 for children under 13 years of age. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey, what's going on, guys? Patrick Prime here once again with another episode of The Sit Rep. And this is a special episode because I have two guests tonight. I have Michael Watkins, comic book artist, and Aaron Veitch, voice actor. Gentlemen, how are you doing tonight? And then the bottom screen, that's Michael Drawings. It's not a fourth guest, so don't get excited. It's a third guest, I can't even do math tonight. Go for it, Michael. Do it, man. This is going to be a cluster. We're going to ask questions, and everybody's going to be fighting over each other as we're up. I'll just be fighting over, like, passing the opportunity to Michael, so we're good. We'll just assume Michael goes first. No, no, no, no. You guys are going to go first because I'm going to draw a lot. Yes, that's what Michael's doing tonight. That makes sense. Aaron here was the voice of prowl in Transformers War for Cybertron Netflix Siege. And so in honor of prowl, Michael is drawing prowl. And Aaron, I was so happy you were on, I actually dusted off my G1 prowl. Oh, wow. Where you take a look at. Awesome. And then something I picked up in our rack was this statue of prowl. Very cool. And then, of course, I have my Toy Hacks Earthrise prowl Amazon sold out of and nobody can find it anymore. I was just going to say, that's a rare find. Yeah, yeah, those skyrocketed. The prowl in Ironhide Twin Pack, yeah. That is one of my biggest complaint with Amazon and these exclusives is they make the exclusives your core characters. They make some of the oddballs from 87 through 89. You don't want to prowl in Ironhide. Ah, man, you know what you call that two pack? The death of childhood. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm waiting for the Studio Series 86 figures, you know, brawn with the shoulder getting blown out. Right, right. So that means the Ironhide figure would be just like the G1, it would have no head. Yeah, pretty much. Or have some kind of a blast effect in its place. Right. Smoke coming out of prowl's mouth, yeah. Exactly. So if you guys want a funny story. Always. So, you know, recently I got married this past year and my new nephew is a big Transformers fan. So we bond it really quickly. He'll come over and of course, you see what's behind me. He's literally a kid in the candy store. But he had finished all the way up to the last episode of season two. So he'd get ready to watch, he needed to watch BOT. And they had done the re-release. They had done the re-release of the movie around September of last year. So we take Julian to see the 1986 Transformers. Oh no. And when we sit down, you know, there's a bunch of guys like our age. And I said, hey, man, I said, who are your favorite characters? He said, I really love Ironhide and Optimus Prime. Oh. And I said, man, you are gonna love this. That's when you get to love it. And you just watch the kid. Right. So, you know, we're a good 12 minutes in. And all of a sudden I just see this little, I see this little 12 year old boy look at me. And it's like looking at your past. He goes, what the heck, man? He's like, is Ironhide there? And then you see the fusion blast from Megatron. I said, he is now. And then Prime dies. And you just watch his childhood just die right in front of you. And he's like, well, Starscream. And I was like, it gets better. I remember a kid came into my office and I have some like extra figures hanging in the background of my office. And he's looking at, he must have been 10. I love Transformers. That's awesome. Have you seen the movie? I was like, I sure have. The first one was great. And I looked at him and said, which first one? And he said, you know, the one where Optimus Prime is the big semi and Jazz gets ripped in half. And I said, son, that's not the first one I'm going to talk for a while, right? While Michael's drawing, tell us a little bit about your voice acting. I have never had a voice actor on before. I mean, Michael, that this for me, this whole YouTube thing was a dare. I mean, I'm a 48 year old combat veteran who loves Transformers. One of my buddies, which got in this story one time is I used to work at a casino and my job was to throw out entitled rich people. Great job. Great job. Sounds like it, yeah. But we worked night shifts. So when we were off work, I mean, we're all ex-military, ex-law enforcement. And if we're off during the night, we played PlayStation. I mean, we all played, what was the game we played? Rainbow Six. Was that tactic? Oh yeah, yeah. And one of my buddies was like big into streaming. And he says, we ought to open up a Twitch channel. And I said, man, I suck at online games. I'm the guy that hops in to take the bullets so nobody else does. Hey, that's an important role on any team. Yeah, I do my part. And I told him, I said, well, I really don't want to do a Twitch thing. And he says, why don't you do a YouTube thing? And so what am I going to talk about YouTube? And he says, well, you know all about them plastic robots, don't you? Plastic robots. And so I'm driving home that night and I'm thinking, I need, I like this idea. I love, I have nobody to talk to these things about around here, but I need to come up with a catchy name. And that year, or no, it was two years earlier, I got this tattoo of Optimus Prime wielding the American flag. Oh, wow, that's cool. And I went to Shardicon, my first Transformers convention in 2013. And one of the guys nicknamed me Patriot Prime and I thought, perfect YouTube name. Yeah, absolutely. So how long has your channel been going? I'll be five years in October. Wow. Good for you, man. Thanks. It's become like a secondary part of the hobby where it used to be a buy a new figure, open him up, transform a couple of times. He's on the shelf until I get bored, pull him down and mess with him and forget how to transform and break him. So now I can take him out, show him off to everybody, then put him on the shelf and never touch him again for a couple of years. So you get a wild hair for the next one on the list to seek after, right? Yeah, well, I got a ton of them in this weekend. And what I hate doing is I started off always showing off the box. So my whole stick is the video starts, it's me introducing the figure in the box. Here's the box this way, this way, this way. Now let's get him out, open up out of the packaging and check him out. I hate the new packaging because I can't open them up, play with it and then just use the box. I haven't got this whole stack over here. I'm dying to play with it. I need the time to sit down and film those intros. The boxes are almost as intricate as the toys now. Well, I need more, they're wide open. Have you noticed? Oh, really? No, I haven't seen that. Let me reach him. Let me grab one that might make everybody jealous about me. He's going to get a toy? What? Yeah, yeah. All right. So we've got, this is the new legacy kickback. Nice. And here is the buzzworthy bum will be silver streak. Silver streak is the blue one and blue streak is the silver one. Right. So the new box has the window missing. Interesting. So for the first time ever, I'm wiping down a figure after I open it up because I don't know what kid's booger picking fingers has been all over this thing. Yeah, good call. And then, you know, it's just one simple jerk. Rip that open, steal the figure. Yeah. I don't understand their thinking with this. Well, according to Hasbro. Here we go. According to Hasbro. And I'm going to be very nice because, you know, they do give me money. That packaging actually still makes it really hard to steal the toy. They're saying that they're actually a little more secure that way, but it does cut back on a lot of their, on their cost. So. Okay. Yeah. I guess, I guess time will tell. So a plastic window that thick is going to save the cost on a figure that's entirely made of plastic. Yes. Logic. Now, because of you, I'm going to attempt to, I'm going to attempt to steal one of these on my video just to see how easy. Oh, geez. Cause I'm not, I'm not a box guy. I'm not a box collector. Hey, locks are made to keep honest people honest. Okay. Exactly. All right. So we're nine minutes in. I want to show this off real quick is look at prowl already. Oh, wow. That is so impressive. Crazy. Well, when this is all finished, Aaron, this will go to you and you can use it at cons. Perfect. Comet cons, not Decepticons. You can use it for your kind appearances and you know, you'll have a print you can sell and sign. Oh, that'd be great, man. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I actually just did my first con appearance. What was that? Three weeks ago now? What's the future? TFCon LA. Oh, nice. Yeah. It was here in Burbank. Super cool time. Especially after a couple of years of lockdown not getting to see anyone or do anything. And you know, I hadn't met most of my castmates still. You know, we recorded it all individually and we didn't get to have a wrap party or anything cause the show premiered during the middle of the pandemic. So like. I actually watched a interview of yours and didn't you say you did the voice like months before the show even started? And I totally, I'm sorry, I skipped your question because I asked you about Voice Act and then we went into my channel and the training got raled. I'm used to that. Yeah. My train of thought has like 30 different tracks and it jumps from one to the next at any given moment. So I'm with you. Welcome to this channel. This is what we do. Yay, we're all ADD here. My trainer thought has no conductor. It's just, it does its own thing. Yeah. I love it. So I'll hit you with this guys. I hit everybody with this question right off the bat. What brought you into the world of transformers? Where did the interest come from? Oh boy. So I'll be brutally honest. I had this conversation with a bunch of fans at TFCon too. I never was like a Transformers hater by any means, but I never really like got bitten by the Transformers bug either. They were cool. I enjoyed, you know, I'd catch the cartoons every now and then when I was younger. The one that really was like, all right, that's like my Transformers. This is the one I latched onto was Beast Wars and Beast Machines. Yes. Really enjoyed that. The animation style at the time was groundbreaking. It was like super revolutionary. The voice acting was phenomenal. To this day still, like don't get me wrong, Frank Welker, Peter Cullen, Absolute Legends, but David Kayes, Beast Wars Megatron. Oh man, like so good. Yeah, exactly. That's what I got to imitate during my opening straw. Now real quick, gentlemen, one of my subscribers just donated a dollar to my channel. And that's elites, elites. Thank you so much. And usually when I get a donation, I have a little reward that I give folks. You know, they took the time to send me a buck or two, so they have to get something in return. And I usually have these really horrible videos that I share. So this is how my TF Con in the fall was. Oh dear Jesus. Very nice, very nice. That's my buddy, Bert the Stormtrooper. He is from Florida and he's a military vet like I am. And I can't remember how it happened, but during my early YouTube days, he and I just bonded and we become best friends because of YouTube. And he's out right now. He's got a daughter who does dance competition. So he's in Orlando with her tonight. This is her final dance competition before she moves off to college. But he's having like an emotional weekend this weekend. I bet. Yeah. Did he teach her all her dance moves? Looked like he had quite a few. That cracked me up because we've always had like these little images and he just all of a sudden whips out that black bow tie and we're like, oh no. Of course that's the main reason we went is I love the cons for the people. Especially when I do this thing, I was amazed that people wanted to meet us and me and some other guys, we actually did an opening panel at TFCon. Oh, that's cool. And our panel was regarding how we use YouTube and stuff like this during the pandemic to still keep together, to hang out with your friends. And we thought it was gonna be like a 15 minute one and done thing. They had to rush us out. People just constantly talk to us. It was awesome. That is awesome. Was that your first con appearance as well? It was my, let's say it is ShardaCon. That was a one and done in Charlotte, North Carolina. That was in 2013. And then I did TFCon in 2018 maybe? No, 2019. And then I did this one here in October. Now I'm on the East Coast. I'm in West Virginia. So I hit Baltimore Drive. Nice five hour drive by myself. So when you mentioned ShardaCon, I was very curious where that name came from until you just said Charlotte. That makes more sense. Because when you hold up the glasses, you're like, exactly what did that con represent? Let me see if I could, cause they named it because of the ShardaCon. So it was the whole ShardaCon. Okay, gotcha. But I kept pronouncing it ShardaCon. And I'm like, no, it's not pronounced like that. I was like, please guys, don't make me say it. But they did do an exclusive figure. They did. That was the Beast War, not Beast Wars. Beast Hunters. Beast Hunters and they made, called him Land Shark. So they redid it in the Shark the Con colors. They made 75. I got one. Wow. Never transformed it. Oh really? Yeah. They afraid you'll break him? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, what got me into Transformers, I was nine years old, the year that Transformers came out. And my dad owned a little restaurant and I could walk, cause back then they would let kids walk by themselves. So there was a roses and we went in and I saw Ironhide and Mirage. And I didn't know anything about them. I just, I wanted them. And my dad gave me nine bucks and I went down and I bought Ironhide. So my first transforming toy was Ironhide. I bought the one with no head. I didn't know anything about it. I just thought it was cool. And then I found the comic book. I picked up, my first comic book was G.I. Joe 23. But that next week, Transformers number three came out. The one with Spider-Man on the cover. So that was my first Transformers comic. And I read it and I was like, okay, this is cool. And then the cartoon came out and I was hooked. So it just became the thing that I started collecting and I just really got into the toys. And I grew up, I grew up and got a real job and you ditched toys to pick up girls. And then you come back. And then you buy the toys back. But I just, I kept the love of the figures and the love of the lore. Cause I liked the way that the characters were just created, you know? Optimus Prime was kind of like an extra father figure, you know? Cause, you know, no offense to my dad, but I was a young kid, he was a young dad, you know? He was 27. So he was still, you know, like so in his wild oats a little bit and, you know, Transformers kind of like stepped in there a little bit. So Optimus was somebody I looked up to. And yeah. So as I grew up, I got, I started doing my own comics and eventually I got to work on these robots. And yeah, it just, it's always been there. I have a Transformers tattoo as well, but it's on my back and it is, of course, the best symbol in the Transformers universe that is septic on symbol. I was one of those old fans real quick or what? No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm too fat for an old fan. My very first tattoo when I got in the military, I went in the military in the 90s. So, you know, all 90s people have the, the tribal. There's a, there's a decepticon symbol hid right in there. So I kind of hid my love of the figures now. Just wide open. I don't care. Now that's how Mike, when I kind of bonded because my very first experience with the Transformers was issue number three. And I bought it because of Spider-Man. That was the only issue that Spider-Man was in. And the picture hanging up on the wall now because I got Bob Budiansky to sign it when I was at TFCon was Spider-Man in the black suit. This is pre-Venom webbing up this big robot. And I'm like, this is cool. And man, I was hooked. Going back to the old toys, issue three of the Marvel series is when they started drawing the characters to look more like their animation models. Issue one and two, they looked just like the toys. So I didn't know about what the toys look like. And I remember Christmas of 84, I got Prime and Megatron, Ironhide and Soundwave and Ratchet. I didn't get Ironhide, but I got Ratchet. I opened him up. And when I saw he had a sticker face and no head, I was like, this is nothing. And the Megatron had that big crotch piece that stuck out that far. Oh, God. So you're both Spider-Man fans, is that? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say that. I never was huge on Transformers, but I am with you to this day on the Spider-Man session. Nice. Now, we went to Big Lit Comic Con where I ran into Michael. My son dressed as Spider-Man. He had this 19, it was a Toby McGuire suit. I mean, it tight fitting. And my son just got that form. He was having a blast walking around like Spider-Man. There was one moment where all these Spider-Man got together and they wanted to do a multiverse picture. And they yelled at my son and invited him to go in there. He was top of the world. It was awesome. That's cool. That's the first time I met Michael. I'd recognized his name from comment on my channels, but I just, I never knew he was a comic artist. And when I rolled up and we started talking, I was like, oh, it's just one of those things. And you watch me? I've been stalking you for years. Yeah. And I can't see it real good, but right there on top of that black shelf, Michael autographed a picture of him that he drew, not a picture of him, a picture that he drew of Prime and Megatron. So now every one of my videos has a Michael Watkins art piece in it. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's cool. You have really, your standards have really dropped. Well, I had a lunchbox up there before. I mean, So, so Aaron, what else have you, what else have you voiced? Have you done anything? What else have you done outside of? Outside of the Transformers? Yeah, so that's been, that's been really my only animation gig so far, which I'm super grateful for. Tremendous character, great franchise, fans have been awesome. But yeah, the other roles that I've done, I'm in a video game called Mobile Legends Bang Bang. It's like an e-sports game in Asia. That's primarily where it's played, but I play a character named Glue, who is basically like a big purple goo monster. He's made up of like a bunch of tiny little characters called Glue, or goo, I'm sorry, it's Glue is the big one, goo are the little ones. And so I voiced the big guy and one of the four voices that make up the little horde of characters. So you get the voice of combiner. Basically, yeah, yeah. Nice. Now that you did, not Silent Hill 2, it was a horror game for PlayStation. Evil Within 2, yeah. Evil Within 2. Yeah, I've got- I never seen anyone that game freak me out so much. Yeah, I tried to play that one. I actually tried to play the first one, just as like research for the role. I had a very small part in Evil Within 2, by the way. I'm not like a main character. If people are like playing that game, like, oh, let's hear him. I'm in there for maybe a minute of audio. You're the guy who- Ah! Yeah. It's, so you guys are gamers, right? I know you are prime, Michael, little bit. Yes. So like, you know, in campaigns, there's like audio logs that you gotta find, and they give you a little bit of the backstory of what's going on behind the scenes. You know what I'm talking about? Like the collectible audio logs that you find- You listen to first things, you skip it. Yeah, yeah. So I was in a few of the audio logs for Evil Within 2. So like I said, very small part. But yeah, I was in that. Then I've done a few commercials recently. One of them was, do you guys see the Carvana Super Bowl spot with the, like the over-sharing mom? She's just telling everyone about it. So at the very end, there's the tag that's like, you know, that's like they play the little jingle, and then there's a guy that's like, we'll drive you happy at Carvana. That's me. Right. Right. That's good. What's it? I said, that's cool. I'm zooming in on this, I love that. That's awesome. So amazing. Wait, what are we at? 23 minutes in, he's got that done. That's crazy. Oh man, I'm nowhere. And it's definitely a little skewed. Let me see if I can kind of straighten that out a little bit. Blow your back up again. There you go. So I can, yeah. The paper is sprinkling, so he's a little skewed. But that's where we're going. Awesome. So I start out with like blue lines to kind of give me an idea of what I roughly want to do. And then I'll go in with a mechanical pencil and actually kind of start drawing in a little bit of the detail. And then I'll come back later with an eraser and I'll erase 90% of this and I'll clean everything up and shape it the way that I want to. And eventually I'm happy with where I'm at and then I'll go over it with black ink and then I'll color it and then I send it off to wherever it goes. So you do the coloring too. I actually own a publishing company. So I've created a series. I've written a series. Oh wow. It's all inked, colored, lettered. I've done all the legal in that I've needed to do. I've had merchandise. I had a t-shirt line in Hot Topic of my own stuff. That's awesome. That's amazing. I just, you know, I was told as a kid, you know. And there's a lot of things that got me into like all trends when I was growing comics. I was, you know, a nerdy kid and I got picked on and now when we see how that worked out, all the nerdy kids are the cool kids now. That's, I mean, I've had people come in here and go, I don't understand why you are into this. You know, I got to display at the house of all cowboy stuff. I was like, okay, there's no difference. No, not at all. No difference. You enjoy that. I enjoy this. Yeah. I hear mine talk to me in all the voices from animation. That hadn't happened yet. No. It depends off his cold mess and kicks in during this time. You don't sit there and in your mind when you're playing with one of them and they'll say you don't play with them because we all know we do. I look around my desk and I say, he's here. He's here. Yeah. Do you make the battle sound effects, Michael? Of course. Here's my desk transformer. Awesome. So, yeah, of course, you know, and then, so I got to audition for a voice role. I didn't get it. Awesome. I was actually beaten out by Will Wheaton. They had a, they held the cinema series and I auditioned to do Starscream. Oh, cool. And they told me that I sounded too much like Chris Lott. Can we hear it? And, well, yeah, I'll do it. What made me laugh was the guy said, well, you sound like Cobra Commander. And I looked at the voice director and I went, they have the same guy. He went, no, no, you sound like the guy who did the voice, you know, Chris Lott. And I was like, but Starscream and Cobra Commander are the same guy. That's pretty good. And, you know, so, but I mean, when I did the audition, they had like some pictures up of like the Combiner Wars, Starscream. And I saw Starscream with like a diner about Armin. I didn't know what that was. So I just started riffing off of the 86 movie. I put on my earphones and I went, my fellow Decepticons, as your new leader, I, and they were like, no, no, Cobra Commander. That's nuts. That's what we bought a year. You know what? Maybe someday, if Netflix or somebody decides to pick up another Transformers series, maybe Aaron and I can go do one together. There you go. Hey, you know, basically that means if I would have gotten that role, I would have killed you in the 86 movie. That's true. Hey. Well, technically it was Megatron. But Starscream was shooting. True. So, you know, we're not saying that Megatron killed him, but we know that Starscream pulled the trigger. Yeah. So, Aaron, how did you audition for Netflix? Did you have an agent to say, hey, they're doing the Transformers series. You want to do a voice or how did you fall into Pearl's boots? Oddly enough, at that time, I was unrepresented. Didn't have an agent. I was just doing all my own hustling, trying to find work and doing the work. Kind of like doing three jobs at the same time. But, yeah. So, the casting company that was working on that series was actually the same company that did casting for the Evil Within 2 and another mobile game that I had done. It's called Elder Scrolls, Legends, Heroes of Skyrim. It's like the card battle game that's in Skyrim. They made that as a mobile game. And then I did like, gosh, I think like six or eight voices for that. So, the same casting company was doing the casting for Transformers. So, because of that, you know, I'd worked with them twice already. So, when I submitted, they're like, oh yeah, let's bring them in. And everything's top secret. Like, you don't know what you're auditioning for. It's codenames for the project, codenames for the characters, anything. Like, I don't remember what the substitute word they used, but it wasn't Energon in the script. It was some other substitute word. Like, anything that would give away what it is, they substitute. But- Like, I'll see. I'll see. Yeah, yeah. But I'm, like, incredibly analytical when it comes to scripts. That's just how I approach it. I do as much homework as I can. So, I get the script and immediately I'm like, I think I know what this is. And do a little bit of digging around. And sure enough, I'm like, yeah, yeah. The way the characters are interacting with each other, the backstory synopsis they gave, this is Transformers, I know it is. And then immediately just get incredibly nervous. Like, I'm gonna blow it. But- It's got to be so cool just to realize I am going to voice a character from my childhood or something I have on my shelf. I just, I can't imagine how cool that would be. It was pretty mind blowing, absolutely. I originally, I auditioned for like, I want to say like six or seven different characters, just trying to improve my chances of like, all right, I'm gonna cast a big net and hopefully one of them will come through. And the callback that I got was actually for one of the other characters, I won't say which one, but I got a callback for a different character. And Michael, you had mentioned getting picked on as a kid earlier and being into geeky stuff. Like, it made me think of the casting process. I go into this callback and the voice director, his name's Philip Bach, he's awesome, love the guy. It was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever been through. He has me read the first line of the script for this callback and he's just listening with his eyes closed and immediately he's like, nah, this isn't you. I'm like, shit. I blew this audition, you know, like, all right, well, at least I can say I auditioned for Transformers. It was a fun experience, you know, and I'm just down like, nah. He's like, no, no, no, like your voice is a different guy, I hear it. Like, turn to this page, I want you to read this character, ignore what it says on the script. That's not the right character name, but you're gonna read the lines as this other guy and here's what he's about and he's describing prowl to me, you know, he's the strategy wizard, he's, you know, prime's basically like top security officer and one of the best fighters on the team and he's just all about being on the lookout all the time and he's real protective and okay, okay. And then he goes into a why and he's like, the problem with this other role was we need somebody that, we need Superman for that other role and I don't hear that from you. He's like, I hear Clark Kent from you, like you got picked on when you were a kid, didn't you? I read one line of a script and he's like, coming up with all this stuff. He's like, you're into some geeky stuff, aren't you? I'm like, yeah, did you get bullied when you were younger? Way to profile me, man. Exactly. That's the conversation going, man. So he picked up on all that from one line and then from that, and honestly, like the mind blowing part to me isn't even just that he picked up on all that from one line of dialogue. It's that the suggestion that he made fits like a glove. The more I learned about prowl, the more I realized like, I don't hear enough to act for this. This is me, like, he's a guy who takes things very literally, he's very logical, so logical that sometimes people write him off as being kind of a dick. I'm like, yeah, this fits. Thanks, Phillip. So yeah, it was just a good time. And I love prowl. I mean, he was one of my favorites, but I never had him as a kid. I never found a prowl. Of course, back in 84 to 85, there was no internet. You went to those hills, best, whatever, and you found whatever you could find. So I was really into him in the comics. I had jazz. I made jazz like my second in command. And I was talking to Michael earlier. I said, I remember, I love prowl so much. And in issue number 12 of Transformers Marvel series, there's this big battle where the Decepticons have taken control of Optimus Prime. And you turn the page. I mean, prowls fighting all the Decepticons. And you turn the page and you're greeted with this. Let me see if I can get it to share. Share screen. If you can't get it, I have that comic like right here. I got it here. I got to get it back up. I teased it earlier. Okay, share. There we go. This right here traumatized me as a kid because it's prowl. He's fighting off all these Decepticons. His arm is mangled. You got Sunstreak and getting his head blown up right there. And you're like, what have I gotten myself into? Wow. Yeah, that's an interesting thing with Transformers is like they can show a lot more brutal stuff because at the end of the day, they're like, it's just robots. Yeah. But yeah, you get attached to them like they're people. So then to see that, yeah, it's like, whoa, whoa, what, you can't do that to him? Well, then you remember, I mean, they stressed right off the bat. Yes, they're robots, but they're living beings who think and feel like, okay, he's feeling his mangled arm. And I think it was issue four that they showed Ravage biting Mirage's arm off. So that was some violent stuff for the kids. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we're not soft. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, it's interesting. Oh. It's interesting you mentioned that about them being living, because that was one of the things that was big during the casting process was once, once we were at the callback stage and it was revealed that this is what we're reading for. And these are the characters you're auditioning for. That was a big thing they were intent on, is like, even though these are robots, we don't want you to emulate a robot. We don't want this kind of thing. And they were saying to like, kind of fight those instincts of, oh, I can't let my breath be heard because it's a robot, he doesn't breathe. And they're like, no, no, no, he's, this is like, think cyborg, not robot. Like, it absolutely feels, where hot rods breathing underwater, get graved the trunk and strangling. Yeah, yeah, yep. Well, you know, one of the things that I love and over the years doing comics, I've been really, really fortunate. I've become friends with, you know, Jim Shooter, who is actually the, he was the editor-in-chief at Marvel through the 80s. So he is the guy who actually helped breathe life into Transformers. Hasbro dropped it on his desk. And I think all of us probably know that story. But, and then he dropped it off to Bob Budiansky after a couple of other editors. But, you know, Bob sat down in the way that he thought of these guys, he gave them life. You know, Ratchet was originally supposed to be a nurse and a female. And they were like, well, guys won't buy girl toys. So Ratchet became, you know, Ratchet. But the way that he looked at each one of the characters and the way that Marvel approached character development, that's what sold these. Otherwise, there'd have just been more robots from Japan. Exactly, because you look at the toy shelves, we're just stuffed full of every robot, imagine we had GoBots, Transformers, ZyBots, Converters, old gas station bots. Right, but you know, you sit down and you, because Shooter did the original premise. I don't know if you guys know that, but he created the arc. He created Auntie, which eventually became Tele-Tran for the TV series. Yeah, Auntie was in the UK series. Well, Auntie was the original name of the computer in the Marvel series. Yeah, Auntie is the name of, Auntie is the name of Arc's computer for Marvel. But Shooter created that. He created the concept of Cybertron, the ploy for energy, how all of that broke down. And you know, when we talked about one of my comic series and he was like, you know, he said, you have to find that thing that makes people want to relate. And that's how Marvel did their characters. Like, if you look at Superman, you know Superman, a Superman Clark Kent is how he kind of views humanity and it's his way to blend in. But if you look at Spider-Man, we can all relate to Spider-Man. We've all had bills, we've all tried to be good people and still carry the weight of everyday responsibilities. So when you deal with that type of character development, people find a reason to relate. So absolutely. And hey, Rodimus Primal, that's another guy that I'll watch on some YouTube. I've seen through his videos too, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. But yeah, I mean, it's that depth of characters. Like, Proul being a strategist. My cousin broke my Optimus Prime kid, Optimus Prime figure as a kid. So Proul became my Autobot leader until I got Rodimus. But Proul was, you know, if you look at it, Proul was his go-to guy for logic and jazz was his go-to guy for like the heart of it a little bit, the culture. Because you know, jazz was just that free-loving guy and Proul was your thinker. Yeah. Excuse me. And of course, then you got the comics. I mean, then when the show came out and they had those voices lined up with those characters, perfect. Yep. That just brought life into him. Now, when I was growing up living here in the backwoods of West Virginia, I didn't have cable back in the day. There was no streaming service. So I didn't get to watch Transformers like all my friends did. So for me, my G1 history or fiction back in the day was Marvel Comics. To catch the cartoon was a rare treat when I spent the night with my grandparents here in town. Which ironically, I'm living in their house now. Oh, that's cool. Right there is how I watched it. So a TV with some rabbit ears with some tin foil on top. And that's how they were- Yeah, on top of the TV. You had to turn it so you had to rotate around. There you go. See, that's how you know it from the South too because they called it tin foil. But yeah. I was gonna say, is that a southern thing? But my mom's family's from the South. So that's probably why we set it that way too. I lived in Illinois growing up. But yeah, it was like tin foil. No matter what you drink, it's a Coke. Yeah. What kind of Coke? Like Coke, dark Coke? What's that Mountain Dew flavor? Yeah. So we get these crazy flavors here in West Virginia. That is watermelon Mountain Dew. Oh. Of course I'm trying to be- That's the one. That's the one. So Aaron, are you a collector? I mean, do you have a crazy collection of this? Not here in California, I don't. So I moved out here about eight years ago and had to leave a lot of my collectibles behind. The biggest thing that I collected was comic books. I've got probably around 5,000 comic books. Wow. Yeah. Little bit of everything, mostly Marvel. But I mean, some of the DC vertigo stuff, some image, I mean, a little bit of everything. But yeah, that collection had to stay behind when I made the move. I just don't have the room for it here in tiny little one bedroom apartments that I can barely afford. Thanks, California. But yeah, I collected that. I collected some action figures. Had some of those little mini busts, the Bowen Designs busts and Time Select and yeah, yeah. So yeah, huge, huge comic nerd. Yeah, Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman, those were always my favorites. I hate how hard it is to find comics anymore. There used to be every new Stan Hadam. My thing when I was a kid, as I come here to Pat Paul's, I'd mow the yard, he'd give me five bucks. I could go down to the local drug store, get like three comic books, a bag of chips, everything. And I got so many comics back in the day and now it's all digital and I hate digital. I want physical, yeah, I love streaming, I love all it. But if it's something I really want, I want to hold it in my hand. Yeah, I understand that for sure, yeah. Yeah, digital's nice to be able to like, to read back catalogs. Like, I'm never gonna see a 1963 Amazing Spider-Man number one. It's just not gonna be a thing that I ever come across in a way where I could open it and read it, nor would I want to, cause like, no, keep it in the bag. But I just recently downloaded all of the Savage Sword of Conan books. Remember the black books from the early 80s? Man, they were violent back then. I was like, no wonder it's 80s kids. Yeah. I mean, there was big boobs showing and heads getting cut off and I'm like, this one's at the grocery store. Oh, man. Yeah, some of the stuff, I, yeah, some of the older comics, man. The grocery store comics. I remember picking up what was at house too, Marvel did an adaptation of that. But there was this old comic series, Robo Warriors or something like that. But it was like these guys, it was like Power Rangers before Power Rangers. Okay. But they would like just don suits of armor basically. And they were, it was a black and white comic, but man, there was nudity in it. There was all kinds of crazy stuff that I never expected. And I was like, oh, okay, this is a thing. My sister collected Elf Quest comics. You remember those? I do. Elf Quest. Man, they were always Elves were banging them. Like my sister is 10. Yeah, she's about 10 or 11 at the time. She's reading these. I'm looking through like, don't let mom see that. Right. I recently, my son, you might say, saw me post on Facebook. He's into Greek mythology now. And I have dusted off my copies of Jason of the Argonauts, Clash the Titans. We will watch us some Harry house and stuff. Totally forgot about the boob scene right in the beginning of Clash the Titans. Oh, you showed it, right? I was like, look, a bird. Yeah, you're right. Clash the Titans is done. I just downloaded that the other day. So. I know what you're doing after this. No, no. I actually, I've recently talked to some people at HBO about one of my series becoming a show. And it's the same people who do like the Legend of Kenny Powers. Okay. Yeah. They're doing Righteous Jimsons right now. And, you know, it's, it's funny. And I do, I do laugh at like Kenny Powers because I grew up in Martinsville, Virginia. So, I mean, there's nothing for me to see a guy with a mullet like that still walking around. Exactly. You know, but, you know, I just, I can't sign off on one of the properties that I have becoming something with boobs and violence that is not in there. Because I want to be able to show something that I've worked on to my 19-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old stepdaughter. Or, you know, my pastor from church, you know, I want them to be able to look at that and not pray for my soul. Yeah, there's been some stuff I've watched on HBO. I'm like, oh, I need to go to church. I just, there's something about the way things were presented in the 80s, even though there was a little bit of nudity and a little bit of extra violence, there was still a morality to it and a moral center that you usually still found that you just don't see a lot of anymore. Yeah, you know, it was for the story. It wasn't there to be there. It was for the story. All right, I'm gonna give fishing a big shout out. Thanks for the super chat. We talked about Spider-Man earlier. Here's some Peter Parker. That was my size in the military. I can't pull that off anymore. I got another one for me now. All the scenes to pick, Dancing Tobi. It's funny. I have a weird sense of humor. Well, you know what? The biggest voice role that I've ever gotten to do, of course, was Venom. So, you know, since we did a Spider-Man shout out for the $5, I guess. We can thank you. Ha ha ha ha ha. That's awesome. Which Venom did you do? What series? So Marvel did a thing. Well, Sony actually did a thing called Renew Your Vowels, which was the Spider-Man series, but they partnered with YouTube and this is right before the buyout. And I voiced Venom, Magneto, and The Moment. Oh, cool. And the way that I approached Venom was, of course, you have the symbiote voice, which is as close to Tom Hardy as you can possibly get. And I did Eddie's voice as Midwestern as I possibly could, but I dubbed them together so that you heard an echo. So you would hear the symbiote and then you would hear Eddie, because I feel like people don't talk about the duality of those characters. Agreed. That's what always intrigued me too, because they're always talking like we. You know, they're just kind of faded. I always thought, and we'll go back to my nerd ways here, do you guys remember the? Yes, I do. Yeah, yeah. So I loved their voices. Remember they had that reverb voice. I always thought that Venom voice with that reverb would be awesome. Yeah. I've been rewatching the old shows on 2B. Love the two miniseries. The show is nothing. I didn't catch this as a kid. The show, all the action scenes are reused from the miniseries. Oh, really? Yeah, and they went sheep when they did that. I'll check that out. Oh, we have Deluxe Baldwin. Hello Deluxe. He hit us with a five dollars. Deluxe, let's see. Everybody likes it. You guys will like my sound wave. Hold on one second here. Where is he? Reverge Egypt. I wasn't expecting that. That's what I do. Welcome to the chat Deluxe. That's another one of my good YouTube buddies that I've met doing this great stuff. We hung out at TFCon together. Isn't that the DARPA robot? I don't know. I heard some on the news the other day that there is a robot dog that patrols the streets of Pompeii. And they said, I think he's named Spot. So if you YouTube Spot Pompeii, one, it's the coolest thing you'll ever see if you're into robots. Two, it's the creepiest thing you'll ever see if you're into robots. I mean, you just imagine you're stepping the wrong line. You know, this thing will open fire on your each. So great. It's at 209? Yeah, probably. Yeah. If I know 209. Do you guys watch Black Mirror? I have not. Oh, man, there's an episode that you absolutely have to watch. It's called, oh, God, I can't think of the name of it now. It's it's in black and white. And it's basically like those those dog robots just gone haywire. Like it's the exact nightmare scenario you're talking about that they've got they've got some type of like a high caliber gun on them and they can move just insanely fast. It plays out like a horror movie almost, but it's so good. But that's all I can think of. Anytime I see those Boston Dynamics robots is like, oh, man, just a few more years and we're running for our lives. There is a movie on Amazon. I think it's Amazon Prime. It's called I'm like you. I just forgot the damn name of it. Machines of man that has that guy. OK, he's always a villain in every movie he plays. The he's got the blonde hair buzz cut and got the real big blue eyes. He's like a bad guy in everything you're playing. Michael Donahue, something like that. But Neil McDonald. What's that? Is it Neil McDonald? Yes. Yes. So just. Yeah, justified. It's what I think of with him. And the Yellowstone. That's why I'm watching season four. Season four dropped on Peacock finally. But it is he works for a company that he sent these robots in to clear out some guerrilla warriors. And the robots, of course, they go haywire and they're just after everybody. It's done like a horror movie. And that's one of my favorite movies of all time, The Terminator. And it's not because of it's it's an action movie. It's flat out horror. That movie scared me so bad. And yeah, watch it today, except for the one scene where he's cutting his eye out, everything else is flawless. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I I saw someone posted the comments like stop motion forever. And yeah, I I I really enjoy stop motion stuff and just just practical effects in general. Like I'm not one of those guys that's like practical over digital. I think they both have their place. But man, like to completely stray away from practical and stop motion and miniature, I think is a big mistake. I think everything looked better when it was combined, like the best of all of it. There are some horror movies now because another thing while I like buying my media, you get the behind the scenes stuff. You get. Yeah. And how they're blending the practical effect and they'll make everything CGI, but where the wound is or where the blood is going to ride. There's nothing that looks worse than CGI blood. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, especially when they show it like spreading through fabric. It looks so fake when it blows up this way. You can see there's rain and blood shots coming up from from. I used to read it was it Fingoria. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So they also his magazine to hit from your mom, too. They were almost as bad as the boots. But I loved looking at how like they had one on RoboCop. So I mean, I'm sure we've all watched the original RoboCop. My mom did not realize what it was. And she dropped me off by myself to just go see RoboCop. So, you know, I come back to change, man. The scene with the scene where Murphy gets his hands shut off. Oh, yeah. And I it I was an adult before I could watch that scene again without like flinching a little bit. Have you seen the unedited versions where they had like 10 seconds into that film, but it's 10 seconds will add 10 years to your life. Yes. Murphy death scene. Not only they shoot his hand off, you watch him blow his arm off. Ed 209 scene where he lays into that dude for like an extra five seconds. Yeah. It's just so many chunks. But they they talked about how they did the special effects for that. And they showed a lot of the stop motion and a lot of the miniatures. And I mean, that is that is workmanship that you just don't see anymore. Yeah, really don't. And it is just it is just awesome. Fishy, thank you so much. Let's see what I can find you. Erin will appreciate this. This is from a live stream that I did with my buddy, Burt, one time. Eighties toys as a eBay page. That's what we keep hearing the eBay thing. Yeah. We were off earlier. We were talking with Matt and whoops. There it goes. What happened? I'll lean back and it wasn't up in there. Live live. It's the rare. Oh, that's good. Because the best part about that is it ties in directly with the practical versus VFX thing. Like I thought for sure that was just a green screen effect. But nope. It feels so funny because I just we're talking. I went to lean back and I forgot I had stepped forward. That's the grid right before he gets reformatted. Yeah. But like we was talking with practical effects again, or my son's getting so interested in mythology, one of my favorite all time movies. You know, we got Terminator, but I grew up with Jason and the Argonauts and I will never not watch that movie. So I'm debating on getting on Blu-ray. I'm trying to research which one has the best picture. But I watched a 30 minute Ray Harry housing documentary the other day on YouTube and how they did the skeleton fights. Yeah, four months to film that scene. They said there was one day there was like to do to make sure the swords connected and everything. It's just amazing. I mean, that movie took place in 1963. And you talk about blowing people's minds back then. Yeah. Yeah, even even the stuff with like the original King Kong film just like I'm not going to say it looks real, but it looks great. You know, I get I think I think people forget sometimes that you can have something still be fun to watch and entertaining and not necessarily look photorealistic. It doesn't have to look real. It just has to be well done. It's art, ultimately. Like there can be any kind of art, you know, not every painting has to be a still life that looks like you could reach out and grab the food on the table. Like sometimes it's abstract and that's still cool, too. Like I like films that don't always have to resort to photorealism. Sometimes it just looks fun, like I'm one of these rare people that appreciate what George Lucas did when he redid the Star Wars movies. OK, Star Wars fan. I am it was always detracting when the Thai fighters were flying through the space. You had that white blocker. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, some of the touch ups. I'm with you. Yeah. There you go. Skeletons and soldiers can't get wrong with them. I found on entertainment earth, there is a one foot tall statue of Taylos, the giant statue from Jason the Argonauts picking the ship up out of the water. Like I want that for Christmas. It's three hundred dollars will be saving up. But I want that for Christmas. Oh, Benjamin, thank you so much. Let's see, we did skinny me. Let's do let's embarrass myself with where is it? Oh, do you find me sexy? Oh, look at my titties. Oh, my titties. Perfect. That's why my wife never watches my show. Oh, man, I haven't seen those Austin Powers movies in so long. I want to watch those. I mean, I didn't like the first one. But when I saw the second one in the theater, I thought I was going to die from not being able to breathe. I was laughing so hard, especially the tent scene with the shadows. That's so good. All right, so I think what else to talk about? We've been on here for an hour now. Doesn't feel like it, man. You have a good time. My friends on here, Matthew, Rodimus, Primal, Bert, we attempted two weeks ago to in the corner here or where I shared the screen, we were going to watch an episode of Transformers from 84 and we were going to Mystery Science Theater 3000 to shut us down in 20 minutes. Wow. So we're like, well, hell. So we went ahead and just did a live stream. We were on for three hours just like this. That's crazy. Why does it shut you down? Copyright. Really? Yeah. And I had I had it on screen. I had it down low enough. We were talking over the whole thing and we were having a blast. And then they shut us down. I've heard they're really cracking down on on that. Like some some stuff that they shouldn't even be cracking down on is getting copyright claims and creators are getting their channels shut down. And yeah, it's all there was a thing with Mattel maybe his last month or February where people were getting Jurassic Park figures and reviewing it. Stores were getting figures in for the new movie. OK, these channels who specifically did dinosaur reviews. Mattel was shutting them down for copyright violations. I think it all got fixed. But, you know, YouTube's like, well, they're saying you guys can't show this. I mean, there were channels who had thousands and thousands of subscribers that just got shut down because of what they've always done. But this time, Mattel like, nope. Yeah, I don't understand. I didn't get a strike. I just got my live stream shut down. I have made it five years without a strike. I wonder if it's possible to get permission to do that. Well, you got channels like Dead Meat, The Kill Count, does the horror movies where he'll play the whole movie and he talks over it. And you got the people that do reaction videos. You got the reviews. There's some loophole that's got to be there in order to do that. And I may research it. I'm just curious what you would need if you wanted to do that, like what you would need, maybe from Hasbro. Yeah. Gee, I wonder if I know anybody with connections. Karen, anyone? Oh, no, I can't think of anyone. I mean, if we did that right now, how would we get in trouble if like two of us have actually worked on? Yeah, I just saw that comment that just popped up. So yeah. Wow. And see what I thought, too, if I could put it in the corner like this, if you watch my reviews, I'm always putting clips and stuff and always having that little corner. But unfortunately, there's no way to stream it as like a guest. And maybe, I don't know how you're doing it by having yourself on twice because you're using the same link as yourself twice to do your drawing. Right. Who knows? I'll figure something out. I don't know. I would come back for something like that. I think that would be hilarious. We were talking about the artist's mistakes, the voices and just laughing. Of course, we're all drinking beer. I was going to say that there it is. Have to do a shot every time we find an animation or continuity error. Oh, my gosh, what was we did? No, we only do that for season three. No, we'll pick what was the one carnage in C minor. Are you Bruticus and the combat icons? Yeah. Yeah, that's too deep a cut for me. I'm not sure what you're talking about. What's going on there? That's fair enough is the worst animated episode. In Transformers history, you have Bruticus is with Galvatron as his second in command, and he's the same size as Galvatron. OK, and not to mention you got the combat icons also out doing their thing while Bruticus is there. And isn't that the one where Ultram Ragnus picks up the constructed cons and they're in his fists? And look, here's one scene where Galvatron's sound waiver flying through the air and Galvatron's holding on the sound wave's hand like helping fly. It's weird. It's it's they did some wonky stuff, you know, speaking of. And I saw that they posted it on Cybertron.com. But. There, they did a release where Hasbro talked about the first five episodes of season three and how it was supposed to be shockwave and not Blitzwing, who defected. Rodimus actually did a thing on that not too long ago. Yeah, it's actually your latest video. Am I correct, Rodimus? He does these awesome retrospect. He does. I've watched some of his retrospectives. I watch his retrospectives and I watch Chris McFeely for the basics. And then I watch this Patriot Prime loser. You never know what to expect with him. Sometimes it's been 15 minutes talking about a chair. And yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty much like my YouTube. Oh, and I watch him go. Who? Thank you. That's like the big one that, you know, you can't as a YouTube, he's like one of the big transformers. I got no problem. OK, OK. You can never film a video without somebody making a comment. Well, him go did that. Like, well, watch him. Yeah, I like his quirkiness. Yeah. He's just checking him out. I don't know that one. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I like to do with mine to keep my reviews fresh and all my friends do reviews. But if it's a figure I got coming in, I refuse to watch a review on it because I want to be my thoughts. I don't want anything else. Now, after I've viewed it, now hop on there and do some stuff. I like I said, I'll watch him because he's he's just quirky. But, you know, I've I've been asked before to do reviews as well. I mean, you've got like a collection and I was like, everyone does for views. You know, if I do anything, I want to do something like this. But I'm going to sit down and sketch and talk about a transformer. You know, because for me, that that's more fun. I like talking about the character. Yeah, you should. I was going to say, I've been just sneaking peaks of your work as you've gone. And yeah, it's well, hold on. I mean, if we need, we need to make him look more we need to make him look, you know, a little bit more like Aaron now. That's fair. Air out. Seventies prowling there now. Right. And so I guess we need to do that for proud. And it's like you pulled a Michael Rosenbaum, man. You know, we expected Lex Luthor and you come out with all this hair. And I'm like, I know, I know Lex Luthor from Batman V Superman. Now, for those of you in the chat going, what are they talking about? When I was looking up Aaron and, you know, researching a little bit, all his promo shots and IMDB page, everything he's bald, he has no hair. So he pops up on the channel first. I'm like, who's this guy? I can't hear anything that pops out. There we go. There he is. Yeah, a little different. I think it's a pick I use for my thumbnail. I stole from the OK. Got you. Got you. But see, I mean, you look like you would be the perfect TV or movie villain with that look. Oh, that that was the reason I kept that look for so long. Yeah, like with with the look, the height, the voice. Like, I'm like, yeah, bad guy all day. Right, six, three. Oh, OK, you're just under me. OK, you're six, four. Yeah. Yeah. So like, not not a giant, but tall enough that like most people in in Hollywood are like five, nine. Yeah. So like, that's a good six inch difference. I'm at that nice height when they're like, oh, you collect transformers. Yeah. What about it? Nothing. Yeah. I'm I'm six, five. Oh, wow. Yes. I was impressed when I walked up to by, I was like, hey. Yeah. The weather is nice up here. Thanks for that. But, you know, shooter is like right at seven foot, maybe a little bit over. I didn't know that. Yeah. Shooters like I have a picture with me and Jim Shooter and Keith Gibbs, the con owner of Fayetteville, Comic Con, and I'm the little guy. Wow. I'm in the middle like, hi, everyone. And it's it's awkward. I don't like it. I was going to say, like I'm I'm not ever like the tallest, tallest person, but I'm usually like up there. And yeah, it's very like perspective altering when you when you encounter people that are not just like an inch taller than you, but like a foot taller than you. You're just like, is this what I look like to everyone else? This is this is unsettling. I think that's why my wife married me. She's four foot ten. Oh, wow. She married me because when she goes to the grocery store, she just can't get that stuff. Right. Yeah. My wife is constantly like, hey, can you get that off the top shelf? But she's still five, six, so four, five, seven. If you're watching this, honey, I don't remember. I'm sorry. That's why I hope my son is blessed with my height. He's just kind of in the middle right now. Hold your son. He is. He'll be eight, the 22nd. OK, he actually has his own YouTube channel. He wanted to follow in daddy's footsteps. Good for him. Awesome. What is his Transformers related also? No, I can't get him interested in these. Oh, OK. Right now it's all Fortnite before that was Minecraft. Then it was into Funko Pops. Gotcha. And he's just very wherever. But he adores Nathan Drake. I mean, I'll give him that. OK, gotcha. Have you guys seen the movie? Oh, yeah, I thought they did a real good job on it. I haven't seen it yet. But yeah, I've heard good things. Or my son, it was great because we were watching. I forget what movie we went to. But there was a trailer. Oh, it was a trailer for a trailer for Uncharted when we went and saw Spider-Man. Oh, OK. The one's watching it going, well, why is Peter Parker in this movie? I was like, exactly. But he pulled it off. I kind of once you realize they're going for the younger version, I'm like, OK, right. Because I have a chance with Nathan Fillion because he's just too old to play the partner. He looks so perfect for that role. I heard Nolan North actually makes an appearance in the movie. He does. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. He's going to be at the next Big Lick Comic-Con. He's an absolute legend, man. You know, that guy is so good. I'm going to make a trip to Big Lick, to the store, and about the middle of this month, like the 19th, I might stop by and talk to JD and Adam and see about, you know, maybe we can get Aaron to fly out to the East Coast. Oh, I'd be down for that. As the movies make us out to be. I don't know, man. I told you, I drove through West Virginia once. Yeah. Well, there's parts of West Virginia I don't like to go to. I was invited to do a spot in the Dark Knight Rises because I've done some work on Batman. And we're driving through Pennsylvania. We're driving up to Pennsylvania. So we drive from where I lived in Virginia at the time. This quickest way was to cut through West Virginia and I drive into this unincorporated town and I've never seen one of these. And there is a church attached right beside is a Chinese restaurant. And on the other side of the Chinese restaurant was an exotic dancer thing. So it's like, you know, you can get your kid. Yeah. Anyway, across from that was a graveyard and there was a tree in the middle of this graveyard that had Christmas lights on it in the middle of July with that had dead animals hanging from it. Well, I like to celebrate Christmas different here. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So it looked kind of like it kind of it looked like the one right here, the ghost town of the. Yeah, that's about what I drove through. Wow. So I stopped at a gas station to fill up and I walk in and there's a couple of guys sitting in the corner covered in soot because you could tell they worked one of the mines and. Yeah, all I could hear was deliverance in my head. That would be fair. That took place in Kentucky. I don't care. The boy when the guy said, you look like you from round here. No, sir, I am not. That's when you just put your tongue in your bottom. Let go. Well, I don't want to wear that way. Is that where you put your dip? Yeah, that's right. Keep your keep your back here right there. Yeah, I'm here when I was in base when I was in basic training. You know, drill sergeant has all lined up. We're scared to death. Shade ball. He's going down line. Where are you from? Pratt? And there's just the answer where they're from. I was like, oh, my God, he hits me with the West Virginia. I'm done. So when he told me, Morgan, where are you from? And I was like, West Virginia drill sergeant, but I do not drive a pickup truck. I do not date my sister. I have not married my cousin and I love rock and roll music. You're all right. And he went to the next guy and he's from Mullins. And he goes, I'm from Wyoming. I was like, he's fucked. Yeah, my my D.I. looked like Eddie Murphy. His name was Sergeant Romeo. This guy walked by and he had two horseshoes branded on his biceps. And I know that because his sleeve on his BDUs are rolled up enough that I could see the horseshoe brand on his biceps. And he walked past me. He didn't say anything, but I'm a smart ass. So as soon as he walked past, I went, Eddie, if you talk to me this way, Eddie, I want half. And he came back and he called me everything but a child of God. And I assumed the position of a front-leaning rest. Yeah, I'm very familiar with that position. And he found out that I was a ROTC. And Aaron, I don't know if you know what a ROTC is. That's basically you do military science through high school and college and you go in to be an officer. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. So so a D.I. is not going to like some snot nose punk kid standing in front of him who's eventually going to tell him what to do in his army. Right. So I could I can do a lot of push-ups. Well, I could then. So, yeah, you're a channel boy. Oh, my worst thing for me was I went all the way through basic training and then my A.I.T. took over, which is your advanced training. About three weeks afterwards, I just stayed the same place. This took place in 1999 when they finally decided they were going to integrate female drill sergeants in with the regulars. Now, when you're when you're from the south and you were talking, I'm going to be right back. You know, and you're showing respect to a female. You call her ma'am. Oh, drill sergeants don't like being called ma'am. No. What are you? Yes, ma'am. I'm no ma'am, and I'm just down there knocking them out. I have just like shockwave when I left the military. How many do you have to do all at once? Oh, Lord, till they told you to stop. Oh, God. And in a military style was one, two, three, one, one, two, three, two. Oh, man. And then you get one, one, two, two, two. Oh, good times. I can I can feel that burn like it's happening. Like, oh, God. Your arms start shaking. Yeah, you sit there vibrate. But I didn't mind the pushups all day, sit ups all day. I hated running. That was I was an asthmatic growing up, which kind of got into my love of transformers and comics. I didn't play sports. It was this world right here. And so when I turned 25, my asthma was just gone. And I told that I said because my dad came from military family because they wouldn't let me in with asthma. And I told that since my asthma is gone. You think I go into military? He's like, yep, don't tell him. And I remember just being scared to death to run because before when I'd run, it would turn back. So fortunately, that never happened. Oh, that's good. Old when I went into the army. I was 25 in there with a bunch of 17, 18 year olds and they called me grandpa. It's ridiculous. All right. Yeah, I remember I remember being young like that and thinking, yeah, like, old is like 40 plus. And then you get to be 20, 25, and it's like, old is 50. And then you get to be 30 and it's like, old is 70. I'm sure eventually I'll get to the point where I'm like, not old is 90. I'm still young. I'll be 40 man this summer. And I'm like, 50 still young, right? I'll be 47 in September. So yeah, I'm right there with whatever. Hey, man, usually nobody guesses my age until I tell him. Now, since I grew this, I don't know why this is all white. When this there's nothing. There's no whiteness whatsoever. It's all in my face, but my wife won't let me get rid of it. Well, you know, Aaron, you can't really tell your age because you you do work in entertainment. So yeah, yeah, 20, you're 22. That's right. Until I don't look 20. Surgeon dies. No, one thing one thing I do have working for me, though, is I actually can't grow facial hair for shit. So yeah, rocking the baby face for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I was. This is this is two weeks without shaving. OK, OK. Well, my new thing is I got the point going on. You can't see there's much here. And my son loves this. This is the hardest style I have ever attempted before. Every day it's coming in and trimming the point down. And then I had somebody ask me what I love that. Look, how do you get to grow like that? You don't you don't grow it like this. I don't sit there and will it point. So I shaved a while back. I just I shaved it. I shaved my face down. And my wife had never really seen me without any facial fuzz. And she looked at me and she said, honey, I didn't get married to live like this. I have a superhero butt chin. Oh, my. And she wasn't a fan. No, not at all. I don't know what this but dimple thing is. So I'm going to need you to cover that back up. The last time I shaved completely, my wife looks at me and goes, why did you do that? I'm like, you married me when I was in the army. I had none of this. I had no hair. Why are you mad? I just want to look like because it's your freedom beard. Have you had the experience where you shave and your kid cries? Yeah. Have you gone through? Yeah. That's always such like a funny video thing to see. Like, I don't have kids. I can't grow facial hair. I'll never see it. But I like watching that and living vicariously cracks me up. I don't know why the kids just look absolutely terrified. Like, you know, you got to be wondering about people just hopping in this dream right now. They're wanting to see the comic book hardest. They want to see the voice actor. We're talking about facial hair. Right into GQ. Well, yeah, thanks. We're going to talk about crumbing your toys and recoloring them and we'll call that G2. Right. There you go. So you can color your beard neon colors. I was threatened with divorce if I colored my beard. You could look, you could do a little bit of green and a little bit of purple and it gets you a green hat that says Megatron attack. No, I do. And your G2 Patriot prime. Oh, there's my bloody fire talks. You're a mesmerizing Michael. Agreed. Agreed. Some glasses. But thank you. Especially just like how casually he is. He's like, a line here, a line there, just talking. Well, I mean, I've been trying to figure out where I was going to put his gun. And then I was like, you know what, I'm having fun talking. So I kind of just stopped. I'll get back to it. I'll figure it out. Now, point out how good he is. He's got the points right there on Pral's shoulders. Where's my G1? Yeah. He's got those drawn. The tires behind. I don't know how good this will pick up. Yeah. See, it's a door. There's your windshield that is going to break off at some point if you're not careful. I am so nervous. And I could just go ahead and do this if you want me to really G1 it up. There's your there's your hood flap. Yeah. But, but I hate drawing that in. And my G1 Pral is he's up here, but he's on this side. So how many, how far are you from finishing up G1? What do you, what do you? The Autobot, most of the latter year Autobot pretenders, the Autobot headmasters, that's it. How many figures make up that whole lineup? I think it's like 244. Wow. Yeah. Is that about right? I think so. Yeah, that's crazy. I have a checklist somewhere, but I'm missing the Autobot, most of the Autobot pretenders and a couple of the micro masters. And yeah. And then I need rural and road buster and the deluxe insecticons. And then we can call it a collection. You know, and I am impressed that all of my collection, I'm only missing three weapons. I'm missing chop shop spear and a Scorponox, fast tracks, two little guns. Oh man. So what we're going to do then is we're going to create a list because I'm at a comic con about every other weekend. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we'll create a list and then I'll walk around when I'm scouring for stuff and we'll just start doing part, we'll start doing part hunting. There we go. That way we can just help each other complete our collections. And that's another great thing with making all the YouTube friends and stuff is our whole group looks out for each other. Like I had a buddy of mine. He looked out for me. I don't have a target in my area. My nearest target is two hours away. I've got a Walmart and Ollie's in $79 generals. I have four targets near me. So I have one right across the freeway from me. Yeah. So most of mine's Amazon and entertainment earth. Well, yeah, I mean, there's so much stuff around here in Greenville. Man, yeah, I'll, yeah. Send me a want list and we'll just like do some stuff. And meanwhile, I've got two figures in my Transformers collection and they're both prowling. They're both prowling. No, American releases right now. I'm not ready to dive into Japanese just yet. I've taken the dive. I have a, I have a non knockoff Browning. So I actually was arrested for buying that. What? In Danville, Virginia, I was picked up for buying Browning because it was a text conversation. And just so happened, my first wife worked for Spirit Halloween. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Spirit Halloween change. Yeah, yeah. Coming soon to a closed store near you. So she was managing one of those for the month of October and someone robbed it. This is the figure he's talking about. Okay. Yeah, that's, oh, that's the blue one. Yeah, that's a blue one. Yeah. So I'm going to transforming for you, Aaron. So you'll see what he's talking about. All right, sounds good. So my wife had, my first wife had found this online on Craigslist and she'd been talking to this guy. She was going to pick it up for my birthday. And we go to meet the guy in the Target parking lot. And like I said, someone had robbed her Spirit Halloween store. So the police were there investigating it and they took her phone just to kind of go through it because she was the manager. And they see these text messages about Browning, the numbers 308, which was his number from the Destron line. I know where this is headed. Right. So I'm picking up this nice transformer and a box, and I picked up a collection and I'm ready for him to finish the transform so I can finish the story. And this is where he gets really funny. It's like a joint set for him. Lord, but fast forward, he's a gun. So there you go. Yep, I figured. So I pick up a box with that in it and a couple of other figures that I'm missing and some cops pull in and pick me up for illegally buying a 308 Browning firearm according to my wife's text messages. I would love to be there when you just said, hold on. Oh, no, no, no. I didn't get to take it with me. They took it. So I'm sitting in this room being drilled by this cop because he's like, you know, here you are buying a legal gun, your wife's spirit Halloween's been robbed. Something smells a little fishy. One of the guys comes in, he's a buddy of mine. He was one of the cops there. He goes, did you just arrest the transformer artist for buying a transformer? And he was like, well, what about these text messages right here about Merle? Who killed Merle? And this was during the walking dead. Oh, God. He said, who killed Merle? And I've already figured out that this guy's kind of a dumb ass. So I went, the governor, the governor killed Merle. He said, the governor of Virginia hasn't killed anybody. And I went, well, he did. He said, well, where's his body? I said, I don't know. Ask Darrell. I said, who's Darrell? I said, that's his brother. So anyway, they let us go. And my buddy didn't make that. I just lost my headphones. I'll wait for him to come back. There you go. Am I back? Yes, sir. I just caught the cord in my headphones and launched them. God, and now my stupid voice assistant's trying to activate. I'm a mess. Keep going though. Sorry, I'd interrupt. It's okay. Californians. So they let me, of course they let us go. And my buddy would come by once in a while and tell me that they would put a legends transformer on this guy's desk every chance they would get it. Oh my God. And ask him how that sucks for Megatron. Let's go. They said they wrote him this a little bit. Could you imagine having to explain that though to your friends? Not at all. The rest of the guy for buying transformers and then accused them of killing Merle on the walking dead and hiding his body. Thanks Virginia. Oh man. Reasons I don't regret it anymore. Well, this has been a hoot. We're in an hour and a half. I got a little boy downstairs. It's actually just waiting me to come back down so we can, I bought the game Crossfire. Y'all remember that? Crossfire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like marble blast things, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've re-released it and I bought it and we are like Crossfire fanatics right now. Okay. When you get the game, it comes with 40 marbles. That's not enough. I went on Amazon, bought replacements so we got 80 marbles flying back and forth. Well, since we're getting ready to end this, I'll just do this, I'll. Let's blow it up real quick. Yeah, we'll just open it up his mouth a little bit. Your little pink is coming out. They're orange smug, man. Oh no, I'm not gonna color this in but there you go. We're set now. Carl's dead. Love it. RIP, pro. RIP. All right. There's no hop in me and just as we're leaving. Right. All that always. Well, most of my streams are at 10 o'clock at night because I wait until everybody goes to bed. Hey, it's a weekend. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Michael said something about it being at 10 and I'm like, that's awfully late. Like he's like, yeah, he's gotta wait for his kids to go to bed. I'm like, oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. He usually has what I do, but yeah, it's a weekend. But Aaron, thank you so much for hopping in. I know Michael hit you up and you're like, well, who the hell's this guy? So we'll absolutely. No, no, no, yeah. Yeah, Michael had good things to say about you. It's been a blast, man. Thanks for having me. Excellent, yeah. We always do try to do these a lot and have fun. I might send you, I'll send you Instagram invite or however that were. Yeah. I don't Instagram that much. I'm on there as much as I need to be. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty much me after I promote the channel. Yeah. He's hopped on here. Let's see, fishy. Thanks you again for two bucks. What can I give you this time? Da, da, da. Let's find a good one. Ooh, child things are get brighter and bring it down hard. Son of a day. What are you doing? Dance off, bro. Who's a perfect man? Thanks. I got a couple of new ones on here. Let's see where they are. Oh, here's my anytime somebody throws up the Rumble is red frenzy is blue argument. That's another one that goes right over my head. Oh, yeah. It's a G one thing. Okay. You wouldn't understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Way to make it 90s, man. Way to make it 90s. Well, guys, once again, thank you so much for hopping on. I really appreciate I loved doing these. I love meeting new people all because of these plastic robots. I mean, it just it amazes me. I've told people before that I have made more friends with these things than any job I've ever had, including the military. I mean, I have three or four friends I may talk with anymore, but this, the list just goes on and on. And it's an absolute pleasure to meet you, Mike, to interact with you once again. And I just from the bottom of our thank you so much. Oh, man, it's been a pleasure. Erin, you know, it's really fun to actually get to talk in real time. Yeah, man, for real. Yeah. And of course, you know, getting to show up on a channel that I watch. I got a lot of it's kind of cool. Excellent. We'll definitely do it some more. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, Michael likewise, man. It's been great getting to actually chat with you. We've done the Instagram message thing for like over a year now. But yeah, nice to virtually meet you. And I'm sorry, Prime, what's your name by the way? Did you just go by Prime or? Jason. Jason. Well, nice to meet you, man. Thanks for having me on the channel. This has been a ton of fun. And I'm with you, man. The community is awesome. Every single fan I've ever interacted with has just been an absolute pleasure to chat with. They're super welcoming. They're super forgiving of my lack of knowledge of some of the older Transformers stuff, too, which I appreciate. We will take you in and show you how. What was that line, the aslin, the line? Don't quote the old text to me. I was there when it was written. Oh, yeah. I probably butchered that up completely. Close enough to know what you're talking about, at least. Exactly. But yeah, I'll try. Go ahead. No, I'll just say if anyone would like to keep in touch or hit me up, feel free. I'm on Instagram. It's at AaronMVeach.com. All right, just AaronMVeach, not that problem. Yeah, M is for Matthew, if you're curious. Oh, I've got a funny story to tell you right off the bat because I was trying to find you on Instagram. Okay. So I clicked one. Uh-oh. Oh, let me find this. Uh-oh. I was like, I won't share it, but I was telling Michael. I said, well, I just sent him a message and now I got a friend request and I pulled up the bio and I started reading it and was like, I don't think this is the guy. Let me see if I can pull it up. That's not Aaron. There we are. I'm so curious where this is headed. All right, this AaronVeach, all one word, has 31 posts, 191 followers, and he's following 206 people. He friend requested me and this is about him. I like pictures of midgets, people falling down, Justin Bieber, memes, and anything with geriatric nudity. Yeah, that's not me. Yeah. I was like, what the hell have I done? I get a friend request and I'm like, I don't want to share it. That's going in the black pile. Yeah. What a bio. Wow. I told Michael, like, Jesus Christ, what have I done? You want to disquiet on my channel? What's wrong with you? He doesn't look like it. That's the other Aaron. Oh, that's the one from the other Transforge. It's just a skid roper sonar. Right. I told you that changed my bio. Aaron, I'm so shocked. I never get to know geriatric nudity. Stay away from Google, people. Don't you do it. Don't you do it. All right. Once again, thank you to you guys, everyone in the chat. Thanks for hanging out with us on a Friday night. It just goes to show that we all have nothing better to do to hang out and talk Transformers. And if you haven't, I've got Michael's information in the description of this video. I've got Aaron's information in the description of this video. Check these guys out, like their pages. Good. Just don't Google the other guy. And I appreciate it. Yeah. And, you know, real quick for me, I'm doing South Carolina Comic-Con this coming weekend. But if anyone's close to the Virginia area, I will be in Dulles in May for Big League Nova. And I will be returning to Roanoke for Big League in August. Excellent. So I know this guy who may show up, some loser named Jason. And he follows me around a lot. He's weird. And don't Instagram that name either, yeah. But, yeah, definitely I'm the same as Aaron. Feel free to interact, you know. I love talking and meeting people and just having a good time, sharing the love of these giant plastic metal robots. Well, they're not metal anymore. That wasn't the G-1. Hey, hey, hey. I get that die cast was a lost start. Here's your B-4's reference. Exactly. All right, guys, well, thank you so much. And for those of you who have not, don't forget to like, don't forget to subscribe. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Hula!