, you know, you've got the rings of power, which is just
15:22
horrible. It is I I didn't even watch this
15:25
the the second season of it. I hear they're working on the
15:29
third. They're supposed to make five
15:31
seasons of this thing. I'm like, oh God.
15:34
But but yeah, I'm like you. I just got done with what's the
15:39
prequel they did with Taylor Kitsch?
15:42
I just got done with that one. Yeah, something wolf.
15:45
Yeah, Dark Wolf. Dark Wolf.
15:48
Yeah. And see, now I want to see
15:50
another prequel. I want to see his Aussie buddy,
15:53
well, a prequel with him, you know what I mean?
15:55
That was great. Show well, well, so, you know,
15:58
so, so I'm a big fan of Jack Carr, like as an author and like
16:05
I've, I've read all of all of his books.
16:07
I've I've had him on the show, but I've had people kind of, you
16:11
know, in that same, you know, vein of like throw authors on
16:16
the show and he the book, the book that he put out this year,
16:21
Cry Havoc is actually about James Reese's dad, who was a
16:27
Vietnam, you know, a Vietnam veteran and was part of the, you
16:34
know, Mac V Sag and not a lot of thrillers about the Vietnam War
16:38
are out there. So you know it was.
16:41
But that was interesting, yeah. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm actually
16:46
writing, you know, a Cold War thrill myself, you know, right
16:52
now. So.
16:53
That's cool, man. But.
16:55
Yeah, I know you're an author. I got to get you a book.
16:57
I haven't gotten it yet, but I've, I've got to get it.
16:59
I want to check that out, man. Yeah, 'cause you know, I met
17:06
through Jed, our our mutual buddy.
17:09
I met a few people, one being Matt from Small Time Republic,
17:14
who's from southern Alabama. Another one was Wes from, you
17:22
know, the whatever cast that that guy love W to death and he
17:27
does one called Conspiracy Chronicles he works on.
17:30
That's really cool. So yeah, I dig what you guys are
17:33
doing, man. I really do.
17:34
It's it. I got I got to check that out.
17:37
It's just I'm so busy with other stuff, man.
17:39
I've got I this time of year, this time of year I have
17:43
commissions. You see my drawing board behind
17:45
me. I do, I do pencil sketch
17:47
portraits for people and I've got a few that I've got to get
17:51
out and I got that. I got the comic book going.
17:54
I've got my YouTube channel. I got 4 shows a week I do on
17:57
there and I'm on other channels just like you, you know, I'm,
18:00
I'm on your channel. I, I'm on Gary from Pop culture
18:04
Minefields channel. I'm on that 70's rock fans
18:07
channel. So I'm just juggling all the
18:09
time. I don't have enough hours and a
18:10
day in a good way, you know? None of us.
18:14
None of us do. No.
18:17
I've been, yeah. I mean, I've been on other
18:20
shows, you know, too lately because I have, you know, I have
18:27
friends who worked for Charlie Kirk.
18:30
I, I only met, I only met him once.
18:32
But like I, I kind of had had like, you know, I wouldn't say I
18:37
was like a huge like, you know, Turning Point Insider, but like,
18:40
you know, so I've been doing lots of, you know, interviews
18:43
about that lately. Didn't know anything about his
18:47
organization at all. I really didn't know any of the
18:51
lore until he passed away. That's when I found out about
18:55
it, you know? Yeah.
18:56
Sounds like a great thing. It really does.
18:59
Yeah, no, it's in in the luck. I mean, so the the weird thing
19:04
with that was like, you know, like Charlie Kirk was obviously,
19:09
you know, a very notable, like public figure.
19:11
But when I met him, he was just, you know, still, you know, he
19:17
was just still, you know, I, you know, I kind of, you know, when
19:21
I met him via Skype at first, he, you know, he, he was still
19:25
kind like an unknown, you know, he, he was just, you know, he
19:29
was just a normal guy. And so, you know, obviously what
19:34
he was doing for free speech and whatnot, tremendous.
19:39
But like, you know, to me, just the guy I met who was just, you
19:44
know, a really kind and genuine guy, that guy was also, you
19:49
know, murdered. And it's just, you know, the way
19:54
the Internet has reacted that to that whole thing is, you know,
19:58
it, it's sad, really so. It is, you know, people praising
20:05
what happened and things like that.
20:07
You know, that's not. But then again, you know what,
20:10
Charlie? Or listen to me, Charlie.
20:13
Sam. I I I go by Joe Rogan's mantra.
20:19
The answer to bad speech is more speech.
20:22
Yeah. Let these people just let them
20:24
hang themselves. Go ahead.
20:26
Yeah. That just make yourself you
20:29
know, at least I know where you're coming from.
20:32
You know what I mean? It's it's gotten to the I, I
20:37
talk about this all the time. When they, when they shot him
20:41
down, they, that was a full on attack on civil discourse.
20:48
Yeah. They don't want, they don't want
20:50
you to have these discussions. They they how do I put this?
20:56
The people that are behind the strings, they want us fighting
21:00
with each other. They want us polarized.
21:03
Yeah. And I preach all the time.
21:06
Don't do that. Get together on things, you
21:10
know, getting back to the pop culture thing, you know, I don't
21:13
know if anybody noticed this about the latest Mission
21:16
Impossible movie, but that was the entire message of that
21:18
movie. I'm a big Mission Impossible
21:21
fan. I love spy stuff, you know?
21:24
And me too. That look.
21:26
Did you see the newest Mission Impossible movie?
21:29
The last one. I, I haven't seen it yet, but
21:31
now that it's, you know, available for rent, I'm probably
21:34
going. To need to watch it, man,
21:36
because first of all, if you're a fan of the series, they have
21:39
callbacks to every movie. Very cool little, little
21:43
jangling keys. But it's it's it, it's a little
21:47
long, but you know what the whole message of the movie is?
21:50
We have to work together if they want to separate it.
21:52
He is trying like hell to get everybody to work together on
21:56
this thing and he just can't do it the whole movie.
21:58
It's great, dude. It it is really fun.
22:01
I enjoy the. Hell out of it.
22:02
Well, you know, people give, you know, Tom Cruise, you know, crap
22:06
for the whole Scientology thing and whatnot.
22:11
And maybe some of that is deserved.
22:13
Like I, I have to tell you the as time goes on, like, you know,
22:17
in the more I hear like Tom Cruise talk, I'm kind of like,
22:21
well, he's actually, he's actually, you know, he seems
22:25
pretty decent. I, you know, I don't know about
22:27
the whole thing with, you know, his, his ex wives or any of
22:32
that, but he, he's, he's one of the few who's not doing all of
22:36
this, you know, activist stuff and finger wagging.
22:41
You know what people are saying. He knows.
22:44
What side his bread's buttered on?
22:46
He knows what side his bread's buttered on.
22:49
That's the one guy you're never going to see on X Talk and
22:53
Smoke. You're never going to see him
22:54
doing that. He is the last movie star.
22:57
He wants there to be a a a buffer between him and the rest
23:01
of the world. Well, him and it's very.
23:03
Simple to do, folks. All you have to do.
23:06
This is what I tell people all the time.
23:08
If you don't like what's going on the Internet, unplug.
23:11
It's not that hard. Just put the phone down.
23:14
It's Yeah, I've, I highly recommend doing it at least once
23:17
a week. Really.
23:18
Yeah. You know.
23:20
Yeah. But you know, if you hear him
23:23
talk, he sounds bass as hell, unless you bring up psychology.
23:29
Now that one right there He he is.
23:32
He has a very, very, very strong stance on psychology and the
23:37
drugs that are issued out by a psychiatrist and stuff like
23:42
that. He's almost tinfoil hat level
23:44
with when it comes to that. He, he thinks and just check
23:49
into it, you'll see what I'm talking about.
23:51
He, he thinks that psychology is just a bunch of smoke and
23:56
mirrors. He thinks it's a big con, you
23:58
know? Which I have to say like some of
24:01
that, like, you know, I'm not saying that he's completely
24:06
right, but he's not completely wrong.
24:09
No, but it's just. If if what's wild about it is,
24:14
though, you see him in interviews, you will see his
24:17
entire demeanor change. He will get very serious, you
24:20
know what I mean? It's it, it, it's pretty wild.
24:23
Everybody's got their chink, you know, in their armor.
24:26
Everybody's got that button that if you push it, they're going to
24:28
go and and let you know what they think, you know, And that's
24:32
his when it comes to that. Yeah.
24:34
Yeah. But when it comes to Cruz, yeah,
24:37
he's wrapped up in Scientology. And we know, look, I'm not going
24:40
to trust any religion that's run by a guy that wrote science
24:43
fiction novels. I'm sorry.
24:44
I'm just not going to do that, you know?
24:45
But some of these people, you know, the LA is a different
24:49
thing, man. They, those guys are, they're
24:51
kind of out of a different cloth, you know?
24:53
Yeah, I I don't hate, I don't hate him for it.
24:57
But, you know, I can tell you this about Tom Cruise.
25:00
The guy knows how to make a movie.
25:02
He knows how to do that. Every time I don't go see one of
25:05
his in the theater, I kick myself in the ass for doing The
25:07
last one I didn't go see in the theater was The Edge of
25:12
Tomorrow, the one that had the the title overseas A Live die,
25:17
repeat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:20
Yeah, great movie and I completely missed the boat on
25:23
that one. Didn't see it till it came on,
25:25
you know, cable or whatever. Yeah, I'm I'm the same way.
25:28
With so I go see everything he makes now because I'm tired of
25:31
missing it, you know what I mean?
25:33
Yeah, I'm, I'm the same way with Keanu Reeves.
25:36
He's he's another, he's another one who, you know, you never
25:40
hear any. You know, he has no social media
25:43
presence. You never the only.
25:45
Thing you see on social media is him practicing to play John
25:49
Wick, right? You see those videos of him
25:51
nailing it with with pistols and and rifles and shit, You know,
25:54
Yeah. Or all you see out of him.
25:56
Yep. You know, or him he you know,
25:59
he's also like a rear. He's also like a a real, you
26:02
know, gearhead too. And like he has his own, you
26:05
know, motorcycle, you know, business too.
26:10
So you know that man, he keeps busy when he's not, you know,
26:15
he's got the end age man movie stuff.
26:18
Yeah, but I mean, you know, he and Tom Cruise both felt good
26:21
for, you know, nearing. Who's this?
26:25
I want to say three years older than I am.
26:29
Yeah, he's the, he's the same age as my dad, So, but, you
26:36
know, kind of back to you and your background, you know, you
26:39
mentioned that you got into, you know, that you do sketches and
26:43
that you do some, you know, comic book stuff.
26:45
So how'd you get into that whole lot, you know?
26:49
Well, I've been OK. I've been.
26:52
I've been doing pencil sketch portraits most of my life.
26:57
Actually, what happened was when I was about 8 years old, I did
27:01
AI did a drawing with crayons of a guy at an archaeological dig
27:07
in National Geographic magazine. Guy had no shirt on.
27:12
He was bent over and he was digging, you know, you know, I
27:15
don't know if you've ever seen these things before.
27:16
But what they'll do is they'll, they'll take wooden 2 by fours
27:19
and they'll, they'll section out what they're digging up and you
27:22
know, they'll, they'll be trying to keep it clean and everything.
27:25
Anyway, this, I drew it with crayons.
27:27
And this guy, excuse me, my mother saw it and she said, oh,
27:31
I got to get him in the art classes.
27:33
And there was a woman in the back of the neighborhood named
27:35
Virginia Cook who is still around.
27:39
She is one of the founding members of the Bossier Arts
27:43
Council and just had a gallery named after her.
27:47
And she was my first art teacher.
27:49
I would go to school. I I, I mean, I went to school
27:52
with her son and I used to go to her house after school from the
27:56
age of eight to about 11, I think.
28:00
And I was painting stuff like Arizona sunsets because I really
28:04
like, my favorite color is orange.
28:06
I love the color in your background there.
28:07
That that that's my favorite color.
28:09
OK, so I was doing a lot of Arizona sunsets because they've
28:13
got shades of yellow and Reds and really beautiful oranges and
28:16
stuff. So I was doing that did a lot of
28:18
I was I was a big movie fan always have been airplanes, you
28:24
know, airport 75 love that movie.
28:27
You know their whole airport series, those disaster movies
28:29
love them. I I draw a lot of airplanes
28:32
paint painted a lot of Star Wars stuff.
28:35
But one day I decided I was going to do a portrait of
28:40
Christy Mcnichol. I was in love with this chick.
28:43
She was on TV at the time. She was on a show called Family
28:46
and I did probably the worst portrait I've ever done.
28:49
It is the most hideous thing I've ever done in my life when
28:53
it comes to drawing somebody's face.
28:55
But she saw something in it and she said, OK, you're done with
28:57
me. I'm going to send you down to
28:58
the Barnwell Arts Center and I'm up there at the age of 12 with a
29:04
bunch of 25 and 30 year olds drawing a homeless guy that my
29:09
teacher, Susan Nemo would throw him 20 bucks to sit for us and,
29:12
and we were drawing porches every Tuesday night.
29:17
And that's, that's where I really learned the craft of
29:21
drawing somebody's face. She, she really, what she taught
29:25
me was not really how to shade or anything like that.
29:28
I already knew how to do all that stuff.
29:29
She taught me the shortcuts on how to do a human's face and I
29:34
can do it in under 2 hours now and make it look like a black
29:36
and white photograph, you know what I mean?
29:38
That's. What I do Wow and.
29:39
And if people, if people, if they, if they a lot of work I
29:46
do, people can't get their family together.
29:48
So they give me their favorite picture of each person and I
29:52
make it look like they're sitting all together.
29:54
You know, that's the beautiful thing about art.
29:56
You can do anything with it. So yeah.
29:58
Yeah, that's beautiful, man. Yeah, I've been doing that my
30:02
whole life. I, I, I, I can't even count how
30:05
many of these I've done I've got.
30:08
Let me see if I can pull up a picture of 1.
30:11
I know I can throw them up on my WhatsApp and do it that way.
30:14
Hang on a second. I'll throw a couple on there.
30:16
But yeah, I've been doing it since I was, I want to say the
30:21
last lesson I took was 14. But I'm doing them my whole.
30:24
I've done them my whole life. I charge 75 bucks a face.
30:27
I don't care how big they are, you know, I just worry about how
30:31
much I'm making per hour because it takes me about two hours to
30:33
do a face. Doesn't matter what size it is.
30:35
Yeah, and, and that's what I do and that's the basis of what I
30:40
do. Everything else, you know, I
30:43
mean, I've got a 4/8 hour week job.
30:47
But yeah, the, the art all started with the human face.
30:51
And I've, I really love the movies and I drew Flash Gordon
30:54
as a kid. I've used to draw Jamie Lee
30:56
Curtis like it was going out of style.
30:58
Was a big horror movie fan. It was basically half of the
31:01
stuff I drew was out of People magazine.
31:03
You know what I mean? That that I was a huge fan of
31:06
movies when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah.
31:09
Well, that that's awesome that you have that, you know,
31:12
passion, especially for it's God, you know.
31:16
I mean, really, you know, when I drew that first picture, I, I
31:20
was inspired, you know what I'm saying?
31:23
So yeah, yeah, I've, I've been shown some shortcuts, but I've
31:26
always been able to do this. Always been able to do.
31:29
It yeah, Yeah. Well, you know, that that's
31:32
always the, you know, that's always the question of, you
31:35
know, do you think it, you know, that's kind of been, you know,
31:39
debated among, you know, philosophers for, you know, ever
31:44
is, you know, is, is artistic talent something that you're,
31:48
you know, born with or can it be taught, you know, necessarily.
31:52
And I mean, you know. Yeah, there's, there's something
31:54
you can, you can teach it. But really what you're teaching
31:58
is how to refine what you're doing.
32:01
Because most people that can do this, they're born with it.
32:04
They really are. Yeah.
32:07
I mean I I would. Say that myself.
32:09
Yeah, I mean, I would say the same is true for, you know, me
32:13
as like a writer and, you know, as like a storyteller.
32:16
Like, you know, like I've, I've always been a, you know, a
32:20
fairly good, you know, writer and pretty good with words ever
32:25
since I was, you know, a kid. But, you know, when it comes to
32:30
like, you know, artistic, you know, like drawing, like I'm
32:35
lucky if I can make like a good, you know, stick figure or
32:39
something like, I just don't have that.
32:41
I hear that. I hear that one a lot.
32:43
I do. Did you want to see some of this
32:45
stuff? Man, I can.
32:47
Yeah, absolutely. So hang.
32:49
On Let's see screen, we don't need sound for this.
32:53
So there you go. All right, that guy and Elvis,
32:59
I've probably drawn more than anybody else.
33:01
These are bad pictures because this is from years ago, but
33:04
that's one off the cover of the Sons of Katie Elder that I did
33:08
it. That's my Marilyn.
33:12
Oh, wow. Did that one.
33:13
What, in 99? Yeah, something like that.
33:17
That's my Pierce Brosnan favorite.
33:20
James Bond is, by the way. That is my favorite James Bond
33:24
too buddy. That's one I did of me and my
33:27
wife for some for our wedding and invitations.
33:31
We put, we had it engraved on all our gifts and stuff too.
33:34
Elvis, I've done a lot, that guy, I've done a lot.
33:39
You know, there's some, there's certain people that a lot of
33:41
people want, you know, Now this one right here, this is just an
33:44
example of what I do. People just send me, they'll
33:47
e-mail me the picture and I'll just sit there and draw it, you
33:51
know, put it on my iPad and draw it.
33:55
Yeah, and I. Think this last one.
33:58
That's me and my wife when we were much, much younger.
34:01
So yeah, that's that's what I do, man.
34:04
Gorgeous. So yeah, I mean.
34:05
For a long time. So I mean, like, I, I have an, I
34:10
have an iPad Pro, but like you're, you're one of those
34:13
people who actually like draws and, you know, uses the, you
34:17
know, Apple Pencil for. Dude, I wouldn't even be doing
34:20
the comic book. You see, You see the poster back
34:22
there, the privateer that that's just the character thing I did.
34:26
I would never be doing this comic book if it wasn't for the
34:30
Procreate app on the iPad. Because you saw I can, I don't
34:36
toot my horn about much, but I can get a pencil and do a black
34:40
and white picture of your face in two hours.
34:43
OK, but putting ink on, it's another thing.
34:47
I'm scared to death of putting ink on anything.
34:50
I've only done a couple of ink drawings my entire life, but
34:53
with the advent of technology, now I can just hit a back button
34:57
if I mess it up, you know? So yeah.
35:00
Yeah, so that's, that's what made me decide to go ahead and
35:04
and do the comic book because I had a tool I could use and not
35:07
mess up my drawings, you know? What I mean it's, I mean like,
35:11
so I have apple, I have apple everything.
35:14
I'm, I'm one of those, I'm one of those Apple cultists like,
35:18
and I don't even need like an Apple Pencil Pro, but I, I have
35:21
one and I, I have to say, even like from my dupe, from, you
35:24
know, the little doodles that I do and, you know, making Anna
35:29
annotations on some of my, you know, book manuscripts.
35:33
It, it's nice to have. So Yep.
35:36
Absolutely. And my daughter turned me on to
35:40
it. I mean, a lot of people that do
35:43
comic books and do them digitally now use Photoshop.
35:46
And I just don't feel like paying $250 a year to use that.
35:49
So if you've got an iPad, you can use Procreate for nothing.
35:54
And it's, it's a cheap alternative, yeah.
35:57
Yeah, I, so I took AI took a lot of like graphic design classes
36:03
in college. So when I was when I was in
36:06
college, they gave us like the Adobe suite for free.
36:10
I use, you know, now that I'm, you know, out of college and
36:13
kind of doing my own thing as like a freelancer, that whenever
36:17
I do like graphics or anything like that, I use a suite of
36:21
programs by the company Affinity.
36:26
It's like Photoshop and like Illustrator and you know all
36:31
that. But you, you pay, you pay one
36:33
time and it's, you know, it's, it's yours.
36:37
So that's. Well you that now do you know
36:41
about the procreate app? Well, yeah, yeah, I.
36:44
I just, I wanted to make sure you did because that one, if you
36:48
own an iPad, you got it for nothing.
36:50
Yeah. Well, it's pretty user friendly,
36:52
it really is. Yeah, well, one thing I am, one
36:55
thing I have done is like I'll take a lot of, I'll take like a
37:00
lot of portraits, I'll take like a lot of landscape photos on my
37:06
phone or something. I've just like various places
37:08
I've visited. And then what I've done in
37:11
Procrate is you can take a photo and then like, you know,
37:17
basically turn into like a sketch and then I'll I'll fill
37:21
that sketch in with, you know, colors and all kind of do
37:25
painting that way. So you know, what do you think
37:33
of like AI generated imagery when I knew that would.
37:37
Come up. Yeah, that's been, that's been
37:40
all the rage for the last. I know we started talking about
37:44
it about a year ago. The AI art, look, it doesn't
37:49
hurt me at all. I I, I really think I specialize
37:53
in one thing. Yeah, one thing only.
37:56
And it's something that people, you know, it's really
38:01
personalized, You know, they're getting a piece of art from
38:03
person that they're standing in front of.
38:05
And a matter of fact, one thing I'm actually thinking about
38:09
doing is buying a stick because I now that I've got this
38:14
streaming set up and everything I record put a camera right
38:19
over. You see that mount right there?
38:22
That's for a camera. I just don't have it up there
38:24
right now. And I actually record when I
38:26
draw to show people, Hey, this is not AIA person actually drew
38:31
this for you. You know what I'm actually
38:33
thinking about giving that, you know, sending that to people
38:35
when I ship it so they they can prove to people, Hey, this was
38:38
not drawn by, you know, some program actual living breathing
38:43
person did it, you know. I definitely think that there's
38:46
something to be said for like actual, you know, are and I, you
38:51
know, and I do think there is like a place for my whole, my
38:56
whole thing as like as an indie author is, you know, a lot of my
39:02
so a lot of my stores are kind of like, you know, in the pulp,
39:06
you know, genre and what not. And so I love pop art and, you
39:11
know, kind of seems like, you know, your, your style in
39:15
particular is, you know, kind of hope about a lot.
39:18
A lot of those guys, you know, are either, you know,
39:21
unfortunately some of them, the ones who are still alive are
39:25
like in their 90s or, you know, some of them have, yeah, passed
39:29
on. Just lost a big one man.
39:31
The guy that was doing the movie posters.
39:32
I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but.
39:35
Yeah, yeah. The guy that did the Indiana
39:37
Jones posters and stuff, Yeah, he.
39:39
Yeah. Fantastic.
39:40
And yeah, that's the kind of stuff I loved as a kid.
39:44
And that's that's another reason why I started drawing, you know,
39:46
was was that. But I view it as a tool.
39:50
I I can understand an author like yourself making a cover
39:55
with it. I could understand that
39:57
completely now. Yeah.
39:58
Is that going to cost somebody a job?
40:00
Yeah, it is. But it's.
40:04
People are going to tell, they'll be able to tell that an
40:06
AI did it, though. There's just something about it
40:09
now. It's getting better.
40:10
It's it's making leaps and bounds right now really is.
40:15
But you know, there's just something about it that's a
40:18
little bit off, you know what I mean?
40:20
Yeah. And I mean, I, I suppose that I
40:22
suppose that that's good, you know.
40:25
I suppose that I suppose that's, you know, that's, you know, good
40:29
somewhat that they're still is kind of that, you know,
40:32
different differentiation thing. My whole approach is like, you
40:40
know, if I could pay for a lot of us in the indie author space,
40:45
right? We, you know, as a writer, we
40:49
spent we spend a lot of time, you know, and money writing and,
40:53
you know, doing like edits and what not.
40:56
And so my whole thing is, you know, if I, if I can't afford,
41:01
you know, to get, if I can't afford to get like a, you know,
41:04
a cover, you know, artwork, you know, and someone that can, you
41:09
know, be reasonable. Obviously I do want to support
41:13
them, but you know, I'm, you know, I don't have like a ton of
41:18
money. And so, you know, if an author,
41:21
if, if a cover artist is going to say, well, you know, I'm, I'm
41:26
going to charge, you know, $300, you know, just for, you know.
41:32
Then you're not going to do it. But if it was a case, if it was
41:36
a case of say, I said, well, I'd love the exposure, let me do
41:40
that for you, right? You know, one hand washing the
41:43
other, you'd probably do that in two seconds, you know?
41:46
Yeah. And I, and I, and I have, and I
41:48
have done that for like, you know, one of the things that I
41:53
kind do like for a living is like I, you know, I'm a, I'm a,
41:58
I'm a copywriter. So like, I'll do, you know, like
42:02
copywriting for businesses, but then I'll also do like edits for
42:05
other indie authors. And, you know, usually it's
42:08
like, well, you know, we, we kind of scratch each other's,
42:13
you know, backs that that way, you know, so there, you know,
42:19
there's that aspect too. Mm, Hmm.
42:23
But when when you when you're talking about the AI question,
42:26
how do I feel about it? I tell you, I'm tired of seeing
42:30
it in journalism. I'm tired of seeing these guys
42:33
not even editing their stuff before they put it out.
42:37
Yeah. You know what you write?
42:39
You know what I'm talking about. I'm one of these guys that is
42:42
really, I really pay attention to grammar when I'm reading.
42:47
And if it's not grammatically correct, I can tell right away.
42:50
You know, I read. My kryptonite is reading.
42:53
I read really slow and sometimes I'll reread things over and over
42:56
again. I'm great at math.
42:58
I took precalculus in high school because I knew I was
43:00
going to have to pick up a book. It just comes to me naturally.
43:03
But when it comes to reading, I don't even like subtitles in
43:06
movies because I, you know, they go by too fast for me.
43:09
You know what I mean? But when it comes to this AI
43:13
stuff, man, you know, it's a good tool, but don't make it
43:18
your entire thing. That's exactly what I'm saying,
43:21
yeah. That's in see, like that's where
43:25
I that's where like as like a, you know, a technical writer.
43:30
I use AI as a tool, as as an author.
43:36
It's it's, it's helpful to have, you know, AI like going and, you
43:40
know, cracked some of my stuff somewhat and, you know, and
43:44
proofread it to like a certain extent.
43:46
But then I also have, you know, other authors in the community
43:50
who, you know, we, we proofread each other's stuff and you know,
43:57
do that. So I it's, it's like, it's like
44:00
anything. I use all these stuff as, you
44:03
know, tools. Now.
44:05
It is a little weird to me when you get, when I hear like
44:09
people, you know, talking to AI about like, you know, their
44:14
personal relationships and their problem.
44:16
It's like, OK, you know, like if you're doing that, then, you
44:20
know, maybe you need to talk to like a shrink or, you know,
44:24
some. Right, you might have, you might
44:26
need to, you know, check, check yourself there.
44:30
Yeah, for. Sure.
44:32
I wanted to show you something here.
44:33
Just just the other day I decided to do this.
44:37
Just what I've decided to do, and it's kind of helped my
44:40
subscriber counts is because I do live stuff on my channel, you
44:44
know, and you know how slow it takes that to to speed up right
44:48
for you to gain subscribers. It takes a long time to do it
44:51
that way. It's Evergreen content is the
44:54
way to go, right? So what I tried to do is if I'm
44:58
not doing a show in a day, I will do a short, right?
45:05
And I decided to take some of the inked pages that I have and
45:10
make them shorts, right? And you know, for advertising my
45:16
shows, whatever. So one of the things I did was
45:19
this. Check this out.
45:20
I'm going to put it up here and I'm going to share it with you.
45:22
This is the first page inked of the privateer, OK?
45:26
And it depicts a Coast Guard, the actually specifically the
45:30
dolphin, which is based in Florida, think it's out of
45:34
Miami. It's a cutter for the Coast
45:36
Guard. And they, they, they, you see
45:41
the, the final thing down there, the guy shocked at what he's
45:44
looking at that's coming their way, right.
45:47
Well, I decided to go ahead and do an AI video of it and look
45:51
what it produced. Check this out.
45:55
Isn't that neat? Isn't that cool?
45:57
Yeah. And, and the fact that it came
45:59
out like that first tells me that I did a good job drawing it
46:03
because it didn't morph these things in there, any kind of
46:06
crazy stuff. But just the fact that it it
46:09
that, that, you know, you see what it does it it's telling the
46:12
story one at a time. And I just thought it was really
46:15
neat. Yeah, it's like one of those
46:18
animated notions comics. Yeah.
46:20
So just to advertise my stuff, I'll use it.
46:24
Yeah, I, I, I animate all my thumbnails now, you know what I
46:28
mean? Just to put them in my intro
46:30
videos and stuff. So yeah.
46:32
Well, that that's the other thing too, with like the AI
46:35
image generators that that I do too, is when I'm making thumb,
46:39
when I'm making thumbnails, you know, for the video, like I'll
46:42
have it, you know, generate whatever, you know, topic or,
46:47
you know, guest. I have because, you know, like
46:51
I'm not someone I don't want to you just because I can do, you
46:56
know, graphics I don't want to do.
46:59
I don't want to hand make every single thumbnail for, you know,
47:03
every single video. You know, some people might
47:06
look. My production studio is my phone
47:09
buddy. I do most of the shit I do for
47:11
my shows on my phone. Yep, same, same, same for me
47:15
and, you know, my, my iPad and my Mac.
47:17
But, you know, people ask if I, if I, you know, if I have anyone
47:21
who I've hired and I'm like, yeah, you're, you're, you're
47:24
looking at the, you know, at the one employee of, you know, the
47:28
Whitfield. Has one employee he does 60 jobs
47:34
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's how all of us start
47:37
off I and I don't feel bad about it one bit because I sat there
47:41
and I saw Jeremy Grimes one time the gigs and gamers.
47:45
Jeremy Grimes. Yeah, yeah.
47:46
Say he he started his channel on his phone.
47:49
That's all he did was use his phone.
47:51
To run his channel. You know so.
47:54
Well, it it's. We're barking up the right tree,
47:56
pal. Yeah.
47:57
Well, it's it's it what's what's interesting for me is like I had
48:01
a YouTube channel like 10 years ago and then that that got
48:05
banned because of the whole like, you know, COVID thing.
48:08
And I now I've just like kind of restarted this new one that, you
48:13
know, because YouTube has LAX, you know, some of their stuff
48:18
after they got called out by Congress, which was a which, you
48:21
know, that was a long time coming.
48:25
Yeah, a long. Time coming, Yeah.
48:27
I'm only a little sour that I lost, you know, my previous
48:30
channel. But you know what?
48:32
Hey, you know, it is what it is. No use crying over spilled milk.
48:38
So, you know, I'm starting my new one again.
48:40
But like, I've had, I've had the show in podcast format for, you
48:44
know, close to, gosh, 17 years at this point.
48:50
Yeah. No, I'm not.
48:52
I'm not. Unfortunately, I'm not, you
48:54
know, at like Joe Rogan levels of famous, even though some
48:58
people think I should be at this point.
48:59
But, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a grind.
49:02
And I, you know, and I, I'm, you know, I think of podcasting as
49:07
an art form and I, I still enjoy it, you know, to this day.
49:12
So yeah. Well, I was going to say, I was
49:15
going to say, do you enjoy what you're doing, Sam?
49:18
Yeah. Then you just keep doing it.
49:21
I I mean, you know who can tell you you're doing something
49:24
wrong? You know, you just keep doing
49:25
it. Yeah, I mean, and you know, the
49:28
the other thing too is like, you know, I don't have any over, I
49:33
don't have any corporate overlords telling me, you know,
49:36
no, you, you know, you can't cover this topic or you can't,
49:40
you know, have this guest on or, you know, something like that.
49:44
So, you know, like one week I'll have you know, some obscure, you
49:49
know, author or you know, or someone or, you know, the next
49:53
minute I the next, you know, show I might have some like, you
49:57
know, Kyle Mills, who was a New York Times, you know, best
50:00
seller. So but anyway, you mentioned,
50:05
you know, your comic books. So how would you get started
50:08
with, you know, that series? That's kind of what you're
50:11
working on right now. Well.
50:13
That right there. Let me tell you, man, like I
50:16
said, I love movies my entire life.
50:19
And where should I start this at?
50:23
OK, Did you ever watch the show The West Wing on?
50:27
I think it was on ABC when it it might have been NBC, might have
50:30
been NBC. It was on.
50:31
Did you ever watch that one with Charlie?
50:33
Not Charlie Sheen, but Martin Sheen is the president on it.
50:36
I, I've seen episodes. I haven't seen the entire
50:40
series, but I I have seen, yeah, I've seen episodes.
50:45
You should what? It's probably the last Civil
50:48
Discourse piece of artwork we had as far as Hollywood goes.
50:54
You should watch that sometime. It's really good.
50:58
I, my wife and I put on stuff that we've watched over and over
51:03
again just for sitting around playing with our phones at
51:06
night. At the end of the day.
51:08
Right now, we're watching the The Walking Dead all the way
51:11
through for like the third time. But my favorite drama of all
51:16
time is The West Wing. And they had an episode where
51:20
the wife of the president played by Stockard Channing, who I
51:26
love. If you don't know who that is,
51:28
if you've ever seen the movie Grease, she was the leader of
51:30
the Pink Lady. She was the tough chick, right?
51:34
Anyway, she plays the wife of the president in the show and
51:37
she was being honored by the Daughters of the American
51:40
Revolution because one of her great, great, great, great
51:43
forefathers was a privateer during the American Revolution.
51:49
OK, and the American Revolution. If I was able, you know, people
51:54
get asked the question all the time, if you could live in
51:57
another time period, what would it be?
51:58
It would be the American Revolution for me.
52:01
I would love to be there and see what happened and help out with
52:07
things and stuff. And the privateers, I did some,
52:11
you know, I didn't know what this was about.
52:13
They kept giving her shit, calling him a pirate, right?
52:17
And I didn't really know what it was about.
52:19
So I did some investigating about it.
52:20
These guys what what the colonies did.
52:22
Course we didn't have a Navy back then, right?
52:25
So what they did was they issued letters of Marquis to merchant
52:29
marines and pirates and privateers to go out and fight
52:34
for the colonies against these ships on the open seas against
52:39
the British. And they they brought back the
52:44
the letter of Marquis. What it did was it gave them the
52:47
right to fight for the colonies. But anything that they got, they
52:51
could keep whatever they got on the ship once they took it.
52:54
But if it was something that would help the war effort,
52:57
whether it be gunpowder, medical supplies, that kind of thing,
53:02
right? Anything that helped the war
53:04
effort, they had to bring back to the colonies.
53:06
That's what this letters of Marquis said, right?
53:09
And look it up, man. They, they supplied a lot of
53:13
stuff to the colonial army, man, they really did.
53:17
These guys have been taking shit from the British for years.
53:19
And they'd love the fact that they go out and do that, you
53:22
know what I mean? So it intrigued me and there was
53:27
a story back in the old Disney days.
53:31
I saw it in Wonderful World of Color, I think was the name of
53:34
it. I don't know if it was Wonderful
53:35
World of Disney yet. I'm I'm an old guy, man.
53:38
They used to be on Sunday nights.
53:41
And oh gosh, I can't remember the actor's name right now.
53:46
I'd have to look it up. But they had a show called The
53:49
Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and it was an intriguing show, 3
53:54
episode show. It was actually put out as a
53:56
movie in Great Britain, came out in the 60s.
53:59
I saw it as a young kid and it was about a guy that donned A
54:04
scarecrow mask and ran a smuggling operation in the
54:08
southern coast of England called Romney Marsh, right.
54:12
And that was heavily influenced into it.
54:15
Anyway, I wrote a treatment, what they call a treatment.
54:18
You know, it's a short summarization of what you would
54:22
do to start a movie script. And it was just going to be
54:27
about this guy who's whose father was taken from him at the
54:31
age of 12 by a an English press gang.
54:36
You know, these were gangs of guys that would show up, a
54:38
Sergeant, a few soldiers, and they just beat anybody a
54:42
fighting age within an inch of their life and basically throw
54:46
them into slavery and the friggin Royal Navy.
54:48
You know, that's what these guys did.
54:51
And and he stowed away on a pirate ship and to learn the
54:59
ways of the sea and try and find his father.
55:00
That was my story, right? Well, then this video game
55:05
called DC Universe Online came out and I was not a big DC fan,
55:10
OK? And I started playing it and I
55:14
said, you know what? I'm going to make this character
55:17
that I've been writing little stories about for years into the
55:21
superhero in my game. And I got in with a bunch of
55:25
guys in a league called Mythology and my God, Sam there
55:29
for a five year period between 5:00 between 2011, first year.
55:33
That game was out to 2016. We wrote 2 end game quality
55:40
stories in an open writing thread.
55:43
OK. The only rules for it were you
55:46
could not kill off any characters without telling the
55:49
guy that owns the character and you couldn't change the story
55:53
before what you had written, right?
55:55
That was the only rules to it. We wrote some great stories man.
55:59
And I said you know what? When I lost my job at Libby
56:03
during COVID, you know, you know what happened?
56:05
They call it the Great Reset and they did it for a reason.
56:09
It's because a lot of these companies, they filed for
56:12
bankruptcy and they re, you know, reorganized.
56:15
And I had been working for Libby Glass for 18 years.
56:18
I was a furnace tech forum pushing 300 tons of glass a day
56:21
through 2 furnaces. 2021, January 1st, they shut the doors
56:28
and I said, you know what? I got fewer days ahead than I
56:31
have behind. I'm going to start doing what
56:33
I've always wanted to do. My kids are grown, you know, and
56:37
that's when I started my, I actually started the YouTube
56:40
channel just to copyright the, the work I was doing on the
56:43
book. Cheap way to do that, right?
56:46
You know what I mean? If anybody steals my idea, go
56:50
check out the videos from 2022. I've been doing this for a long
56:55
time. You know what I mean?
56:56
I got a weekly show up. I, I show them what I'm doing on
56:58
the comic book. So that's why I started the
57:00
YouTube channel. But I found out, you know, I
57:03
went on Nick Wiser's channel. I was I've been watching comics
57:07
division and his show and Nick invited me on there the first
57:12
year I was working on the book and he said when it was ready,
57:16
you just come back and we will push it to the NTH man.
57:18
And I've been I've been a YouTube ever since.
57:21
This community is so much fun. The guys I meet like you and
57:25
everybody else, they're they are they will help you any way they
57:29
can. It's it's awesome.
57:31
And so that that's what happened.
57:33
I lost my job and everything reset for me too.
57:37
And I said, you know what, I'm going to start working on my
57:39
comic book. I decided to make him a comic
57:42
book character and bring that pirate to the American from the
57:45
American. You know when he lands Sam in
57:47
his story to he he lands on September 12th of 2001, the day
57:55
after the towers fall. That's when he.
57:57
Yeah. That's the, yeah, that's it.
58:00
So I'd, I'd have to, I'd have to read you the I'll, I'll send
58:04
you, you know what I'll do? I'll send you a copy of the, the
58:09
origin story. It's a little treatment, the
58:11
type thing. Yeah, that would.
58:13
That would be awesome. See what it is.
58:15
But anyway, yeah, that's what got me into it, man.
58:17
I I saw an episode of The West Wing that made me do a little
58:20
research on pirates and privateers during the American
58:23
Revolution, which I love. I love everything about the
58:26
American Revolution. I love reading about it.
58:28
I'm no, you know, I'm no scholar on it, but I love reading that
58:31
period. I think it's awesome.
58:33
So yeah, that's how it started. Yeah.
58:36
I mean, I have, I have. Him.
58:38
Let's see, my wife makes me. She's testing out merch, right?
58:43
He's got his flintlock and he's got his sword, right?
58:46
He's got the 13 stars on the back of his jacket, right?
58:51
Yeah. And then hang on.
58:53
This is him. This is the guy, right?
58:55
Here. Oh, wow.
58:57
I, I love him. I, I love your, you know, you
59:02
draw actually in the art style that I, that I love, man.
59:05
It's, it's like the, it's like the 60s, like pulp art, like
59:10
Jack, you know, the 50s and 60s. Jack and and that's that was the
59:14
heyday heyday of comic books. I read my first copy.
59:18
I still got a copy up here. I had to rebuy it, but I've
59:21
still got a copy of the first comic.
59:22
Book I ever read. And I'm going to make my book.
59:27
You know, the, the, the trend in comics these days is to make the
59:30
graphic novel, the big 100 page thing and all.
59:33
I want to take people back to what I read as a kid, the 20
59:36
page rag with the cliffhanger ending, man.
59:38
And that's what they're going to get out of my book, you know
59:40
what I mean? Yeah, it's going to be it's
59:43
going to cost less. I'm actually thinking about, you
59:45
know, today's comics. I think half of the price
59:49
problem is the paper it's on and the slickness of it.
59:52
Not, you know, it's got deep colors and everything.
59:54
It's really gorgeous. I get that.
59:58
Why not go back to the new Sprint for color and, and, and,
1:00:01
and make it cost a little less? You know what I mean?
1:00:04
I want to experience the way I did as a kid.
1:00:06
And that's what I'm going to do with my book.
1:00:08
Yeah. Well, you know, that that's what
1:00:10
I've that's what I've done with, you know, my book, you know,
1:00:15
series hero, shadows of, you know, deception, you know, I'm
1:00:22
kind of bringing back the whole, you know, pulp novella, you
1:00:26
know, yeah, thing and yeah, kind of, you know, setting it.
1:00:31
I'm setting the stories, you know, and like current day and
1:00:33
whatnot. But, you know, it's still like
1:00:35
the, you know, kind, the kind of the dime novel, you know?
1:00:40
Right, right. My dad was a big fan that there
1:00:43
was 2 that my father bought, and I'm still a fan of one of them.
1:00:47
You cannot tell me that the guy that invented the Punisher, his
1:00:52
first appearance was an Amazing Spider Man 129 drawn by my
1:00:57
favorite comic book artist ever, Ross Andrew.
1:01:00
I know a lot of people like different things.
1:01:03
That's my guy anyway. You can't tell me he's not based
1:01:07
on Mack Boland. Yeah, you cannot tell me that.
1:01:11
I was saying story, yeah, I was going to.
1:01:14
I was just going to say, like a lot of the, a lot of the, you
1:01:19
know, a lot of the guys, it kind of my whole circle of, you know,
1:01:24
indie authors, the men's adventure fiction community,
1:01:27
we've all talked, you know, Mac Bowen.
1:01:30
And in fact, like I, I actually have.
1:01:35
Yeah. Yeah.
1:01:35
Don Pendleton. Yeah.
1:01:37
Don Pendleton. Pendleton, you know, wrote the
1:01:42
The Executioner series and. Who was it that did Destroyer?
1:01:47
That was the other one that my dad loved was the Destroyer.
1:01:50
He loved that one. You know, I'll look it up real
1:01:54
quick. Yeah, let's see.
1:01:56
If, if my friend, if my friend and friend of the show, Jake
1:02:00
Widmer were here, he would, he would know because, you know,
1:02:04
even though he's a couple years younger than I am, like, he's
1:02:07
into all this stuff. You know, I, I've said often on
1:02:11
my show, one of the things that a lot of, you know, people say
1:02:18
is, Oh well, and Gen. Z, you know, they don't read
1:02:23
books anymore and, you know. That's not true.
1:02:27
Well, I know better than that. Well, part of the well, part of
1:02:30
the whole thing though too is, is books now are like most
1:02:36
novels are 506 pages long. And most people, not even just
1:02:46
people my age in their 20s and 30s, but most people in general,
1:02:50
just do not have time to sit down and read an 800 page novel
1:02:58
anymore, right? Absolutely.
1:03:02
You know they have. Their place, they have their
1:03:04
place, don't get me wrong. I mean, they have their place,
1:03:06
but a lot. Of favorite, my favorite Stephen
1:03:09
King book is probably one of his biggest ones, The Stand, you
1:03:13
know, and I think when they put the unedited version of it out,
1:03:17
I think it was 750 pages. But when we first read it was
1:03:21
like 400 because the, you know, he wasn't a big name.
1:03:24
Then they edited it down. But just to answer that
1:03:28
question, if anybody's wondering the author of the Destroyer
1:03:31
series, it's two people. It's Warren Murphy and Richard
1:03:35
Sapper. So, yeah, yeah.
1:03:37
Warren Murphy. Warren Murphy.
1:03:39
Yeah, that's who I was thinking. But yeah, I think there's a
1:03:44
look. My dad had every executioner
1:03:46
book, he had every Destroyer book.
1:03:49
And you know, the smaller page size, there's nothing wrong with
1:03:53
that. One of the greatest action
1:03:54
movies ever made, Die Hard, is based on a book that's only
1:03:58
like, what, 155 pages long, something like that, you know?
1:04:04
So I mean. Yeah, exactly.
1:04:06
Like my my books are two are like 250 to 300 pages, you know,
1:04:13
long. And you know, like I like to say
1:04:19
because when I was first putting out that, you know, the series,
1:04:22
one of the whole things was is my friends were like, well, I'd
1:04:26
love to buy your book, Sam, but I'm not sure I'm going to have
1:04:29
time to read it because, you know, I've got, you know, work
1:04:32
or school or, you know, some of them even I have kids.
1:04:37
I just don't have time to do like a hot, you know, a 500
1:04:40
page, you know, plus, you know, book.
1:04:44
And I'm like, well, what if it was something that was like 200
1:04:47
hundred and 50 and you could, you could finish it in one
1:04:51
weekend if you really wanted to. Or, you know, you could finish
1:04:55
it, you know, on the bus ride, you know, to and from your, you
1:05:01
know, your job or what not. And we were kind of like, wait,
1:05:04
you can, you can do that. And I'm like, yeah, our, our
1:05:07
grandparents grew up with, you know, these pulp, you know,
1:05:10
magazines. And, you know, the the other
1:05:14
thing too is, you know, like, you know, men's magazines like
1:05:18
Playboy used to have, you know, fiction sections.
1:05:21
And then too. And the first Explorers, the
1:05:25
exposure Americans had to it was short snippets of the novels in
1:05:31
yes, in Playboy magazine. Yeah.
1:05:33
I've brought that up more. I've, I've actually brought that
1:05:36
up multiple times, yeah. Yeah, we did read it for the
1:05:41
articles occasionally, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:05:46
Occasionally I've actually had, I've actually had Karina Harney,
1:05:50
who's who was Playmate of the Year on the show before.
1:05:54
So wow, yeah, she yeah. Lovely, lovely lady So.
1:06:01
You get Patty McGuire on, even though she's an older lady now.
1:06:04
Then yeah, I'd, I'd love to meet her.
1:06:07
You know I love. With her when I was a kid, man.
1:06:10
You know, I actually, I don't know, I don't know if she does.
1:06:16
I don't know if she does, you know, press.
1:06:19
But I'm, you know, I have a few of them who might, who have said
1:06:25
that they want to come on the show so.
1:06:27
That's cool, man. A lot of them are are actually
1:06:30
like, you know more, you know, they're more aligned with our
1:06:34
way of thinking then you might then you might think.
1:06:38
So look. You know, and, and since you
1:06:42
said our way of thinking, look, I, I want people to just do this
1:06:47
for me, OK? Yeah, just open your ears when
1:06:51
you talk to people, OK? Exactly.
1:06:54
We've got a way of thinking and, and you know, we're, we're
1:06:57
conservative type folks and, and we'd rather, we'd rather see
1:07:01
good, good quality stuff instead of quantity garbage, you know,
1:07:06
but it's, we need to get back to civil discourse, man, we really
1:07:11
do. Well, the whole, the whole
1:07:14
cancer culture thing is really what drives me crazy.
1:07:20
It I'll say this like I'm more, you know, I, I'm more
1:07:24
conservative. I'm not like a strict religious,
1:07:27
you know, conservatively it, it, it's really, I've, I think it's
1:07:33
really hard to like pin people, you know, it's certainly hard to
1:07:36
pin me down because it's like, yeah, I'm concerned about on
1:07:39
some things and I'm more libertarian on others.
1:07:44
Yeah, as far as the whole, like, you know, gay marriage thing,
1:07:48
like, you know, I don't care what people do in their personal
1:07:53
lives as long as they're not hurting others.
1:07:55
You know, I do draw the line on, you know, some of this stuff
1:07:59
being pushed towards kids. That's kind of where I take a
1:08:03
hot, a hard line. I I don't.
1:08:05
With you on that one. So yeah.
1:08:07
I don't necessarily know why, you know, some of the stuff is
1:08:11
being pushed in, in schools and you know, that's kind of where
1:08:14
I, I draw the line, you know, if someone wants to be, you know,
1:08:20
gay, straight, trans, whatever, and, you know, in their own
1:08:24
lives, you know, God bless you, you know, you know, don't you
1:08:30
know? Don't tread on me.
1:08:32
It's an old saying in the United States.
1:08:34
Don't tread on me. Don't make me have to jump
1:08:37
through a hoop for you. Yeah, you know, look, I was in
1:08:41
the club business for 18 years as well, buddy.
1:08:44
I did. I did three years as a military
1:08:46
policeman. You see my hat?
1:08:48
Thank you for. Your service in the United
1:08:50
States. Oh, yeah, That family business.
1:08:53
Glad to do it. Every guy with my name, I'm the
1:08:56
third. And every guy with my name was
1:08:58
in the Army at some point. You know, Papa Joe, My Papa Joe,
1:09:02
my grandfather, senior was with patent at the Battle of Bulge.
1:09:06
He's part of that great generation.
1:09:07
Kept us from speaking German the rest of our lives, you know?
1:09:10
Yeah, friggin. My dad was drill Sergeant at
1:09:15
Fort Polk, send the kids to Vietnam in 65 when I was born.
1:09:19
I was actually born right here in Louisiana, even though my
1:09:22
parents are from Maine and Massachusetts.
1:09:24
I say all that to to just, you know, yeah.
1:09:30
You don't have to put labels on things.
1:09:34
I worked in the club business after being in the Army, and I
1:09:37
met plenty of homosexual people. I've got homosexual friends and
1:09:43
not one of them, like anything that a lot of these radicals are
1:09:49
pushing, they, they like to be left alone and live their lives,
1:09:53
man. And they think they're just as
1:09:54
crazy as we think they are. You know what I mean?
1:09:57
Yeah, it's, it's funny. I, I have a few, I have a few
1:10:00
gay, you know, I have a few gay friends and they've, they've
1:10:04
all, the interesting thing is they've, they've all told me
1:10:08
almost universally that they're, that they're more afraid to come
1:10:13
out as Trump supporters than they were to come out as gay.
1:10:21
Gay to their families or, you know, or not.
1:10:25
Yeah. Which you know.
1:10:29
That, that, and that's and then silly, that's, that's completely
1:10:32
silly. You know, I, I, I supported
1:10:35
Trump because I didn't have a better alternative.
1:10:37
I'll tell you, Sam, the person that I the last person I gave
1:10:41
money to in a campaign, and I used to do it on a regular
1:10:43
basis. I would pick a candidate and
1:10:45
push for him during during their run.
1:10:49
Tulsi Gabbard's the one that I backed the last time she ran for
1:10:53
president. OK, Yeah, I'm a big fan.
1:10:57
Big fan of her. Me too.
1:10:59
And I gave her money, but she unfortunately wouldn't take
1:11:03
corporate money. She wanted to go grass roots and
1:11:05
all that good stuff. And she ran out of money.
1:11:08
But you know, I wasn't about to vote for a person that wasn't
1:11:15
vetted. I wasn't damn sure, wasn't about
1:11:17
to vote for the person that the person, the horse that I back
1:11:21
nuke so bad. She rent and left the race a
1:11:24
week after the debate they were in together, you know?
1:11:27
Yeah, it was shocking to me. She even became vice president.
1:11:32
So I was like, yeah, well. You know, in regards to Tulsi,
1:11:39
I, I remember I first heard her on Joe Rogan, you know it, in
1:11:44
2020 during the whole Democrat primary.
1:11:47
And I was still a Trump guy, but I would always get asked, you
1:11:52
know, by, you know, by my, you know, not that they were all
1:11:56
friends, but I, you know, I was in college at the time and I
1:11:59
would, you know, I would always have conversation with these
1:12:01
lefties. Well, Sam, if you had to vote
1:12:03
for anyone other than Trump, you know, gun to your head, you
1:12:08
know, who would it be? Is there anyone that on the
1:12:11
Democrat side who you, who you would, who you would like?
1:12:14
And at that time, I I would say, you know, honestly, gun to my
1:12:20
head if I had to, like I might actually vote for Tones and
1:12:24
Gabbard if she, you know, if she were running against Trump, I'm
1:12:30
not saying I would, but you know, she would be the only one
1:12:33
who I would consider and they would always say, Oh no, she's
1:12:38
too right wing, you know, for and I'm like, and Harley didn't.
1:12:44
Like her, that's what. That's why she ended up leaving.
1:12:46
Yeah, and I'm like, and I'm like, why?
1:12:50
She's a, she's a, you know, she's a, she's a 90s Democrat.
1:12:54
You, you could even make the argument that Trump himself is a
1:12:58
90s yes, Democrat. That that's, that, that's the,
1:13:03
that's the weird, that's the weird thing.
1:13:06
And it's like, well, and it's like, look, I don't like all
1:13:08
these, like, weirdos, you know, on the far right, like Nick
1:13:12
Fuentes and Andrew Tate, you know?
1:13:15
I know. I.
1:13:16
No, I think those people. I didn't like, I didn't like
1:13:19
Rush Limbaugh. I agreed with a lot of what he
1:13:22
said, but he he was so arrogant. He just rubbed me the wrong way
1:13:26
when he spoke, man. I was just like, oh come on man,
1:13:30
stop it. Get on and see horse, you know,
1:13:32
and see that and see. That's funny because I grew up
1:13:35
as I grew up as a rush baby. He's one of the people who kind
1:13:38
of got me into podcasting. A lot of what he did was satire.
1:13:43
But I can see how, you know, you might think he's.
1:13:48
Yeah. You know, like I.
1:13:49
Said And when it comes to Trump, I am not.
1:13:52
I have got a buddy of mine that is a just a Trump maniac.
1:13:56
He's always been just Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump I He
1:14:02
was the only choice for me this time around because he was the
1:14:04
only one that made sense. And he is the one that when he
1:14:09
was president before, my wallet was a little bit fatter than it
1:14:12
has been. Yeah, in the last few years.
1:14:15
You know what I mean? So yeah.
1:14:17
Why wouldn't I, you know? Listen, but boy, you.
1:14:19
Say that and certain people will lose it on you, you know, and
1:14:23
I'm like, so I can understand where your your homosexual
1:14:27
friends coming from. Yeah.
1:14:28
They don't want to be pegged as as somebody that's behind that.
1:14:31
Yeah, right. And listen, like even even as a
1:14:34
Trump guy, there are so sometimes where like I'll go on
1:14:37
true social and shut. Up, man.
1:14:41
Just please show or or just please, you know, have a please
1:14:46
just have like a please just dial back a, you know, a little
1:14:51
bit. Right, but that's that's half of
1:14:53
the that's half his personas. Why half the people that love
1:14:57
him love him Because he's very. You know, and I, you know, and,
1:15:02
and I and I and I get that. And it's like, you know, well,
1:15:05
I'd rather have that than someone who, you know who, who
1:15:09
is so smooth, like, like, you know, Obama, you know, and yet
1:15:14
like talks out, you know, I mean, it's, it's really, it's
1:15:21
really unfortunate that we can't go back to the days of someone
1:15:24
like, you know, Reagan or even JFK, you know, or stuff like
1:15:28
that. But.
1:15:29
And, and that's the thing, the great leaders only come along
1:15:33
every every other decade, right? They, they only come along every
1:15:39
once in a while. They, they, you know it, it was
1:15:42
JFK in the 60s, Reagan in the 80s.
1:15:46
And I would argue we haven't had a great one since Reagan.
1:15:49
Well, and. Trump may very well go down as a
1:15:51
great one when he's looked at my history.
1:15:54
You know, he may, he may go down as that.
1:15:56
Yeah, Well, well, that that's the other thing too, is like,
1:16:01
you know, I it's always one of those things where you have to
1:16:06
look at in in hindsight, right? Like, you know.
1:16:09
Yeah, you can't judge him right now.
1:16:11
You can't judge. Him.
1:16:12
Well, you know what, you go back to what you know people were
1:16:15
saying out like, you know, like like JFK back in, you know, back
1:16:19
in the 60s, like, you know, there were people who you know,
1:16:23
were against, you know him, they thought he was a.
1:16:26
Communist they want, yeah, they, dude, there was a lot of people
1:16:30
that hated him. They, they couldn't stand him.
1:16:32
Yeah. You know, and, and on the flip
1:16:36
side, you know, same thing with with Richard Nixon.
1:16:38
I, I think you know, people on I think people have kind of
1:16:42
unfairly, you know, they look at Richard Nixon and all I think of
1:16:47
is Watergate without looking at, you know, what he did as present
1:16:53
as a whole. And I think right, you know,
1:16:55
Nixon, at least by my generation, kind of has been
1:16:58
vindicated as well. You know, look at what, look at
1:17:01
what he did do like even. Those tapes are always going to
1:17:04
hang around his neck. We're always going to have,
1:17:07
we're always going to have that, you know, vision of him on the
1:17:10
beach looking for microphones. You know what I mean?
1:17:14
It's it's it's kind of stuck with him.
1:17:16
But this is the thing. He did do some good stuff.
1:17:19
He got us out of Vietnam. Yeah.
1:17:21
And, and, you know, he did, he opened the door to China and all
1:17:24
that good stuff. But, you know, he once again,
1:17:31
his hubris is what brought him down.
1:17:33
And I'll never forget the day that Marine One left the White
1:17:38
House with him on it. My mom was very upset and you
1:17:46
know it. It was a bad day for this
1:17:48
country, man. It really was.
1:17:49
When he left office, when he resigned, it was a bad day.
1:17:52
It was a black eye. I I think, yeah, I think though,
1:17:56
too, You know, you look at some of the presidential scandals
1:18:00
that have gone on, you know, since then on on both sides.
1:18:05
And it's like, it's like, it's like really.
1:18:10
That's small potatoes. Right.
1:18:11
Yeah. Yeah.
1:18:13
And, you know, listen, I don't, I don't think any, I don't think
1:18:20
any president is, you know, perfect.
1:18:23
Perfect. They're all yeah.
1:18:26
You know, humans are not perfect.
1:18:30
No, you know what? I, I, I, I used to have.
1:18:34
And This is why I keep preaching civil discourse.
1:18:37
OK, yeah. When I was working at the plant,
1:18:39
I had a buddy of mine, both of us vets.
1:18:42
He was in the Navy. He was African American.
1:18:44
I was, I'm Caucasian, right. And he was left-leaning.
1:18:50
I was, I was conservative. And it was when Trump was
1:18:54
running the first time and he, the whole conversation, it
1:18:59
wasn't about the, the, the, the person that was up for the
1:19:02
Democrats. You know, it was, it was about,
1:19:05
you know, it wasn't about Hillary, It was about him.
1:19:07
That was our conversation every time.
1:19:10
And I was like, but he goes, this guy sounds like, you know,
1:19:15
I, I just, I, I the stuff he says is crazy.
1:19:18
I'm like, but I know it sounds really arrogant and everything
1:19:22
he says, I said, but look at the ideas he's putting forward.
1:19:25
And he goes, I can't. And I said, I know because, you
1:19:29
know, I took I took speech in college.
1:19:31
And the problem with Trump is he distorts his message with the
1:19:36
way he delivers it. And it sure.
1:19:39
It really is a shame. And that was our discussion
1:19:41
every time. And we went home.
1:19:44
He and I are still friends to this day.
1:19:46
He's moved on to Dallas. But you know what?
1:19:49
We knew where each other stood at the end of the day.
1:19:51
And that's why I say open your ears and talk, man, because, you
1:19:55
know, not everybody's perfect. Trump is not perfect.
1:19:59
I wish he would shut up half the time and just do the job.
1:20:02
Yeah, I like what he's doing. Just shut up and do it, you
1:20:06
know? There there is also though, too,
1:20:09
and this became really apparent kind of with with Trump the
1:20:13
first time too of, you know, the of the corporate media taking
1:20:20
things out of context. Well, yeah, they're yeah.
1:20:25
Like that's half the problem too, and not just with Trump,
1:20:28
but with but with anyone. Because I I guarantee you, Joe,
1:20:32
you can even take, you know, clips out of me, out of context,
1:20:37
you know, or like take a certain.
1:20:39
Snip. My audience is always saying,
1:20:41
yeah, you know, that's what she said and everything.
1:20:44
Yeah, you could clip any one of us the wrong way.
1:20:47
Look, I'm going to tell you a story.
1:20:49
I was a very short. I was a student at Louisiana
1:20:55
State University, Shreveport, LSU Shreveport, taking
1:20:59
communications journalism. OK, I was only in it for like a
1:21:04
semester in two weeks, but I got great grades the first semester
1:21:09
and I learned some really cool stuff about what you print and
1:21:12
what you don't print. This.
1:21:13
This is when papers are still going, you know.
1:21:16
We got. To see some things, Sam, that
1:21:18
you would really find interesting.
1:21:20
Like for instance, they showed us photographs of, I don't know,
1:21:24
well, you too young for it. It was this was an 87.
1:21:29
Hey, this guy had. Go ahead.
1:21:32
Real quick, can we can we pause for a SEC?
1:21:35
I need to use the the restroom. Go for it, man.
1:21:39
Yeah, and I'll finish the story when you get back.
1:21:41
Yep. All right, all righty, folks,
1:21:46
We're we're back. So sorry.
1:21:49
Just had to take a quick break there.
1:21:52
Anyway, though. You were saying, Joe?
1:21:55
Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm going, I'm taking
1:21:58
journalism at LSUS. And they had shown us some cool
1:22:01
things. Like one of them, it was a story
1:22:03
about somebody up in the, I want to say it was in the middle of
1:22:08
the country somewhere, like up, up in Pennsylvania or something.
1:22:12
And I don't even know if it was a City Councilman or mayor, what
1:22:16
his status was, but it was a public figure.
1:22:18
And he'd call the press conference and he blew his own
1:22:22
brains out right in front of the press conference.
1:22:27
OK, wow. And somebody was taking pictures
1:22:32
of one of those high speed cameras and you saw him kind of
1:22:39
grimacing before the shot and then just a totally blank kind
1:22:42
of shocked look on his face after he did it.
1:22:46
And they were showing us, you know, what, what to put out and
1:22:52
what not to put out that kind of thing, What what you should do
1:22:55
and what you shouldn't do. But one night me and my buddy
1:22:59
are going up the steps of the student center in on the campus
1:23:06
there. And there was a group of folks.
1:23:11
It was a cameraman and a reporter from a local station.
1:23:18
And they waved us over. And I was taking a night course
1:23:23
with a buddy of mine that I joined the Army with.
1:23:26
And we go up to this woman. She says, we got some questions
1:23:31
to ask you. Would you mind being on camera?
1:23:32
I was like, no, don't mind, you know.
1:23:35
And she said, how do you feel about President Reagan making
1:23:40
cuts to higher education? Put the microphone in my face.
1:23:43
And I said, well, my buddy and I, you know, we joined the Army
1:23:46
for college money, so we aren't really affected by it.
1:23:49
And she turned around, looked at her cameraman, went like this,
1:23:53
gave the slash throat thing cut. Right.
1:23:56
Yeah, And I, I looked at her and she didn't know what a, you
1:24:00
know, what I was a student of or anything.
1:24:02
She really hadn't asked anything.
1:24:04
And I said, wait a minute, you don't want to talk to us
1:24:06
anymore? And she's like, no, we're done.
1:24:08
Thank you. I said.
1:24:08
I was like, wait a second, you know, my buddy was grabbing by
1:24:11
by the arm. I said, just a second, I want to
1:24:13
talk to her real quick. I said, you know, I'm studying
1:24:15
journalism here. And I was told that I'm supposed
1:24:19
to be covering stories from every angle.
1:24:23
You're not interested in what I've got to say.
1:24:25
And she goes, she actually said this to me.
1:24:27
She goes, no, we're just looking to talk to people that are
1:24:29
getting hurt by it. And that was in 1987, Sam.
1:24:33
Yeah. So, yeah, the manipulative media
1:24:36
has been around for a long time. OK.
1:24:41
You have got to. If anybody out there watching
1:24:43
this show thinks that you're getting the truth and nothing
1:24:46
but the truth out of the media, you are sorely mistaken.
1:24:50
You need to do your own research.
1:24:52
If they show you a story, that's great.
1:24:54
But first of all, in today's climate, they used to call it
1:24:57
editorialism. They don't call it that anymore.
1:25:00
They call it news. Now whenever the talking heads
1:25:03
make themselves the story and their and their opinion, we used
1:25:06
to call that editorializing and they used to call it that before
1:25:10
they even said anything. So you knew it was.
1:25:12
Now you don't. Now they just say it right off
1:25:15
the top of their head. And so you really got to Get the
1:25:18
facts, glean the facts out of it, you know, and then go look
1:25:22
it up yourself and see what's really going.
1:25:24
On well, and that it well and that shame, Yeah.
1:25:27
Oh yeah, it is a shame. But also, I mean, that's where,
1:25:31
like, again, this is the thing I love about podcasting.
1:25:35
Like the, you know, the idea that little, you know, old me
1:25:41
can, you know, talk to people and get their full, you know,
1:25:46
story on things. Like, like I said, I, I had, you
1:25:51
know, Karina Harney on on the show.
1:25:52
And one of the reasons I did was a few years ago, there was a,
1:25:57
there was a documentary series, I say documentary series in
1:26:03
heavy air quotes about like all this, you know, quote, UN quote,
1:26:08
scandalous stuff that Hugh Hefner had been involved in long
1:26:14
after he, he, he had already been dead for like, you know,
1:26:20
he, he passed in 25th. He passed in 2016.
1:26:24
So almost like, you know, almost a full decade ago.
1:26:28
And this, this documentary series that came out like two or
1:26:32
three years ago, they interviewed some playmates and
1:26:37
women, but it was very selective.
1:26:40
And I first found Karina because she had, well, I mean, I, I knew
1:26:46
of her, but she had posted on, she had posted something like I
1:26:51
can't remember on Instagram or something.
1:26:55
I guess they had interviewed her and she had never had any
1:27:00
problems with half or anything like that.
1:27:03
They had interviewed her for like 3 hours in her in her home
1:27:09
and they didn't use any of it in the documentary.
1:27:15
And so I invited her on on the show and said, hey, I just want
1:27:22
to know your story. So she came on and we had a
1:27:26
three hour conversation. She's a Christian, you know,
1:27:29
she's conservative. She she has a very interesting
1:27:31
background, None of which they wanted to, you know, to feature.
1:27:39
No, she said that half wasn't, you know, perfect, but when you
1:27:44
know, she met, when she knew him, there was anything, you
1:27:48
know, that was off. So you know, stuff like stuff
1:27:52
like that. And, you know, so like when the
1:27:57
when the corporate media wants to destroy someone, you know,
1:28:02
they'll, they'll go ahead and try and to do that, you know,
1:28:07
it, it's, it's narrative news. News now.
1:28:12
It's not. Yeah, it is.
1:28:13
Actual news, borderline propaganda.
1:28:16
Yeah. Really.
1:28:17
I mean, yeah. And gone are the days of
1:28:21
Cronkite and just giving you the facts, ma'am.
1:28:23
Just the facts, like they used to say on the dragnet.
1:28:26
Just the facts, ma'am. Well, even and even and even
1:28:29
Cronkite now, I mean there there has there's stuff that has come
1:28:34
out on him that you know what, you know, the, the Vietnam, you
1:28:43
know, war, regardless of how you feel about, you know, Vietnam,
1:28:48
you know, I, I don't think it was Nestle, you know, just fight
1:28:52
that we what we go in there. But at the at the same time,
1:28:57
there was definitely kind of, there was definitely a concerted
1:29:01
effort to slander, you know, Vietnam vets and what not, you
1:29:07
know. Jane, that's wrong.
1:29:09
Yeah, I mean how Jane fun and never got, you know, tried for
1:29:14
treason or or anything like. That How do I change?
1:29:17
Yeah. Yeah.
1:29:19
And, you know, like I, I've neighbor, I have neighbors who
1:29:24
are, you know, Vietnam vets that they're, you know, they're up
1:29:28
there now. But I mean, they, they just,
1:29:30
they despise her, you know, a lot of people.
1:29:34
And yeah, and I mean, and even what even one of my neighbors
1:29:38
said that, you know, Cronkite like once you know, there, there
1:29:43
seems to kind of be a you know, they're about there now that he,
1:29:49
you know, they kind of pushed the anti war, you know,
1:29:52
propaganda that as soon as he kind of came out against the
1:29:55
war, that was when stuff started to change.
1:29:58
So I would I wasn't around then. I don't know.
1:30:00
But it it's, you know. Guys that were, that's who you
1:30:04
got to listen to. They, they're the ones that that
1:30:07
know, right? Yeah, that's, that's who you got
1:30:09
to lean on for that. So yeah, I've look the, the,
1:30:15
the, the, the media and government involvement together
1:30:20
hand in hand has been around for a long time.
1:30:23
All you have to look no further than the the McCarthy hearings,
1:30:26
you know, the communism thing back then, a lot of people
1:30:30
getting blackballed that weren't even communists, you know, just
1:30:34
because they wanted them to shut up, that kind of thing that.
1:30:38
But in today's the, the good thing is there's more people
1:30:43
waking up to the fact that they can manipulate the narrative and
1:30:50
more people are turning on guys like you, you know, guys like
1:30:56
Tim Poole, guys like the Quartering, you know, people
1:30:59
that are trying to give you information without the slant,
1:31:02
you know, well, it's hard to do. It's hard to do.
1:31:05
It really is, you know. I mean even one of.
1:31:09
The things I've seen that I really like is what's that app
1:31:12
called Ground News, where they actually show you the slant of
1:31:15
all the stories and stuff? Have you seen this?
1:31:17
Yeah. Yeah.
1:31:18
Pretty cool. It's pretty cool.
1:31:20
I do like that. Yeah.
1:31:21
But. Well, even, even, you know, even
1:31:25
guys in, you know, our circle like, you know, I, you know, so
1:31:30
you mentioned, you know, during the pandemic, you know, you got
1:31:34
kind of furloughed and I, I was. Oh, I was.
1:31:38
My career was over. It was yeah, done.
1:31:41
They shut the doors. Yeah, yeah, I, I was in, you
1:31:45
know, I was in college and, you know, I, we got, we got sent
1:31:51
home and, you know, I, I kind of thankfully, you know, the
1:31:57
campus, I went to USF and thankfully it, it reopened kind
1:32:01
of right before I graduated. But yeah, there was like a,
1:32:03
there was like a chunk where I was doing my degree and
1:32:07
technical communications entire online for a good chunk of that.
1:32:12
And that was when I that was when I discovered, you know,
1:32:16
Gary, you know, nerd Roddick and the critical drinker.
1:32:22
I don't even know what, how I found them.
1:32:24
I think you know the algorithm puts.
1:32:29
You know YouTube's algorithm pushes.
1:32:31
You know stuff. I'll tell you exactly the guy
1:32:34
that got me. It was Jeremy Grimes from Gigs
1:32:37
and Gamers. There was a video game that was
1:32:40
coming out about that time called Last of Us Two.
1:32:43
We all know the story behind. We all know how popular the
1:32:46
first game was. I love it.
1:32:49
It's top five video game all time for me and I don't even
1:32:53
play those kind of games. It's just the story was so good,
1:32:56
you know? Yeah, I don't.
1:32:57
And I had, I had here it is right here.
1:33:02
I had bought this game and every year I bought this game for five
1:33:06
years running, spent $100 on it. Every year spent 60 on the game
1:33:11
and 40 bucks on the Game Pass because I didn't have a lot of
1:33:15
time on my hands and I wanted everything unlocked.
1:33:17
So I, you know, get the game pass and it had my two favorite
1:33:20
wrestlers, girl and guy in the in the promotion on it.
1:33:24
I spent 100 bucks on this buddy and I've played it for an hour.
1:33:28
It was such a trash fire. This game was it was so bad.
1:33:33
And that's when I decided I was never going to friggin buy a
1:33:36
game brand new again, right. So when I searched for reviews
1:33:40
on Last of Us Two, I found Geeks and Gamers and Jeremy Grimes and
1:33:46
he was trashing that game on a daily basis, man, he was blowing
1:33:50
it up. And and that's when I when I
1:33:53
watched Friday Night Tights the first time, was following him,
1:33:56
knew he was on that show and I watched it and I toured that
1:33:59
show. I thought it was great.
1:34:01
And they said, and this was, you know, back then in 2001, that
1:34:06
era there 21. Excuse me.
1:34:08
Yep, they said. If you've got a voice, both him
1:34:12
and Gary would say it during their shows.
1:34:14
If you've got a voice and you've got a camera and you've got the
1:34:16
means, get on here. You know.
1:34:20
We need your help. It basically is what it sounded
1:34:23
like, you know what I mean? And I was like, well shit, you
1:34:27
know, let's do this. I.
1:34:30
That's how I started doing it, but that that's the guy that
1:34:32
inspired me to do it. Yeah, yeah.
1:34:34
Well, like I said, you know, I mean, I was always interested in
1:34:39
politics. Like even going back to when I
1:34:41
was a kid, I was a bit of a, you know, of a, of an odd, you know,
1:34:45
of an oddball that way. But I kind of started you.
1:34:48
Were Michael J Fox and Family Ties, huh?
1:34:50
Yeah. You, you, you was worried about
1:34:52
the money and where it's going. And yeah.
1:34:55
Yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty much. And, you know, I was so, you
1:35:00
know, I, I, you know, much like Charlie Kirk, you know, I would,
1:35:06
I would listen to Rush as a kid. And I was also big into Dennis
1:35:12
Miller. Dennis Miller is one of the most
1:35:16
underrated comedians of all time.
1:35:18
Does he still have his podcast? Because I used to listen to.
1:35:20
It. It was so funny.
1:35:23
Unfortunately he unfortunately he doesn't.
1:35:25
But I, I mean, I listen to his radio show and the podcast too,
1:35:32
you know, which was great. He just got and, and I, I
1:35:36
understand where he's, where he's coming from.
1:35:39
I, I think kind of like around 2020, he just kind of got like a
1:35:43
little, you know, depressed. And finally, you know, he was
1:35:48
like, you know, I, I've, I've made enough money, you know, I,
1:35:53
I, I remember, I remember. Step back from this, from my own
1:35:56
mental health, is what it sounds like, right?
1:35:58
Yeah, well, I, I remember and I can't remember, remember exactly
1:36:02
what, what he, what he said, but he's like, you know, I, I don't
1:36:04
want to be, he's like, I don't want to be, I don't want to be
1:36:08
Mick Jagger. And you know, doing this when
1:36:11
I'm 100 fucking years old, you know, he's like I.
1:36:16
Tell you what, still to this day, a lot of guys love Norm
1:36:21
MacDonald. I get it.
1:36:23
Dennis Miller was my Weekend Update guy.
1:36:25
I love that guy better than any of the rest of them.
1:36:28
Yeah, well, I, well, you know, most people don't know this, but
1:36:31
like Norm got his start writing for Dennis.
1:36:39
That that, that does not surprise me one bit.
1:36:42
Yeah. Doesn't surprise me at all.
1:36:45
Yeah, I mean, you know, even even kind of like their even
1:36:49
kind of like their comedy, you know, style.
1:36:52
It's it's different, but it's also kind of very similar kind
1:36:56
of, you know, and kind of the content that they, you know,
1:37:00
cover and. This is highbrow metaphors.
1:37:03
Cracked me up, dude. They're they're just too good.
1:37:06
I I enjoyed the hell out of. Them and what's what's funny is
1:37:09
I've kind of, I've kind of done that too.
1:37:11
Is especially like, you know, my, my references are a little
1:37:18
more modern, but like to the Gen.
1:37:20
Z, but like, you know, to Gen. ZA lot of millennial references
1:37:25
that I grew up with. They they don't, you know, they
1:37:29
don't get them, you know, like I'm, you know, part of my
1:37:34
audience now doesn't even like understand the whole concept of
1:37:38
like dial up Internet or, you know, or something like that.
1:37:41
Where it's like I yeah, where it's like, you know, where I
1:37:44
remember those days, right? Yeah.
1:37:50
When I found, yeah, I think it was like for, I think was for
1:37:54
the Witcher TV show or something like that, which I hadn't bet
1:37:58
what I hadn't been into the Witcher, but like, yeah, same
1:38:01
thing. It was kind of like, it was kind
1:38:05
of like, yeah, that was kind of when Netflix started to go
1:38:07
downhill, you know, so. I've never been a big Netflix
1:38:12
guy. I'd never have been.
1:38:15
My brother loves it because for the documentaries, yeah.
1:38:19
Well, I, I, I learn more towards HBO Max and yeah, Paramount, you
1:38:27
know, they've got more of the stuff I dig.
1:38:30
You know well, and then you know in regards in regards to the
1:38:34
last of in regards to the last of two.
1:38:37
I remember after after I graduated college, I got APS 5
1:38:42
for my graduation present. So I actually foolishly like I
1:38:47
got I got the Last of Us two. It was like $20 and I'm like,
1:38:52
how bad can this really? Can this really I still?
1:38:56
Haven't finished it. I keep trying to kill Abby as I
1:38:59
play as her. They won't let me do it.
1:39:02
Yeah, well, we all do. We all, we've all tried to do
1:39:07
that. And like, the thing what is is
1:39:10
it's that game is a slut. Part of the problem with that
1:39:15
game is it's not only bad, it's like it's a long.
1:39:20
Yeah, it is the first one. What was it?
1:39:23
Maybe 15 hours of gameplay to get the whole thing done, which
1:39:27
is like 25 for Last of Us. You play the whole game as one
1:39:31
character and then you got to flip and do it the other way.
1:39:33
Yeah, which like which is a, which is a is a cool, which is a
1:39:38
cool concept. They were like on the surface,
1:39:44
it is a cool concept. I think of like, you know,
1:39:46
playing as two different characters.
1:39:48
I. Could see doing that as Luke
1:39:50
Skywalker and Darth Vader. OK yeah, but not as the person
1:39:56
that destroyed the dude you wanted the playoffs the entire
1:39:59
game. Well, I can't do that.
1:40:02
And. Well, and I don't know if you've
1:40:03
gotten to this part, but they they make you the thing that I,
1:40:08
you know, pisses a lot of people off too, is they make you they
1:40:12
want to make you kill Joel as yeah, whatever her yeah, her
1:40:18
face is too the 1st. 20 minutes of the game.
1:40:22
Yeah. And so that that was like one of
1:40:27
those things where it's like, Oh yeah, this really.
1:40:31
Wait, later on in the game you actually have to go through that
1:40:34
scene again? Yeah.
1:40:36
As Abby. Yeah.
1:40:39
So glad I didn't finish that game.
1:40:41
Oh my. God, yeah, there's, there's,
1:40:45
yeah. And they literally, they
1:40:47
literally make you. It's a QuickTime event, but they
1:40:50
still make you bash. They actually make you like
1:40:53
Bash, you know, Jewel's brains and it's.
1:40:58
So, so glad he has nothing to do with that show.
1:41:01
Now I don't even know if they're going to put on another season
1:41:03
of that. I really don't.
1:41:05
Well, they're not and they they they were going to they they
1:41:09
were going to make a Last of Us three as far as like a game.
1:41:12
But I think I think that's. He has destroyed his reputation,
1:41:17
man. Yes.
1:41:18
So yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's.
1:41:22
We're talking about Neil Cockman, by the way.
1:41:25
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the whole entire
1:41:28
games industry too is just like at least the AAA game.
1:41:34
I mean, it's it's abysmal there. There are a few.
1:41:37
There are a few. Kind of remember we're seeing
1:41:39
stuff that was in development five years ago.
1:41:41
So yeah, it's going to be abysmal for a while.
1:41:44
Yeah. And they're going to have a hard
1:41:46
time bouncing back. But I am kind of holding out.
1:41:49
I hope that the new James Bond game is going to be good.
1:41:55
Be like I'm with you, Sam, I'm with you.
1:41:57
Especially since we haven't, especially since we haven't had,
1:42:01
we haven't had like a, a James Bond game.
1:42:03
I think since I was in like a sophomore in high school, that
1:42:07
would have been like 2011. It's.
1:42:09
Been a long time or something. Yeah, they've made some since
1:42:12
Goldeneye. The standard that was on the 64.
1:42:16
They've made a few. I think the last system they
1:42:20
made one for was PS3 I think. Yeah, yeah, that.
1:42:24
Yeah, that. One in a long time.
1:42:27
Yeah. But.
1:42:29
Yeah. Yeah, they like to see a good
1:42:30
one. Yeah, the last, the last really
1:42:34
good Bond game I remember playing was was actually when
1:42:39
they brought Connor back and made a game out of from Rush
1:42:43
With Love on the on the PS2. That was game coming on.
1:42:49
I'd never played it, but I do remember that one when it came
1:42:51
out, yeah. Well, that that was fun because,
1:42:53
you know, I was like, I was like 12 or so.
1:42:55
But that was kind of my generation's first experience to
1:42:58
Sean Connery and. Yeah.
1:43:01
You know, and now I, I love, you know, the movies.
1:43:04
And that's kind of what got me into, you know, reading the, you
1:43:10
know, the Bond novels and, you know.
1:43:13
Short stories for Pierce Brosnan.
1:43:15
My favorite Bond movie was Thunderball with Sean Connery
1:43:20
because I love the underwater fight scene at the end of it.
1:43:22
I thought it was bad ass. Yeah.
1:43:24
Spear guns and everything, yeah. It's, it's, it's too bad we
1:43:29
never got like 1/3. I love Pierce Brosnan, but it's
1:43:33
too bad we never got at least like a third Timothy, Timothy
1:43:37
Dalton one. So.
1:43:40
Yeah, that would have been good. You're right.
1:43:43
He. Was a good bond.
1:43:44
I liked the first movie, didn't like the second movie as much,
1:43:49
but the first movie he did The Living Daylights.
1:43:51
That's one of the best Bond movies in my mind.
1:43:53
I loved it. I thought it was great.
1:43:55
Yeah. Lice and and in his case, he was
1:43:58
a fan of the series. That guy was one of those dudes
1:44:02
like Cavill. Is he was he really wanted to
1:44:09
play James Bond, and he'd always wanted to do it, Yeah.
1:44:12
Yeah, I would, I would love it if they cast a Henry Cavill as
1:44:18
Bond. I know they're not going to
1:44:20
because he's he's too, he's too old.
1:44:25
I, I would love, I would love Henry Cavill as you know, Bond.
1:44:30
And then I would love Gina Carano as a Bond girl, but
1:44:35
they're probably not going to cast her either.
1:44:38
Yeah, she won her bout with Disney, but we'll see what
1:44:42
happens. Yeah, you know, I know you.
1:44:44
I know you're, I know you're a Sydney sweetie fan.
1:44:48
And I have to, I have to ask, do you think she would be?
1:44:52
Do you think she would be a bond, a good Bond girl?
1:44:55
I. Know she'd be a good blonde
1:44:56
girl, but you got let me tell you something about Sydney
1:44:59
Sweeney. I'm not the big Sydney Sweeney
1:45:02
fan on my show. It's Knock Knocks the world a
1:45:05
big swing Sydney Sweeney fan. I just, I heard Jeremy say one
1:45:09
day if you wanted to get your video seen, put a picture of
1:45:13
Sidney Sweeney on there and people would click on it.
1:45:15
So it's kind of a running joke. We do a segment now called The
1:45:19
Sweeney Spot and everything, man.
1:45:20
Yeah, I've she won me over. I love the kids attitude.
1:45:24
I'm not a fan of blondes. Anybody that knows me, if you're
1:45:28
a wrestling fan, AJ Lee is my type of girl.
1:45:31
A petite brunette is. I've been married to three of
1:45:34
them. OK, I have AI.
1:45:36
My wife says I have a type. All of my wives look the same.
1:45:40
You know they could be sisters. Yeah.
1:45:43
But but when it comes to her, she won me over with her
1:45:46
attitude when she wore that sweatshirt that said excuse me
1:45:50
for having a great rack or whatever the hell it was that
1:45:52
one time. You remember when she did that?
1:45:55
I was like, this kid gets it, man.
1:45:57
And the other thing I like about her is she is part of a growing
1:46:01
trend in these younger based Hollywood types, like a Jenna
1:46:07
Ortega, like Sidney Sweeney, another one's Glenn Powell.
1:46:12
These guys are taking the money they make and they're investing
1:46:16
it in themselves. If you notice a lot of the stuff
1:46:19
she's in, she produces. So is the money behind it, you
1:46:25
know? So is, you know, I I know he's I
1:46:28
know his dad is, I mean his dad is one of my all time actors.
1:46:32
But I have to say I love Scott EI, love Scott Eastwood as well
1:46:38
as. Clinton Scott E was another one,
1:46:41
yeah. Yeah, he's very good.
1:46:43
He should. Be in a lot more stuff.
1:46:45
Why the I've always said if you know, if shadows, if my series
1:46:49
ever gets adapted into like a, you know, into an Amazon, you
1:46:53
know, into a Paramount show or something like that.
1:46:59
I mean, I I've always I've always written my John Ryder
1:47:02
character with Scott Eastwood in mind.
1:47:07
And then, you know, kind of in my, in my Cold War series where,
1:47:12
you know, I kind of follow his dad, you know, Clint is kind of
1:47:16
my, you know, mental, I mean, and I mean, I, I'm a huge Clint
1:47:23
Eastwood fan either. Me too, too.
1:47:26
Always have been. You know we can.
1:47:28
My generation is seeing one hero after another fall by the
1:47:31
wayside. It's simply because of age.
1:47:34
But at 95, our man Clint keeps marching on.
1:47:38
Man, it's unreal. Yeah, yeah.
1:47:44
Well, that, well, that's the other thing too, is like, is
1:47:47
like I've never actually seen a a movie that Sydney Sweeney is
1:47:53
in. I I I know that she's you know,
1:47:56
I know this is she's attractive. I, I've never watched you for it
1:48:00
though, because that that just seems like a a train wreck.
1:48:04
I. Watched one episode of it and
1:48:06
it's about teenagers doing drugs and I was just like OK.
1:48:09
That's yeah, we'll, we'll see and see like where I went to
1:48:13
high school, like, you know, I, I where I went to high school in
1:48:17
card, it was like, it was like upper middle class where where a
1:48:20
bunch of kids were, were doing drugs like that.
1:48:24
So I'm like, why do I need to watch a show about something
1:48:26
that I, you know, kind of yeah, yeah.
1:48:33
And it's like I some. Stuff, you know, just the
1:48:34
subject matter, excuse me, some stuff, the subject matter just
1:48:38
turns me off. But when it comes to Swaney, I,
1:48:41
I just, I, I like her attitude and how she's going about her
1:48:44
career, right. Like when Madam Webb came out,
1:48:47
she was laughing at herself on Saturday Night Live.
1:48:50
She was making jokes about the damn movie being so bad, you
1:48:52
know, I mean, it was, it was funny, you know?
1:48:54
Well she and well she. Wasn't really been in the movie
1:48:57
at all that much too from what I from what I understand it.
1:49:00
She wasn't. It was a, it was a big, it was a
1:49:03
big rug. It was a big rug pull,
1:49:06
basically. That's the other thing is like
1:49:09
most of the movies I watch are like from the 70s and you know,
1:49:14
like stuff that you that you grew up with.
1:49:17
I grew up with a bunch of that stuff.
1:49:19
Yeah, man, I I'm a Flint fan. Then.
1:49:21
Then you've seen The Dirty Harry series.
1:49:24
You've seen the any which way but loose movies.
1:49:28
And his westerns were dynamite. I mean, he it's it's funny.
1:49:34
I watched what was that movie The Tarantino made that was so
1:49:37
good a few years back, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
1:49:41
And I'm sitting there looking at Dicaprio's character and I'm
1:49:45
like, my God, this is Clint Eastwood.
1:49:48
This is Clint Eastwood. You know what I mean?
1:49:50
He's he's on a western in black and white.
1:49:53
And then, I mean, I don't think Clint would have cried about it
1:49:57
or anything, you know, not that pitch.
1:49:59
But he ends up going and making Italian Westerns, right?
1:50:04
You know, spaghetti westerns, and then comes back and he meets
1:50:08
a really good director at the end of it.
1:50:10
And all of a sudden, hey, he's about to be.
1:50:14
You knew. You knew his career was going to
1:50:17
go in the right direction. Yeah.
1:50:20
But I'll tell you what, if you're a big Clint Eastwood fan,
1:50:23
though, you've got to watch a lot of the stuff that he
1:50:25
directs. Yeah.
1:50:28
My favorite movie. My favorite movie.
1:50:30
Of course, he directed a lot of the stuff he was in.
1:50:33
Favorite Western of all time is still Outlaw Josie Wales.
1:50:36
Nobody can convince me anything. Yeah, but my favorite movie he
1:50:41
ever directed is very inspirational.
1:50:44
It's called Invictus, it's got Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman
1:50:49
and it's about how Nelson Mandela used the rugby team.
1:50:55
I saw that in the theater. Bring his country together and
1:50:58
it it is an amazing movie. You if you've never seen that
1:51:02
movie, I highly recommend it to those people watching.
1:51:05
If you if, if you don't know the stuff that Clint Eastwood has
1:51:08
directed, you need to check it out.
1:51:10
I would I would say to I would say to one of my all time
1:51:16
favorite movies that still, you know, the ending still gets me
1:51:24
choked up to this day. Is is Grand Reno?
1:51:29
Yeah, my and. He directed that one too.
1:51:32
Yeah, my my paternal grandfather, who has since long
1:51:40
past, is pretty much Clint Eastwood's character.
1:51:46
In right, right. He's a bigot.
1:51:49
We all know it. But you know, underneath that,
1:51:52
that outer there's, there's a heart of gold.
1:51:55
And and he's really, you know, yeah, we all know that guy.
1:51:59
We all know him. Yeah, like, like my, like my
1:52:03
grandfather and I were, were very close, you know, like he,
1:52:09
like I remember he and I actually saw that one in the
1:52:13
theater and I, I, I remember. He must have loved it.
1:52:16
Yeah, I, I remember particularly the barbershop scene where he,
1:52:20
you know, where Clinton and the Barber, my grandfather was.
1:52:27
He was, he was never one to really.
1:52:31
I mean, he would chuckle and whatnot, a few things, but I, I
1:52:36
never heard the man belly laugh like I like I had heard him, you
1:52:43
know, in that theater when that, when that scene, you know.
1:52:47
I got the pleasure of meeting him, Sam, when I was I was
1:52:51
stationed in San Francisco for three months.
1:52:54
That was my last place that they, the Army sent me.
1:52:57
And I think they sent me there, excuse me, because I, they knew
1:53:01
I was getting out and I had spent a year on Johnson Island
1:53:06
in the middle of the Pacific and Oakland Separation Base is right
1:53:11
across the Bay from San Francisco.
1:53:13
And so they sent me the Presidio.
1:53:15
I think that's why they sent me there, because everybody that
1:53:17
gets out of the Pacific Theater goes through Oakland.
1:53:20
OK. And I knew at the time, I don't
1:53:25
think he was the mayor of Carmel yet, but I knew we had a bar up
1:53:31
there and a couple of the guys that were straight out of basic
1:53:35
training, couple of 18 year old dudes.
1:53:37
And I, I was 20 at the time. I was the only guy with the car.
1:53:41
You know, they had put me with a bunch of guys straight out of
1:53:44
basic training. We were doing military funerals
1:53:47
up and down the West Coast every day, Dress Blues, 21 gun salute,
1:53:51
folding the flag, all that stuff, two and three times a
1:53:53
day. And one weekend I, I took a
1:53:57
couple of them in the car. We, we made the hour drive North
1:54:00
Carmel and went to his bar. And sure enough, he was there
1:54:03
that night. He bought us around, you know,
1:54:05
he found out we were in the military, bought us around.
1:54:07
And that guy, that's a big dude. He looks skinny on film, but
1:54:12
that is a large human being. Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's, that's
1:54:18
that's what I've heard. Yeah.
1:54:20
I. I I what?
1:54:22
Is a sweetheart, man. Yeah.
1:54:25
My dad is an autograph collector and some of the stuff I've got
1:54:30
hanging on the walls here were I got from my father and he has he
1:54:35
has a form letter that he sends out to get these autographs.
1:54:40
And it said basically tells a little story about himself and
1:54:42
says, you know, this is not for resale.
1:54:45
I'm, I'm a collector, you know, I'd like to, you know, get get
1:54:49
your autograph, blah, blah, blah.
1:54:51
And you really find out what these guys are like by what they
1:54:54
send back. He sends them a, he sends them a
1:54:56
pre stamped envelope so they don't have to spend anything.
1:54:59
All they have to do is sign the thing and send it back.
1:55:02
Bruce Willis signed it with an auto pin.
1:55:04
OK, that was kind of a bummer. When I heard that, I was like,
1:55:07
what? Because I'm a big Bruce fan, you
1:55:09
know? But Clint, that the 8 by 10.
1:55:12
My dad said Clint, he signed the front of it and then on the back
1:55:16
he wrote him a letter thanking him for his military service.
1:55:20
That's what Clint Eastwood did. Yeah, Clint is.
1:55:24
I mean, Clint may be my all time favorite actor slash director
1:55:31
just because from the from the time I first saw Hannah as a as
1:55:35
a kid, I was like, that is, you know, I want to be that I, I
1:55:43
want to be that cool when I, when I grew up, when when I grow
1:55:47
up, you know. And it's not hard to be that
1:55:49
cool. All you have to do is say what
1:55:51
you think and and love your country.
1:55:54
That's that's Clint Eastwood. Yeah, he says what he thinks and
1:55:58
he loves his country, man, that that's all there is to it.
1:56:00
Yeah, and you know, all, all of his, all of his kids have turned
1:56:06
out, you know, well, yeah, well, you know, at least the ones we,
1:56:11
at least the ones we know about. The ones we know about.
1:56:15
Yeah, so. But yeah, so you know, well man,
1:56:22
you know, you have all of, you know good stuff going too.
1:56:25
You've got I don't know how many shows you're up to, but I.
1:56:30
I, I, you know, I, I just make the channel about what I dig and
1:56:35
me and my brother do the political show.
1:56:36
It's not really a political show.
1:56:38
It's more like headlines and what we think of them.
1:56:40
It was born of conversations. We would have my dad or excuse
1:56:44
me, my brother lives in Dallas, TX, and he's got a long commute
1:56:48
on 635 and anybody that's driven that road knows, you know what
1:56:52
my brother calls, he calls it Fury Rd.
1:56:54
That's what he calls it. And what he does is he calls his
1:56:57
family. So he doesn't shoot people on
1:56:59
the freeway. You know, it it it uses that
1:57:01
time to call his family, right? Yeah, yeah.
1:57:04
That that show was born of me. The conversations I had with him
1:57:08
when he was trying to verse traffic in Dallas on the way
1:57:10
home. Then I've got during the
1:57:15
football season, we do a pregame show every Sunday from 11:50 ten
1:57:20
right before kickoff. And then I've got a pop culture
1:57:25
show. That's my favorite show I do
1:57:26
every week. I love movies and I love doing
1:57:28
that. You've been on that show.
1:57:31
And then I do the one for the comic book.
1:57:35
I only do it for an hour. I don't want to bore people to
1:57:37
death, but I give them an update on what's going on with the
1:57:40
comic book and I do some drawing during that time.
1:57:43
I do it right before I go to work on Fridays.
1:57:46
And then I keep my hands in video games because I don't have
1:57:50
time to play them anymore. So I have a video game show
1:57:52
that's called Video Games, Cocktails and Fails, Papa Joe
1:57:55
Gamer After Dark, right? Where I have a cocktail and play
1:57:59
a video game, you know, and I'm playing through Mass Effect
1:58:03
right now. Yeah, never played it before.
1:58:06
And it's one of those ones that just, I, I didn't play it when
1:58:09
it came out, you know? I've, yeah, I, I'm playing
1:58:13
through the first one as well. It's, you know, it's kind of.
1:58:16
I'm on the third one. They've they've got me playing
1:58:19
through the 1st 3. The guys that are on the show
1:58:21
with me and everybody gets to come on.
1:58:24
The only shows I do by my, the only show I do by myself I don't
1:58:29
is the one I do with my brother because it's just me and him.
1:58:33
And whenever he's not available, like this week he's not
1:58:36
available. So I'll do one called Chilling
1:58:38
at the club and it's just a chill stream, chat driven.
1:58:43
Anybody comes in, the chat says what they want to talk about.
1:58:46
It's kind of like what Charlie does, you know, what's his name?
1:58:50
Penguin 0 Moist Critical. Yeah, I know you're talking
1:58:53
about. Yeah, basically that.
1:58:55
I just sit there and search for stuff for people and we talk
1:58:58
about it and stuff, you know? Yeah that that's kind just had
1:59:01
just how the Whitfield's report live is my my Co host and I you
1:59:06
know we just talk out like the news of the week and you know
1:59:10
headlines and then you know if people come in to chat we and
1:59:13
drag yeah, I dig that show. You know them?
1:59:16
Yeah, We. Live show is great.
1:59:18
Yeah, we, we appreciate you and you know, if you, if you ever
1:59:21
need a second, you know, if you ever need a second, you know,
1:59:25
wheel for, you know, any of the shows, I'm always, you know,
1:59:29
happy. You know, I used to do that.
1:59:31
I used to, I whenever my brother wasn't available, I, I, I, I did
1:59:36
a show called Backup Hackers. And I and I would invite
1:59:40
somebody to come on and talk about not, not the same format
1:59:43
as me and my brother did, but we would talk about the big
1:59:45
articles of the week, You know what I mean?
1:59:47
Yeah. So I might have to bring that
1:59:49
back now that you say that, man, I'm, that would be fun doing
1:59:51
that show with you. It would.
1:59:53
Yeah. Well, well, well, well.
1:59:55
Feel free. I mean, I I feel a little more
1:59:58
now now I'm now I'm no longer persona non grata on.
2:00:03
Right. And I'm so glad to see that.
2:00:06
I let everybody know when you got your channel back.
2:00:08
I was like, yes, she's back on. Yeah, well, well, and
2:00:12
unfortunately she's. Never gone anywhere, guys.
2:00:14
She's always been over on Rumble, that's for sure.
2:00:17
So, yeah, well, one, well, unfortunately they, they still
2:00:21
haven't given me back my old channel, so I had to start a new
2:00:24
one. But you know, YouTube keeps
2:00:29
saying that they're going to like, you know, that they're
2:00:32
going to do amnesty, you know, for some channels, which I think
2:00:36
is dumb. I'm like, you know, I'm like,
2:00:39
I'm like, I, I shouldn't have to fill out.
2:00:42
I shouldn't have to fill out out of form, you know?
2:00:47
Yeah. And, and honestly, I and
2:00:50
honestly, I think the only reason why my channel was even
2:00:53
banned was because I, I think there was like a malicious troll
2:00:56
that just kept flagging everything, you know,
2:01:01
maliciously. And that happens, you know, too.
2:01:05
So yeah, it does. But yeah, I mean, you know, you,
2:01:13
you do a lot for this, you know, streaming community and a lot
2:01:16
for the, you know, just for independent content graders, you
2:01:21
know, all stripes. I really appreciate having you
2:01:24
on, man. So.
2:01:25
Oh, no problem dude. Anytime you want me on, just let
2:01:28
me know. And yeah, you always get invites
2:01:32
if you anytime you want to come. I know Wednesday when I do it on
2:01:35
Wednesday, it's a bad time because everybody's eating
2:01:37
dinner about that time. Or, you know, I do it because my
2:01:40
wife is going to a meeting that night.
2:01:42
Yeah, and I've got the place to myself, so that's what I'll do
2:01:45
at that time. But.
2:01:46
You're going to keep. Getting invite Sam.
2:01:49
Maybe you'll show up one of these days.
2:01:51
Yeah, I, I will definitely pop on sometimes.
2:01:56
Usually, as much as I love rumble, there are technical, you
2:02:00
know, things that, you know, I kind of have to sort out with,
2:02:05
you know, to make sure everything works properly over
2:02:09
there so that, you know, that's always fun.
2:02:12
But anyway, well, where can people find all all of your
2:02:17
stuff? OK, you go to joesatmosphere.com
2:02:22
just like it's spelled right there with an F instead of aph
2:02:27
in the atmosphere. I did that on purpose so I could
2:02:30
get the.com really easily and it worked like just the way I
2:02:33
planned it. You go there, you'll see a
2:02:37
little bit of history of my artwork and and how I do things.
2:02:40
You'll see my streaming schedule on there too.
2:02:42
And there's a couple of action buttons you can hit.
2:02:44
One of them goes to my subscribe star page where for $1.00 you
2:02:48
can get all the written word on the comic book, all the back
2:02:51
stories of the characters, the plot for the first comic books
2:02:55
on there, all the sketched pages, $5 for all the artwork.
2:03:00
You can, you know, it's a one time thing and you can look at
2:03:03
all of it. You know what I mean?
2:03:04
Wow. And then over on there's another
2:03:09
action button that will take you to the Amazon Kindle page where
2:03:13
the teaser book is at. It's called Privateer issue 0
2:03:19
and all. It is the first 5 pages of you
2:03:23
saw one of them earlier in the show.
2:03:25
You know that I animated, but it's just the first 5 pages is
2:03:29
what they call a comic book platform.
2:03:34
They call it the issues issue 0 and it's just a teaser to get
2:03:39
people interested in what I'm doing.
2:03:41
It costs a buck. Unfortunately, those nasty
2:03:45
capitalists over there at Prime and Kindle want a buck for
2:03:49
server money or something, you know.
2:03:51
But yeah, spend a dollar and support the book and all of
2:03:56
that's on joesatmosphere.com and my schedule is up on on the
2:04:03
YouTube page. I made that the first thing you
2:04:06
see down there. There's a trailer for the
2:04:08
channel. And then of course they put the
2:04:11
for you thing in there, which I think is dumb.
2:04:13
But anyway, yeah, the next thing you see there is my live
2:04:16
schedule and I'm on God. I do about 6 or 7 streams a week
2:04:22
on a regular basis. Four of them are mine, but I'm
2:04:26
on a lot of a lot of the people's channels too.
2:04:29
Yeah, well, Yep. That's.
2:04:30
Where you are. And, and I'm not just on
2:04:32
YouTube, I'm on X I'm Joe's atmosphere everywhere.
2:04:36
If it's a social media platform, you can find me there under
2:04:39
Joe's atmosphere. For sure, yeah.
2:04:41
And, you know, I'll, I'll have all your stuff, you know, linked
2:04:46
down in the description, you know, on both, you know,
2:04:49
Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, all that got you
2:04:53
stuff, you know, as I do with all the guests so that, you
2:04:56
know, people can just, you know, link to Joe's stuff directly
2:05:01
from the, you know, from the episode page.
2:05:06
I appreciate. So, yeah, really enjoy having
2:05:11
you on, man, and would love to have you, you know, back on
2:05:15
anytime you want to, you know, come on.
2:05:17
And you know, once once the book is, you know, more developed,
2:05:24
you know, ready to push out, would love to have you back on
2:05:27
man. Don't worry, I'm going to be
2:05:28
hitting up all my friends when it start.
2:05:30
Time to start printing this thing.
2:05:32
Yeah. Look, I I have never done it
2:05:35
before. It's completely amateur thing.
2:05:38
So I I was making deadlines for myself.
2:05:40
I'm not doing that anymore. I'm 60.
2:05:42
Yeah, I'm doing what I love. I'm going to take my time and do
2:05:45
it. Hopefully you guys will
2:05:46
appreciate when you see. Well, you know, like that.
2:05:49
That's that's kind of my, my approach too with, you know,
2:05:54
writing the books now, like, you know, there are, there are some
2:05:58
things where like I'll look at, you know, since I'm self
2:06:01
published, I'll, you know, I'll look at like, you know, OK, so
2:06:04
when is, you know, when is the best time?
2:06:06
When do people usually buy, you know, these, you know, these
2:06:10
thriller books? So, you know, all kind of
2:06:12
schedule my release dates around there.
2:06:15
But you know, generally I'm pretty flexible, you know, with
2:06:18
like pre-orders and whatnot. So, and it'll be, it'll be
2:06:24
interesting because it, you know, one thing I would be
2:06:29
curious about too, is like, you know what I published with the
2:06:33
novellas? It's it's all just like, you
2:06:35
know, text, It's all just text based, right.
2:06:38
But I'm curious as to like, you know, like what actually like
2:06:41
publishing a comic book on Amazon as an as like an indie
2:06:47
guy would be like 2. So so that would.
2:06:52
Be I'm not, I'm not selling many of them right now, but I'm not
2:06:55
trying to. I'm not pushing it or anything
2:06:58
like that. But right, where do I find your
2:07:00
book at, man? Can I get it on Kindle?
2:07:03
Can I get it through Amazon Prime?
2:07:05
Can I get it through that? Yeah, yeah, All my books are on.
2:07:09
I mean all all inky, but I mean all my books are on Amazon
2:07:17
Kindle. You can buy paperback editions.
2:07:21
I I have the first three books of the shadows of deception saga
2:07:25
in in hardcover as well. Kind of combined the the first 3
2:07:34
Nobel as into one hero as well. So yeah, people can can find all
2:07:42
my stuff on Amazon as well. And I think we I even even got
2:07:50
some of the audio, but I've even got some of them on Audible too.
2:07:54
So as Audible. So yeah, that's cool.
2:08:01
But again, Joe, really appreciate you coming on.
2:08:05
So and folks, we really appreciate you for tuning in and
2:08:13
hope you have a good rest of your Monday and we'll see you on
2:08:17
the Wednesday's show. So until then, take care.
2:08:21
God bless God freedom. I've seen that order and we'll
2:08:25
see you on the next show. Take care folks.
2:08:30
The right to offend is not some pesky little part of freedom of
2:08:34
speech that we have to put up with.
2:08:36
It is the heart and soul and lungs of freedom of speech.
2:08:40
It is the coursing lifeblood of human process.
2:08:43
It is the instigator of liberty and modernity and science and
2:08:47
understanding. What a laughing stock today's
2:08:51
student leaders are that they can so casually dismiss the
2:08:55
right to be offensive without realising that their lovely,
2:08:59
enlightened lives are the gifts of individuals who gave offence.
2:09:05
Offensiveness is not just something we have to
2:09:07
begrudgingly accept. Offensiveness is the motor of
2:09:11
human progress. Thank you for watching the
2:09:15
Whitfield Report live on the Right to Offend Media Network.
2:09:19
Make sure to check out Sam's books on Amazon, Audible, and
2:09:23
Kindle. You can follow Sam on X at Sam W
2:09:28
under Score NGC and the Right to Offend Media Network at RTO
2:09:34
Media. Like, comment, subscribe and
2:09:38
share with your friends. And until next time, God bless
2:09:43
God save this great nation. God, freedom, legacy, in that
2:09:49
order.