Podcast appearances and mentions of clement street

KCBS Radio's Foodie Chap Liam Mayclem is here to discuss this weekend's events from celebrating the 25th anniversary of Chapeau! on Clement Street to attending the Fillmore Jazz Fest.

We're taking another drink on Clement Street as Nicole & Arnold share the history of two more buildings that house two more of our favorite watering holes in the Inner Richmond District.

San Francisco movie and media critic Pam Grady joins us and she finally brings Westerns into OMFYS with ZACHARIAH (1971), a homoerotic oater starring John Rubenstein and a very young Don Johnson as star-crossed gunslingers who just can't quit each other on their road to hippy-dippy enlightenment. Billed as "The First Electric Western," Country Joe & the Fish, the James Gang and the New York Rock Ensemble show up with their late-1960s Gibson guitars and Fender stacks even though everything else about the movie takes place in the 19th Century. John Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones nearly steals the show by shooting a dude and then playing a kick-ass drum solo. ZACHARIAH is streaming on YouTube but this DVD-rip on Archive is far superior so Airplay that to your flat screen: https://archive.org/details/zachariah-1971-dvdrip-xvi-d Our second feature is the very-noir psychological western PURSUED from tough guy director Raoul Walsh in 1947. The Hollywood pothead par excellence ROBERT MITCHUM plays Jeb Rand who struggles to recall the massacre of his family through repressed memories and expressionist dream sequences. Making the past more than prologue is that the people who slaughtered the Rands are still plotting to finish the job. Also starring Teresa Wright as Jeb's love interest and sister-by-adoption (ew); Judith Anderson as the matriarch who's definitely keeping secrets; and the Skipper's dad, Alan Hale Sr. New Mexico's landscapes are brought to life in PURSUED by the breathtaking cinematography of James Wong Howe and it's all set to a sweeping Max Steiner score. Bob and Cory also discuss how Raoul Walsh got his eyepatch plus the ghastly prank the great director played on Errol Flynn, so wait for that. PAM GRADY will be introducing Scorsese's Dylan near-mockumentary, ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, on Sunday, Sept. 24th at the 4 Star Theater (2200 Clement Street, San Francisco). Go here for tickets and info: https://www.4-star-movies.com/calendar-of-events/scorsese-more-than-a-gangster-rolling-thunder-revue-a-bob-dylan-story-live-music-500-pm You can follow Pam on X (Twitter) @cinepam and read many of her latest reviews on the #AWFJ site: https://awfj.org/blog/author/pam-grady/ OMFYS Hosts: Bob Calhoun, Cory Sklar and Greg Franklin Philena Franklin is on strike but her dad did the TikTok Report. Philena will return later this month for our PUBLIC DOMAIN ZOMBIE episode with MESSIAH OF EVIL (1974) and Bela Lugosi in WHITE ZOMBIE (1932). MUSIC Theme song: Chaki the Funk Wizard "Pray for the Flying J" courtesy of Count Dante & the Black Dragon Fighting Society. "Royale" by Josh Lippi & the Overtimers and "Les-ly" by Mini Vandals courtesy of the YouTube Audio Archive. Trailer audio courtesy of Archive.org Instagram/Facebook (Meta): oldmoviesforyoungstoners Bluesky: @oldmoviesystoners.bsky.social Twitter (X): OM4YStoners Contact: oldmoviesforyoungstoners AT gmail DOT com

Have a drink with us as Nicole & Arnold share the history of a couple of the buildings that now house two of our favorite bars on Clement Street in the Inner Richmond District.

San Francisco is a preservation-minded city, but as we hear in this episode, not all parts of the city get the same amount of preservation love. Alum Andrea Dumovich Heywood talks with us about her research into Clement Street, a diverse neighborhood in the city's Inner Richmond area, that is considered the city's second Chinatown.  You'll hear what makes this neighborhood vibrant, the few places that have been landmarked, and the case for designating some of the area's intangible heritage. And please complete our quick survey - enter to win a fab Save As mug! 

Phil & Jake are joined by friend-of-the-pod Jade Puget (from AFI and Blaqk Audio) to rank mini-trucks, the enigmatic historical curiousity known as "Fritch's mustache", and the Green Day album Kerplunk! on the List of Every Damn Thing.Follow Jade on Instagram (@jadepuget) and Twitter (@jadepuget). AFI will be touring in 2022; don't miss their new album Bodies. And Blaqk Audio is playing shows too.If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). We also have a subreddit!SHOW NOTES: Jade and Jake are both proud graduates of Mendocino College, where they could be found playing Terminator 2: Judgment Day pinball in the Eagle's Nest circa 1993. There's some talk of The Crappy, which was the name given to the house (in our hometown of Ukiah, California) where Jake lived and all his friends hung out. West Side Ukiah (aka “the good side of Dora”) is the Ukiah neighborhood where Phil grew up. It's above sea level. Jake and Jade were from the much-grittier streets of Empire Gardens and The Meadows, respectively. “Sudden Impact” was the name of both a mysterious drifter as well as his awesome mini-truck. It's also the name of the white-guy group in the “Motownphilly” video. Their album never got released. There's a podcast about them but we haven't listened to it. “Motownphilly” is of course by Boyz II Men, not Bell Biv DeVoe as Jake claims; though Michael Bivins did produce the song, and does the rap in it. We talk about 2 Live Crew, a rap group from Miami who were especially dirty and loved bass. Here's "Pop that Coochie" to give you some idea of what they were up to. We also mention “Ditty” by Paperboy. The mustache photo under discussion was printed on the CD of D Is For Delinquent by Jade's early band Loose Change (with Chon Travis). Another early band of Jade's that we mention is Influence 13 (with Nick 13). “Continuity of self” is the sense of self-continuity that represents the ability to perceive oneself as an entity that extends both backwards into the past and forwards into the future. This sense allows individuals to view themselves as being the same, despite the tremors induced by time and environment. Jake was the lead in the musical Li'l Abner in high school. Phil was in the play too in a small role. The end of one of Jake's songs was Phil's cue to come on the stage, so Phil listened to Jake sing it many times and sometimes gets it stuck in his head. Jake is not as into the Doggystyle album art as Phil accuses him of being. Green Day songs discussed include “2000 Light Years Away” and “Dominated Love Slave”. We also mention their record 39/Smooth, the Sweet Children EP and Dookie. Other albums discussed include the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique and Nirvana's Nevermind. Green Apple Books (Jade calls it “Red Apple Books”) is a world-class bookstore on Clement Street in San Francisco. Phil briefly worked there but it turned out wasn't suited to retail work. Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk is a great documentary about the scene that Green Day was a part of in their early years. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Bad Boy Club * Taco Bell * dong bongs * Double Stuf Oreos * Lincoln Logs * PG-13 * the Volkswagen “Bug” * Spaceballs * Warner Bros large-graphic cartoon t-shirts * identity * anti-nostalgia * poison oak * Howard the Duck * Barry Bonds * Theodore Roosevelt * Hulk Hogan * Ice Cube * album sequencing * Tré Cool * Watchmen (comic book) * bicycles * “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & the Pips * Harry Styles * picklesBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here).TOP TEN: Dolly Parton - person interspecies animal friends - idea sex - idea bicycles - tool coffee - beverage Clement Street in San Francisco - location Prince - person It's-It - food Doctor Doom - fictional character Cher - person BOTTOM TEN:236. Jon Voight - person237. Hank Williams, Jr - person238. British Royal Family - institution239. Steven Seagal - person240. McRib - food241. death - idea242. war - idea243. cigarettes - drug244. QAnon - idea245. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was produced & edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil, Jake and Jason are reunited with bud-of-the-pod Dave Hause to rank pickles and Sir Topham Hatt (from Thomas & Friends) on the List of Every Damn Thing. Plus coffee gets re-ranked!Follow Dave on Instagram (@davehause), Twitter (@hausedave) and Facebook (DaveHauseMusic). We love his critically-acclaimed new album Blood Harmony, and so will you (it's on Spotify & Apple Music). Hopefully you can see him play live near you!If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). We also have a subreddit!SHOW NOTES: Here's Dave's USA Today piece about Taylor Swift being “infinitely more punk rock” than him. Jason and Jake praise the song “Gary” from Dave's new record, because it's an incredible song. We note that our last episode featured Dave's brother Tim Hause. The two brothers collaborated on Blood Harmony, as well as on Tim Hause's recently-recorded album (coming out later this year). We successfully deduce that sauerkraut is both a pickled and fermented food (the same goes for kimchi). Here's a Southern Living article about how Texans– and only Texans– eat pickles at the movie theater. We discuss different types of pickles, such as cornichons and bread-and-butter pickles (the latter of which apparently got their name because they were good for bartering for staple food items). Here's Hannibal Buress' pickle juice bit wherein he confesses "I have a surplus of pickle juice in my apartment". We talk about Dave being a transplant from Philadelphia. Did you know that the city's name literally means "Brother Love" in Greek? Why doesn't this get mentioned more? Guy Fieri is the prime minister of Sonoma County, where Phil lives. Phil says that all businesses in the county have a picture of Fieri on the wall, and he eats and drinks for free by law. Jason uses “onion murder” as an argument for ranking pickles higher than onions. Research shows that a guy in India was once killed for onions, but it's not fair to blame the onions for this. Maybe the guy who died in a tragic accident while harvesting onions could be blamed on the onions. Phil ponders on the nature of Thomas' sentience, and whether his consciousness is a gestalt of the train itself and the humans that operate it. Jake compares it to Voltron. Sir Tophamm Hatt is originally from The Railway Series books by Wilbert & Christopher Awdry, but our frame of reference is mostly the Thomas & Friends TV show (featuring, of course, the titular star Thomas the Tank Engine). Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Patrick Stewart and Brian Cox are our nominees for portraying a live-action Topham Hatt. We shout-out some of our favorite coffee companies: Time & Tide Coffee (Biddeford, ME), Timeless Coffee (Oakland, CA) and Black Oak Coffee (Ukiah, CA). We also give praise to the Blue Danube Coffee House on Clement Street in San Francisco. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:having COVID * escabeche * Grillo's pickles * Christmas ornaments * cucumbers * onions * Dolly Parton * Watchmen (comic) * the Golden Gate Bridge * Pompeii * It's-It * volcanoes * Popeye * Blade * The British Royal Family * capitalism * E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial * Charmander * goats * VW Bugs * Carthage * cold brew shandy * Star Wars * coffee enemas * Mendocino County * bicycles * The Monk of Mokha by Dave EggersBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here).TOP TEN: Dolly Parton - person interspecies animal friends - idea sex - idea bicycles - tool coffee - beverage Clement Street in San Francisco - location Prince - person It's-It - food Cher - person dogs - animal BOTTOM TEN:223. Jon Voight - person224. Hank Williams, Jr - person225. British Royal Family - institution226. Steven Seagal - person227. McRib - food228. death - idea229. war - idea230. cigarettes - drug231. QAnon - idea232. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was produced & edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Diary for Monday, August 16, 2021. Rested most of the morning, garden in the afternoon, Clement Street playground, Maynard Park playground, exercise playground, Meta Nabor, inside resting.

The story of Gus' Discount Tackle begins with skiing in the Alps. In this podcast, Stephanie Scott, the current owner, shares with us the story of her life. Her dad, Gus, escaped his home in Austria when the Nazis began persecuting Jews. He arrived in New York but went west for a restaurant bussing job in San Francisco. Gus met his wife (Stephanie's mom) in The City. She was a Sorbonne-educated lab doctor who immigrated here from Russia. Gus opened a general merchandise shop on Clement Street, but the predatory landlord there kept raising Gus' rent. Through a handshake-type agreement, he got the funding to buy his own place—the spot on Balboa where the shop still exists today, around 60 years later. Stephanie grew up on 17th Avenue on the northern side of the Richmond in the 1950s and '60s. She shares impressions of what San Francisco was like back then—a busy time with Beats, hippies, free-love advocates, and LSD, none of which the more square Stephanie took part in. She met her husband when they were both at SF State. After post-graduate opportunities fizzled out, Stephanie started working in her dad's store. The rest, as she says, is history. She's been there 45 years. Stephanie ends the podcast reflecting on the people she's watched grow up around Gus's, the changes that the store has seen, including transitioning from general merchandise to fishing supplies, and her hopes for the next phase of the only place she's ever lived—San Francisco. We recorded this podcast at Gus' Discount Tackle in the Outer Richmond in June 2021. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Phil, Jake and Beth are joined by writer, model and friend Eirinie Carson to rank the TV sitcom Frasier, the British Royal Family, and fast fashion on the List of Every Damn Thing.Follow Eirinie on Instagram (@eirinieeee) and Twitter (@Eirineee). Her articles (including the one Jake mentions in this episode) and other projects can be found here.Beth is raising money through Rise Up Against Racism to build little free anti-racist libraries throughout the Bay Area. Her fundraising page can be found here. You can follow her progress on Instagram (@little.free.antiracist.library).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: We talk briefly about kid's shows, including We Bare Bears, Apple & Onion and Hey Duggee.  In Apple & Onion, Richard Ayoade plays Onion. He and his best friend Apple live in an apartment and deal with various problems. Everyone they know is food. It's strange because their friend Falafel has ground onions inside of him and they never mention it. It's like Pixar's Cars where it's best not to think about it too much. Here's some examples of the rules of anthropomorphic food on the show. Sitcoms discussed in this episode include Cheers, 30 Rock, Seinfeld, The IT Crowd and Peepshow. Phil also brings up That Mitchell & Webb Look, which isn't sit but is com. We were right in assuming Kelsey Grammer hung out with Robin Williams. It turns out they were roommates at Julliard. It's possible they may have used cocaine together. Here's the article Beth mentions about Grammer's problematic politics putting the Frasier reboot at risk. When Jake says the character of Daphne Moon reminds him of Cathy, this is what he's talking about. There's some talk of how Julia-Louis Dreyfus / Elaine changed throughout the course of Seinfeld. It's possible when Phil said this what really was happening was that he himself was growing into manhood and began to look at JLD differently. Here's some fish-throwing at Pike Place Market. Our Black Frasier discussion includes the one on 30 Rock as well as Phoebe Robinson podcast. Eirinie doesn't think Choppin' Broccoli is funny but Jake still does. Here's Monica Bellucci in a latex dress from The Matrix movies. She wears more than one so here's a video of all Monica Bellucci content from those films, compiled by someone operating with one hand. Most of Jake & Beth's research on the royal family was done by watching The Crown on Netflix. Jake also listened to the Prince Harry interview on Dax Sheppard's podcast. Fast fashion retailers discussed include H&M, UNIQLO, Target and Old Navy. They're all doing okay so we didn't provide links. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Sideshow Bob * laugh tracks * the male gaze * David Hyde-Pierce * Seattle * Lilith Sternin * Batman: The Animated Series * Saturday Night Live * The Three Stooges * Shakira * air * Bruce Springsteen * Wigan kebab * The Truman Show * Double Stuf Oreos * capitalism * colonialism * war * Hank Williams, Jr. * consumer waste * Warner Bros large-graphic cartoon t-shirts * band t-shirts * Grocery Outlet * commandos * Tommy Bahama shirtsBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It's-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:160. Jenny McCarthy - person161. Jon Voight - person162. Hank Williams, Jr - person163. British Royal Family - institution164. Steven Seagal - person165. McRib - food166. war - idea167. cigarettes - drug168. QAnon - idea169. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil & Jake are joined by old friend (and fellow Pomolita Junior High School survivor) Sarah Walsh to rank the 1983 movie Flashdance, middle school, and sandwiches on the List of Every Damn Thing.If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: We chat briefly about the 90s sitcom Sister, Sister, which leads to Phil wonder if there was a TV adaptation of the movie Sister Act, but he was probably thinking of Sister Kate. Nuns used to be much more common in popular culture; there are fewer than one-third as many in America now than there were in the 1960s. We discuss depictions of breakdancing in popular culture, including the 1984 movie Breakin', which is perhaps what Phil was thinking of when talking about the theme of street dance vs. classical dance. We also mention the sequel Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which came out later in the same year. Micheal Jackson moonwalking at the Grammys happened in 1983 (the year Flashdance came out). The song “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara was  produced by Father of Disco Giorgio Moroder. The music video for the song perfectly demonstrates the marriage of MTV and Hollywood in the 80s; see also “When Doves Cry” by Prince (from Purple Rain), “Footloose”, and pretty much any movie from the era produced by Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer. Phil wonders if no-nudity strip clubs were really a common thing in the 80s, or if they only existed in movies like Flashdance and Tango & Cash.  In Queens in the early 2000s there was a place like that  under the N Train in Astoria.  Dames is a 1934 movie that has some really amazing dance sequences but it's mostly done with editing. Phil notes that the music video for “Papa Don't Preach” by Madonna is similar in imagery and overall style style to Flashdance. Could Madonna have played the lead in the film? In the climax of the movie Akeela and the Bee you don't see her spell out the final word “pulchritude" but you see the people in her life, including Angela Basset, Curtis Armstrong and Laurence Fishburne spell the word out. It's great. Phil wanted something like that at the end of Flashdance. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Soul II Soul * Beverly Hills Cop * Jennifer Beals * Adrian Lyne * 9½ Weeks * feminism * Jennifer Grey * Batman * Lee Ving * Pittsburgh * class struggle * Bruce Springsteen * Enter the Dragon * Trading Places * Jamie Lee Curtis * The Truman Show * Bon Jovi * shirtless men wearing elaborate angel wings, gold lamé shorts and furry cha-cha heels * the intro to “Back That Azz Up” * Jim Carrey * Pokemon * teenagers * pantsing * Jersey Shore * Monopoly * The Last Starfighter * capitalism * Daylight Saving Time * ice cream sandwiches * burritos * nail clippers * It's-It * smellBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It's-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:157. broken glass - substance158. Jenny McCarthy - person159. Jon Voight - person160. Hank Williams, Jr - person161. Steven Seagal - person162. McRib - food163. war - idea164. cigarettes - drug165. QAnon - idea166. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil & Jake are joined by Pete (from the Grocery Gamblers podcast) and returning guest Tiffa (from Intermission podcast) to rank Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, Steven Seagal, and the idea of self-promotion on the List of Every Damn Thing.VOTE HERE to help choose which item on the List of Every Damn Thing should be re-ranked in an upcoming episode (you can vote once a day).Keep up with Grocery Gamblers on Instagram (@grocerygamblerspod), and with Intermission on Instagram (@Intermission_podcast) & Twitter (@IntermissionPC). Subscribe to both shows wherever you get your podcasts!If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: Bro-Country is a tricky term because no one self-identifies as a fan. So there's a lot of judgment baked into the word. It's not exactly a slur but it's not real descriptive. Florida Georgia Line is a “Country music act” for example that fits the bill but we doubt if you asked them they'd say Bro-Country is their genre. Who knows, maybe they would.   Morgan Wallen broke covid quarantine and got (temporarily) canceled from hosting Saturday Night Live, and then later got drunk and shouted some racial slurs which got him canceled in general.  Our mouths start to hurt from just saying the words Sour Patch Kids Cereal. Sour Patch Kids Ice Cream is a little less painful. Piggly-Wiggly was, in fact, the first modern grocery store with checkout stands, individually price-marked items and shopping carts. In the episode, we reveal our befuddlement with the correct pronunciation of “shaman”. According to Cambridge Dictionary, in the UK it rhymes with “layman” and in the US it rhymes with “ramen”. Seagal movies that we discuss include Under Siege, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Exit Wounds (co-starring DMX) and On Deadly Ground (here's the environmentalist sermon at the end of it). Here's Seagal with Valdimir Putin. Here he is giving a samurai sword to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Here's him and Sheriff Joe Arapaio (we're not sure if this is before or after they allegedly killed a puppy with a tank while shooting Steven Seagal: Lawman). The full name of Seagal's conspiracy thriller novel is The Way of the Shadow Wolves: The Deep State and the Highjacking of America. His album is called Songs from the Crystal Cave. Here's footage of Seagal training with MMA guys. Pete tells a few stories about Willits, California (which is in beautiful Mendocino County). ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Jimmy Buffett * Pork King Good pork rinds * avocados * Taco Bell * cold brew shandy * generation ships * Kelly LeBrock * Nicolas Cage * R. Lee Ermy * Michael Caine * Jaws 4: The Revenge * Christopher Lee * redface * Decker * Julianna Margulies * Jean-Claude van Damme * elk * Native Americans * cultural appropriation * sex * Jenny McCarthy * Jon Voight * Midnight Cowboy * French fry ice cream * Toy Soldiers * online dating * SpaceballsBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It's-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:154. broken glass - substance155. Jenny McCarthy - person156. Jon Voight - person157. Hank Williams, Jr - person158. Steven Seagal - person159. McRib - food160. war - idea161. cigarettes - drug162. QAnon - idea163. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil & Jake rank the fictional vampire-hunter Blade, the first (and best) installment of The Matrix film franchise, and bricks on the List of Every Damn Thing.VOTE HERE to help choose which item on the List of Every Damn Thing should be re-ranked in an upcoming episode (you can vote once a day).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: We of course talk a lot about the Blade movies and Wesley Snipes. When reviewing Snipes' early work, we only mention Major League briefly and don't even talk about how he didn't come back for the sequel. We also mention Passenger 57 and Demolition Man. Sticky Fingaz from Onyx was the star of the short-lived Blade TV series. We talk about the history of horror themes in comics. We don't really get into EC Comics, Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, or the U.S. Congressional inquiry and Comics Code Authority that followed, but we could talk for days about that if you let us. Here's the cover of Tomb of Dracula #10, featuring the first appearance of Blade. Marvel Comics characters discussed in this episode include Morbius (The Living Vampire), Werewolf by Night, the X-Men (especially Gambit), Ghost Rider, the Avengers and of course Dracula. We bring up John Woo, the Hong Kong-based action director. He's best known in the US for Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. His HK work was very influential also. Yuen Woo-Ping is a director and choreographer based in Hong Kong who's also done a lot of work in American movies (The Matrix and Kill Bill for example). We talk about non-Marvel Cinematic Universe movies such as the 1989 Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie, Howard the Duck, X-Men and Ghost Rider. We do get into the MCU a little bit, with the upcoming Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali. We talk about a whole lot of other action movies, including Mortal Kombat (1995), John Wick, Speed Racer, Police Story, Drunken Master II and Die Hard. Daybreakers starring Ethan Hawke is a very smart (but also very dumb) movie that's a lot more fun than it needs to be. It's about a world where almost everyone's already been bitten by vampires and blood is getting scarce. We guess it's about oil? The recently-cancelled, long-running show The Venture Brothers' character of Jefferson Twilight is a Blade parody who specializes in killing vampires of African descent. Blacula is a 1972 film that Phil saw on broadcast TV as a child, but it fell out of rotation. Phil mentions, but forgets the title of, Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again. Here's the scene where he transforms.  In pop-singer Bebe Rexha's video for "Sacrifice" she restages a couple sequences from Blade. The song has a real early 90s club sound to it, that's what the kids want these days. In the episode, Phil says you don't see a lot of references to Popeye in pop culture. We forgot about Ludacris' legitimately terrifying video for "Get Back". Laurence Fishburne is Phil's wife's favorite actor. When he shows up she always hopes it means everything up to that point in the movie was inside the Matrix. It's almost never true though. The Three Little Pigs should have a back-to-basics reboot. Kids only know the deconstructed versions now. There are deconstructed, ironic takes on the story going back to the 1930s! We just want a straight-up fable about planning ahead. We mention the Reginald Denny incident, which Ice Cube references in the song in “Natural Born Killaz”. Brickbats are bricks used as weapons. Here's an illustration of a member of the Dead Rabbits with a brickbat. Krazy Kat (AKA Krazy & Ignatz) is a comic-strip in which one character loves to throw a brick at the other. Brick chicken is chicken that you cook by putting a brick on it. You can use a similar method to make a panini as well. Usually people wrap it in foil but Phil doesn't. He's a wild man. Brick ovens are excellent for making naan bread or pizzas because they can get to very high temperatures.  Note on the term “brick shithouse”: This is used with men as well as women. Phil remembers reading a description of Lebron James that said he was built like a brick shithouse. The song "Brick House" by the Commodores was written by Shirley Hanna-King, while her husband slept! Here's some discussion of why "Brick House" as a slang term never really took off. We think the main problem is the shit connection. Few people when they're talking about someone attractive want to also make a reference to an outhouse. Here's a pic of the “earthquake bricks” that Jake talks about. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Marv Wolfman * Gene Colan * Jim Brown * Guillermo del Toro * Nicolas Cage * Jackie Chan * Kris Kristofferson * Stephen Dorff * Twilight * Buffy the Vampire Slayer * Anne Rice * Interview With the Vampire * Queen of the Damned * Traci Lords * Randy Quaid * Popeye * Charmander * Dan Aykroyd * Will Smith * Boyz n the Hood * Apocalypse Now! * the Wachowskis * Keanu Reeves * Fight Club * Jackie Chan * Matrix 4 * Carrie-Anne Moss * Trading Places * The Truman Show * Batman: The Animated Series * The Three Stooges * Shakira * Bill Paxton * firefighters * Larimer Square in Denver * cubed ice * dilapidated shacksBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It's-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:151. carpets - decoration152. broken glass - substance153. Jenny McCarthy - person154. Jon Voight - person155. Hank Williams, Jr - person156. McRib - food157. war - idea158. cigarettes - drug159. QAnon - idea160. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil, Jake & Jason rank fast-food chain Taco Bell, Batman: The Animated Series and crossbows on the List of Every Damn Thing.VOTE HERE to help choose which item on the List of Every Damn Thing should be re-ranked in an upcoming episode (you can vote once a day).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).SHOW NOTES: Youtube is aggressively pushing sexy Fran Drescher content at Phil, such as this video where someone combed through episodes of the Nanny for material. We engage in some speculation about a reboot of The Nanny. After thinking about it, the Nanny itself was a reworking of similar stories. Dorito taco shells don't go hard enough, they're not dumb enough, there's not enough crystals on the shell. Go all the way. There should be a Mountain Dew sauce. Don't half-step! We discuss many Taco Bell ads, including those featuring Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Godzilla and of course the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Phil has a lot to say about how Shaq & Hakeem Olajuwon helped Taco Bell launch the Double Decker Taco. Taco Bell was using the Run for the Border slogan as late as the 90s. The Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica is the world's most beautiful Taco Bell. Here’s Taco Bell’s appearance in Demolition Man. Man-Bat is like a werewolf but he turns into a bat instead of a wolf. Harley Quinn is a culturally omnipresent sexy clown with a baseball bat and a PhD. Renee Montoya is a hard-boiled detective who was played in a recent movie by Rosie Perez. Clayface is a washed-up actor who uses makeup that turns him into a shape-changing mud-man. Body horror! Jason mentions the legitimately upsetting movie Monsturd.  Fleischer Superman cartoons are really good, they're by the animators behind Popeye & Betty Boop but they go more realistic here. They rely heavily on (and were innovators in) rotoscoping (where real motion is traced). They look super Art Deco. Here's an example of Superman dealing with some robots. The 1989 Batman movie directed by Tim Burton (who also made Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) maybe doesn't hold up that well but the soundtrack includes “Batdance” by Prince which would go high on the list if we ranked it. Bruce Timm was one of the main artists and designers on Batman: The Animated Series. His stuff looks really good but you get the idea that they needed to spray him with a water bottle every so often cause he'd get too worked up. Paul Dini was the head writer on Batman: The Animated Series. His sister taught one of Jake’s college classes. Beer Street and Gin Lane are a couple of woodcuts showing you two places: a cool place where people drink beer and an awful nightmare where they drink gin. The Ventriloquist is Phil's favorite villain. The actual villain is "Scarface", a dummy. Poison Ivy is a mad scientist, femme-fatale, ecoterrorist who looks like Tex Avery designed her in the 30s. Talia Al Ghul loves Batman, but her father is his sworn enemy. The Watchmen comic is ranked really high because it's good. It doesn't hit now like it did in 1986, what could? Here’s the cover of Wolverine Limited Series #4, which inexplicably features a gun sight on a crossbow. It turns out harpoon guns are more similar to cannons than crossbows. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Glenn Bell * Chipotle * Legally Blonde * Legally Blonde 2 * plant-based meat * sexy CEO Brian Niccol * hot sauce * Mexico City * Popeye’s chicken * vegans * square pizza * bagels * shirtless men wearing elaborate angel wings, gold lame shorts and furry cha-cha heels * loggerheads * cartoons * Lady Lovely Locks and the Pixietails * Mark Hamill * Martin * Ewoks TV series * the 1960s Batman TV series * Saturday Night Live * Shakira * Birds of Prey (movie) * Trading Places * grapple guns * MacBeth * Ted Nugent * Chewbacca’s bowcaster * ballista * Scarlett from GI Joe * Game of Thrones * The Walking DeadBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It’s-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:148. carpets - decoration149. broken glass - substance150. Jenny McCarthy - person151. Jon Voight - person152. Hank Williams, Jr - person153. McRib - food154. war - idea155. cigarettes - drug156. QAnon - idea157. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

In this lightning (and wife-ening) episode, Phil & Jake are joined by Beth & Ali to rapid-fire rank karaoke, dippin’ sauce, landlines, the Golden Gate Bridge, bagels, goats, Cadbury Creme Eggs and carpets on the List of Every Damn Thing.VOTE HERE to help choose which item on the List of Every Damn Thing should be re-ranked in an upcoming episode (you can vote once a day).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter and Instagram).Check out the Little Anti-Racist Library project that Beth is working on.SHOW NOTES: We mention many of our favorite karaoke songs, including “Last Christmas” by Wham! (we don't cite it specifically, but Jake also likes George Michael’s “One More Try”), “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey & Phil Collins, “Dream A Little Dream of Me” by The Mommas & the Poppas, “To Be With You” by Mr. Big, “Bernadette” by the Four Tops and “Blow the Whistle” by Too $hort. Dimples is a San Francisco treasure. If you like karaoke, overpriced drinks, open gambling, a weird sex-work vibe and possibly indoors cigarette-smoking, go there. Ali doesn’t mention the song “Last Resort” by name when she brings up Papa Roach in honor of Beth’s hometown of Stockton, CA. The band is actually from about sixty miles away in Vacaville, CA, but hey what’s the difference really? We mention “Cherry Pie” by Warrant, but not as an acceptable karaoke song. Also, “November Rain” by Guns ‘n’ Roses has way too much instrumentals to be a good karaoke song. Even the radio edit. Phil tells a story about a former student teaching him to mix hot sauce and butter, which is the recipe for buffalo wing sauce (usually made with Frank's Red Hot sauce). When Jake refers to Phil’s mom having a “Bucky Walter” in her home, he’s trying to use Boontling, the local dialect of the small town of Boonville, CA. It looks like he misuses the term, though, as a “Bucky Walter” is specifically a payphone (he should've said “Walter Levi”). “Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90s” is a country song that Phil listens to when he goes to the hardware store. The paint color of the Golden Gate Bridge is neither golden nor red. It’s international orange. Here’s a brief video with some clips of the GG Bridge “singing” (as described in the episode by Jake and Ali). If you’re in Petaluma, CA and have a bagel-hankering, go to The Bagel Mill. The Marble Rye is the king of bagels. It's made by dividing the dough into two piles and mixing cocoa powder into one pile! Strange that it doesn't taste like chocolate. When Jake & Beth inexplicitly exclaim “Cram!” they’re referring to the comedy of Tony Baker. Googling teaches us that goats are, in fact, ungulates. We discuss the use of goats in religion. In Islam it's traditional at the end of Ramadan to slaughter a goat and donate it to the needy. Phil didn't know the word off the top of his head but it's Qurbani and it comes from a story about Abraham. In non-majority Muslim places there's not really a framework for donating and the needy aren't expecting goat meat.  The scapegoat is a different story from Hebrew tradition in which there were two goats and one was sacrificed while the other one was marked up to carry all of the sins and let go into the wilderness. We're not religious but it seems like the scapegoat got off easy (although it does carry the burden of guilt) which is the opposite of how we'd always understood the expression. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:steroids * sex * puns * Christmas trees * pancakes * Saturday Night Live * Mendocino County * Japan * mayonnaise * aioli * artichokes * onions * rye bread * Popeye’s chicken * glitter * 5G towers * nail clippers * generation ships * zipper jeans * Top Ramen * Robin Williams Tunnel * Jersey Shore * “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & the Pips * the Eiffel Tower * Watchmen comic * It’s-It * bridge tolls * Cher * Watchmen TV series * square pizza * pizza on a bagel * screaming goats * fainting goats * goat cheese * crows * Boxer dogs * wind chimes * Jessica Rabbit * Popeye * Dan Aykroyd * Dragnet * Whoppers * McRib * Double Stuf Oreos * Gambit * Howard the Duck * Surge * magic carpets * static electricity * ratsBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It’s-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:145. carpets - decoration146. broken glass - substance147. Jenny McCarthy - person148. Jon Voight - person149. Hank Williams, Jr - person150. McRib - food151. war - idea152. cigarettes - drug153. QAnon - idea154. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter and Instagram.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil and Jake are joined by Efrem Schulz, a friend of the pod-- and vocalist for Death By Stereo, Voodoo Glow Skulls and Manic Hispanic-- to stack the whack of the the List of Every Damn Thing by ranking “Weird Al” Yankovic, the 1987 comedy film Spaceballs, and Warner Bros large-graphic cartoon t-shirts.Find Efrem on Twitter (@Efbystereo) and Instagram (@efbystereo). Check the brand-new Voodoo Glow Skulls album Livin’ the Apocalypse! Also check out the Fight For Columbia bandcamp compilation.VOTE HERE to help choose which item on the List of Every Damn Thing should be re-ranked in an upcoming episode (you can vote once a day).If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter and Instagram).SHOW NOTES: It doesn’t come up in our conversation, but Efrem recorded the episode from his shop Programme Skate & Sound in Fullerton, CA.  Efrem also plays bass in the Danzig / Misfits tribute band Dirty Black Summer. Grammar authorities say both “champing at the bit” and “chomping at the bit” are fine to use. Jake was wrong about how to write Weird Al’s name. The quotes go around “Weird Al” not just “Weird”. Weird, right? Weird Al songs (and videos) discussed include “Eat It”, “White & Nerdy”, “Tacky”, “Amish Paradise”, “Fat” and “Lasagna”. And of course we couldn’t skip his polka medleys (including “The Hamilton Polka”). Efrem tells a story about bonding over Weird Al with George Rebelo from Hot Water Music. George is a great guy and amazing drummer. Hot Water Music is one of the best bands ever. Chamillionaire retired from rapping and is now a venture capitalist in Santa Monica. Here he is over a John Tesh sample and here he is on an extremely 2005 Scott Storch beat. People forget his breakout hit was about racial profiling. We couldn’t find footage online of the MTV show Death By Stereo did with Coolio, but here’s an old post on punknews.org that proves it happened. Roast battle champion Mike Lawrence has a take on Spaceballs similar to Phil's wife's. We discuss the works of Mel Brooks, including Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Rick Moranis is at his best in Ghostbusters. Bill Pullman is at his best in Independence Day. He belongs in the air. We name-check lots of cartoon characters that one might find on an oversized t-shirt, including Taz, Betty Boop, Tweety Bird, Elmer Fudd and Foghorn Leghorn. There’s also mention of Yosemite Sam mudflaps. Phil & Jake both looked for evidence of Michael Bivins wearing WB merchandise, and couldn't find it. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It might be that he was too grown-up by the time these shirts came about. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:coffee * Red Bull * 5-Hour Energy * lyrics * Vincent Price in “Thriller” * Al TV * Dr. Demento * parody * Prince * Cheech & Chong * Pee-Wee Herman * Bill Paxton * Bruce Springsteen * sex * Star Wars * Joan Rivers * Hollywood Squares * Jim J. Bullock * Dick Van Patten * Eight Is Enough * Luke Skywalker * Han Solo * The Greatest American Hero * The Last Starfighter * Buckaroo Bonzai * Enter the Dragon * Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey * Wayne’s World * Bell Biv DeVoe * Crocs * Spinderella * Tommy Bahama * band t-shirtsBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It’s-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:137. Lincoln Logs - toy138. broken glass - substance139. Jenny McCarthy - person140. Jon Voight - person141. Hank Williams, Jr - person142. McRib - food143. war - idea144. cigarettes - drug145. QAnon - idea146. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter and Instagram.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Phil, Jake and Jason are joined by new guest Christina to gussy-up the List of Every Damn Thing by ranking the fictional princess Cinderella, the 80s glam-metal band Cinderella, and the hip-hop trailblazer Spinderella.If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter and Instagram). You can view the full list at everydamnthing.netSHOW NOTES: RIP to Shock G. of Digital Underground, who died not long before we recorded this episode. Jessica Rabbit is considered to be a Disney Princess by us. The character of Cinderella is so unremarkable in the 1950 Disney movie that they don’t even include her as an ingredient in this official trailer. Charles Perrault, who wrote the Cinderella story best-known in contemporary culture, is pretty much the father of the “fairy tale” genre. His works-- derived from folk stories-- also include Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots and Sleeping Beauty. As we discuss in this episode, Brandy played Cinderella in the 1997 Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella TV movie. Phil didn't mention it but when his wife listens to "The Boy Is Mine" she agrees that the boy is Brandy's. Jake, however, knows the boy is Monica’s. Jason didn’t mention that Drew Barrymore’s air fryer is part of a Wal-Mart Collection. We mention Princess Diana. You can get the Di-themed Beanie Baby for just $50k on eBay. I Was A Rat by Phillip Pullman is just fantastic. Phil recommends it.  Songs (and music videos) of Cinderella’s that we discuss include “Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone” (partly shot in Bodie State Historic Park), “Nobody’s Fool”, “Somebody Save Me”, “Shake Me” and “Gypsy Road”. We also discuss their unremarkable deep-cut “Winds of Change” (not to be confused with “Wind of Change” by Scorpions). We engage in a bit of a hot-or-not session with metal guys, including Tom Keifer, Dee Snider, Stephen Pearcy (aka the guy from Ratt),Kevin DuBrow (aka the guy from Quiet Riot), Vince Neil, Brett Micheals, Slash and Jon Bon Jovi. Here's Michael Bivins (of Bell Biv DeVoe) in the video for “Motown Philly” by Boys II Men. Here’s a clip featuring the real voice of Gilbert Gottfried. The video for “Fresh” by Kool & The Gang is maybe the best interpretation of the Cinderella story and features the best K & the G song too. That's not our opinion, that's a fact. This trailer for the 1977 Cinderella erotic fairy tale movie that Phil saw as a kid acknowledges the foot fetish aspect of the story. The poster art for the movie is pretty great. Jake mentions that Salt-N-Pepa make an appearance in Coming 2 America. Spinderella does not. It looks like Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor was, in fact, in a relationship with Salt for a while in the 80’s. Jake should really know who Wendy Williams is. Jack Kirby continues to be Phil's example of someone who did work-for-hire in a creative field and didn't get paid. Jake was wrong: Spinderella is credited as a one of the producers on some of Salt-N-Pepa’s albums. But he was right when he guessed that she’s not even a performer on the album that features “Push It”. Here’s a clip from the Salt-N-Pepa Lifetime movie. We talk about the NWA song “I Ain’t Tha 1” (written and performed by Ice Cube). The lyrics are troublesome, but tame in comparison to some of his later more misogynistic songs. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Brittany Murphy * Dolly Parton * the Brothers Grimm * Ever After (1998 movie) * Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish * Meghan Markle *  social mobility * step-mothers * sheeple * Jenny McCarthy * Barry Bonds, the home run king of all time * Bridgerton * Steve Jobs * toe shoes * Bon Jovi * the word “moist” * wind chimes * MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 * kefir * ShakiraBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):TOP TEN:1. Dolly Parton - person2. interspecies animal friends - idea3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location4. Prince - person5. It’s-It - food6. Cher - person7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character8. Donald Duck - fictional character9. Hank Williams - person10. air - substanceBOTTOM TEN:134. Lincoln Logs - toy135. broken glass - substance136. Jenny McCarthy - person137. Jon Voight - person138. Hank Williams, Jr - person139. McRib - food140. war - idea141. cigarettes - drug142. QAnon - idea143. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter and Instagram.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Clement Street in the Richmond retains the charm of a San Francisco neighborhood where local businesses are an integral part of the community. This week, Nicole, David, and Michael take a virtual stroll down the eastern end of Clement to highlight some of the many long-standing businesses located there.

We’re marching our way towards St Patrick’s Day on the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. Subscribe and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. The Bookends, Marc Gunn, Sam Gillogly, Deirdre Graham, The Gas Men, Roads to Home, The Known World Project, Lorcan Mac Mathuna, Hawp, The Darkeyed Musician, Scythian, Reilly, Tuatha de Danann, Andrew McManus, Brad Tuck I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, please share the show on social or with a friend. The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is here to build our diverse Celtic community and help the incredible artists who so generously share their music with you. If you hear music you love, buy the albums, shirts, and songbooks, follow the artists on streaming, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. Every week, you can get Celtic music news in your inbox. The Celtic Music Magazine is a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Subscribe and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. Just list the show number, and the name of as many bands in the episode as you like. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2021 episode.  Vote Now! THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:03 - The Bookends "St Patrick's March" from Chapter One 5:05 - WELCOME 5:37 - Marc Gunn, Sam Gillogly "Battle of Aughrim/Star of Munster" from Selcouth 9:11 - Deirdre Graham "Uamh an Oir" from URRANTA Pronunciation Uamh an Oir - Oo-uv un Ore 14:00 - The Gas Men "Patsy Geary's/Connie O'Connell's/Going to the Well for Water" from Clement Street 17:58 - Roads to Home "Carrickfergus" from Dark of the Moon 22:52 - CELTIC FEEDBACK 27:35 - The Known World Project "Thig am Bata" from The Willow Sessions Pronunciation Thig an bata - Hig un but-ah 30:02 - Lorcan Mac Mathuna "The Dead Kings" from An Bhuatais & The Meaning of Life Pronunciation An Bhuatais - Un Voo-a-tish 37:13 - Hawp "O, Mary Turn Awa'" from Storm and Calm 39:44 - The Darkeyed Musician "The Pledge" from The Pledge 43:53 - THANKS 45:10 - Scythian "Galway City" feat. Shane Hayes from Roots & Stones 48:36 - Reilly "Brave the Fight" from Saints of the Ocean 52:16 - Tuatha de Danann "The Master Reels" from In Nomine Eireann 57:30 - Andrew McManus "One of a Kind" from Days of Wonder 1:01:56 - CLOSING 1:03:14 - Brad Tuck "Off to Sea" from The Rocky Isle The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. The show was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to Apple Podcasts or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/. WELCOME TO CELTIC MUSIC * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic musician and podcaster. This show is dedicated to the indie Celtic musicians. Please support these artists. Share the show with your friends. And find more episodes at celticmusicpodcast.com. You can also support this podcast on Patreon. ATTN Celtic Musicians. I’m looking for some good stories to share. You see, I also host the Pub Songs Podcast. I started sharing stories from musicians about their songs. I’d like to do more of those. So if you have a story that you’d like to share about a song, from a gig, or maybe even just a piece of Celtic history that you love. Drop me an email at marc@marcgunn.com. Put “Pub Story” in the show subject. Tell me about your story. Maybe I’ll ask you to record your story for the show. THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! Because of Your kind and generous support, this show comes out every week. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow. As a patron, you get to hear episodes before regular listeners. When we hit a milestone, you get an extra-long episode. You can pledge a dollar or more per episode and cap how much you want to spend each month over on Patreon. A super special thanks to our newest patrons: Cynthia R, shawn b, Mark B, Paul Crowley You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast on Patreon at SongHenge.com. TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/ #celticmusic #irishmusic #celticpodcast I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Email a voicemail message to celticpodcast@gmail.com James Slaven emailed photos: "Hey, Marc! Hope things are going well!  Still immensely enjoying the podcast.  It's been quite helpful as I hike around state parks to get some socially distanced exercise and keep sane during my ten months (so far) of working from home.  A few pictures are attached of various hikes that I was taking while listening to your various shows.  There's nothing like having the bagpipes come on as you crest a hill and see a beautiful lake! Also, I'm enjoying the variety in the shows.  Bagpipe and Irish pub tunes are my two favorites, but being exposed to other fusion genres and having a nice mixture of genders and of cultures is awesome.   Keep up the good work!" Mike Nichols emailed: "I think you have played a track from Sea Star on one of your programs I have heard.  I believe Faye was part of a duo that performed under the moniker of Syren. I have one track of theirs from the old "noise trade " or downloads,com days. Red is the Rose: I love this track to a degree that is not reasonable. Wondering if you have any information about where that music catalog might be available. Would love to hear Great Selkie or Moon Jubilee, I'm sure your cast experience could weave either of those into a fantastic episode of one of creatures and the other of celebration songs. Just Mike's opinion. Thanks for a terrific show. Your great work helps me with long drives at my work. I've been busily sharing the show with a few select friends. Thanks again" David Black emailed: "Hi, Further to your episode #483 about being poor but happy I would suggest an Irish song immediately suited to this subject called Cad É Sin Don Té Sin (a rather strange expression in the Irish Language meaning, what's it to you if it doesn't bother you). Altan have done a great version with a different melody." KIM KNEBEL emailed: "Hi Marc. Just listened to the recent podcast featuring women in Celtic music. Suggestion for the new version: The Holman sisters of Tuatha Dea (Rebecca Mullikin) and their violinist, Laura Smith. The song Alienn Dun is haunting and their voices just amazing. While they've gone a bit more to the rock side, their older music has a Celtic/Gypsy flair. Laura is a newer addition and is pretty amazing. Thank you for all you do!!"

We add the McRib, San Francisco's Clement Street and wind chimes to the List of Every Damn Thing.

Our tenth episode of On the Fly is with one of my dear friends and my homie, chef Rob Lam of Perle Wine Bar in Montclair, Town Square Eats in Jack London Square, and his upcoming pet project, Lily, which was on track to open on Clement Street in SF in mid-March, but remains in a state of suspense. I originally called to just check in on him, catch up, hear what was the latest, and how he was doing, but as I was listening to everything he's trying to figure out, I realized that I should actually be recording our conversation. Rob covers a lot of ground, from the role of technology in helping them rise to the current challenge of converting three restaurant concepts to takeout and delivery, to the brutal finances, to looking ahead and mulling over ideas on how to format happy hour, the dining experience, the menu, even what kinds of drinks will work best. He also talks about how they're looking at launching their new restaurant through takeout, and how that experience will tell the story of Lily. I was impressed with his positive mindset about how to approach all these business challenges, and how he believes it's all making him a better restaurateur. But, like any true hospitalitarian, Rob is concerned about what hospitality will look like in this new world—what will be left behind in the guest experience as we knew it, and what’s to come? Thanks for listening in. Perle Wine Bar: https://www.perlewinebar.comTown Square Eats: https://www.townsquareeats.comLily: https://www.instagram.com/lilyonclement/Two-Top: 1. WesBurger 'N' More: https://www.wesburgernmore.com2. Roam: https://www.roamburgers.comIf you’re a Bay Area business or individual and want to be featured in On the Fly, please fill out the form at bit.ly/ontheflyguest.Support the show (http://www.venmo.com/Marcia-Gagliardi)

Jack Anderson's talented sisters, Lenore and Jean, owned and operated the Anderson Sisters School of Dance on Clement Street. Learn which beloved actor performed there early in their career.

The video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its tenth birthday so what better time to talk to its creator about the early days of the online games media, the future of games coverage, and getting fired in front of the entire world. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclippodcast Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,638 Patrons. --------------------------------------------------------------   - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about video games, the people who make them, and the people who play them. On today's episode we talk to a guy who grew up a short drive from the epicenter of the online media revolution. As video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its 10th year of operation, we decided to talk to its founder about skipping school, hosting podcasts, and getting fired in front of the entire world. Jeff Gerstmann is a name you either know or don't, depending on whether or not you care about the world of games coverage. Outside of the world of games, Jeff is a husband, son, and a grown-up local kid in Petaluma, a city in Northern California that sits on the outskirts of what many would consider a reasonable commute to San Francisco. There he grew up with his mum and dad who operated a tire shop. A small town kid, with a small town life who loved rap, skateboards, and video games. But inside the world of games Jeff is larger than life. He's part of a dwindling older generation of journalists who were there when the magazines died, and the world of internet reporting exploded. He's lead the charge on finding new ways to talk about games, be it on video, podcast or late light E3 live shows. And crucially, his surname became a rallying cry for media ethics when he fell victim to one of the most lamentable acts of brand self-destruction of the digital age. Much of Jeff's story lives in the gaming zeitgeist. Before I met him, I thought I knew most of it. You see, to me Jeff was a hero. He had figured it all out. Growing up in Ireland, years before Twitch or even YouTube had started, I'd watch him host shows broadcast live from the GameSpot offices in San Francisco. His job was talking about games, and he knew more about games than anyone I'd ever seen trying to do it on television. His job became a north star that I'd spend years following. And when I'd eventually find myself working in the same building those shows were filmed in, sitting at a desk a short walk from his, I slowly began to get a deeper understanding of Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann. Equal parts a quiet, contemplative person and a troublemaker, now responsible for keeping order. I recently sat down with Jeff to talk about the 10 Year Anniversary of his career's second act, the video game website GiantBomb.com. But the story of Giant Bomb and the story of Jeff Gerstmann are intertwined. So to tell you how Giant Bomb was founded we have to go back to a small town in Northern California, to the kid of the folks who ran the tire shop in sunny, quiet, suburban, Petaluma. - [Jeff] The first video game console I owned, it was the Fairchild Channel F, which was, it kinda came out around the same time, same window as the Atari 2600 but it had a few more educational games so I think that tipped my parents in the favor of getting that thing, it had this terrible plunger controller, there was like a decent bowling game but it just immediately failed. I had relatives who had an Atari 2600 and would kinda covet that thing and eventually they gave it to me when the video game industry kinda crashed. But we got into computers not long after that. I got an Atari 400 and that was really the first proper like hey, this is a somewhat successful platform with stuff coming out that mattered. And so I mostly started on a computer. - [Danny] What was the impetus for your parents getting it? Were they interested in technology at all or were you crying for it or what was the story there? - [Jeff] You know, my dad played some video games certainly over the years but I think that was largely because that's what I was interested in. We were going to arcades a lot and on the weekends we would go out, there was an arcade in town called Dodge City and we would go to Dodge City. You know, my mom went once or twice, this was like the height of Pac-Man fever so like I would be there, my dad would be there, we'd be playing games and there would just be this huge line almost out the door of people waiting to play Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man. And it was just weird, you know, because it was just another game, like to me it was just like, all right, well yeah, I don't know, Pac-Man's over there and it is what it is and I'm over here playing Galaxian or Vanguard or you know, whatever the heck else, I don't really remember talking to too many people about video games. This was, you know, this woulda been, god, 82 ish, like early to mid 80s really and I was going to elementary school then and just there were like one or two other kids I knew that had computers but most kids didn't and they weren't really into video games per say or if they were they weren't really letting on. So there was one kid I knew that had a TRS-80 and so I'd go over to his place and play Parsec and some other stuff like that. There was a kid near the tire shop that my parents ran that had a VIC-20 and I could go over there and play like Radar Rat Race and some other stuff too. - [Danny] So, I guess, what did you want to be when you grew up when you were like a middle schooler? Obviously games journalism wasn't a target you could exactly aim for so what were you thinking about your future when you were in like middle school, high school? - [Jeff] When I was in high school we saw a posting, so LucasArts was relatively local, they were in Marin County and, you know, this woulda been like 1990, 1991, somewhere around there, and they were looking for testers. And I remember applying for it but like I was 15. Like it was, logistically it would've been impossible for me to even do that job 'cause I couldn't even drive a car yet. And it was 20ish miles away. But also like I remember writing, like they wanted a resume, I wrote an essay and it was like, you should give me this job. It was real dumb, I mean, whatever, in retrospect it was like, that is not a way to get a job. Also, ridiculous to assume that that would've even been possible at 15. But yeah, that was the first time I ever really thought about working in video games, I woulda been like 14 or 15. - [Danny] So how did it actually come to pass then? What was your first gig in the industry and how did you end up getting it? - [Jeff] So, I started going to trade shows, I met a guy a named Glenn Rubenstein who was a year younger than I was and we went to the same school, we went to the same high school. And Glenn was writing video game reviews for the local Petaluma newspaper and also I think he had a column in the San Francisco Examiner which was a newspaper. And so there would be articles about like, this youthful guy writing game reviews, look at this guy, it was like kind of a story or whatever. So we became friends, then he kinda said like, hey, I'm going to CES, do you wanna come with me? And I was like, yeah, I would love to go see video games. - [Danny] How old are you? - [Jeff] This is, I'm 16 at this point, he's 15. - [Danny] Wow, okay. It's in Vegas, right? - It's in Vegas also, yes. He's like, hey do you wanna come to Las Vegas. So I pitched it to my parents and just said like, hey, this thing's going on, I'd really like to go do it and they said yes, for whatever reason they said yes. And so me and Glenn set out to go, he had been to one before, he had been to CES I think the previous CES in Chicago might've been his first and so I went with him to that and just like I bought myself like a blazer and put it on and went to this trade show and went around and played video games and tried to play blackjack wearing a blazer because I looked like maybe I was of age. And that's where we met Ryan McDonald. We needed, honestly, I think we just needed more people to help pay for the hotel room or something like that and Ryan was doing something similar, he was writing about video games for a Healdsburg newspaper, which is about 40 miles north of Petaluma, where I'm now, which, for people who don't know, Petaluma is about 40 miles north of San Francisco, so, you know, Healdsburg's getting pretty far out there. And we met Ryan at the local mall, he seemed like an okay guy and we're like, yeah, you wanna come, let's go to Las Vegas. And so I kind of started just going to trade shows, we all met the guys from Game Informer pretty early on, Andy McNamara and Paul and some of the early other reviewers that were there at the time, Elizabeth Olsen and people like that, and we knew some people that were doing PR for video games at the time and stuff like that so we just kinda started meeting people and getting around. So that led to, Glenn ended up, so Glenn actually got me my first couple of jobs afterwards. We started going to the trade shows, we were doing a local public access show that was not about video games, it wasn't about much of anything really, and basically like barely getting by in high school 'cause we were just doing all this other stuff and not wanting to go to school very much. And so he ended up getting in at a magazine, they were starting up a magazine, they were originally gonna call it Blast, they were gonna call it Blast and it was gonna be like this lifestyle magazine funded by the, I guess the CEO of Creative Labs, so the Sound Blaster people were starting, basically funding a magazine. And so I spent a year commuting to Berkeley working for this magazine right after I got out of high school, so that woulda been like 1994. I was 19 commuting to Berkeley, working for a magazine, having no idea what I was doing, and we were covering Doom and we were covering, what are some fun things you could do with your Creative Labs branded sound card and stuff like that, that place lasted a little under a year before it folded. We made it about three issues, I think there was fourth that was almost done, and then I was out of there and had no idea what to do next. I was 19 and jaded and like burned by how that job went and angry at everything. - [Danny] Yeah, had you dropped out of high school, had you just sorta finished it and then left off or were you thinking about college or were you thinkin', oh shit, do I jump to another journalism gig, what was your head space then? - [Jeff] I finished high school. Between the public access show we were doing and this video game stuff that was still pretty nascent, you know, it wasn't really a job, it was very easy to look at that stuff and go like, man, I don't wanna go to school, like it's a waste of time. And so there was awhile there that like, I'll get my GED which is like so you can kinda test out of high school. And they tell you that it's equivalent to a high school diploma but then in some ways it's kind of not, I don't know, there was a weird. I had missed so much school and also we, so we were doing the public access show and I filmed a teacher, so a teacher at the high school I was going to, our chemistry teacher got fired and I believe the talk was, and I'm not sure, it was sexual harassment from the sounds of things, like to students. And so the first day that they introduced here's your new chemistry teacher I had the video camera that we used to tape the show so I filmed them introducing this new teacher and all this other stuff and like asked them questions like it was a press conference. And they answered, no one said, hey put that thing down. Like I was very clearly pointing a video camera at them. And then like the next day, that day, the day after, something like that, like the principal called me and said, hey, what are you gonna do with that video tape? And I said, well we're gonna put it on television. - [Danny] Oh my gosh. - [Jeff] And he was super not happy about that. - [Danny] I wonder why. - [Jeff] Yeah, and so at that point we realized we had something so we called the papers and said, hey we got this tape and they started investigating it and it became a story, it was something that they, I think they were trying to keep very quiet. Later on that teacher would show up at my doorstep looking for a copy of the tape because he was trying to sue the, I don't know, he was trying to get something out of the school district or something over what happened, this was years later after I was out of high school. So that was very strange. So after that between the amount of school we were missing, I had like a guidance counselor basically recommend that I should go on independent study. Which was basically, at the time it was primarily, it woulda been like pregnant teens and people that like were having trouble in school and that sorta stuff and they were like, oh, we're piloting a new program for kids who don't necessarily fit into the standard curriculum and they pitched it like that but basically it felt like they were just trying to get me and Glenn out of there. - [Danny] Right, journalist at heart it turns out. - [Jeff] I guess, I don't know. And so that led to me getting much higher grades and stuff because I was able to just kinda like crank through stuff really quickly. I graduated early because I just finished the work. I mean, I graduated like two weeks early, not hugely early. But it was great, it felt like I was getting one over on the school district because I was doing a full semester of science while like reading a book in my patents hot tub or, you know, just like stupid crap like that. I was getting like journalism credit for the stuff we were doing going to trade shows and like video production, they were just throwin' credits at me left and right and so yeah, I graduated early, it was great, I was able to take that and go back to the high school that I had stopped going to and go talk to like the one teacher that I liked, Mr. Moore, he was a math teacher, great guy, I think he taught some of the computer stuff also. And I remember telling him like, hey, I just graduated. And he just looked at me and said, god dammit, Gerstmann, you got 'em. He seemed like dismayed that I had managed to get one over on the system somehow but he couldn't help, but yeah, it was a, that felt pretty good. - [Danny] Through his life, Jeff's do-it-his-own way attitude has been both a source of great strength and the catalyst for much drama. He attended a local junior college for a semester, but it didn't stick, preferring to do extra-curricular work like attending trade-shows with his friend Ryan McDonald, hanging out with local bands, and as he put it, learning how to drink. Around this time Glenn, who had gotta him the job at the magazine years earlier, started working for a new website in San Francisco's Richmond district. Just a few blocks from the servers of archive.org on the cloudy avenues of Clement Street, lied an office where a staff of 20 was running the website GameSpot. They had hired Glenn to lead the charge on a new console-focused spin-off of the site that they were going to call VideoGameSpot. - [Jeff] Glenn hired Ryan McDonald not long after that to be like the strategy slash codes editor and then I started freelancing for him because they wanted 100 reviews by launch and they were lookin' to launch like three months, four months from that time. And so I started crankin' out reviews and the way I always heard it was that I was turning reviews around really quickly, really clean copy, and so Vince Broady kinda said like, hey, bring this guy and let's see. And they brought me in as like an editorial assistant which was more or less an intern type role and within two or three months, not even two or three months, within like a month, the launch editor, there was a guy, Joe Hutsko, who would come on, it was one of Vince's friends who had just come on I think to kinda see this console site through to launch and then I think he was gonna go on to do something else somewhere else and I was working late one night and Joe Hutsko walked by and saw me there and he was like, you're still here, what are you doin'? I was like, this work has to get done. And then like the next day I had an offer letter for a full time job at that point. - [Danny] GameSpot would go through several transformations and acquisitions over the coming years. But as the business side of online media was learning how to walk, emerging technologies were creating exciting new ways for people to talk about games. GameSpot led this charge with one of the first video game podcasts, The Hotspot, and a weekly live show, On The Spot. Suddenly these young game reporters were starting to become more than just bylines. For years readers, the folks writing reviews and new articles, were just names at the bottom of a page. But now, for the first time, they were people with voices and faces. People with unique perspectives, opinions and personalities. And Jeff, with his experience doing public access shows in Petaluma, was at the forefront of this new form of media. The idea of streaming video games on the internet now is so blase and normal but back then I think to a lot of people it felt like magical, like a television channel that's broadcasting about games. From your perspective on your guys's end, did it feel weird to be like doing a live show that people were watching while you were just talking about this relatively niche hobby? - [Jeff] It felt like a natural extension of the stuff we had been doing. And it felt like, I don't know, it felt fresh and cool and like the tech was weird and sometimes it didn't work the way you wanted it to but at the same time we were wearing makeup, we had built a studio, we had lights, we had a jib, it was Frank Adams lowering a camera into the shot and all this other stuff and so coming from like these lame public access shows I was doing when I was 16 and stuff, like I had a weird leg up on a lot of other people because I was already relatively comfortable being in front of a camera. - [Danny] GameSpot continued to evolve. It went from indie to being purchased by media house Ziff Davis who then eventually sold it to CNET. By this stage the editor in chief was Greg Kasavin, who you may now recognize as the creative director of Supergiant Games, a studio we're currently running an embedded series on. His two right hand men at the time were Ricardo Torres on previews and Jeff on reviews. But when Greg left to start his career in games production, the role was never properly filled. Instead Ricardo and Jeff sort of ran it together, with increased influence being exerted on them from the powers above. The original founders of GameSpot had come from a editorial background but they were gone and the site was now being managed by people were less seasoned, more traffic orientated, and didn't value the power of editorial independence as much as they should have. - [Jeff] You know, there was an understanding about like this is kinda how this stuff is supposed to work, it's not always supposed to be an easy relationship if everyone's kind of sticking to their guns and doing their jobs and stuff. I don't know that they always saw the value of that, I think that's something that they corrected quickly, it was just kind of, it was a blip, if you look at GameSpot as a 20 plus year institution there was that brief period of time there where it was like, man, this went a little sideways for a bit and I was just in the right place at the right time, wrong place wrong time, whatever it was. - [Danny] What happened to Jeff next has been told a thousand times with new pieces added as time has provided new context. I myself spent years trying to fill in the blanks on how it all went down. Talking to friends and colleagues of Jeff who were there that day. It was a Wednesday in November, 2007 and the office was busily preparing for the weekly live-show which aired on Thursday afternoon. Jeff had just another another brush-up with management, this time over a review of Kane and Lynch which had made the sales department uncomfortable as they had sold a large advertising campaign to the game's publisher Eidos. If you visited GameSpot that week, the entire homepage was taken over by messaging about the game alongside a six out of ten review from Jeff. Jeff had had some run ins with top brass before and felt like he'd come close to losing his job a few times but this wasn't one of those times. It seemed like it had been dealt with, and he was already working on his next review. Later that morning his supervisor called him into a meeting and then called HR. He was told he was being terminated immediately, and as California is an at-will employment state, Jeff had no recourse. He was told to clean out his desk and bizarrely he was allowed to walk the halls for the rest of the day. Saying goodbye to his friends and colleagues, who were cursing the names of those in charge. Jeff drove home that day, the same 40 mile commute between San Francisco and Petaluma he had done thousands of times before. But this time it would be different, it would be a number of years before he stepped foot in the building again. There was no live show that week, the Kane and Lynch review had been taken down and then reposted and slowly over the coming days rumors began to circulate about Jeff's termination. Popular webcomic Penny Arcade ran a strip outlining the pressure from Eidos. Staff from the website 1UP, who were located just a block north of GameSpot on San Francisco's 2nd Street, held a protest outside the lobby of the building in support of the remaining staff. In an age before social media it would be a full eight days before the staff would actually speak up. And it happened on the next episode of On The Spot. The show ran with a somber opening. Ryan McDonald flanked by Ricardo Torres and a wincing Alex Navarro explained the situation. The camera pans out to reveal a full set with previewer Brad shoemaker, new hire Kevin VanOrd, community manager Jody Robinson and reporter Brendan Sinclar among a dozen of other staff. - [Ryan] Obviously we wanted to start today's On the Spot off a little different than we had in the past. The recent events and what happened last week in regards to our longtime friend and colleague, Jeff Gerstmann, being dismissed. It's been really hard on us and the response obviously's been tremendously immense and it's been on both sides. It's nice to see that everybody speaks up and has been kinda pullin' for us. On the other hand it's been hard obviously seein' GameSpot sucks written 100,000 times on forums and stuff so obviously we wanted to address this and talk to you guys today. Jeff was a personal friend to pretty much everybody so it was really, really hard that it happened the way it did. But yeah, we really wanted to say that we love and miss Jeff and give him, honestly, the proper send off that he deserves so that's what today's show's all about. And obviously you can see this is hard for me personally. - [Danny] For Jeff things were equally as bizarre. Tech Blogs like ValleyWag were running stories about the state of the site which were clearly sourced from somebody inside of GameSpot. The LA Times ran a story about the firing. And Jeff's mother received a phone call from a newspaper in Norway looking for a quote. It was three a.m. when the phone rang. - [Jeff] You know, some of it was just like, some of the people I talked to were very like looking for more dirt, they were expecting me to get on the phone and be like, oh, well here's where the rest of the bodies are buried. But like, you know, I was shocked. I was not happy about the whole thing but at the same time I feel good about the work I did while I was there and there were so many great people there that kinda got caught in some of this crossfire a little bit. I wasn't like, oh well here's the other nasty things that happened, there wasn't any. There wasn't anything else. So some people were coming to me looking for like some bigger story that I just didn't have to give. And that was strange, it seemed like everyone wanted something from me for a little while and it was a very weird time. And so at that point it was like, 'cause you know, like I was not an editor in chief in title but you know, we were running an editorial team. And so there aren't a lot of jobs out there at that level. It wasn't like I could walk into IGN or 1UP or, you know, I don't even know who else was even out there at that point, it wasn't like I could walk into those places and say, yes, make me your editor in chief. Like, they already have people in those roles, it wasn't really a viable thing. So at that point I was like, well I kinda need to maybe start something new. The weekend after everything went down or it might've been, it was like the Friday after or maybe it was like a full week afterwards, a bunch of people that I used to work with came up here to my place and we just hung out, like kinda impromptu, just have a bunch of drinks, play some Rock Band, and that sorta thing, and Dave Snider came by, Ryan Davis invited Dave over. And Dave was working on his stuff, I think Boompa was still up, they had a car website, you know, they were running Comic Vine, they were building Political Base which was another kind of wiki focused site for political donations in the run up to that election there, this was November, 2007. And so they were starting a new company and looking to build, they were building websites. And I was like, oh, that's cool, awesome, and nothing really came of it for a little bit. So I went and did a show on Revision3, so I drove into San Francisco, did that show, and then on the way back from or as I was finishing up that show I got a call from Dave and he said, hey, you should come by the office in Sausalito and just come by. I was like, all right, cool. And so on my way back from there I stopped at the office in Sausalito and looked at Comic Vine, the other stuff they were doing, and we sat in a room and ate sandwiches and I more or less committed to them right there. It was kind of like an, oh, we'll think about it and they were very much like, hey, why don't you just take a month and get your head together, like take an actual break 'cause this is so crazy and then let us know what you wanna do. And so we kinda started building a website not too long after that. - [Danny] Over the coming weeks several of Jeff's friends would leave GameSpot. Some were burned out from games coverage, this latest spell just being the straw that broke the camel's back. But others were leaving to work with Jeff. Fellow Sonoma County local Ryan Davis was the first. The two of them set up a blog, and started to a run a podcast which they hurriedly titled, Arrow Pointing Down. - [Jeff] So, every single person at the company that we were, that I was now a part of were people that had worked at that old company. And so we did not wanna give the appearance of people getting poached out of there and like I don't know if there was an actual non compete with some of the people in the building or anything that would've prevented them from doing this stuff but all of it had to be kind of like quiet and so it couldn't be something as simple as like, hey we want to hire you over here. It had to be like, well, if you were, if you were no longer working and you needed a place to work we do have some opening. You know, it was very much that sort of thing. But I knew pretty immediately looking at it and going, okay, we wanna team of about this size and I knew that Alex would not be available, Alex Navarro, I knew that he was not looking to do this sort of work at that time. He was, you know, I think already thinking about Harmonix, he ended up doing public relations for Harmonix for a brief period of time. Like I pretty much had a whiteboard, I knew in my head that I, at that point it was like okay, this is me, it's Ryan, it's Brad, it's Vinny. Which is not how you're supposed to hire people. You know, some people are like, well what are the positions that we're looking to fill and all this other stuff and, but like knowing like what we looking to build and we needed to be a tight team, who were the people that are gonna be impactful in those roles, like okay, Brad has a lot of experience in previews, he is a person that I know, like he knows a ton of people around the game industry. Like, I've worked reviews and so on the review side of things we didn't talk to companies all that often. Brad had that in his role so he left, he left and he had other things that he was maybe thinking about doing, it wasn't like a, it was not a clandestine like, he left specifically to, it was like, okay, he's out and we're gonna figure this out. And then we needed someone to do do video and we had been working with Vinny for awhile and Vinny was fantastic and it was like, okay, Vinny's really funny, this seems like a good fit for him and so we kinda went about it that way. It felt like night and day a lot of ways, but very similar in others. We were able to sit down for the first time, for me the first time ever, like I never thought I would have the opportunity to build something like this, you know. I was always like very respectful or very envious of like Vince Broady as like the editorial lead of the founder of GameSpot and so I was like, man, he took a chance and built this thing and built it from the ground up and look at it, it's this huge, this monument, it's lasted so long. And I never thought I would have an opportunity like that in my career, it just never seemed like it was in the cards. And so being forced into it was exciting. Because it let me sit down and be like, okay, what do we actually want to do? What do we think is actually the best way to cover games with a small team in this day and age? And when we started in 96 on VideoGameSpot, like the videos had to be very low frame rate and very short because no one could download 'em and, you know, it was like we were doing minute long video clips of gameplay and that was revolutionary at the time. You know, you had to install the Real Video Player and all this, you know, all this other stuff. And here we were on the cusp of like, actually we can kind of, we can kinda livestream, you know, the services to do it easily weren't in place, you still had to host it yourself and that got very expensive and all that and YouTube wasn't really there in the way that they are now, YouTube existed but it was, I don't think you could put up videos that were longer than five or 10 minutes at the time and it just was not a viable place for that at the time. And so we had to kinda sit down and say, well with the technology we have available what can we do? And we wanted to be a podcast, the Hotspot was one of the most fun things I had doing in my entire time at GameSpot and we knew right out of the gate that we wanted to have a podcast be kind of one of the main things. And then from there it was like, okay, well, do we wanna write news? Not really, none of us are really news writers per say. And it was like, well, we need to able to capture video of games and put it on the internet. And we need to be able to talk alongside it or something like that, whether we're cutting it together or doing it on the fly. And so Mike Tatum, who was the head of biz dev for the company just went out to the Apple Store and came back with the biggest ass Mac Pro he could've gotten at the time and set it the room with me and Ryan and we looked at it and we were like, neither of us know how to use any of this shit. And we messed around with it long enough to figure out eventually we could capture some footage. We were like, okay, we figured out, first the game we captured footage of was Hot Shots Golf for the Playstation 3. And we were like, okay, we captured the footage, now what do we with it? And we hadn't answered that question yet 'cause there was no website to put it on or anything like that. So those early silly days of just like putting that stuff together. We didn't really know exactly what we wanted to do, it was just a matter, it was very freeing in way to be able to sit down and be like, okay, here are the things that we liked doing before, let's try to keep doing that. And then the rest is up in the air. For a long time there we weren't even necessarily sold on the idea of just covering video games. It was always meant to be bigger than that. We were gonna cover music, we were gonna cover movies, you know, all this other stuff. But at the end of the day old habits die hard, it was very easy for us to cover video games compared to like, calling music PR people out of the blue and being like, hey, we wanna interview this artist that's coming to town, can you set, you know, it was just, we stuck with what we knew and kinda just mainly covered video games and flavors of Gatorade. Really it was the original mandate for GameSpot was we wanna create a site that we ourselves would use. And I approached it that way and said like, well, what kind of game coverage do I actually care about? And a lot of the preview related stuff at the time was just not, it was a lot of like carved up little parts of a game. Like, we're gonna give you assets on these three new guns and this two new trees and it was like, here's the rims and tires of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Outlets used to compete for the exclusive rights to run stuff like that. It was a very different time so we knew we were never gonna matter to publishers the same way the big sites did and that was fine, we wanted to kinda do our own thing and so that led to it being a little more guerrilla. You talked earlier about long footage of games being something of a novelty or a weird impossibility back then but for us it kinda just became a necessity because of the number of people we had and the lack of time we could devote to actual editing. It was like, just stuff kinda came in long out of the gate. And so we first launched as just a WordPress blog and we went to our first E3 in 08 with just a WordPress blog. We could run videos on it but it was pretty bare bones. It was mostly a placeholder, it was like, here's the name of the site, you can comment on these stories, and we were just kind of writing news and reviews and putting up videos here and there. And it was all pretty straightforward stuff, it was like that and the podcast. And then we rolled out the full site not long after that E3, it was like July of that year I think and then that was like, okay, now here's this full wiki, here's all this other stuff. Better user features, full message boards, all this other stuff. And so we went at it that way for awhile and then the premium membership stuff came later. - [Danny] It wasn't just old staff who were leaving GameSpot for Jeff's new project, users were flocking too. Once the full site was launched tens of thousands of profiles were created, a large portion of which were disenfranchised GameSpot fans who wanted to support Jeff and the staff who had left. I was one of them and I remember that time well. The passion and excitement of those days was one of the most powerful moments I've had as part of an online community. And the folks at Whiskey Media used this passion to help fund the site. Giant Bomb had taken the ad-free subscription model that GameSpot had pioneered, and added much more. For $5 a month you not only supported some of your favorite creators, but got access to bonus videos and features. New users signed up in their droves. - [Jeff] The launch of the site proper exceeded our expectations in a way that like wiki submissions were taking a week or more to approve because so many people were signing up and contributing and all this other stuff, it was just, we were staying up all night working on just the community stuff, moderation stuff. And then the premium membership stuff did well out of the gate. We went back and forth on a few ideas about what are we offering here and all that sort of stuff but yeah, it did really well that first day. Advertising was never really a thing for us, we had one in house ad person eventually for a brief period of time but like, you know, advertising's all about eyeballs and we were never gonna be the biggest website in the world, it was we were about, okay, well we want people who really care about this stuff and so, you know, in advertising you're trying to make a case for just like, oh no, this is a smaller audience but they're smarter and they spend more money and you know, at some point you have to go out and educate brands and say like, here's why you wanna advertise here instead of there or spend your money with us because our people are smarter or this and that and at the end of the day advertisers just want eyeballs so like you can go in and pitch that story all you want, it's just not how the advertising model typically works. So we had a few things where like, you know, we had some sponsored achievements on the site and there was a livestream, I was actually against it, but they did a livestream for, NTSF:SUV:SD, I think was the ordering of that, an Adult Swim show. Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. They did a livestream like live watch along with it. And so we were doing a few things like that that were innovative at the time I guess and so you would have people who understood like, hey, the internet is changing, it's not necessarily about just raw eyeballs. We wanna find people who are more engaged with a thing and you know, this was kinda like the nascent form of like the influencer type stuff about like figuring out who are these people we can get that have sway with their audiences and so on and so forth. But, us being an editorial operation, we could never really go fully into that world. So the stuff that I would be comfortable doing in those spaces kinda, we ended up shooting down a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than we signed because it was like, no, I don't think we can do that. So the advertising stuff was never really gonna be for us and for those reasons, it's just, you know, the advertising market just wasn't really compatible with our size and our scope but also kind of our mentality and where we were at with stuff so we wanted to try and find something different. And again, that was another Dave Snider, Dave was kind of the main first proponent about like, no, people will pay for good stuff on the internet, I know it. And I think I was a little more like, I don't know, man, people like to pirate stuff. But he's like, no, this will, he won me over pretty fast and we went through with it, we went on with it. - [Danny] Giant Bomb has been running for a decade and in that time the site has evolved to keep up with the changing desires of its audience. But there are a few shows that have lasted the test of time. Their weekly podcast The Giant Bombcast has had over 570 episodes and is one of the most popular video game podcasts in the world. And their Quick Looks series predated the creation of Let's Plays, still exists today. I asked Jeff to tell me about some of his favorites are. He notes their live E3 internet show, and eventually making the podcast profitable as some of his proudest achievements. As shows have come and gone, so too have staff. Just like GameSpot created a platform for Jeff to make a name for himself. Giant Bomb has become an incubator of talent all to itself. As the sort of captain of the ship as well, what does it feel like to be responsible for kind of what Giant Bomb has become in terms of its, as an incubator for talent, right. You've had people come through the doors and leave out the other side to go on to wonderful careers as well. Do you take a pride in that, especially considering, you know, how you seem to have a reverence for the people who gave you opportunities in your early career. - [Jeff] It's cool, I don't always think about it. Like, I don't know, like I look at it and go like, did I do anything for anyone, I don't know, I'm just here, I don't know, I just do my thing. And I don't know that I always, I used to take it really personally back in the GameSpot days when anyone would leave. I would always think like, man, why would you, why would you go do something else, we're doing great, we're doing all this other stuff, and now I look at it in retrospect and go like, maybe it was people like me in the senior roles for as long as we were that led to people below us wanting to get out for more opportunities, and go like, man, yeah, okay. But yeah, I used to take it really personally 'cause I just, you know, it was great to just, there were times where, you know, man, this is the best team I've ever worked with, this is great. Oh, three people are leaving over the course of six months, what's goin on? And the people that left in the run up to me leaving, at the time I was really bummed out, in retrospect I was like, oh, yeah okay, I get it. And things change and people change and they want something else out of their careers and they wanna take on new challenges and all that sorta stuff and I think that's great. At the same time, like I miss the people that have moved on. Like, there was a time there that there were, we were starting to have conversations, it's like, no, we need to move Danny O'Dwyer over to Giant Bomb, like we have, this should happen. And then he went out and found fame and fortune on his own without us and I was like, well, shit. Let that one slip away, I guess. - [Danny] There will always be a part of me in my professional sort of hindsight that will, I remember when you mentioned that to me at a certain point, I can't remember, was it when I had already handed in my notice or I think it was probably a little bit before maybe, where like, that is like the ultimate dream come true. But now I have a new dream come true which is that I get to just pop into the office and review European sports games twice a year or whatever. - [Jeff] Right, yeah, I mean, I have a code for FIFA that I don't know what to do with so. Might be callin' you for that one. So, it's stuff like that, like it's great seeing people out there doing their thing, and the thing I've tried to be better at this time around that I was terrible at back in the GameSpot days is try to keep in touch with people on a regular basis. Like it can be so easy just to put your head down and be like, I'm surrounded by these people, these are the people I see everyday, these are the only people I talk to because I don't have time for anything else. Discord has actually been really useful at that, honestly. Like hey, let's keep in touch with friends and try to maintain these friendships and stuff like that. So yeah, it's great being in regular contact with people like Patrick and Austin Walker and stuff like that. - [Danny] Giant Bomb lived under the Whiskey Media banner for four years, but the media startup was struggling to grow at a rate required by the landscape of the bay area investors and so the decision was made to fold the company to sell of its assets to suitable suitors. What happened next seemed impossible to anybody watching from the stands. - [Jeff] The process of us selling the company was strange, for a lot of the reasons you would expect. But you know, I think the thing that happened, every start up that sells or fails or anything always like to say, aw, we were just too early. We had the best ideas, too early. But you know, in some cases if we were a year later or something like that and YouTube had been more viable for longer form videos, like who knows what woulda happened. You know, we made the best choices we could along the way but at the end of the day, you know, they had launched a lot of other sites and wanted it to be this big network and when that kinda, I think that wasn't happening at the rate that they needed it to happen so it became a case of just like, okay, maybe it's time to move on and move onto a different business and do a different thing and so we were at that point lucky enough to be something that was sellable, you know. Like you think about the number of start ups now, especially the number of content companies that launched and just went under. And with Giant Bomb with the premium memberships and that sort of stuff we were in a pretty good position there to where we were doing something that people I think were just starting to get a sense of just like, hey, maybe this direct to consumer like subscription type stuff is something we should care about. And so it was something that people were starting to wake up to and be like hey, maybe we want some kind of back pocket plan in case this advertising thing doesn't always work the way it works now. So Mike Tatum, the head of biz dev for Whiskey, asked me one day, he said, hey, would you be open to maybe selling the company to CBS? And I just laughed. And I was like yes, of course, absolutely, go have those conversations, that's the craziest thing anyone's ever said to me, absolutely, yeah, of course. That's the thing, it was a very different time, a very different company, all that other stuff. Like the stuff that happened to me was this blip on this timeline of this multi decade operation that has had good people at the helm of it for almost all of its time, you know. And most of the people that were there when I was there last time and involved in some of that unpleasantness were long gone. So at this point it was like, hey, do you wanna go talk to John Davison about, you know, maybe comin' over there, and Simon Whitcombe. Yeah, they've been around this space for years, it's totally different people, like yeah, of course. And there were other people that were interested, the company that ended up buying tested was like lightly interested but not in a way that sounded all that exciting to me. And so yeah, I had lunch with John and Simon and in, this would've been, it was around the holidays, I don't remember the exact year anymore, it all runs together, man. But it was the holidays, it was like right after Christmas, we went into Christmas break knowing that it was likely that the company was gonna be sold early the following year. And that the GameSpot team was interested, was kind of like what I went into the holidays knowing. And so I met with them and we just kinda talked it out and, you know, like they had a good head on their shoulders and we were, you know, fairly attractive I guess in the sense that we had our own revenue, it wasn't like we were coming in and like, okay, you gotta bolt us to a sales team, you gotta bolt us to this 'cause otherwise we're gonna be losing money overnight. We were coming in doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, I wasn't in all the negations and meetings and all the back and forth for that sorta stuff but, yeah, it was an exciting weird time because we knew it was happening but we couldn't say it was happening. And rumors started getting out there a little bit, it was a very strange time, you know. It was so hectic. My dad went into the hospital as we were packing up the office to get everything out, and we were entering this quiet period where we wouldn't even have an office and we couldn't even say why, which was so unlike everything we had done with our community and all this other stuff. It was like, here's the thing where we are forced to not talk about this deal or act like anything is weird but we also are not in an office, it's hard to generate content when you're not in the studio. And there was just so much going on around that time, it was really, it was bizarre. I came out of it feeling like we did pretty good. For someone who came into that situation with little more than his good name I feel like I came out of it better. Personally better, better at my job, better at more types of things, better at running a, a little bit more respect for what it takes to run a business but also knowing when to sacrifice the business needs for editorial interest, you know, that sorta stuff. I was able to grasp more pieces of the puzzle, I guess. And so yeah, we came back in and it was fun because I had set up Giancarlo Varanini, I set him up real good where I saw him at an event the week before the deal was getting announced and I think my exact words were, hey I'll see you next week. And we left this Microsoft event or whatever we were at and. - [Danny] Did he know, did he twig it or? - [Jeff] He didn't know at the time but he pieced it together and then he was like, oh my god, you were saying what you were saying, yeah. 'Cause, you know, we still talk to a lot of those people that were over there. - [Danny] So strange, I think I told you, we were in the bizarre situation where the UK, I was at GameSpot UK and the UK sales team had leaked the deal to us, I think maybe six weeks before it was announced. - Wow. - We all knew and we couldn't tell the American office about it. - [Jeff] That's GameSpot UK for you, man. One year they tried to give FIFA an 11. - [Danny]Did they actually? - [Jeff] Actually, yes. They turned in a FIFA review that was trying to give it an 11 out of 10. And we had to be like, no, you absolutely cannot under any circumstances do that. - [Danny] For most of Jeff's life his career and hobby have been impossible tangled. And so for much of his life his identity has been too. For years his Xbox Gamertag was GameSpotting. He only changed it when he set up his new site, to GiantBombing. But since selling to CBS he's tried to create more distance between these two worlds. Jeff isn't the most social person you'll work with. He commutes to and from Petaluma every day, a 40 mile drive during bay area rush hour. Perhaps it's why he doesn't socialize much after work. Or maybe it's a convenient excuse to not have to. At his desk, he sits with headphones on, usually working on something. When he talks to you he speaks openly and honestly. When he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't. He's always struck me as a person who's gears are always turning, thinking about the work. Half enjoying it, half burdened by the weight of it all. He's tried to get better at delegating responsibility but in many ways Giant Bomb is his child and he feels like he needs to be in the room when decisions about it are being made. - [Jeff] For me that's the struggle. Like my personal struggle is like the time management aspect of it and like keeping everything going. Because before I had other things going on in my life you could throw as much waking time as you could at a thing and also we owned the company. It was a sick cycle where in the back of your head you could always say like, well I need to work until three a.m. because this could be the video that puts us over the edge and turns this thing into an even bigger thing. And so it was very easy to justify to yourself incredibly unhealthy work habits that didn't make the site better, that didn't lead to necessarily more content or anything like that, it was just it was very easy to spend every waking moment thinking about it. And now I don't and at first that made me feel guilty, yeah, that's the weird struggle of just like, it's all just kind of a weird head trip. And the worrying goes from like, am I spending enough time with my family, am I spending enough time with my job, this seems like stuff that everyone else figured out a long time ago but I'm coming to it over the last few years and going like, man, this is an interesting new challenge. But it's been great, I wouldn't, if it wasn't for my wife I don't think I would, I'm not even sure if I would still be doing this, honestly. I probably would've completely burned out or something by now without her to kinda have my back and all that sorta stuff. Yeah, she's been great. She's the best thing that ever happened to me, totally. - [Danny] Trying to create a distance between life and work you're passionate about can often be a struggle. But it was impossible for the staff of Giant Bomb to do so in the summer of 2013. This July will mark the 6th year since the tragic passing of their friend and colleague Ryan Davis and in recent months it's been on Jeff's mind a lot more. Last year the site launched a 24 hour livestream that plays videos from throughout the 10 year archive of Giant Bomb and users often vote for videos that Ryan is featured in. So Jeff is confronted with the memory of their friendship a lot more these days. - [Jeff] You know, going back to those videos and stuff, the relationship that Ryan and I had was very complicated and changed a lot over the years because, you know, we were close friends, we were in a band, we were inseparable, I got him hired, we became coworkers, I became his boss. And so the relationship changed along the way too. So yeah, I don't know, when I think about Ryan I think about the days before were working together, primarily. Those are my Ryan memories, usually. The videos, the stuff we did along the way, yeah, we did some really cool shit and I like a lot of it just fine, but me personally, I think about the stuff prior to, when Ryan was answering phones for AT and T internet at three in the morning when people couldn't get into their email, that's the Ryan I think of. The Ryan that was living with three other guys in this tiny ass place and we'd just go hang out and he wasn't 21 yet so I was indispensable. Like that sort of stuff, that's the stuff I think about when I think about Ryan. - [Danny] When I asked Jeff about the future of Giant Bomb he's excited, but cautious. Years of working on the internet has taught him to be careful about over-promising before stuff is built. Perhaps his experiences have also taught him not to plan too far ahead. As the site enters its 11th year its been changing its programming to try and bring in new viewers. Giant Bomb has been successful, it pays its own way at CBS, but it's still a website owned by a large media organization, so often the future is planned quarter by quarter, year by year. Perhaps the most surprising thing in coming to know Jeff, is how excited he still is about games. His Twitter profile reads "I've been writing about "video games my entire life. "It would be insane to stop now." So you wouldn't blame him for being burned out on video games after 30 plus years of talking about them. But if nothing else, the thing that strikes me about Jeff Gerstmann is that these days when you can be so cynical about video games he's still a true believer in the power of the medium, whether it be players of Pac-Man or Fortnite. - [Jeff] I think games are only gonna continue to get more popular. If you look at what we're seeing with something like Fortnite right now. Like, it's having a moment that, that Minecraft had before it. It's huge, it's bigger than a Five Nights at Freddy's, it's crazy. But like I'm just trying to think about like, you know, games that have penetrated the mainstream in a huge way. What we're seeing with Fortnite right now feels almost unprecedented. It's Pac-Man esque. You know, like Minecraft was huge, but not in a, like kids loved Minecraft, kids love Roblox, but Fortnite is cut such a wide swathe across society to where it's like all these popular mainstream sports figures are now doing Fortnite dances in actual sports and it's never been like that before. So in some ways like, gaming has kind of never been cooler or less cool depending on your perspective. Because it's literally everywhere. You know, everyone is carrying around a device in their pocket that is capable of feats that like it would've been insane, no console 10 years ago could've done anything like this. Granted, the controls are still bad. The technology is pushed so far forward and it's so pervasive and in so many different places and in so many different styles. You look at like Pokemon Go and the idea of location based gaming, you know, people getting out there and moving around to catch Pokemon, like all that stuff is amazing and it's crazy. But like where we're going on that front, I think if the technology bears out and data caps don't kill the dream and all this other stuff, we're gonna reach a point where anyone can play top level video games on the device they carry around with them every single day. And in some cases they are, I mean, Fortnite's on phones for whatever that's worth. So I think that this isn't gonna go away, this is gaming's kind of big push into the mainstream kind of once and for all. And I think that games coverage, that's a more complicated thing. If you look at YouTube right now with demonetizing videos and everyone trying to stream and everyone trying to have a side hustle streaming or something like that. Kids growing up like commentating games as they're playing 'em because they just watch people on YouTube and they think that's how you're supposed to play games. That's it, that's where we're going, or that's where we are already. And so I think over the next five years it'll be tumultuous because I think you'll see the bottom drop out of ads in a way that makes the Twitch streaming and YouTube and like the kinda hobbyist turned pro streamer, I think that that's gonna have to even out. I think it's only gonna get harder and I think that will keep a lot of people out eventually, or it'll lead to a growth in just the hobbyist streaming and people will have different expectations. They'll just be like, I'm streaming 'cause I like it, I'm not gonna sit here and think I'm gonna make a bunch of money. The same way I made public access when I was 16, it's like, oh, we're on television. Like I'm not making any money off of it the way real people on TV do but I just wanna do it 'cause it's fun. - [Danny] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Noclip Podcast. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, it was quite a long story and it's also kind of an impossible story to tell in its entirety so I had to pick my battles and figure out a narrative that kind of worked. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was nice piece to celebrate a website that means a lot to me and I'm sure a lot to you as well. Now for the housekeeping, if you wanna follow us on Twitter we are @Noclipvideo, I am @dannyodwyer, we have r/noclip if you're interested in getting on board and talking on Reddit and of course if you're a Patron keep up to date on all the Patreon posts. Podcasts are available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and loads of other places anywhere podcasts are sold basically. We also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the podcast. That's Youtube.com/Noclippodcast. If you didn't know, we also make documentaries about video games, those are available for free with no advertising at Youtube.com/noclipvideo. Patrons get this show early for 5$ a month, if you're interested in supporting our work please head over to Patreon.com/noclip. And that's the podcast for another episode. We are actually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco right now recording bunches of interviews which will be going up on the channel in the next couple of weeks. But we'll be back with another podcast in the not too distant future so make sure you hit that subscribe. We've never actually asked people to rate it, so if you're listening now and you're still listening at the end of this podcast, hey, why not rate us? Thank you so much for listening, we'll see you next time.

Green Apple Books is one of the most beloved bookstores in San Francisco, and a mainstay on Clement Street (and now also in the Inner Sunset). Founded in 1967, the bookstore is now owned by three of its employees. We invited co-owner Pete Mulvihill to the San Francisco Diaries podcast studio to share how he went from being a young book lover working at this iconic shop to being its owner. You can follow Green Apple Books on Twitter @greenapplebooks, and be sure to visit the store on 506 Clement Street. Got your own favorite San Francisco spot with a rich history? Send us your own tale of the city by emailing us at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com!

Green Apple Books is a San Francisco institution. Richard Savoy opened the store on Clement Street in 1967. In the early 1990s, Kevin Hunsanger moved to the city and got a job selling rare books there. A few years later, he found himself part of the shop's ownership group, a gig that would last more than 20 years. In this podcast, Kevin talks about his move to San Francisco and his history of working at and owning Green Apple Books. Check back Thursday, when Kevin will talk about what he's up to next—establishing a San Francisco cultural history museum. ​We recorded this podcast at the San Francisco Elk's Lodge in January 2019. Film photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #330 speeds on a bonnie boat this week with Celtic music from Chambless, Taylor And Muse, Cara Wildman, Bellow Bridge, Nava, Chambless & Muse, The Kindred Kilts, The Gas Men, Serious Kitchen, StoneRing, The Elders, Ella, Mark Saul, Banna De Dha. http://celticmusicpodcast.com Listen and share this podcast. Then download 34 Celtic MP3s for Free! Subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. This is our free newsletter and your guide to the latest Celtic music and podcast news. Remember to support the artists who support this podcast: buy their CDs, download their MP3s, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. http://bestcelticmusic.net Today's show is brought to you by the Celtic Invasion of the Isle of Skye Travel will change your life. It opens your eyes to the mysterious and makes historical events come alive. Join Marc Gunn on the adventure of a lifetime. You won't travel in big tour buses and see everything. Instead, you will stay in one area. You will get to Know the region through its culture, history, and legends. Plus, you will enjoy some great music by Marc Gunn and other Celtic artists. In 2018, visit the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Subscribe to the mailing list to join the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com NOTES * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic and Geek musician and podcaster. This podcast is dedicated to the indie Celtic musicians. I want to ask you to support these artists. Share the show with your friends. And find more episodes at celticmusicpodcast.com. You can also support this podcast on Patreon. Thanks to Spencer Crawford, Kevin McDonald our newest amazing patrons. * CELTIC PODCAST NEWS I did an interview this summer with Samual of Visite Bretagne in the town of Auray in Brittany. From him, you can learn more about the history of the Celts of Brittany in this week's Celtfather Music & Travel at celtfather.com. If you want to see Auray, Brittany, I posted another vlog over on YouTube. I'm happy to let you know that my Celtic CD Grab Bags are all gone. I put the last of those CDs in the mail yesterday. I can't believe how quickly they went. I really expected them to be around for a lot longer. But alas no. This podcast exists due to your generosity. Every week, generous listeners pledge $1 or more per episode to keep this show in production and to pay for my time in producing it. Once again, I want to thank everyone who gives, especially right now. I usually experience I drop in patronage at this time of year, and that's with the increased production of shows that often come for free during the Christmas holidays. I would greatly appreciate it if you would become a patron of the podcast. Whenever we hit a milestone, I bring you a two-hour special. We are $31 away from the next milestone. If we reach that goal before the end of October, you will not only get a 2-hour Celtic Rock special, but you'll also get a second 2-hour special of music that will get you as well as newbies hooked on Celtic music. Will you help us reach that goal? Please sign up today at http://patreon.com/celticpodcast * I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK: What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Email a voicemail message to celticpodcast@gmail.com Dan & Rosa Hulse emailed: "Hi Marc, Two weeks ago to the day my wife and I were just returning from a week long vacation in Ireland when my wife fell and fractured her ankle in two places. So I am waiting for her in the surgical waiting room at this moment. It had been a great vacation up until then. I really appreciate the podcast and your support of independent Celtic artists. May the Craic be with you!" Patrick Clark sent a few pictures from Anchorage, Alaska: "Hey Marc, Loving the show, I’ve been listening it to it for a number of years. I ironically listen to it while lifting, which is mainly training for the Highland games. Keep up the good work!" THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:35 "The Barmaid Set" by Chambless, Taylor And Muse from Live at NTIF 5:23 "Knepphallingen" by Cara Wildman from Cara Wildman 9:05 "Twa Recruiting Sergeants" by Bellow Bridge from Cautionary Tales 12:33 "Magic Box" by Nava from Tapestry 16:11 "The Bonnie Ship the Diamond" by Jil Chambless, Ed Miller and Scooter Muse from The Lang Awa' Ships 19:32 CELTIC PODCAST NEWS 21:26 "Irish Medley: Goodbye Mick / Katie Daley / Muirsheen Durkin (Live)" by The Kindred Kilts from Live at Summer Crush Winery 26:00 "The Lilting Gas Men" by The Gas Men from Clement Street 30:22 "The Silkie of Sulle Skerrie" by Serious Kitchen from "Tig" 37:29 "Neal Herding Goats / Matt's March" by StoneRing from Old Songs New Voices 42:29 CELTIC FEEDBACK 44:05 "Stone & Ice" by The Elders from True 48:20 "The Skye Boat Song" by Ella from Elluria's Lament 51:46 "It's An Instrument" by Mark Saul from Mixolydian 57:37 "The King's Shilling / The Reconciliation" by Banna De Dha from Band of Two VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20. It's easier than ever to do. Just list the show number, and the name of one or two bands. That's it. You can vote once for each episode help me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2017 episode. bestcelticmusic.net/vote/ The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to iTunes or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com.

On today's episode of THE FOOD SEEN, Desmond Tan was born and raised in Burma, known as “exotic place full of gold pagodas and smiling Buddhist monks - or a country that puts activists in jail”. He and his family left for San Francisco in the 1970's, and in search of Burmese food during the tech boom, he found his home on Clement Street at Burma Superstar, where he was first a customer before buying the restaurant in 2000. He rid the menu of Egg Foo Young, Mongolian Beef, Southeast Asian Chicken Salad, replacing it with laphet, the fermented tea leaves for their famous Tea Leaf Salad (which can now be shipped nationally), Tan's favorite dish, mohinga, a chowder-y catfish noodle soup, traditionally eaten for breakfast, and samusa, hand wrapped dumplings that can be deep fried and served in a soup or salad. He worked with writer Kate Leahy to document the unwritten kitchen recipes of his homeland, creating a cookbook that archives the culture Burma's past, present, and hopeful future.

Happy Thanksgiving! And thank you for your continued support of Celtic music and the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. This week, you'll be thankful for Celtic music from Jed Marum, The Gas Men, Jesse Ferguson, Mitchell and Vincent, Hugh Morrison, Hearthfire Duo, Mary Jane Lamond, New York Brogue, Pitch the Peat, The Saucy Rovers, Belfast Andi, The Beer Mats, Banna, The Muckers, New Shilling. Do you support Celtic music, then subscribe to our Celtic Music Magazine. This is our free newsletter and your guide to the latest Celtic music and podcast news. Subscribe today to download 34 Celtic MP3s for free. Please rate the show on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Remember to support the artists who support this podcast: buy their CDs, download their MP3s, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. And remember to Vote in the Celtic Top 20 to help me create next year's Best Celtic Music 2016 episode.   Today's show is brought to you by Celtic Invasion Vacations Travel will change your life. It opens your eyes to the mysterious and makes historical events come alive. In 2017, you can experience the culture, history and legends of Brittany with the next Celtic Invasion Vacation. You'll join a small group of 8-10 invaders who love Celtic music and culture like you, and who love to travel. Subscribe to the mailing list to join a Free Webinar on Tuesday, December 6th on "Breaking Down the Celtic Travel Barrier". Join the webinar and invasion at celticinvasion.com   Notes: * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. * Kilted Kings are still performing at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival through the second weekend of December. Details are at KiltedKings.com. * I want to send out a big thanks to the patrons of the podcast. Your generous pledge of as little as $1 per episode pays for the production of this podcast as well as my time in producing the show. You will enjoy a personal podcast feed where you can listen to the show before regular subscribers, occasional extended editions of the show, and my deepest thanks. When we hit a milestone, you get a 2-hour special. Special thanks to our newest patrons: Rachel Barckhaus, Harvey Yaw. Help celebrate Celtic culture through music. Become a patron today! * Every day from now until Christmas, you can listen to past episodes of the Celtic Christmas Podcast directly on Facebook or subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and just about everywhere you listen to podcasts online. Subscribe at celticchristmasmusic.net * I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK: What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening, or from one of your trips to one of the Celtic nations. Call 678-CELT-POD to leave a voicemail message. That's 678-235-8763. Brian Mcreynolds shared a photo on Facebook: "I'm at work upgrading some temperature controllers. It's a lot nicer work with some Celtic music from your podcast." Eric Atkinson wrote in the shownotes: "I’m working and living in Pyongyang, North Korea. I don’t get TV or radio and I have very limited internet access. I rely on DVDs and podcasts for home entertainment. While on a breather trip to Beijing, I downloaded a lot of Irish and Celtic music podcasts and I listen to at least one every day. I’m listening to one now. Thanks for providing such great entertainment. It’s really appreciated in this challenging place to live. Keep up the good work. p.s. I also play Celtic flute and with the lots of time I have to practice, I’m getting quite good. I’ve got my first private concert next Saturday. So, Irish and Celtic music will be played live on the International Compound in Pyongyang, North Korea next weekend. Liam Smith posted on Facebook: "While listening to your podcast #284, 2-Hours of On Fire Celtic Music, my wife and I were quite taken with Innisfall's song, My Lagan Love. I didn't hesitate to order the MP3s from Amazon.com, and of course, I sent them a note to let them know where I found their music. Then, of course, I had to read all about them on their website. I'm well pleased!"   This Week in Celtic Music 0:36 "Carrickfurgus" by Jed Marum from Calla's Waltz 5:21 "Liverpool/Plains of Boyle/Jolly Beggarman" by The Gas Men from Clement Street 9:22 "Arthur McBride" by Jesse Ferguson from The Butcher Boy 15:17 "Paddy Went to London/The Cliffs of Moher" by Mitchell and Vincent from Circling the Square 18:22 "Prisoner Song" by Hugh Morrison from Prison Ballads 22:17 "A Minor Tradition" by Hearthfire Duo from Rising Tides 24:52 CELTIC PODCAST NEWS 25:58 "Mairi Bhan Dhail As Eas" by Mary Jane Lamond from Storas 31:29 "The Banks of the Roses" by New York Brogue from Live from the Poor Mouth 34:08 "An Leanbh Nua/Kilavil/Jerry's Beaver Hat" by Pitch the Peat from Far From Home 38:40 "Old Ripppin' Wind" by The Saucy Rovers from Treasure Sickness 42:56 CELTIC FEEDBACK 45:08 "St. Patrick Was A Gentleman" by Belfast Andi from All That Glitters 47:14 "The Cheeky Goat" by The Beer Mats from Easter Lily 49:38 "Ciaran O'Connell" by Banna from Cheers! 52:20 "Eddie Connors" by The Muckers from The Muckers 56:38 "Mary Ellen Carter/Coal Miner's Reel/Christmas Eve" by New Shilling from Irishtown Sessions VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20. It's easier than ever to do. Just list the show number, and the name of one or two bands. That's it. You can vote once for each episode help me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2016 episode. The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to iTunes or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at celticmusicpodcast.com.

Touring San Francisco, digging in the Polo Fields, and motoring down Clement Street in 1911.

Eric Reed opens the morning program. He'll be in town March 23, for two shows at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA. Visit www.EricReed.net and MySpace.com/EricReedJazz. His latest,"Stand!" is a wonderful reflection on Ephesians 6:13--all original Reed music. We'll have to ask him what it all means. The CD features his trio: Reed on piano, Willie Jones III on drums and Rodney Whitaker on bass. The Oakland gig has a different line-up. Pippa Fleming, who describes herself as a Lesbian vocalist who lays her hands on her audience by putting their spirits at ease and conveying humanities truths. She says she is "ear witness to the diverse sounds of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-generational collective of amazing musicians who are putting independent music back on the map, frontline vocalist for the group: "Deemed Defective." They have a gig March 20. Kind of rare, so Pippa fans need to catch her at the The Rocket Room, 406 Clement Street, San Francisco, 94118, 8:30 p.m. $4 if you reserve your tickets at www.basecampmusic.com,www.myspace.com/deemeddefective We close with a conversation with Jean Damu and perhaps Rob Prince from the University of Denver's School of International Studies on the international warfare in the Congo and the 6th Anniversary of the War in Afganistan (3/19). He'll be at the airport early. We hope he'll call in. We are also going to feature our first commentary by Death Row Journalist Mumia Abu Jamal.