 Welcome to the Adam Does Movies Podcast, episode two. I'm your host Adam. It'd be weird if I had a different name and then titled it Adam Does Movies, but let's move past this. Today's episode is going to be a little different already, just one episode in. I'm going to get a little bit more personal. It's something I haven't done on my YouTube channel Adam Does Movies in over a decade. Sure there's a random one-off every four years where I say like, hey, I do this because of this or whatever, but for the most part I keep things very fun and light and that's always been the goal is to just make people laugh, give people some enjoyment, put some happiness out in the world in between some of my movie rants and you know, whatever else I'm doing, but it's always at the detriment of staying impersonal. It's always to kind of detach myself from what's going on on YouTube because I don't feel like giving people the baggage or the backstory. I just want to make people laugh. But after a decade of doing this and having a podcast, I think it would be useful to at least dive into who I am as an individual and maybe you might gain some appreciation or maybe you might, you know, respect me less depending on your outlook on things. So for this episode, we're going to dive into two things, one, why I do my show, why I like to entertain, why I will continue to do this as long as I physically can, and two, what movies mean to me, why I chose movies as my venue, my primary means to like go after and tackle day in and day out. Now my full-time job of course, which we'll dive into as well, but that's the goal for this episode. Please join me on this magical journey I'm sure we'll take together to start. We travel way back in time. Do you think Wainsworld with the waves and whatnot, 1982 I'm born fresh as a daisy. No, we're not going to go back that far. But my childhood was pretty basic, much like my adult years have been so far. And that's okay. I think some formula is good. Of course, spicing things up is very nice as well, but yeah, I had a pretty basic childhood. I had a brother two years younger than me, named Jake. I had a sister 10 years younger than me, Didi, named after my late grandma. We were all kind of into the same things for the most part. My brother definitely more in the sports side of things. I played sports all year round. My dad, huge sports nut. He was in football, he was in baseball. He was kind of a big deal in them too, at least in his hometown. My grandpa, Earl, actually was a coach for him. My mom was the cheerleader. They met in college. You can't even write a movie, more cliche, right? That's like every movie, playbook standard, teen romance, the cheerleader, the football player, the coach that begrudgingly accepts him into the family. It's all right there, that's my parents' life. Mine, not too much different, but we'll get to it. So yeah, growing up, we watched a lot of movies at the house. A lot of movies, mainly on, we didn't go to the movies a ton, we just saw them on TV. We had HBO for a while. It was always cool seeing that HBO logo fly out across the cityscape. You knew you were in for a treat when that happened. You know a movie was gonna kick your ass. We watched a lot of stuff on cable. Shawshank Redemption was on like every other day, I swear. I've seen that movie a thousand times. It's still a banger. It still holds up. If you haven't seen Shawshank Redemption, fix your life. It's top tier, emotional, impactful, beautiful film. So yeah, a lot of movies in the household, watching with my dad, I can think of many rainy Sundays laying on his big chest, face down, just cradled there when I'm like eight or nine, watching probably lethal weapon. He was a big lethal weapon guy, die hard. Jean-Claude Van Damme, we watched so many Jean-Claude movies and they're awesome. I don't recommend them though, unless you're willing to understand that they're not high art. These are movies where he typically goes out, roundhouse kicks a bunch of dudes, finds the hot blonde, nails her, wash, rinse, repeat. These are like Fast and the Furious scripts. They churn them out, just change the name of his character and it's the same movie over and over and we ate it up every time. Yeah, Jean-Claude Van Damme was big in our house. Jackie Chan was big in our house. We liked a lot of the fighting, a lot of the hand-to-hand, a lot of the gunfights. It's all good. So yeah, my dad raised us with a lot of movies, raised us with a lot of sports background. My mom was more, you know, do well in school, dumbass, so that you eventually can leave this house and make a name for yourself. She was a nurse, would go on to actually manage full wings of hospitals, very successful. My dad was in sales. He worked for a plumbing and heating supply company. He would get moved around a lot because he was very good at his job and eventually he would be the guy that they turned to to restructure, to re-manage things, to make more profit, to get supply out the door in a timely manner, find the right people for the right positions, that sort of thing, just damn good at it. And I think it helps that he's very personable. He was a guy that you could sit and have a beer with as they say and I don't even drink. Never even wanted to drink, never touched the stuff. He liked to drink, he liked to socialize and like I said, he was just, everybody wanted to be around him. Yeah, that was my old man. So great parents, brother I got along with well, sister I got along with well. Obviously, you know, you fight from time to time but for the most part it was just a very solid middle-class structured family, not too exciting. As we get older, you know, you get friendships, you get girlfriends, you do a lot of different things but like I said, my dad was moving a lot in different companies and that would often take us to different towns, different cities, whatnot. We spent a lot of time in St. Cloud, Minnesota then we went to Monticello, Minnesota then we were in New Walm, then we were back in Monticello we were in Burnsville for a while all over the place, really. It wasn't until I'd say freshman or sophomore year where I really looked at my parents as more than just tools that helped dress me and tell me to brush my teeth and to obviously not help dress me when I'm a teenager but you know what I mean? That would be really awkward and uncomfortable. Make sure I'm doing my homework, feeding me and making sure I go to bed at a reasonable time. I started to look at them as friends and as people I could respect and grow fascinated with and want to be like emulate when I got older like I want to be like my old man, have my own cars have my own place, make a name for myself. We then moved to New Walm and then I started to get a little pissed at them. Like, oh, thanks for moving me my sophomore year of high school, dick. Living in New Walm was fine. We were only there for one year. The only thing that stayed consistent the constant in my life besides my parents and some of my friends that I kept in contact with were movies, were some TV shows. I love Seinfeld. I love Scrubs later on. Always Sunday in Philadelphia. The Office. Obviously some of these shows were later than where we're at right now in the timeline. Movies though was the consistent factor. When I was in New Walm, we saw Star Wars episode one which I talked about in the previous episode. Don't really like that movie but the experience was fantastic. Saw The Matrix while I was in New Walm for that one year and I believe right before we left, we saw The Sixth Sense together. That was a trip. That was a mind game and a half by M. Night Shyamalan. Whew, fun stuff. We end up leaving New Walm after just one year because none of us really enjoyed it there and my dad was flexible enough where he could move around and pick and choose where he wanted to go. But during the time away from some of the close friends, I grew a lot. You get a little complacent when you're doing the same thing day in and day out. This forced me to grow as an individual. My dad worked in Mankato which was a half hour from New Walm, drive wise and I would actually go work there with them. I worked at his warehouse. It was not a good job. I would sweep the floor using this bizarre chemical compound that kept the dust down. It didn't really keep the dust down very much. In fact, all it really did was make more of a mess because I had to sweep up all the compound. I would also load the trucks with piping, giant toilets, help with showers. These were the kind of things we stored there. It's a plumbing and heating supply shop. There was also pawn shops all along Mankato. And this was fun for me because on my break, I would actually walk through these pawn shops. I don't have a lot of money at the time and things are cheap at pawn shops. And I would find old movies and video games that I could pay a dollar for, get whatever on DVD, Sandlot on DVD for a dollar. That's a good deal. It's a great deal. They'd always have the bargain bins that you can see at Walmart too where there's $5 DVDs. And you look at it and think, do I really need another copy of Braveheart? That's $5, I probably should. We do own two copies of Braveheart, not because I bought it, but because my wife Lindsay did from Best Buy. She didn't realize we already owned it unwrapped. So we have two unwrapped copies of Braveheart at the house. Probably should sell one of those or at least open one up and watch it. I've seen Braveheart just pointing out how ridiculous some of these purchases are we made when we were younger and still continue to do. If you're watching the podcast, I have Lego castles and stuff behind me. Yeah, we're great with money, really into the stock market. Probably should be, probably should get more on the ball with that stuff. I have a 401k, so I'm kind of an adult. In New Ulm, while making friends and going to school there, I just wanted to be back in Monticello. That's where everything was for us. The small town, Queen Town, it was growing. And my dad knew that, he sensed that. And one of my last days on the job at his job, I didn't know it at the time, but he said to me, Adam, why don't we go for lunch? I was like, okay, we've done that a couple of times. We go out to eat. After we're done eating, he goes, what's playing right now that looks kind of good? I search it up. It's Deep Blue Sea, The Shark Movie. I said, Deep Blue Sea's playing. He goes, that sounds good, why don't we check it out? I'm thinking in the back of my mind, this is gonna be a four hour lunch. This doesn't seem cool, but I'm not gonna say anything to dad because maybe he's not thinking about it. I'm kind of getting away with something here. We go to the movie, we have a great time. Love Deep Blue Sea. And afterwards he says, actually I breach it because now I've gotten what I wanted. I got the meal, I got the movie. I've been wind and dined. It's time to go back to work, I guess. So I say, dad, shouldn't we get back to the office? And he turns, he goes, oh, I quit. Yeah, I don't work there anymore. Which I was a little taken aback by thinking, well, I'm not a full grown adult yet. I'm only 16 or 17. I think the job is what gives us money for the house and whatnot. But within that hour, after telling me, he was on the phone with three or four different companies wheeling and dealing for a new job. He really wanted to get back to Monticello and there was a place called Pipeline. I'm sure he already had wheels in motion for months. And this was the final play to get the new job. Probably had to quit to accept the new offer. That's how adult stuff works. I know this now, but at the time I thought, oh my gosh, this superhero. He quits a job and just makes a couple of calls and has the next one lined up. This man is a demigod. No, not quite the case. But that's just how it works. You have the job you're at and the job you're going to. That's what my father's dad always said. My grandpa Bill also passed on. Very wise man and I still stand by that mantra. You have the job you're at and the job you're going to. You don't ever quit the job until you have the other job lined up. Now of course, you might be very happy where you're at. Doesn't mean you have to quit. It just means you have to look at what's next. What's on the horizon for you? Before we leave New Ulm, I think there was one other movie we went to and that was Saving Private Ryan, which I saw, I don't know. I know it was on a school, maybe it was on a Sunday night. I think that's what it was. It was a Sunday night showing we were coming home late from work and we ended up seeing a nine o'clock movie. Saving Private Ryan's not short. So I don't think I got to bed until probably one in the morning and I don't typically stay up that late in high school, at least not until my later years of high school. So I remember sleeping through a lot of my classes Monday, but it was worth it because Saving Private Ryan was fantastic. Still is, still holds up. We move back to Monticello finally. I believe I'm a junior in high school. Yeah, I think I would have been a junior in high school. Things are all lining up, things are going well, Christmas is around the corner, it's coming. And this is where my basic existence, my pretty quaint, standard, middle class lifestyle, gets shaken a bit. It gets, it gets, actually it gets fucking destroyed because my dad would die a week before Christmas. You know, unexpected car accident. Minnesota has terrible winters, very harsh winters. The roads can get very icy. And a particular morning my dad was driving, he didn't know it, of course, black ice on the road. You can't see it, it's essentially invisible. It's just a clear coat over the top. Cars do not handle well or trucks. So he slid, smashed into a tree and crushed him on impact. They rushed him to the hospital, but yeah, there was nothing they could do. That broke me, broke me as an individual. I'm 40 years old, he was 38 at the time. So I've outlived him now by two years, which is a very sad thing to say. He was my best friend and he was gone just like that. In high school, when you are at probably your most fragile, your most selfish, your most foolish, and for something like that to happen can put someone in a very dark place. Now, I was in a very dark place for multiple years after that. I didn't do anything too stupid though. I didn't turn to drugs or alcohol or jump into a cult. I just was down. I just didn't wanna see people, I shut myself off. Again, the only constant for me were movies. I would digest as much as I could, usually more on the emo side, the sadder side of things. Watching stuff like Fight Club and Seven and basically the entire David Fincher collection kept me going. I remember listening to a lot of emo music too, big into tool, big into corn, system of a down, things like that. That was me just laying on the backyard trampoline, laying in bed till two or three in the afternoon feeling sorry for myself. Reality is people die all the time. Another reality is kids are in a lot worse positions than I was. Some kids are born in orphanages, some kids are born in a third world country with a gun in their hand. And here I am feeling bad for myself, for losing an amazing dad who I had for 17 years of my life. He didn't get to see me graduate college. He didn't get to see me get married. He didn't get to see me have kids, but I got to see him at his best. And maybe that's, you know, that's all right. He didn't grow old enough to become an enemy. He didn't grow old enough to disappoint me. I look back at my old man and I think untouchable, amazing father, amazing husband, amazing worker, amazing short-lived life. But before he died on December 15th, he had purchased one present for the family. It was actually a present for me, which my mom found in the back corner of the garage. Wasn't wrapped, it's just in its cardboard box. It was a video camera that he got from Best Buy. He was big into sports. He didn't really know anything about filmmaking or, you know, I didn't even know he knew I was that interested in it. But again, I'm a high schooler. I'm selfish, I'm in my own mind. I'm not thinking about how easy it is for parents. Now that I am a parent, of course I know we're always watching our kids, the good ones at least are always watching their kids. We know what they're thinking. We know what they're doing. We know their passions. So he got a video camera for me. My mom didn't even know it at the time. It was a surprise to her. He did that stuff a lot. He would, definitely a fault of his. He would kind of be like a kid at a candy store, see the amazing food and just start buying it. One time I was at my buddy Derek's and I remember my dad pulling up into the driveway with a giant brand new big screen TV. This isn't the big screen TV like we have now where it's in a thin, easy to carry box even though it might weigh a decent amount. It's still manageable. No, no, no, no. Big screens back in the 90s were massive. These were mammoths. They would take up an entire wall of a room. They were the talk of the town. When the neighbor would come over, they'd see that ugly monstrosity set up. Wood panel trim like the kind you find on a station wagon. Doesn't go on anything. It sits right on the carpet. Disgusting TVs, but awesome. But awesome back then. Yeah, he would do those types of purchases a lot. I remember he also bought a five changing DVD player when DVDs first came out. That thing had to have cost a lot of money but he could hold five DVDs. So you push a button, the thing switches. I don't have to get up. I don't have to go put a DVD and I couldn't even imagine how he would feel about streaming now. You don't have to put anything in. You just have to fire up the app and it's right there. It's amazing. No five changer DVDs. I think he also had a five changer in his truck too for CDs. Fantastic, fantastic. But yeah, he bought me the camera before he died obviously and that was the only Christmas present and that Christmas present was the thing that got me through it all. For the next few years, I would use that camera which I still own and you can see it if you're watching on YouTube. It's in the background behind me. I can't point to it properly. It's on the shelf behind me. I've had it still to this day. I don't use it obviously anymore. It's old school. It's very old school. It has a old cassette tape that you put in and you get about 50 minutes of footage on it. The battery doesn't last more than a couple hours. It worked well when I needed it and I needed it, man. Me and my buddies would shoot films all the time. I would just randomly shoot everything I saw with this camera. I would write scripts. I would act out skits. We would do fake commercials. Every day I was using this camera. It was letting me escape from what was happening in the real world just like a movie does. I've always been kind of the class clown in school intentionally, not as a joke, but I wanted to make people laugh. I wanted to make people happy. Sometimes that was at my expense. Sometimes unfortunately it would be at the expense of others because I was not a perfect kid, but I think I was a decent kid at least. But yeah, sometimes gets on a hand with the teasing. For the most part though, I haven't changed. I've grown obviously. I try not to make fun of others for comedy except for movies. I mean, I think that's fair game. If I pay money to go to a movie and it sucks, yeah, you're gonna hear about it. But I don't personally attack a director or actors. It's just all for entertainment and for fun. And that camera, that camera was fun. And I would continue to purchase more video cameras as I got older. Towards the end of high school, early college, I bought my second camera, which was a mini DV. It still took tapes, but they were thinner tapes. It was a higher crisp quality. It might have been 420p for all I know. And I filmed a series of movies that I scripted out. They were 45 minutes each called Water Wars. It was a ton of fun with my friends. We shot them over a couple of days each. They were actually DVD, I have DVDs of them, cassettes of them that I made. We showed the first one at the Monticello Theater at midnight just for friends and family that wanted to go. It was such a cool experience. And yeah, eventually I got out of my funk after a couple of years of shutting down because of this camera, because of the gift my dad gave me. I don't look back on really anything that, in my childhood that I think, man, I wish he didn't act that way then or I wish there wasn't so much fighting. It was a very happy household. What I look back on and think of is the time my mom and dad came back from American Pie, laughing the entire trip home, saying how we have to go see this movie. And then I went to see it a day or so later with my buddies and all I could think was, man, my parents are depraved. Man, they are some sick bastards for enjoying this film. It was hilarious. American Pie is hilarious, but I didn't know my parents were that way. I didn't know. I didn't know that they thought that was kind of, that was the fun stuff in this. I should have, my dad was kind of always a pervert in a good way, you know. But when I got out of my groove and got into college and inevitably failed out multiple times because I was depressed, but when I finally squared everything over and said, Adam, you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to a point where you can appreciate the time you have here. Because if anything, when our parents go, when a loved one dies, when a kid has an unexplained death, or there's a tragic accident or whatever, there's so many things that can happen at any given moment. We should look at that and take away one thing. Life is fleeting. We have to make the most of it while we're here. And I intend to do that every day I get up now. In college, that wasn't how I felt. I slept in the car most of the time. I was depressed. I was in my own sad, pathetic bubble, shutting everyone out. I was taking a, I took a job, I've had several jobs. I've had a million jobs actually from food service at Subway, to lifting furniture for a furniture store, to just a lot of in and outs, corn to tasselene. I was a bus boy when I was 14 or 15. I've worked a lot of jobs over my life. And the one that I got from my uncle, Dennis, was in insurance. I was running car quotes, life insurance quotes through different companies. And I even went and took the couple day course that you have to do to get licensed as an insurance salesman. If you wanna make a lot of money, in a decently short amount of time, go into insurance sales. It's super easy to get into. You take a course over the span of a week. Probably doesn't even have to be in person anymore. It did when I did it, but I'm sure there's online now. You take a test and you're licensed. And then you just build up a book of business. And those residuals just keep coming in every month. Sure, they might be only a few bucks for each policy, but year over year, people rarely cancel their insurance or switch agents. And if you're a free agent who's licensed with all stay progressive, whatever, the sky's the limit. My uncle makes very good money and he was a salesman for Sherwin Williams for a decade, that's a painting company. He was up at night one night looking at the ceiling he told me and he said, I need to make more money for my family. So to do that, he had to drastically change. Switched gears, went into insurance sales. And it's worked out very well for him. And that's the road I was going down until he had lunch with me one time and he just straight upset at him. Is this what you wanna do? Don't get me wrong, you can make a lot of money doing this. My brother, Jake, can attest to that. He's an insurance salesman, he does very well. He's very successful. And I'm very proud of him. But he said this to me and I looked back and thought, yeah, no, I'll be miserable doing this. Selling insurance, there's no meaning for me there. I don't really care about making millions of dollars. Obviously everyone wants to and the goal is to just find happiness. And often that's because you don't have to worry about money. You can go places with money. You can see and experience all sorts of new things that you couldn't if you lived paycheck to paycheck. So weighing the happiness aspect with the financial aspect is very challenging. But he brought this up to me and he already knew the answer and I already knew the answer. We were both just kind of spinning in circles. And so yeah, I said to him, no, I don't wanna do this. That's when I went to a two year college at Brown, not Brown University, Brown College. It was a for-profit scam school. Didn't know it at the time. They were inevitably shut down because of bad practices and all the lies and whatever. It was really my only option because I'd already failed out of two colleges previously. My mom was like, you're on your own, Adam, don't screw it up again. She's always been incredibly supportive but she also had to be tough at some point and realized that a couple years of grieving is enough now. Life's not gonna stop for you. So keep moving forward. I did the two years, got in, got out, got a visual associates degree. It's a very broad degree. I have a good freehand. I'm good at drawing. I'm decent at design, marketing. I'm a web designer right now. That's really my strong point. When I say design, design's very, it's a very, very broad term but web design is my bread and butter. Brochure design, trifolds, things of that nature. Not quite as good. Logo design, I don't like doing it. I struggle. Web design, I get. That's me. That's where I fit in. And that's my full-time job. I'm a web developer and designer. I have been for over a decade. This brought me to live with my grandparents for a year after college. Irene and Bill, both amazing people. Salt of the earth, worked hard. Both teachers, my grandpa was a master electrician. Then he went into teaching. Then they flipped a dozen or so houses. Very hands-on, amazing people. My grandpa passed away as I pointed out. My grandma's still going. My grandma Irene and my grandpa Earl are both still alive. They're in their 90s. It's phenomenal. And I look at them and I say thank you for the jeans. Hopefully that sticks. Cause I wanna live a long time too. Got plenty of things I wanna do still. I lived with them and it was one of my favorite years ever. Just watching episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Guy, they put on the Golden Girls once in awhile. Sure, I'll dabble in the Golden Girls. That's fine. I'll jump there with Blanche. And that theme song, oh my God. Thank you for being a friend. Don't, don't, don't, don't. I won't sing it all, but you get my point. I had made some videos there too. My cousin Bob lived there. I had an aunt that lives there, Christy and Steve, my uncle and Bob and Janet. Lots of people live around my grandma at the time. And it was really fun getting to connect with my cousins constantly. And I worked at a place called Ad Art. It was this rinky-dink little shop in Albert Lee, Minnesota, out in the middle of nowhere kind of. It's not really a booming town. And I was doing some really lame stuff there. I was designing t-shirts, decals, bumper stickers, marching band uniforms, had really crappy tech, outdated version of Adobe Illustrator. I remember pirating one version of the Adobe Suite. I'm fresh out of college, okay? The company went pony up for me to get new Adobe software, so I just went and did it myself. I sailed the high seas on Pirate Bay. Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff. Eventually, after a year, I moved on. In fact, my wife is the one that convinced me to move on, Lindsay. She said, Adam, you're finally kind of getting out of your funk, but I think we need to do something new. We need to kind of start over. Fresh, clean slate. And Lindsay hence steered me wrong so far. Lindsay, my wife still, she, I mean, I had a crush on her in middle school, but I knew I loved her not long after my dad died. She was there. And this isn't a girl at the time that I really, I talked to once in a while in class, but she really stepped up. After my dad died, I had people over all the time, friends, family, cousins, everyone was there constantly. And some of the people, I didn't really talk to that much in high school. Lindsay was one of those people and she could just read me. She saw past the facade. She saw what was underneath. And so when I was being overwhelmed by the constant in and outs, everyone jumping in, she would pull me aside and be like, Adam, you wanna go get a bite to eat? You wanna go here? You wanna go there? And we wouldn't go alone. I'd be with a buddy, Chris or whoever. There'd be four of us typically, but she just got it. She was a very compassionate person. So when she says something to me, I really do listen. Obviously I don't listen when she says, can you switch out the laundry or pick up your shoes or whatnot? That stuff's out one year now, whatever. But the big stuff is where I'm paying attention. She said we should move out of state and we did. I listened, we went to Arizona. I didn't have a job, but I got one the first day out there for a small web firm. And I remember this is great and this is where my college education really comes into play. The boss there, Tony Kkar says to me, Adam, it says here, you're from Brown. I'm a Harvard man myself, so might be some competition. And he laughs and I laugh and I don't tell him that it's not Brown University. It's Brown College, a scam school for profit. We laugh and we laugh and I get the job because I'm a Brown guy. I'm highly educated Ivy League or something. I don't know much about this stuff. I keep my lips closed on this one. I would spend the first six months kind of learning from one of the senior developers there. It's a very small web shop. I know nothing about web design at all. The reason I got the job is because I said I know nothing about web design and development, but I will learn. I have no friends, I have no family out in Arizona. It's just me and my wife. She's a teacher, she's working all the time. I can stay here as late as you need me. I'll work around the clock to figure this out. Six months later, I asked my boss, the senior web developer, so I had to have been one of the least qualified candidates you interviewed, right? He said, oh yeah, you were terrible. But we went through three or four designers who just thought they knew everything. So it was refreshing to hear someone willing to learn and listen and let me sculpt. That's why you got the job. That's why we started you at Lope. That's why we've been giving you raises every three months. And I will never forget that job. I worked there for two years, and the only reason I even left them was because the work didn't come in very much. I was paid salary, I was on a salary every, so every paycheck was the same regardless of how much work I was doing, and I felt bad. I felt like they were keeping me on because they liked me, not because they needed me. So after two years, I said, guys, I did you a favor, I found a new job, I'm moving on, I appreciate you. And once in a while, I still touch base with them all these years later. Unfortunately for the next company, I only worked there for three or four months, and we decided we wanted to move back to Minnesota. After two years in Arizona, we had enough, we missed family and friends, we moved back. Shortly after we had children who I would raise somewhat like my father. I don't push them on sports as much as he pushed me on them. I never really liked sports that much. I mean, I like playing sports for fun, but I wasn't into football like he was, or baseball. But I still did them because I respected the hell out of them, and it meant a lot to him. So I was always in sports year round. My kids, eh, you wanna go up for this and try it? Great, my daughter's in volleyball right now, she loves volleyball. I'm jealous because I loved volleyball and that wasn't really an opportunity I had growing up. My son Connor's playing basketball, he loves basketball. I'm not great at basketball, even though I'm 6'3", have long ass arms built like I should be good at it, but just not very skilled in that department. He's enjoying it. Movies they love. We saw Guardians of the Galaxy 3 recently. It was a great time. We go to all the major ones together or we watch them when they come out, depending on if I think it's gonna be good and if they have any interest in it. Mario Brothers had a blast. The reason I still do this show, on YouTube all these years later is because of the person I grew into. It's because of how I was raised. Some people have memories with their parents or significant other or whatever walk of life they come from of going to operas or plays or gardening or whatever the hell you're into. For me it was movies and escapism and wanting to make my own content. On YouTube, on TikTok, on all these different platforms it's challenging because it's all about making money for the platform of course. And in the industry, in Hollywood right now it can seem very much the same. You get jaded over stuff because you see what they're doing on the screen. Okay, we're trying to appeal to more people so we're putting, you know, insert X, Y or Z into this film. We're shooting in this location because we get a tax break. We're filming a sequel to this not because it's a work of art or because we have an interesting story to tell. It's because it's an easy way to make more money. We're remaking this franchise for the same reasons. You see it all, you get cynical, of course. But there's still tons of good stuff coming out. Things that still make me look at the screen and say yes, everything everywhere at all at once you got it, you clicked. The Northsmen, freaking great. Northmen, I think I said plural, I think it's Northmen. Regardless, you know what I'm saying, there's still movies making today that can hit you in the right way. I still have a lot left in the tank as well. I'm only 40, I'm not that old. I eventually wanna write a cool script. Wanna get it in front of the right people. I don't have connections, I built everything I have from the ground up. My YouTube channel started at zero. It's almost to 70,000 subscribers. To some, that's like eh, that's it. You've been doing this for a decade. To others, they're gonna say, all right, this guy's got some can-do spirit. And I don't look at that as a failure because I have a decent fan base, I have a lot of support. I look at it as an opportunity to grow. I made a lot of mistakes with my channel over the years. I also had multiple kids. I also have a wife who suffers from Crohn's disease, which really sucks and it's hard on her and it's hard on me, honestly. But family always comes first, even if that means taking six months or a year off like I did several times on YouTube. I've been there, I've been in worse situations. I took multiple years off at life after my dad died. You want me to go three months, no problem. Whatever it takes to get everyone happy and healthy, I'll do it. Right now though, the goal, the focus is the same as it's always been. Make content I can be proud of, talk about movies, interact with fans, interact with like-minded individuals and people that aren't like-minded that have a different take, that can challenge your opinions, challenge your viewpoints in a civil way, of course. I still have that camera back there as a reminder that there was a guy that believed in me. Everyone needs that person. Even if it's blind ambition, go for it. As long as it's not getting in the way of some of the other things that, sadly, are necessity, financial support is a big one. That's why I have my job, web development, web design, which I like, which I'm good at, the company's great to me. I have that job and I have the job that I'm going to, which is to one day write a script, make a movie or a series, build up a big fan base of support so I can see this dream become a reality. Everybody needs goals. Everybody needs someone that they can lean on for support. Everyone needs a champion that says you do you and will help you. All right, well, that was my, I guess, more personal podcast. Next Monday, we'll get back into good old-fashioned movie conversation. What that is, well, we'll find out one way together. Please follow or subscribe, whatever you do, on the podcast of your choice that you're listening to. If you're on YouTube, there's a subscribe button. But if you're on Spotify, Apple Music, I'm sure there's a way to follow me on the station. And I would appreciate it. I brought up Guardians of the Galaxy 3 to just kind of put a bow on this. I loved it, my kids both saw it and loved it as well. I know it's getting mixed reception from some. I definitely would shred lightly bringing your kids to the movie. It is a little bit more graphic. There's some animal torture stuff, even though it's fake, to a kid's eyes that can look very real. And they do look pretty real CG-wise. So just shred lightly with the kids. Again, minor 11 and 14, they could both handle it pretty well. And even if you saw the previous Guardians of the Galaxy movies, this one's a little darker, a little bit more mean on those bones. Next week, I don't think there's a real big release. Charlie Day has a movie coming out I'm interested in. And then we have Fast and the Furious 10. They're still making these movies. I thought the last one was Atrocious. I'll still see it. Maybe it'll just be fun and it won't be as dumb as the previous one. I have a hard time believing it though because I watched the trailer and it looks dumb as shit. Then we have the Little Mermaid. I'm curious about this one because so far all the live action remakes have been pretty bad, pretty soulless. This one doesn't look to be much different. But time will tell. All right. Thank you for listening to the podcast. I'll have another one next Monday. And I'll talk to you then. Take care.