Our Wildest Anime Expo Stories | Trash Taste #216
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- Hey, welcome back to Trash Taste episode, Crypto Bros. I'm Joey and I'm with Garnt and Connor as per usual. - You can't start the episode like that. - I'm just kidding. - I wonder how many Crypto Bros actually watch this. - Probably none by the amount that we've ranted about. - They're resilient. They're like cockroaches. But yeah, it's been a hot minute since we've been all in the office. It's been...

- Jeez, how long has it been? - It also is a very hot minute right now. - Oh my God. - We've got four ACs running and it's still kind of toasty in here. - It's so toasty in here. - We haven't met since 'cause we did the yard episodes. And before that we did a couple before we left. So I left like June.

- Yeah, so it's been close to two months, I think, since we've been here. - We're encroaching on the two month period. - Yeah, damn. - We're encroaching on that. So we actually ran out of backlogs, so hello people in the week of August. - Welcome. - August 6th. - That's the only way you can get us together now. It's like, we don't have a backlog.

Everybody gather. - Oh yeah, we went to, we did like a lot. - We did a lot. - Where do we start? But Joey, do you wanna start? - Oh yeah, you gotta send a shout out. - I heard you have something to share. - I have an announcement I wanted to make. - You're pregnant? - Yeah, I am. Two weeks, thank you. - Congratulations. - Thank you. - I'm so proud of you. - Yeah, this food baby is gonna be sick. - I thought you couldn't do it.

- The haters were like, it will never happen. - They shouldn't do it. - No, but I wanted to make an announcement quickly. We posted about it online like about a week ago, I think, but we are doing the first official nonsense pop-up in Tokyo. - Nice.

- Congrats. - So that was the big project I've been hinting on for like the past year or so that we've been working on this. Now I can finally talk about it. But yeah, so we're gonna be doing a pop-up from the 13th of September till the 29th of September in Shibuya in Tokyo.

If you've been to Tokyo before, you obviously know Shibuya, big shopping district, big touristy area. But there's a mall there called the Parco building, which is like pretty big mall. It's where the Nintendo store is and like the Pokemon Center and all those. - People always tell me the names of malls here. I'm like, yeah. - Wait, what? - People always refer to like places like, "Let's meet up at this mall."

- You don't know the parker building? - No. - Really? - We'll have a Google link. - Yeah, we'll have a Google link to it. - I probably know where that is, but I never know it by name. - Yeah, you couldn't tell me like, Connor, rock up there and I'll get there. Like I need to Google it. - Oh, okay. It's at like the top of the hill basically. It's a big mall, but yeah, we're gonna be doing our pop-up there for about two and a half weeks.

Obviously selling our own new stuff that we'll be releasing some vanilla nonsense stuff as well. And we're doing two really big anime collaborations, which you're not allowed to say. - I am legally not allowed to say, but. - Can we get a hint Joey? Can we get a hint?

- Well, one of them is your favorite anime. - Okay. - Of all time. - It's just like the same as him. It's just telling. - Yeah. - Well, if you're a fan. - If you're a Ginguk fan or a Trash Taste fan, you know. - If you know, you know. - You know, you know. - Domestic Girlfriend, Joey? - No.

- Wait, you got the domestic girlfriend collab? Oh my God. - You wouldn't catch me dead with that collab. Cut to me two years from now with the domestic girlfriend collab. No, so yeah, we're doing one that's really big, Garnt's favorite. And then the other one is also, I would say probably one of the biggest anime from last year is probably the best way I can say it. So yeah, all I'm gonna say is get ready to Wolf for Mommy. - Two years ago. - Two years ago? It was two years ago?

- Now we're going from hints to just- - I just wanna say, you know, - Before someone corrects you. - Yeah, okay. It was the biggest anime- - Bro's doesn't realize he's old. He's like last year. - That actually shocks me. I actually thought it was last year. So yeah.

So you probably know what that one is gonna be. If you want more details, obviously follow our socials on Twitter and Instagram. We're gonna be announcing it throughout the time. But if you're in Tokyo during the 13th to the 29th of September, come on over to the pop-up. Some of these are gonna be exclusive to the pop-up as well. So make sure to jump in there. I'll be there as well every now and then.

If you guys wanna come along as well, you're more than free to do so. And if you're a content creator who's in Japan or living in Japan, please come on over. Feel free to like take videos, take photos, all that kind of stuff. It's greatly appreciated. - My boy has been working on this for a long time behind the scenes. He's been very nervous about this, guys. So show up, show up guys, show your support. - It's been a year in the making. - It's gonna be cool to see how it goes. Also just seeing Japanese people just,

- Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is like, I'm really curious to see how the Japanese audience is going to find these clothes. I'm like, I hope it's to their liking is all I'm gonna say 'cause we spent a lot of time and money to make this work. So yeah, that'll be all in the description, I guess, if you wanna check that out. So that's all I wanted to say.

- Exciting stuff. - That's all I've been doing for the past like two months. Literally that. - That's a lot of work. - That is a lot of work. - It's a lot of work. - I can only imagine, and Joey's been talking about this for what seems like forever. - Yeah, ages, yeah. - Yeah, we started working on this like, I think we started working on this AEX last year.

- So over a year ago, we've been working on this. - God damn. - I didn't realize how much time and effort it takes to do a pop-up in Japan, especially when it comes to like anime collaborations, but hopefully it all goes out without a problem. And yeah. - Well, looking forward to hearing more about it when the pop-up comes up. - Yeah, when the pop-up is actually live. - And you have your stories and experience to share. - Hell yeah. So 13th to the 29th of September, lock that in. - Yeah. - I'll be there.

- Other than that, what have you guys been doing? - What haven't we been doing? - We've been traveling around. - Yeah, yeah. I didn't even know you went to Australia, right? - Yes. - Yeah, I didn't know you were going to Australia. - I didn't know you were going to Australia. - Really? I swear I told you. - No, you didn't. - I went to Australia for a friend's wedding.

- Oh, okay, you did say that. - Yeah, he did say that. - Oh shit, yeah, he did say that. - See, good friend. - I thought you were going back home just to visit family. - Oh no, no, there was that too. Yeah, I went back to Sydney for like a week to- - Did you do the LA straight to- - No, no, no, no. - You came back to Japan? - Yeah, so we all went to LA for Anime Expo for about a week or so. Or I was there for a week anyway. You were there for a lot longer.

And then I came back for about a week, filmed a bunch of videos and then went to Australia for two weeks. So July was fucked for me. I'm sure July was fucked for all of us to be fair though. 'Cause you were in America for like what? Basically the entire month, right?

- I went to the Netherlands. - Oh yeah, that's right. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, we talked about that. You went to the Anne Frank Museum. - Yeah. - No, no, no, no. - That was the previous time. - That was the previous time. - Wait, you went twice? - Yeah, 'cause we went for TwitchCon. - I forgot you did that. - I went for like four days. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - I went to Rotterdam. Not even Amsterdam, I went straight to Rotterdam. - Oh, it was in Rotterdam? - It was in Rotterdam, yeah. - Oh wow. - I'm guessing 'cause like,

- They have like a, maybe it's like cheaper than Amsterdam. - I mean, I'm sure it is, yeah. - You know what? I felt like I need to apologize to the city of Rotterdam. The first time I went, I thought it sucked ass. - What do you mean, for our tour? - Yeah, I thought it was lame. - Really? I liked Rotterdam. - I did not like it. It was like the most boring place in the Netherlands. - I'm pretty sure we said on the podcast, breaking down everything that we liked Rotterdam, 'cause I liked Rotterdam. - I liked the energy of the audience in Rotterdam.

I didn't like the city because we stayed in like, we were staying in like the Holiday Inn and it was one of those Holiday Inns that just had a really fucking weird vibe to it.

- Do you remember that holiday inn we stayed in? - Was that the one with like the big like kind of courtyard area in the front? - I think it was fine. - That was in Rotterdam, right? - Yes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - No, I thought it was fine. - What was up with the weird, I liked it. - I thought it had- - It was like- - Rose above Holiday Inn? - No, no, no, no. - It was like every other holiday inn. - No, it was not like every other holiday inn. - It's 'cause it didn't flood this one.

- Yeah, sure. - There was like some weird vibe, bro. My floor had some weird shenanigans going on, bro. - Really? - Yeah, dude, the guy next to me the entire night was trying to like get into his room. I didn't know if it was like his room or he was drunk or something. And then like- - Oh, was that the one where there was a random scream at 2:00 AM? - Yeah, that too as well.

- Oh, okay, I forgot about that. - There was a weird vibe. - That was, oh yeah, that was a Rotterdam, wasn't it? - And like the hotel was just weird. Like the hotel was a weird vibe, like throughout the night. Like I just felt like one of those nights where like everyone in the hotel was having the worst day and then I was just having a day. And so I'm around that, you know? Which is fine 'cause it's like, you know, whatever. But I just remember like, and then where we were staying and where the venue was, we didn't really get to see much of the city. But I got to go see it more and I thought it was really good this time.

- What made you change your mind about Raya? - Well, actually went around. - Actually seeing the city. - Yeah, actually going around the city. Yeah, actually going around the city. We did like a stream as well. We cycled around, that was really fun.

It was just chill vibes, great vibes. - Yeah, that's what I've been saying. - I mean, I thought it was chill. I'm finding out now that you didn't like the front of the car we went there. - Well, now I like it. - I thought we were on the same wavelength. - We are now, we are now. We are now on the same wavelength after I've seen more of it. It was good though, yeah, it was good. It was like four days, but it was like a lot to get there. 'Cause I also got stuck in fucking Germany. I took a layover. - I thought you liked Germany.

- I do like Germany, but I don't like being stuck in Germany. - Wait, was this during like the massive like airport blackout period that was happening? - No, it was the Eigl's. - Oh, you did, that's right. - Did I talk about this while we were on the yacht? Did I talk about this? - No, no, you didn't. - I don't think so. - Oh, so I got stuck in Germany. I get a text like 10 minutes before I land. "Ah, your flight's been canceled."

I was like, what the fuck? - Okay. - It's like 4:00 PM. I was like, well, it's a flight to Germany. It's 4:00 PM. I'll get another one. It's not a big deal. So I start looking. There's no fucking flights to Amsterdam from Germany. I'm like, what the fuck is this? What the fuck should I land? And I'm like, hey, where the fuck do I go? 'Cause I'm supposed to go to this terminal to get on my flight.

And then like, no, no, you should go to this other terminal. And I was like, should I get my bag? Like it's in this terminal. But if I go to the other terminal now, which is on the complete other side of the airport, 20 minutes away, I would leave my bag. - Yeah. - And I don't know what's happening. What happens when they cancel the flight? Do you know what to do in that situation? I didn't know. - Yeah, I've never been in that situation. - I do now because I've had the same, I had a similar story that stuck in America. - I kinda like, I found a,

and I was like, hey, 'cause I had no faith in anyone in the airport to help me. 'Cause this is just how it is in Europe. No one's fucking helping you. You're done. You've got to like pray that you get lucky. You might get one guy who's sympathetic, but no one cares. So I asked the ANA person, I was like, 'cause that's who I flew with. I was like, hey, do you know what I'm supposed to do here? And they were, obviously they're ANA. They were like very helpful. They kind of walked me to everywhere I needed to go, helped me out a lot. - ANA goaded. - They're goaded, dude. They help you out.

- They do their job. - They actually like, yeah, so they were like, "I think what you should do is like, "just go to the check-in terminal of your flight, "even if it's not happening." So to go all the way to the other side of the airport. Meanwhile, I'm freaking out thinking like my luggage is like in the other terminal. - It's just sitting there, yeah. - Yeah.

Also on the board at the airport, the flight still says it's happening. - Yeah. - But online it says it's not happening. And I got a notification that it's canceled, but on the board it's there. So now I'm freaking out 'cause I'm like, what is happening? And I have like an hour until maybe my flight happens and I'm going to the other terminal now and like, it's all freaking out. I finally get to the KLM terminal, like check-in desk and I'm like, hey, what's going on? And they're like, I don't know.

I'm like, what do you mean? And then it's like 20 other people. I'm like, you guys all get fucked too? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, do you guys know what's happened? They're like, nope. And I was like, all of us just waiting in front of the desk and none of them are talking to us. Like none of the staff are trying to help us. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And I was like, well, what are we gonna do? They were like, I don't know. Well, fuck. Well, great. So I start looking at other flights maybe.

'Cause apparently the reason it got canceled was bad weather, but it was like sunny outside. It was like perfectly fine. It was like normal, but maybe in Netherlands it wasn't. I don't know. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Anyway, so I look and there was like one flight going to Amsterdam. It was like 2000 Euro economy flight.

- What? - I guess 'cause everyone was trying to get on it. - From Germany to Amsterdam. - Yeah, it's like a one hour flight. - It's like a one hour flight, yeah. - Everyone was trying to fucking get on this flight. I was like, oh my God, like I'm not paying that. I'd rather just wait. 'Cause I'd have to pay that. I'm not paying 2000 euros for a flight that I'm gonna get for free anywhere in the world.

- Probably be cheaper. - Probably be cheaper. - I get there as well. I was like genuinely consider like, should I get the train? But the train was four hours and like two or three changes. I was like, ah, fuck this. I'll just wait. That seems like so much effort. And I had like a lot of luggage and I was like, ah, fuck this. So eventually they're like, all right, we figured it out. You guys are fucked. You're getting on a flight tomorrow morning. I was like, what? It's 4:00 PM. You tell me there's no other flight? There was like online, there was like seven other flights that were still available. I was like, what the fuck is this?

They're like, "No, sorry." So they're like, "Scan this QR code, you get a free hotel room." Scan the QR code, link doesn't fucking work. None of it works. So she hands us this QR code and walks off. - Oh my God. - And so we're all like baffled. Everyone's like reloading the page. I'm like, "Bro, the link doesn't work." And then there's this guy fighting for his life from Scotland. "The link doesn't work, mate. I'm just trying to refresh the page." And he's like refreshing it. And I'm like, "Mate, they fucked us. It's not working, all right?"

So we wait 30 minutes, they come back later, finally with a new QR code that works. And then we book our hotel room. And then we're like, how do we get there? They hand me this cryptic ass bloodborne looking map that didn't make any fucking sense. It was literally like,

- You know the Google Maps, the most unhelpful version of the map where it just shows you like a white building. It was literally that. It was a white building with a star on the other side. And they were like, "Go here." No directions or anything or any help at all. - It's like you haven't unlocked that part of the map yet. - It was legit. Like when you open up the map and like the Legend of Zelda when you first come out the cave and everything's white. - Everything's white. - And there's a star. You're like, "What is this?"

This is the most unhelpful shit. And so we just, you know, I kind of was like, you know what? These guys are being really proactive. I just asked these guys like, hey, can I just like tag along? And they were like, sure. And then I realized five minutes in, they had no fucking clue where they were going. I thought maybe I'll just let them do it and I'll just zone out. They had no idea. So I just, I got off and then we awaited where the shuttle was supposed to come. And it just didn't show up. The shuttle to the hotel. - Is this like Berlin airport?

- This is Frankfurt. - Frankfurt. - Frankfurt, right, yeah. - Right. - We're just waiting. And like, there's so many people waiting for different hotel shuttles. It is like, everyone's fighting to get on. - Yeah. - And then I kind of turn to these guys. I'm like, "Hey guys,

I'm gonna call the hotel real quick and find out what's going on. So I call the hotel. I'm like, "Hey, where's the shuttle?" They said, "Oh, it'll be there in an hour." I was like, "An hour? "I'm dying, dude. "I was on a 14 hour flight. "I've been fighting for my life for three hours. "I'm exhausted." And so I'm like, "Fuck this, guys. "I'm gonna get a taxi. "Whoever wants to come in, get in. "Problem is, there's five of us and there's four seats. "So you guys can decide." And so they all kind of like,

And then like only one of them gets in. He's like, "We can't leave the squad." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'll leave the squad. I'm sorry. We get in, go to the airport, wait there. I call an Uber the next morning, I go to the Netherlands. And then we sit on the fucking airplane tarmac for about hour and a half. And they're like, "Ah, we might not go." I'm like, "What? We might not go? You're fucking with me.

- You're killing me. And then eventually we did go, but I was like, I'm gonna kill myself. I'm getting so worked up here. I'm like, this is the worst dude. This is awful. Europe sucks. And the whole time I had no idea where my luggage was because I didn't get my luggage back. They told me not to get my luggage. They said, don't worry. - So you went to the hotel without your luggage? - Yeah, they told me, don't worry.

"Come, it'll be on your flight tomorrow." - Don't worry. - Which is where they have absolutely fucked every single step up of this journey, I was absolutely worried. And I had to go to the hotel with fucking nothing. I just had like my phone charger, which is the one good thing, and like headphones. And so the next day I had to get up where I'd already been on this flight for like 20 plus hours in this grimy ass clothes. And I had to get on that flight again.

get to Amsterdam and then go all the way to Rotterdam. I'm still wearing these like stinky ass clothes. 'Cause I don't know what it is, but like when you have a flight, you get this like weird stench that builds. - It's like musky, right? - Yeah. And I was like, man, I just really wanna like get out of these clothes. - It's the collective stank of all of the people you were on the flight with. That's all just like coalescing into your clothes. - But I do have a tracker in my luggage. So I could see that like it was in the airport.

And I was on my plane and I was refreshing that tracker like crazy. It'll only, 'cause I use like a shitty tracker, it's awful. It'll only like ding when it's close enough to me. It'll ding off other people's stuff. But when I'm on a plane, I can check if it's on the plane 'cause sometimes it will be in range. And so I had this like euphoric relief moment where I was on the plane and eventually it like dinged that it was nearby. And I was like,

- Oh my God, thank fuck for that. - So made it on. - That's useless 'cause what if you get on the plane and it's not there? What the fuck can you do? - I cry. - You're just gonna have a depressing plane. - Sometimes 'cause the plane is big, the luggage might just like be unlucky and I might be at the front, the luggage be at the back, you won't ding and I'll be like, oh my God, my luggage is in the fucking plane. - 'Cause guaranteed you get on the plane, you know your luggage isn't there. There's no way you can communicate with the staff members that, hey, this was- - I would also just have a terrible flight.

- Yeah, you kind of forgot something. - Yeah, you'd just be like, "Oh fuck." - I was having the worst time anyway and I was freaking out about my luggage not being, 'cause also in my luggage, which I know, okay, people are gonna be like, whatever. It was some of the stuff for the auction 'cause I had to bring a lot of stuff with me. And I just had no other choice. I would have loved to have shipped it, but I was like, "Ah, it's a lot of stuff." So some of the auction stuff was in my luggage. So I was freaking out about maybe losing that.

But luckily there would have been like two, three weeks before the auction. So I think even if something went wrong, it could have. But man, that was stressful. But then finally go to Rotterdam and it was fun. It was a great time. - At least that made up for the terrible weather right there. - Europe was way better than America. America was like way too intense, way more fan-ish. The Europe one just felt like a bunch of vibes.

- And it was mostly like European creators as well. Like I thought it would still be a lot of English people, but just met a bunch of people who just did not like stream in English at all. And that was really cool.

It was fun. - Hell yeah. - Got to speak to a lot of really passionate Italian people. - This episode of Trash Chase is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Guys, did you know if you subscribe to Netflix without using a VPN, you're only getting a small selection of what they can offer? - What? - God damn it! - Did you know that Netflix has over 17,000 titles worldwide? - What? - But because of copyright laws, they offer less than half those titles in Japan.

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I was like, what are you? Yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was really funny. We were talking about Italian. I don't know how it came up. 'Cause you know the Pope got in controversy about saying some homophobic stuff. - No, but I'm not surprised. - Well, it's the Pope. Pope was probably around when it was invented. And he, I don't know why it stuck with me so much. He got really passionate. This Italian guy was going off.

He's like, I'm not even mad he said the thing. I'm mad that the other Christian ratted him out. They told the people, the press, it was a private meeting. They ratted on him twice. I was like, you cannot rat.

- There's a rat in the church. - I was like, this is the most Italian stereotype. Like Italian mobster thing. You get the rat on me. - He will see the consequences. - Yeah, it was fun though. It was a good time. It was really chill 'cause I kind of like last TwitchCon, I signed myself up to everything and I had an awful time. And this time I kind of just did nothing. - Just kind of chilled. - And it was great. I just kind of like- - Paid vacation then.

- Basically, yeah. I kind of like, I did one Twitch Rivals, which was fun. And I did, what else? Oh, I did a panel. I had to do a panel. It was fun as well. That was it. I mean, that was like nothing. Like most days I was just surviving. - Hey man, at least you got there in one piece. - Yeah, at least you got there. - And then made it to American no problems. - Yeah, and then we went to AX together. - Yeah, and then we had to AX, which was fun. AX was great. - Yeah, very busy. - How was your guys' AX this year? Because I feel like last year, well, you weren't there last year. And I feel like last year because we had the trash taste

- The Trash Taste booth. Most of us congregated at that booth a lot of the time. - I saw Joey one time or twice. - I think we saw each other like once or twice because our schedule was so packed. - Dead ass, your guys' schedules were packed. I did fuck all this AX. - This is my busiest AX by far. - Really? - I've never had to do such shit. - This was easily my most like relaxing AX. - God damn. - For the first two days, I had nothing on my schedule. So I'm like,

"What the fuck am I gonna do? "The other boys are doing shit." So like, I was just hanging out with Alex, our content producer. We were just like going around LA and it was like, it was chill. It was vibes. - Oh hell yeah. - That was not what I, I've never been so exhausted in my life. I was so tired. - Yeah, you looked exhausted. - Being in LA, downtown LA at least is exhausting vibes. - Oh my God. - Yeah. - I met someone. So we had a few new Geeks Plus staff members this time and there was one Geeks Plus staff member who was like her first time in LA.

- Oh yeah. - Right, in LA. And I remember walking back. - It was the first time in America. - Oh, was it? - Yeah. - Okay, so I remember walking back

So it was me, her, Mei-Lin, and we're walking back from the convention center to the hotel that we were staying at. And we were like giving her all these tips and stuff. And we were like, the number one thing that you should not do is walk back by yourself, especially if it's off the beaten path. - Even during the day. - Even during the day. And what did we do? We were like, okay, we're only doing this

because we are in a group of three. So do not do this by yourself. So we walked back to our hotel and it's like, it's not even like we walked a strange route or something. It was just some of the streets that were just a little bit quieter, right? And I remember on the way back, by per chance, we met someone that's one of Meilyne's acquaintances who also works for another anime company.

And they had a quick chat. And then we found out, so we said our goodbyes. She went off to the convention center. We found out literally five minutes later after we said goodbye, she got punched by a dude. - Yeah, I heard about this. - I was like, what? - What the fuck? - The convention center was literally a five minute walk from where we were at. We weren't even like that far away from the convention center.

So I was like, dude, this reminds me why being in downtown LA is just the complete worst. - She experienced GTA IRL. - Exactly, right, exactly. Needless to say, all the stories have scared the shit out of the Geeks Plus staff members. - Oh yeah. - But I mean, rightly so.

- In some places, definitely in downtown LA. - It's chill. - Yeah, it's chill, it's chill. - I'm one with the people. - Shut the fuck up, give me points. Give me points, I need the points. - I want the points. - Hey, the people need points. - But I'm one with the people. - But I'm one with the people. - Are you one with the people? - Hey, I take advantage of the flights. - Hey, the people need the points, man. - Hey, the people need the points, free flights.

- Go with the man technique that Dynas told us, right? - Yeah. - Throw a couple of dudes out there, throw a couple of mans out there, you'll be all right. - Yeah, but how was your day? You did a few panels, right? - You did a lot of panels too. - Yeah, I mean, we did the Honkai Star Rail panel together. - Oh my God, yeah, we did do that. - Remember that? - Yeah, that was the first time I saw you guys in like four days. - That was interesting 'cause we had like, I feel like that was a lot of gaunt carrying.

- But also at the same time, there wasn't like a whole lot of- - It wasn't kind of a lot of Gargantuan. It was a lot of Gargantuan. - There was not that much for us to do. We kind of were like, "And next up, this thing." - Well, the fact that- - I'm always talking about Honkai. We did a lot actually. Hoyoverse, that was a hard panel, right guys? - No, it was great. But I was stressing 'cause I was like, "Oh shit, we have to do a lot." I thought we have to talk a lot about the game. - Well, because we had to go to some kind of

- Like a rehearsal. - The day before we had to do a rehearsal for it. So I was like, oh shit, there must be like a lot on the table there. And there was some stuff to do, sure. But like, you know, three of us have done so many panels collectively. We were like, how different could this one be? And like, it was your standard panel, you know, just like introduce some stuff, you know, ask questions to the guests, you know,

- I think like rehearsals a lot of the time are just for to quarrel warriors as opposed, well, it depends at least for panels I feel like they're just to like- - It's more for the actual organizers of the panel than the actual people on the panel I feel. - Yeah, and I feel like that panel in particular, we had a bunch, we had a lot of voice actors on stage and I think they kind of carried the panel. - Oh, 100% for sure. We were just like, and next time we have another talented person.

- Which is great. I mean, it was fun to host it. - We would just ask a question and then they would just talk. - We have so many talented people on stage and us three. - That was a big, that was when we did our first Trash Taste panel, I remember that venue. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That was the big one. - I feel like it's hard to do panels in warehouses. The audio.

it like reverberates off the walls a lot. It kind of fucks with your, when you're trying to talk. I much prefer like better small, like venues more designed for like- - And we didn't really do like an audio test either. Like we do. - It's fine. - Yeah. So it was like a little bit echoey. So some of the times I was just like, I want to like work off of whatever this person just said, but I could barely understand what they were saying. - Yeah, it's hard to hear what your co-host is saying.

- I also think like being on doing like the live shows, I kind of realized how much experience that gave me. - Oh my God, yeah. - I remember I hosted the Warner Brothers panel with Suicide Squad Isekai.

And had a bunch of co-hosts who were, bless their hearts, were like really, really nervous and really, really scared. And I was just like, oh, I'm nervous as well, but

I need to act like I'm not nervous. - You gotta be the guy that's not nervous. - I gotta be the confident, wait, I gotta be the confident guy? I'm shitting myself. - Oh yeah, you gotta be the guy who's like, "Nah, dude, we got this." - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just like, okay, the one thing that being on stage has taught me is how to,

- Pretend to not be nervous. - If you have that one person who you feel like you can rely on on stage, if someone's out there crushing it, it makes everyone, a high tide raises all ships. Everyone does so much better. Even if you're faking it,

I think that gives a lot of confidence to people on the panel. - Yeah, basically just fake it till you make it. - Yeah, totally. - Yeah, how was your black butler panel? Because- - That was really fun. - Yeah, that looked like a fun panel. - I've done a lot of panels, all different sizes. This was like a 2000 person panel. And I've never heard screams that loud in my life.

- That was a crazy scream. It was really cool. It was just fun. What a cool like opportunity that was. I also got to, so I'll fully explain. Did a panel where, just did a panel with the producer, I think, I want to say that correctly, director and Dice get one on, the voice of Sebastian.

Joe Taro, Owens, basically every character you ever loved. - An absolute legend. - Legendary boy. - I think he was Irwin in Attack on Titan as well. - He's kind of like the goat. - Yeah, yeah. - And he was so cool. So we, they kind of casually were like, "Hey, if you want to, we can like meet up and have dinner beforehand if you'd like to." And I'm like, "Yes, that would be fucking sick. That would be awesome." So had dinner and,

So then I was talking Japanese with him and he was going great until I think I was about 30 minutes in. I think he thought that I was better than I was at that point. And then he started like, 'cause I always, I told him, oh, like, . And then after that, I think he,

it was going too smoothly where he dropped the Kanta and it just started becoming normal. - Well, I think he dropped the Kanta the moment he heard you say the word Kanta. - Yeah, maybe. - It's like, wait, you know that word? - But it was going great. - No, no, no, no, it was going great. - 'Cause I had this, I had exactly the same experience with like so many Japanese staff members now where you've gotten, like we've gotten conversationally fluent in like bar talk.

- The kinds of talk you would have with someone who you met up with in a foreign country for 30 minutes, all of that conversation I can do. But obviously like when the dinner was getting into the hour, two hour period drinks were going, it was starting to get a little harder. - Your brain's on like full. - I had to really like lock in when he was talking, but it was really cool. I mean, like it was so fun and he's so gracious, man. And he was telling me about like, he also was just like whipping out voices the entire time.

He was just like, he was just like- - When you're like, yo, do the thing, do the thing. - No, no, no, no. So this is the most embarrassing thing. This is the most embarrassing thing. - To Erwin, please. - So we meet up and I don't know what the word for like impersonator was in Japanese. I didn't know what that was. - Impersonator? - Or like to impersonate. - Monomane? - Monomane, yeah. So the person who was introducing us was like, "Oh, he does monomane of your voice." And then when he heard that, he kept going like,

I do the voice. I do the voice though. And I was like, no, no, that's embarrassing. I don't want to do it. But he asked like eight times throughout the dinner. He's like, so you just wanted to know. He's like, you didn't do it now? And I was like, okay, shit, I'll do it. So I did it. And he was like, damn, that's good. I was like, don't lie to me. Don't fucking, don't look me in the eye and lie. But then he voiced some, he can't,

He voiced some street fighter or some fighting game character that just would say things in English, like guacamole or something. And he kept saying it during the dinner, really charmingly. You go like, super guacamole. I was like, what?

- It reminded me of like Natsuki a lot. Where he would just say things in English. But he was really, really nice and he was really gracious. He was like talking about how like he really like has a lot of respect for the English voice actors and stuff 'cause he dubs a lot of American TV shows and a lot of movies. So he's like, "Yeah, no, I get it. Same deal. We're all just trying to voice things." So he was really cool, very gracious. Then we did the panel. But the morning of the panel, I had to go and meet them at 8:00 AM.

in their hotel. - Damn. - So we met them in their hotel, but it turned out it was great for me 'cause as we were walking from this hotel, I kept getting stopped. People being like, "Hey, Connor, can I have a picture?" With like 20 Japanese businessmen. They were like, "Wow, sugoi."

I was like, ah, so I think, you know, it played well into being like, oh, this guy must be, some views are going to show up. That was helpful. And then the panel went great. And then people, we walked out. I walked out first. People were screaming. It was great. It was very cool. It was very fun to be back in front of like a black butler crowd. Yeah. And then the producer came on, screams, the director came on, screams, and then Dice K-1-0 came out and my ears nearly ruptured from

from like how loud the screams were. It was so intense. And then he kept- - That's why he's the goat. - He kept just going like, "Yes, my Lord," and stuff. Everyone was just like freaking out. - I mean, I would freak out. I'm not even a "Black Butler" fan. Obviously, they're like, "I'm gonna come." - It's hard not to. We announced the Emerald Witchhawk, the new Stark.

which was kind of hype. I was like, that's kind of cool though. I got to be like, guys, dim the lights, we have an announcement. Kind of felt like going full circle almost. Like 10 years ago, I started doing this damn impression. - It is pretty impressive that like that fan base, that fan base obviously, but also like just that series is still managing to pull out some like new cool stuff. And like the fans are totally down for it. - Yeah, the producers were saying that they said that the main reason it came back was the fandom in the West.

- Oh, okay. - The fandom was big enough in the West. - The 93%. - The 93%, 93% coming back. - I just helped a little bit in the lols. But one thing also that they mentioned, 'cause in the latest arc, they play a lot of cricket. And over this dinner, like yeah, the cricket.

- It came up, I was like, so how was it like doing cricket? Like how was it like animating or did you guys know anything about cricket? And they were like, we had never seen cricket. We don't know anything about cricket. It's not a thing in Japan. And they were talking about it like it was this mystical game that like yield English people play. I was like, dude, I played that in school. And then they were like, yeah, we found one club in Saitama.

that played cricket. - Oh shit. - I mean, it makes sense. - It was a bunch of Pakistani people. - Of course. - Yeah, of course. - And so they went to this club and just watched them play cricket and just studied it to get it right. - I remember years ago when I was working in Japan, I had to explain to my Japanese coworkers the rules of cricket.

- It's kind of complicated. - I was sitting there for like three hours and they just were like, wait, so it's like nothing like baseball. I'm like, no, it's nothing like baseball. Stop trying to compare it to that because that's all, that's the only frame of reference that they have. - I mean, it's probably the closest frame of reference you can get. - And they were like, wait, so there are two batters? And I'm like, yes, there are two batters. It took them like 40 minutes just to wrap their heads around just the fact that there are two batters playing. It's like, so do they both hit the ball? I'm like,

- No, only one of them. It's like, what does the other guy do? It's like, he runs. - Yeah, he runs to get the map. - And when you bowl it, it has to hit the ground first. - Yeah, and you can't bend your arm. And they're just like, what the hell is this like? - Yeah, I think it was just really interesting them talking about it. Like you said, it was just like the most alien thing.

The bat, it's amazing. One side is flat. The other is kind of curved in a triangle. It was just really interesting. It was really fun. It was very, very endearing. And I was like, yep, I played in school. It's very normal. It's a nice game. I don't know what the hell a baseball is, though.

- I was like, why is it round like that? - Why are people running around in a square? I don't understand. - Yeah, run in line. - It's so much quicker. - It was a really, really good panel though. It was a really good panel. A lot of fun. We did the Honkai one, I did a panel with Mouse as well. - Oh, that was cool. - At the Novo. That was a cool venue. It was kind of like a theater where we would do one of our normal shows. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was cool, it was cool. - Yeah, I did the AnaPlex panel. So this year I hosted the Honkai Star Rail. I've hosted Suicide Squad Isekai and I hosted the new Sword Art Online GGO panel. - Basically, you need an anime, an app. All right, hit me up, hit me up. - So I remember saying on like a stream or something, I was like, yeah, I'm hosting basically the three things that make up Gigguk.

One of the Aniflake staff members actually I think saw that stream or heard me say that and they were like, "I can't believe you said that." - What? - "I can't believe you missed out the most important thing." - What? - And she was like,

I thought you were one of us. I thought you were a fake guy. - Oh shit. - How dare you put Sword Art Online above fate. - I mean, I kind of have to agree with you on that. - And I was like, oh. - I'm right, but yeah, hosted the- - That was great as well. - Yeah, hosted the Sword Art Online one. Funny speaking about that because we did have like a lot of panels. We had rehearsals before, got to meet up with my other panelists and everything like that.

The one thing I wasn't expecting before the panel was, so we were just hanging out, waiting, you know, just hanging about in the room, waiting for the panel to start. And then someone comes in the Anaplates office,

and my handler from Anathex side, she introduced me to this person. Turns out that this producer was the Ufotable or Ufotable Fates guy. - Right. - Wow. - He was the producer that was in charge of like green lighting,

"Fate Zero," you know, the "Unlimited Blade Works" movies. Basically everything to do with fate, you floatable. Everything that made me a fate fan, this man was in charge of. - Right. - God damn. - So he's like your God. - So I get introduced and I'm like,

And they described me as, "Oh, do you know, this is the fake person. This is the fake guy." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just a lowly fan." And my handler was like, "No, you do not understand. I need to show you something." She whips out her laptop. - Oh no, no. - And she starts like,

she starts going through like all of my videos and she starts off being like, yo, so she starts explaining, you know, this, you know, fate has a big fandom abroad. We have a, we have a very dedicated fan base and some of his, some of his videos have helped spread the love of fate to the international fan base. And the producer's like,

I'm curious, let me see. Let me have a look, let me have a taste. And I'm like, you know, I already hate it. I don't know about you guys. I hate it. - I can't watch someone watch my videos. - When somebody watches my videos. - It's a YouTuber's worst nightmare. - Yeah, so I, it is like,

it is that feeling extrapolated because it's someone that I actually give a shit about. - You also respect. - And I actually respect. - And he's like watching her like, "Fate, howdy dun." - And so she pulls up the very first Fate video I made, not the Fates, one of the first big Fate videos I made, which is the like,

- The skit one? - Like the TikTok-esque skit one. And it was like a four minute video. And I expected just to like have a brief introduction about, oh, this is it. We'll watch it for a few seconds then stop. So she plays the video.

- The man fucking locks in. - What the heck? - He's trying to be respectful. - No, no, no, no, he was like, I thought, you know, he's gonna be respectful and everything and we're just gonna watch it for a bit. So she pulls it up. We're all standing up. She pulls it up, puts on the table. Man just like,

puts the laptop down, puts captions on and just leans forward. - Were those Japanese captions? - Yeah, that was like Japanese automatic captions. - Oh my God. - He leans forward and he's actually like, it is the most intense I've seen someone watching my content. - I'm sweating bullets.

So I'm like here, like sweating, like, oh my God, oh my God. - He's watching a TED talk or something. - Yeah, and so this is like the longest four minutes of my life. And like, it's like total silence, absolute fucking silence. And then there was a joke that about like the fake visual novel and he like, he has a laugh. I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. Thank you, thank you. - Ladies and gentlemen, all right, all right. It's made an impact.

These four minutes feel like four hours. I'm like, okay, it's finally over. I can go back to being casual. This episode is sponsored by Shopify. - Boys, as someone who owns a drip company, the first thing I needed to figure out was how the hell am I going to get my products to people all over the world? And thankfully I found Shopify.

- You didn't do it yourself, Joey. I thought you were a genius, but it was all Shopify? - It was all thanks to Shopify, babe. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the, oh my God,

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better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, guys. - Yeah, so at Nonsense, we do actually use Shopify and we've been using Shopify since the very beginning and it makes things so much easier because I had no clue how to do any of this e-commerce stuff. - So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a $1 per month

Trial period at shopify.com/trash, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/trash now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com/trash. Back to the episode. - Video finishes, he turns around and he goes, "Can I watch the other one?" And I'm like, "No, no, no, you can't do this to me. You can't." And so my handler was like, "All right,

Let me show you the long version. Loads up, loads up. And I completely forgot. Maylin was also there at this point. She had walked in and so she loads up this 24 minute video

and he is watching it in its entirety. - Oh my God. - It's not even like- - Not even at two times speed? - Not even at two times speed. - Damn. - One time speed. And meanwhile, like I literally like, Maylin's like standing next to me and I know the joke is that, you know, we all call her mom. - Yeah. - She literally did, I did become like son mode when she was like next to me 'cause I was like,

I was like literally grabbing onto her being like, "Maylyn, Maylyn, get me out of here now. Get me out of here. I can't do this, Maylyn. I can't do this." And she- - That's so stressful. - I was like sweating as such as she would. - It's like a parent-teacher meeting. - Meanwhile, Maylyn's like that parent that just,

that just lives off embarrassing their kid. She's like, "No, no, you need to look, look, we're gonna stand here. I'm gonna watch him, watch your stuff and we're not going anywhere." I was like, "Maylin, please, please get me out of it. Say we got a meeting or something, Maylin, I can't do this." But yeah, he ends up standing there for like a full 20 minutes watching this UFOtable producer watch my fate videos

And it felt like it went on for like 10 hours at that point. But also at the end of it, he was like, "That was genuinely great. I genuinely enjoyed myself. Thank you very much for everything you've done for the fake community." - Hell yeah. - We exchanged business cards and I'm like, "I wanna die."

- At least there's a silver lining to that. At least he wasn't like, after the 24 minutes he closes the laptop and he's like, we're gonna be filing a copyright claim. That's what I was like, that's what I was sweating about. - In like the four minute video, he could have been like,

I've seen enough like a minute. - That would have also been bad. - At least he liked your shit. - I was afraid he'd be like, actually, this piece of information. - This is wrong. - This is wrong actually. This isn't part of the timeline. But yeah, I ended up hosting the Sword Art Online panel who had this. - It's the most gone sentence. - Yeah. - And I'm hosting the Sword Art Online panel which that also ended up well.

One thing that's, you know, another part of it that was cool was we had the meeting beforehand where one of the producers was like, so we had to introduce one of the producers who had flown all the way from Japan. And he was like a little bit nervous. He was like, he was like, he was, we were in the pre-meeting and he was like, just jokingly, he was like, it'd be cool if like, it'd be cool if like the crowd shouts out like GGO or something or Chance GGO, you know, but it's not gonna happen.

It's not gonna happen. And like me hearing that, me hearing that, being on tour, I know that get enough people in the room and all you need to do is just, they will follow anything you say with enough- - You just need to pull the trigger. - If you say it with enough confidence and enough,

energy in your voice, people will want to follow what you are saying. So I had this really cool moment where I didn't tell him I was gonna do it, but I'm like, it wasn't on the script, but I'm like, I'm gonna get them to shout out GGO. - Hell yeah. - And managed to get them shouting GGO when he came on stage.

And he genuinely, I think he had this moment where he was like a little bit nervous to genuinely just feeling himself. - At home. - At home. - Which is how you want to meet. - Yeah, of course. - That's what you're supposed to do as a host. - Very unnatural for most people to be on stage, right? - Yeah, exactly. - Is there like, how much did you pay them?

- It's always good when you get to like do a panel about like stuff that you consume a lot as well. I think it definitely helps feeding off the energy, especially if you have a history with the property or whatever it is as well. - Yeah. - So that's cool. Oh my God, I also remember the very cringe thing that happened.

that when you were talking about cringing, I was like, oh no, I unlocked this. - I unlocked a memory. - When we were having dinner with Doske Ono, he was talking about, talked a little bit about JoJo. Obviously I had to tell him I was a big JoJo fan.

And he did do some lines, which was kind of pog. - Yeah. - It's kind of pog. Anyway, we were chatting and we were talking and I was trying to focus, but most trying to eat and drink. And he says something, he's talking about Joseph, the voice actor for Joseph, who I don't know the name of. - Sugita Tomokazu, I believe. - Yeah, well, he passed away.

not too long ago, I believe. Joseph, old Joseph. - Oh, old Joseph. - Old Joseph. - Young Joseph is . - Yes, sorry, old Joseph. - He's very alive. - Old Joseph, old Joseph. - Okay. - He passed away, but I didn't know that. We were talking and he was like, "Yeah." And he said in Japanese, "Oh yeah, it was, you know, we used to get beers all the time, but you know, I'm just happy we got to have that memory." And then I thought he was like, "Yeah, we get beers all the time together." And so I went, "Ah, dude, that's sick, so go on." Like, yeah. Awesome.

And then he looked at me like, I was like, none of you. And then he explained, I was like, oh shit, fuck, my bad. Shit. I didn't mean to be like, that's sick. Fuck. His POV, it's like, yeah, he passed away. Yo, that's sick as fuck. I was like, damn, that's so good. I was like, that's so cool, man. That sounds so fun. And he's like, what?

- What? - It's like, he literally just died. - He understood that I misunderstood. But it was cringe for me. I was like. - I had an interesting panel at AX where I finally met the anime men.

- Oh, you did? - I got invited to be on the- - We've all met them. - Yeah, I hadn't yet. So I finally met the anime men. They were having their own panel at AX and they asked me to be like a special guest, I guess, for one of their segments. So I was like, all right, yeah, sure. It should be fairly easy. So I'm backstage with them. They're all really nice guys, by the way, super chill. But this is also, I've never felt more like a dad in my life.

in my life because I was very easily the oldest one there. Like it wasn't even close. Cause all these dudes, I'm pretty sure like all the anime men are like,

in their like late teens, early twenties. - Yeah. - Right? And the guests that they also had, there was a couple of other like YouTubers or like TikTokers or whatever it was who were also very, very young, right? So there's at least like a 10 year gap between me and everybody else who was there. So I'm trying to like talk and get to know them and have a conversation, but there is clearly a massive generation gap. - Uncle over here bro. - Yeah, I was literally like the old uncle. I was the drunk uncle that showed up to the party, you know?

And backstage I met another YouTuber called Anthpo. - Oh, I know where this is going. - Yeah, and you know, like I've seen a couple of his stuff in the past, you know, he made some funny skits at the time. And so, and like, I recognized him and I was like, yo, yo Anthpo, right? Like I've seen your stuff. And he looks at me and his eyes just light up and he's like, yo Joey, it's been so long, bro. And I was like, has it?

- Oh no, oh no. - I didn't say this out loud, right? I was like, "Yeah, man, yeah, it's been a while, bro." And then he was like, "Yeah, yo, I don't know if you remember me that much, man, but we met at like so-and-so party and like we chatted for a bit and you know, it's great to see you, man. Hope you've been well, blah, blah, blah." I found out after the panel, he was getting me and Garnt mixed up. He had met Garnt before at this party. He thought it was me. - So Joey, like, so I was talking to Joey

And he was like, yeah, Anthony Poe said he met me before at a party. I don't understand. And I was like, I've met Anthony Poe at the party before. It was at the VidCon party. - Yeah, it was VidCon. He said, yo, I haven't seen you since VidCon. And I was like, I've never been to VidCon. - This just happened to worry him out of time. - It has. - So I thought he was like fucking with me the whole time.

Or like maybe like I had forgotten or like he had like confused VidCon for some other convention. So I was like, maybe I have, he literally gaslit me into thinking that I've met him before. So I was just like, yeah, I think, yeah. - Well, to be fair, we meet a lot of people. - We do. - No, we do. - I forget a lot of people. - This isn't shade at all. - No, no, no. - Not at all. - This is just a funny story. - Anthony, if you're watching this, you're a really nice guy. We had a great conversation. I thought it was just

really funny that you got confused, which happens a lot. - I do remember meeting you at VidCon. I remember the exact conversation we had. Don't worry about it.

- It was just so funny how this utmost confidence being like, yo, it's been so long, bro. And I'm like, I didn't have the heart to be like, I've never met you bro. This is the first time we've met. - And so I went on this panel. I hosted like one of the, I guess like game shows that they did where they were like guessing anime openings or whatever it was. And I was supposed to be like the judge. - Okay. - But,

this made me feel like such an old uncle because the vibe of everybody else and the vibe of the crowd was just completely different to the way that I would normally do it. So much so that I think I said like three things at that panel.

Like I literally showed up, I stood behind like, you know, those like speech desks or whatever they're called. And you know, as a judge position and I thought it was my job to be like, you know, that's correct or that's incorrect or like, here's the next one, you know, be like the host for the game. - Yeah. - Nope, I literally just stood there while the anime men boys who were sitting at the front were just like hosting the entire thing

And I'm literally just the entire panel. I'm literally just standing there like this, just looking at the contestants and then maybe sometimes going like, and that was my entire job. And I was there for like 30 minutes. And then they were like, all right, thank you anime man for that. And I was like, oh,

- They brought the uncle for them just to bring them out. - Yeah, it's like, "Thanks, uncle, you can go smoke a cigarette now." - So do you pass the baton over? - I mean, I guess so. 'Cause like, you know, I mean, to be fair, they did have a big, big crowd. And so clearly they do have like the massive fan base and, you know, to a lot of these like younger generations,

- It's a totally new audience. - Oh no, absolutely. I was saying to my handler, it did kind of feel like the next generation of anime fans, I guess, because a decent amount of the people in the crowd knew who I was. They screamed when I came on stage. - Who's his uncle? - Yeah. - Who's his old father? - But there were clearly some people in the crowd who were like, "Who the fuck is this guy?" I was like, "Why does he have such a similar name "to my favorite content creators?"

Yeah, so that made me feel very old. So yeah, shout out anime man, I guess. The anime man and the anime man finally met up and- - Should have this like My Hero Academia moment where you're like, "You're next." - I think Anthro is at the end of my cyclothon.

- Is he? - Or was he? - Was he in Japan? - Am I thinking about the right person? Let me just double check. - He got famous off of doing like a lot of like parody skits of like TV shows and stuff. I watched him, I watched his like Avatar The Last Airbender. - Yeah, he was, he was. - He was. - Oh, okay. - 'Cause he, 'cause it was a really funny coincidence.

Jaden and Alfred and Anthe were all there in Japan. Just so happen to go to Tokyo tower the day that I'm finishing my thing, bump into Emily. They're like, Emily's like, what the fuck are you doing here?

And they're like, "Oh, we're just going to Tokyo town." She's like, "Oh, I'm waiting for Connor's cyclothon to finish." - Right. - So when I finished my cyclothon and I did, and then like Alpharad and Jayden are like, "Yo, what's up Connor?" I'm like, "What the fuck?" I'm like, "I gotta go." But like, "What the fuck?" And they were there as well. Yeah, so I was like, "Oh damn." - Weird. - Yeah, interesting.

So that was my experience. - Well, you saw the premiere of Dunderdun as well. - I did. I did see the premiere of Dunderdun. - How was it? - Oh my God. I mean, everyone who was at that premiere will know, but it was one of the most insane first episodes I've ever seen. - Was it? - It was so goddamn good. - Absolute cinema? - It was fucking cinema. - Absolute cinema. - They went so hard with this first episode. - So Science Saru cooked? - Oh my God. They were chefing. - They never knocked.

- They never knock. I knew like, I was like, when I saw "Sci and Star" I was like, they're gonna chef this obviously. And they did. 'Cause like, yeah, everyone in that crowd was, I mean, it was a huge premiere too. - Where was it? - It was in the main hall where we did the Honkai thing. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, so there was like easily, you know, close to 2000 people in this room watching this premiere. And it was, oh my God, I'm so excited for it. It's so fun. - I think this is their first Shonen. - Yes. - They do.

- Some of the more of the weird shows. - When does it come out? - I think it's next season. - Excited for it. - 'Cause I would have gone to more premieres if I've- - Had time. - I wanna go to the ReZero one. - Me too. - They had an entire like 90 minute premiere. - I'm so jealous people got to watch that dude. - What the hell man? - I wish I could have gotten that one. - I'm wondering what that premiere was like 'cause that guaranteed was like packed as well. - Oh, of course, yeah.

- The con itself though, I feel like 'cause they'd spread it out more this year. There's a lot more stuff going on outside of the main convention hall. - Yeah, it did feel like there was less people. - I think there's the same amount, but I think they shuffled people outside. 'Cause when I was walking around the convention hall, I didn't feel like it was as bad as previous years. 'Cause normally AX is, obviously it's the biggest anime convention in the world. I think it's like the biggest congregation of people in North America, any one event.

Normally it feels like that way too. Totally. But it didn't feel as bad. And they'd shut down a street, you know the main street outside the front of the convention center? They'd shut that down this time, which they didn't normally do. Figaro.

I think it was, yeah. Which they never shut down. Apparently it's unheard of to shut that down. But I think that helped so much with getting people around. So it was good. - Well, yeah, I heard this year from a lot of people that attended that this was like one of the,

best AXs they've been in terms of like planning an organization. - The booths were crazy as well. - Yeah. - Oh my God. - The Demon Slayer had a booth that was two stories high with like all of it being LEDs. It was like, what is this? - I mean, the moment you walk into the main hall, you just see this like,

- It was nuts. - 10, 15 meter tall Luffy blow up. And I was just like, God damn, they're going fucking hard this year. - It was cool seeing some of the, it was cool seeing the AmiAmi booth is like every year grew a lot. We've been working with AmiAmi for like so long. And that booth was huge this year.

- That's cool. - Actually one of the funnest thing I think we did at AX, I don't know ironically was the Beyblade thing that we did. - Dude, the Beyblade thing was so sick. - Oh my God. - Are we talking about Beyblade? Because that like lit a fire in me that I forgot existed. - Oh dude. - Dude, after I got back from AX, I held like two Beyblade tournaments in my house. 'Cause they gave us the stadium. - Yeah, they did. - I need to go and get it from Ludwig's house. - Yeah. - Oh really? - I didn't have room in my luggage 'cause we'd done this Beyblade sponsor, which was,

I think we were all willing to probably just do for free. - Yeah, it was so good. - We all just wanted to play Beyblades 'cause Beyblade released a new Beyblade system. And they had this really fucking cool thing where like they had one special like projected Beyblade where like it would do like a trail. - It was like some fucking Yu-Gi-Oh shit where you had like a hologram. So you would, so the Beyblade stadium like looks like a circle, right? And obviously- - You'd let it rip. - Yeah, you'd let it rip.

- It literally looks like from the anime. - Yeah, exactly. - I think I saw someone calling it biblically accurate Beyblade. - Yeah, so the stadium kind of looks like that. But this version of the stadium had a projector where they had a sensor that tracked the two Beyblades. Maybe you could track more, I don't know. But it had to track the two Beyblades that were surfing around.

gave them like a fucking Akira-esque trail. - Yeah, like a flame trail. - It was so sick. - And they would like tell you like the speed. It was sick, dude. It was awesome. - So we all got as a gift for attending, we all got this like boxing. - We should do that as an after dark. - I would love to do that. - Oh my God, yeah. - We also had, there was a guy at that booth who,

I think the guys at Beyblade said he was like a professional Beyblader. - Yeah, he like whipped out like a briefcase of Beyblades. And one of them's like titanium. I was like, why do you need a titanium Beyblade? - And he was like teaching us being like, all right, the number one trick is to start low. Like really get your fucking waist down and make sure it's like really, he was giving us all these tips to be better. - Yeah, we came as like newbies and then I think it was you that faced off against the pro.

Right? Or was it a joke? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And we could see the difference when he just had this fucking power stance. - He also had like a fucking gun.

We had like a little like plastic little thing that you have to do that. He had like a whole like metal ass gun that he like full on ripped. It felt like you could like rip that thing, like really go for it. - It was so good. - That was so fun. - We had some fans that had like some crazy ass builds. Some guy brought out a briefcase. It was like the fucking scene from Pulp Fiction where you open up the briefcase and you could see the glow and he's just like, which one do you want? - It's like at the beginning of Pokemon when you pick your starter

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - It was like that, it's like pick your blade. - And he had like nine different Beyblades. So I was like, what's your favorite? - And they were all like shiny and metal. - Yeah. - I was like, what the heck? - It was actually so sick. - I did not know that Beyblade had evolved this much into this many different iterations. - That's cool.

- Childhood me was, I think would have freaked out. - Oh my God, yeah. - What future me was able to do. - Yeah, hell yeah. - You get to do Beyblades? That's sick. - Yeah, that was sick. I would love to get more Beyblades out. - I just gotta go through all like my childhood like games and go through the sponsors. I need a Pokemon one, a Yu-Gi-Oh one now. - Oh my God, if we could do a Yu-Gi-Oh one. - The Yu-Gi-Oh sponsor would be hype. - Oh my God, I'm so hype, please. - That'd be so cool. - I never got into Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day.

- Is the card game hard? - No. - It's gotten more, well, I played the first generation Yu-Gi-Oh! when it was still relatively simple. - Yeah, I probably haven't played the new one, so I can't comment. - You're probably thinking of like the simple Beyblade, not Beyblade. - Well, I was like DX Heroes is the one or GX Heroes, whatever it was. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's when I played. - I think that was the new,

the new one at the time, but like once they started introducing like fusion monsters, I was just like, - Yeah fusion, that's when I had it. - Oh okay, yeah. I stopped before the fusion. - And then I couldn't get like the fusions. So I had to like get the cards from China, knockoffs. So I'd like knock off Chinese versions of the Yu-Gi-Oh's that would transform. But all the names were fucking weird.

instead of being like immortal dragon, it would be like, it would be sun kissed dragon or something. - Right, right. - And the art would look a little off. And I was like, what the fuck? - I mean, they even did that between like the Japanese and English ones. I always, 'cause I was playing it in Japanese, obviously with my Japanese friends. So I always call, remember the Japanese names of the cards, which is bad because you know, sometimes there's a reason why they changed the name of the cards because it just sounds a little,

- A little bit weird in English, you know, like a dark magician girl is, you know, makes sense in English. In Japanese it's black magician girl. So they were like, okay, we gotta change that, you know, make it a little bit different. But yeah, Yu-Gi-Oh! sponsor would be hype. We definitely have to do a Beyblade tournament for Patreon though. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm up. - I'm so down. - I'm ready. I'm ready to build my own Beyblades, man.

- I want a custom build. - You should get Chris to do Beyblading as well. - Oh my God. - That'd be fun. - It's like, what is this? - What is this shit piece of pie? - This is so stupid. - Give me a gin tonic.

- Oh, well, you know what actually I'm annoyed about and I wanna talk about it just 'cause I couldn't believe the outrageous price of LA. - Oh my God, yeah. - So, you know, I met up with Garnt for a beer at the hotel lobby and you know, I knew it was an expensive hotel, it's the Intercontinental. I knew the food wasn't gonna be cheap, but I was like, you know what, I want a bite to eat. I don't wanna leave the hotel. I'm fucking tired, I want a salad. So I look at the menu and

It's $18 for the salad. Pretty fucking steep. I'm like, all right. I'm in the hotel. I'm in a bougie hotel in LA. - Welcome to LA. - With a 20% tip, we're looking at 24 bucks here. So I go, all right, sure. 24 bucks, that's terrible math. Sorry, 22. So I'm like, all right, fuck it, yeah. And he goes, hey, you want any protein? And I'm like, what do you got? He's like, chicken, shrimp, steak. I'm like, oh, chicken, sure.

So I get it and then hands me the bill and I open up the thing and I'm like, what the fuck? $49 for one salad. $49. 49.

- USD, not like Zimbabwe dollars, Joey. Fucking US dollars. - So that's like what? - 7,000 yen. - 7,000 yen. Is that including tip? - Yeah, the tip was compulsory, but then they'd handed it to you where like this tip thing was still like there and visible. So if you were like muscle memorying it, you probably would have added a tip. - I'd actually did that at the hotel, pissed me off. - They have like a hidden stamp, well, not hidden, it's on one of the receipts, stamped says 18% gratuity has been added.

but there's still like the tip thing there. I'm like, why, what the fuck is this? - No, no, they did something really sneaky to me. So they would give two receipts, right? One for the establishment and one for the customer. So on one of the receipts, they have this big red stamp that says gratuity has already been added on top of like the tip, the tipping bits.

So the receipt they gave me first was the one with an empty tip box. So I put in the tip and by the way, this bill was also not fucking cheap at all for like the four beers that we got. And I'm like, I'm playing over a hundred dollars just for like a few beers here at this hotel, but whatever it's fucking LA, whatever. I, I, I, I,

I take the receipt off and then I realize, oh,

- Now you tell me gratuity has already been added after I've already added the tip. - So you double tipped. - Yeah, so I double tipped. So I tipped 40% essentially. - That's fucking vile. - No, I probably tipped more than that because it was just like, it was 20% and then I tipped on top of the final bill, which has already been tipped. So I was fucking fuming, but also I was like,

I just, I didn't have enough energy to be the fucking Karen guy to be like, come on. - Can you remove that? - Can you actually remove this tip that I've already added? 'Cause you know they're gonna try and fight back on that too.

- Like with that fucking salad, right? Where they added the 18. Can I like tell them to like remove that shit if I was a Karen? Like, can I even do that? Like, 'cause they took my card and charged it. - Does that even count as a Karen? Because like that is pretty fucking insane. - I'm just annoyed that they did it. - Yeah, that is insane.

- But like, the worst part was that the salad was pretty fucking good. Like the chicken was fire. - I fucking hope so, you paid 50 bucks for it. - But like, I wanted it to be bad so I could be a full hater. - Right. - I was like, you know, the chicken was pretty fire though. So what happened was the base salad is 18 bucks. - Which is already insane. - To add any protein. So me adding one chicken breast added $20 to the bill.

And then with the tax plus the 20% tip, it was $49. I couldn't believe it bro. - See you should have just done what I did and just walk across the road and go to Chick-fil-A. - Yeah, I just wanted like something healthy quick.

- I thought $18 was a reasonable price for that. - I took one look, 'cause I was thinking about it too one of the days, I was like, man, I need to eat, but I cannot be fucked to go out and try and find something to eat. So I was like, I'll see what the hotel's offering. I took two seconds look at the menu, I was like, I'm going Chick-fil-A. - I mean, Chick-fil-A is not that cheap either. - Yeah, but it's not fucking $49. - Well, I didn't, yeah, that's my bad. He didn't tell me that fucking adding a chicken breast is gonna cost $20.

- He said it like it was gonna be like a free add-on. - Yeah, like what? - Like he didn't say like- - Like what the fuck? What kind of world do they live in where the add-on is more expensive than the base product? - The base, yeah. - That's not an add-on, that's an extra meal. - I know that like- - That's how they get you. - Yeah, either way I was upset. The whole weekend I was pissed off about it 'cause I was like- - Oh yeah, I would be too, yeah. - $49 for a salad. - That's insane. - $49 for a salad. Couldn't fucking believe it.

- Yeah, that's ridiculous. - I mean, LA is the place where you'd be like, yeah, I paid my mortgage for the salad, but it was a fire salad though. The salad was fire. - At least I'm healthy. - But hey, it was a fire salad. But you continued to stay in LA afterwards, right? - Yeah, I stayed in LA for another, when did the ex finish, the seventh? - Eighth. - Eighth, I think. - Eighth, so I stayed in LA for like another two weeks.

Just stayed at Ludd's house. It was really nice. Just hung out with his dogs and cats and streamed a bunch. Did a bunch of content. It was fun. Yeah, we had some really fucking busy days and some days that were not so busy. Congratulations on your charity auction. Yeah, there was a lot of prep for that. So it was kind of like juggling a lot of things. Like I was trying to make... So the reason I stayed so long was because...

It was the only time where Off-Brand could do it, like the event in that time period. And I didn't wanna go back and forth, but I mean, I could have. But you know, I got a whole lot done that trip. I streamed a bunch, did a bunch of videos, went on a bunch of other people's stuff. So I felt like it was kind of worthwhile. - Productive, yeah. - Yeah, and I felt like I got some really good stuff out of it too. I mean, we fucking did so much stuff. We ate every pizza.

which was, I actually ruined my body actually. - Sounds like the American experience. - We had one day where we had-- - Hey, at least you had a salad. - Yeah, I did have a $50 salad. - It was worth. - I'm just trying to think what the fuck I got up to. I don't even think now what I did.

- It was probably one of those periods where it was like, you did so much stuff that it's hard to remember the individual things. - I did a lot of stuff. Yeah, I did a lot of stuff. There was like a whole, like a lot of it was prep for the auction. A lot of it was chasing up creators. I went to the house to grab the items and stuff like that. 'Cause this auction was, well, I will talk about the auction a little bit. 'Cause if I get into it, we'll talk about it for a little while. But like one day, like three days before the auction, I had the longest day of my life. We'd wake up at like,

7:00 AM, which is not that bad, but that's not long. But it was like, we woke up at 7:00 AM, went to a warehouse to film a video with, I did a thing where we got set on fire. We'd like a stunt team. - Oh, cool. - We got literally set on fire. It was fucking sick. Also horrible to get in the fire resistant gear. It was like,

like three layers of condoms soaked in like fireproof gel. It was freezing. - Okay. - Well, I think it's universally agreed on that fire is pretty dangerous. - So having the fire stunt team was, they were cool. It was very interesting being set on fire. So that video will be out hopefully soon.

- I mean, not many people can say they've been set on fire and live to tell the tale. - That's what I thought was pretty cool. So that was really fun, that'll be out. I'm excited for that video to come out. Should be really fun. - Did you feel the flames at all? - Oh yeah, oh yeah. Not on my legs. So you'll see in the video, but only like my legs got set on fire. So I was just covered in this stuff.

And my legs were like, I couldn't feel a thing. - But the heat rises. - I could feel it on my face and I could feel it all over my body. And it was, yeah, it was interesting. It was interesting. And the video, I think it'll be funny when you watch it. - Cool. - All right. - So we all did different things and we got set on fire. - Hell yeah. - It was really cool.

And then that right after that, we'd go to this arcade 'cause I had booked out a Devon who we'd worked with on the Hawaii thing. So I wanted to do another crane game thing, not crane game, arcade stream where we did like two arcade POVs. We did it last year.

So paid for that crew. So it was like, did this one big shoot, immediately went to this crane game shoot that I paid a lot of money 'cause I really wanted it to look amazing. I nearly fucking beat Ludwig. I had such a bad start at this arcade. Then I found one machine where I was printing tickets nonstop. I kept hitting jackpot, jackpot, jackpot. And I was so close to beating Lud, but I fucked up so much early on. I wasted so much time. I was so annoyed about it. - Damn. - But that shoot was like,

three hours ish, immediately went back, had like a five minute nap and then we did the stream where we got drunk. I don't know if you saw any of the stream. - Yeah, I saw it was on Hinge. - We did this stream where Lot had this idea, which I didn't know was gonna be on my channel 'cause Lot was talking about it and I didn't realize, Lot was just being a bro. He was trying to like, he was really being very helpful. He was trying to get me as much streams and content as possible so that

he wanted me to have a good time in LA and feel like it was really worth it. And I didn't realize he was, he was planning it. He was like, we're gonna do the stream where we get drunk. So the concept of the stream was we go to a bar and we go to the, we had a 10 different bars and we just asked them what was the last tab that was closed out? We'll drink it, four of us. - Jesus. - So it could be one beer. It could be like a party of 10, 40 beers. We would have to drink it.

And I thought that sounds like a great use of my talents. This sounds like a great, like perfect stream. And then I found out like on the day, a lot of it was like, oh, it's on your channel. I was like, oh, okay, shit, all right. Okay, so just did a stream, end the stream, go live an hour later. I'm like, all right guys, let's get drunk. And it was one of my most unhinged streams. 'Cause love got absolutely wasted. So it was going pretty good. It was like the first bar was a beer and two shots. I don't know who the fuck ordered that.

- Someone who was depressed, clearly. - I was like, what a weird order. Just two shots of Jameson and a Bud Light. It did feel like a struggle drink. - It was like a Wednesday night as well. - Okay, okay. - So it was like- - Someone hasn't had a good Monday. - Yeah, yeah. - And then the next bar we went to is just a pint of cider and a pint and an IPA. - Great. - Easy. - Between four of us, easy.

And it was me, Alex, I did a thing, Doug, Doug and Ludwig. So I thought we had a pretty good squad. - Decent team. - And then the third bar we went to was three mega margaritas that had four shots of tequila each in them. And that was rough. That was really rough 'cause there's sugar. The next bar was 12 margaritas, had two shots each in them, a shot of Hennessy and two shots of tequila.

- And that's when it started going downhill. Because this challenge suddenly became like felt really impossible. - It was a try not to die challenge. - And Ludwig was like, I thought he was acting drunk before this. And then I think he was just actually like gone after this bar. And then we went to another bar where we had to do a small 200 or 150 milliliter bottle of tequila between us. It's pretty rough. - Yeah, that's a lot.

And then we had just one beer, which was the Savior. And then the next bar we had was one beer as well, which was great. So we were like, maybe we can do this. Maybe we can do this. - How many bars was the challenge? - 10 bars. - Oh, okay. - And then I think we got very lucky the last couple of bar, the second to last bar was like,

which was pretty tough to drink after. - Especially after all those shots of tequila. - Yeah, yeah. And then it was something else. And it was kind of, luckily as the night went on, the order started getting a little bit more manageable, but it was tough. It was really tough. We ended up drinking 55 shots. Like we counted a beer as one shot, but it was overall like 55 shots between the four of us. Yeah, we ended up doing 12 bars.

- Oh my God. - Dog Dugger wanted to keep going. He was a menace. And I'd never felt so bad in my life. - Yeah, I bet. - I felt awful. - How was the hangover the next morning? - Not that bad. - Really? - Really? - I was okay. I think, I don't know. - I would be dying if that was me. - I would be dying. - I did a baking stream the next day.

- Oh my, you streamed the next day after that? - Yeah, we made cookies and baked and some, it was fun, it was a good stream. - If that was me, I'd be in bed all day. - Lottie was dying and he was not having a good time. And he'd wake up at 8:00 AM to do a sponsor.

He was so toasted the night before and he did it. - Damn. - I was so shocked that he did it. I thought there was no chance in hell he was making it. - Twitch stream was built there for him. - Yeah. - He did it and he said it was the worst thing he'd ever done. I think, well, no, I think his performance. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - It was a good time though. And then three days later we did the charity auction.

How was it this year compared to the previous year? Really good. We had way less time to do it this year. Yeah. Because we had a mainline sponsor that was going to sponsor the whole show. It's going to be great. It's going to be cool. They're going to cover all the costs. It's going to be good. And then they pulled out about a month and a half before. We're like, okay, this sucks because I can't really afford to lose money

six figures of money. - Yeah. - And more than just the bottom end of the six figures of money. I was like, I don't really wanna lose that much money. I really wanna do the event, but we managed to get two sponsors.

which helped covered some of it, still losing a bunch. And then we had only about three weeks to put the whole thing together. - Yeah, 'cause when you messaged us, it felt like a lot sooner. - Oh yeah, it was way sooner. - Than the previous years. - Yeah, it was. And that was getting all the stuff was very last minute too. Like getting everyone to get their stuff. It was like, we had 50% of the stuff come in the last like five days. So it was like, it was stressful having to get everyone to get their stuff.

And some people were like bringing it on the day. And then a lot of people were like, "Hey, we're gonna show up." And then a lot of people just didn't show up. - Tell me you're in LA without telling me you're in LA. - So the venue is quite small in the stream, you can see. I was really worried that if I invited too many people that people would have to stand around. So I didn't invite like just everyone ever.

And then I kind of was like, oh damn, a lot of people just didn't show up. So I should have just fucking invited a ton of people and just let them deal with it. I'm just gonna do that next time. I'm just gonna invite everyone. I felt bad. Then the show was like, a lot of the seats were empty. And I was like, ah man, I feel bad about this. Like it shouldn't be empty. But the show was good. We raised more money than last year.

more viewership than last year. And I felt pretty good about it. The items I think were better this year as well. We had some really cool stuff, some great moments. Still a lot of stuff that I think needs to be improved for us to do it again. - Yeah, so you had the big like,

with just fake bids beforehand. - Oh yeah. - Oh yeah. - We had to change the Pokemon thing. - Yeah, I saw that. - 'Cause like a bunch of the FaZe guys, the new FaZe generation were like bidding on it like real. And then I guess their audience were like, then just ran with it. And there was verification, but people were putting in like fake credit cards and stuff.

Like, yeah, it was pretty like- - Which is pretty fucking scummy to do for a charity auction. - Also very illegal. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Very illegal and weird to do for a charity auction. - Yeah. - So then they added like ID verification and that stopped it all. - Oh, that's good. - But the system was still quite slow. So I think, well, I do want to revamp it if I'm going to do it all again next year. I really want to rethink how it all does and definitely would change venue and stuff. So I think if I was to do it again next year, it would be very different from this year. - Okay. - It would probably look more different than, and hopefully,

Hopefully we won't have any issues with sponsors this year and I'll just have more time and it would be good. - Yeah. - 'Cause I'd like to do it again. I think it's a really fun event. I think I was just kind of a bit sad that I didn't have enough time to really improve on it much. Like the event did better, but I felt like, I wish I had more time to improve on it and like really like nailed things down.

But I learned a lot more from this one than I did the first one, I think. - That's good. - So I think if I was doing it again, I'll know how to improve. - Hell yeah. - I'll know how to improve. - Good shit, dude. - Good shit, man. - But it was a fun event and it did well and I was really happy I did it and really happy we got to raise a ton of money and it was just really good vibes, like great vibes. - Yeah, right on. Congrats, man. - Thank you, thank you, thank you. - Unfortunately, we couldn't make it this year. - Well, it was like a lot later.

I think it's last time I did it on like a Thursday or a Wednesday. - I mean, last year you did it just before AX. So that's why we can- - But then I kind of realized, I was like, wait, why am I doing it on a weekday? This makes like no sense. And I was like, why am I accommodating AX? This doesn't make any fucking sense. So I was like, you know, fuck this, I'll just do it. Maybe the weekend after next time or something like that.

But it was really hard 'cause I was trying to like be available to do stuff, to prep for the show, but AX just took all my time. So that week of AX, I just did nothing for the show. So it was really hard to stay on it. So I think I'd like to do it before AX if I was gonna do it again, like the weekend before or something, I don't know, we'll see. - Yeah, I mean, AX takes a lot of time, a lot of energy. - Events are stressful, man. They take a lot of money. Like I still like, even with everything said and done and everything, I still like lost a lot of money. And it sucks that,

you've to almost lose money to raise money for charity. And then obviously nowadays as well, like with what's been going on recently with like everyone online has been really scrutinizing raffles and giveaways to a certain drama. I've been getting like emails from people being like, "Hey, I'm just making sure this is legal. I just wanna look into it." And I'm like, "Bro, what the fuck?"

I never touched the money at all. I'm not even the one like, what the fuck do you think I'm doing here? It's like, hey, I'm trying to do a good thing for charity here. Why do I feel that I'm being put under more scrutiny for trying to do something good with my platform? Obviously, I think that it is up to the creator to make sure whatever you are running is up to par. And obviously, it's good that people are checking that. But then now it almost feels that like,

People are so quick to look for faults and failures in anything charity related that almost feels that there is now the stigma of like, I feel like creators are just doing less charity work. There's way less charity stuff than I feel like five years ago. - I almost feel like you get less stigma for doing something for profit rather than for charity. - Yeah, absolutely. - If it's for profit,

you get less scrutiny. - Everyone's just like, "Get the bag." - Yeah, everyone's like, "All right, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah." But if it's for charity, that's when the huge eyeballs are. - Do you think maybe it's because for a lot of these big charity events, like say your charity event, right? Do you think it's because the pool of money that gets collected for that is so much greater than a lot of the for-profit?

you think maybe? Or maybe- - I don't know, some of the for-profit stuff is crazy though. - It is true, yeah. But I think it's also like, I don't know. Like I obviously think it's very, very strange that we live in a society today where you get scrutinized for doing charitable- - Well, shut the fuck up. - Where you get scrutinized for doing something that like a lot of like, you know,

is for charity, which should be like, everyone should be on board with and everyone should be like trying to support to the best of their ability, right? Even if it's not like monetary support. - There's just been a lot of bad actors in the space, I think, that have like really like sullied the name. And there's also been cases where like, there's been quite a lot of cases where like either, like the streamer didn't really look into what the charity was or what the breakdown of the money was and that kind of stuff. Like, you know, I,

I did a fair amount of research. I work a lot with the charity itself, help them out a lot, like talk with them about how to help them on the social media side, that kind of stuff. Had people check in to make sure that everything also was above board. Like there's a lot of work that goes into like making sure where you are asking your viewers to give money to is a good. So I understand immediately that barrier is also gonna be way too much for a lot of these, a lot of people who are more like, I just wanted the,

a free easy slam dunk. I didn't want to. Yeah. So that's already a barrier. And then there's also been examples where like,

Like a year or two ago, there was an example of like a streamer group that worked with a charity. It turned out that for like every like $10 or something that was being donated to charity, the streamers would get like three of it. - Wow. - And that was not like properly, I think disclosed. Or even if it was disclosed, people were like, what the fuck? - Yeah, that is weird. - Why would I wanna give money to you? - You're not the charity. - And then there's been other occasions where like,

Like the laws around charity stuff is also really weird. Like you could do a fundraiser where like only like 2% of the money goes to charity. It's really weird. - What? - Yeah, because- - That's legal? - Oh, absolutely. Well, I could be being hyperbolic here, but there's like, you are allowed to like get a fundraiser and be like, okay, this amount is for the cost of the fundraiser. - Right. - So like I lost money on the show, right? I could have been like, hey,

I'll just take 50 grand just to cover my losses or something. - Oh, I see, okay. - But I feel like that's wrong. Like, I don't know, I feel like that's disingenuous. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, 100%. - I'm not trying to raise, I'm not trying to like make me go even, I'm trying to raise as much money as possible. - Yeah, exactly. - Totally. - I mean, it's fortunate enough that you are in a position where you could just take the loss, you know,

- Yeah, absolutely. - Charity work is hard for a lot of these reasons. - There's a lot of reasons not to do it and not a lot of reasons to do it now. I feel like the only reason before was that you got to do something good. And now it's like with all these strings attached, it's kind of like, okay, I might just not do this and play video games instead. This does feel kind of like sucks. But I don't mind losing money on it 'cause the cyclothon,

I'm live a lot. The Twitch ads cover a lot of that cost for me. So, the second one I make money and then I don't mind losing money on something like this. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - 'Cause like that's where I see it. - I hope that stigma goes away soon because- - I don't know if it will.

- I think I understand where the worry comes from and where the scrutiny, why some of the scrutiny needs to be there. - It needs to be, you know? 'Cause like if you say, "Hey guys, give money to this charity." And then it turns out that like the charity uses only like 4% of the money every year. - That's like something sauce is going on there. At the same time, I think a lot of people have like overshot with how much,

negative, you know, negative attention as some of these like charities get and some of these people who you, you know, are just trying to do a good thing. And I think benefit of the doubt is a currency that just doesn't exist on the internet anymore. Yeah. It's gone. Yeah. It's always like, if you're trying to do something good, people will just automatically assume the worst a lot of the times. And that just,

discourages even more people from trying to do something good. - Well, they think there's some kind of like agenda behind doing that act, right? That benefits them in some way or some kind, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's weird that, you know, when you, it's the most unbelievable thing you can see on the internet is someone trying to do something

- That is what gets like the most scrutiny where you, a lot of people on the internet just go to assume that there must be another gender. - It's like, there's no way they can be this good of a person. Something must be up. And it's like, no, maybe some people are just good. - Yeah. - You know? And they want to do good. - Yeah.

- It's unfortunate. - Yeah, it sucks. - But yeah, I mean, congratulations on your charity. - Thank you. - I couldn't make it. - It was a lot of fun. - We know and a lot of your audience knows you're doing it for the good. - You're a real one. - You're a real G. - You're a real one. - Try my best. - Yeah, I mean, I couldn't make it in 4G 'cause I was in Wisconsin. - Oh.

- Oh, you got stuck, didn't you? - I got stuck. I got stuck most. I'll get to that later. But obviously went to visit Sydney's family. But also this time I brought my parents over to have like a proper, proper holiday in the Midwest. Because before they were kind of just here for like the, you know, kind of like the wedding ceremony. And so they didn't really get to see too much of

too much of America. They spent most of their time staying with my family in Seattle actually. And I was like, I'm like, no, that's, I gotta show you the true America. For me, for me, hot take, I think being on tour and being all around America, the Midwest and Southern America is the closest to like

what my image of America is when I was growing up. You know what I mean? - Suburban America. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like growing up seeing all these like American films about like, you know, American high schools and a lot of American culture. I was like, okay, this is what- - The slice of life America. - This is the slice of life America that I imagined. - Yeah, totally. - So I wanted them to experience that.

- They actually had a fucking amazing time. The one biggest thing I didn't expect was I get bored of American food, specifically Midwestern American food very fast. - What do you mean you don't like cheese and burgers and wings? - It's cheese and burgers. - Actually, I never get tired of wings.

- Wings, actual wings, actual, not this fucking boneless shit. - I like bugs. - Even though Ohio passed a law that you can have bones in your boneless wings. Did you see that? - I did see that. - Did you see that? Of course, of course Ohio does that. - I was like, of course, that's the one societal issue we have to tackle immediately. - Yeah, so I thought my parents would get bored of the food as quickly as I did because it's very heavy. My mom found a new favorite food.

which I didn't expect. So my mom, traditional Thai woman, eats Thai food a lot of the times, most every day. And she had this fucking awakening the first time she had cheese curds.

- Deep fried cheese. - Deep fried cheese. - Wow. - And so every single day, whenever we'd go to like a bar or a restaurant, whenever she saw cheese curds, which cheese curds are never like the main meal, they're always the appetizer, but in the Midwest, appetizer means- - Full meal. - A full fucking meal that would be shared between everyone. Every time we'd go to a bar, she'd see cheese curds and she'd be like,

- Son, do you wanna help me finish this? I'm like, "Ma." - You could only really eat like three cheese curds for your stomach is like pure lactose. - I know, I know. I'm just like, "Please, mother, my veins are so clogged from eating cheese curds every day." I'm like, "Mother, do you want me to see past the age of 40, mother? Please, mother." - Wait, is your, presumably your mom is like Thai, is she not like lactose intolerant?

I would have assumed so, but yeah, she ate that shit up like every restaurant we went to. Like just fried cheese every day. - Oh my God. - That's insane. - Cheese I can understand, but fried cheese every day? - Fried cheese. - A full plate of just fried cheese. - That's a lot. - Every single day.

But we had a day in Chicago as well and they really, really fucking enjoyed Chicago. - Chicago was dope. - Chicago was really, really dope. I saw a side of my dad that I'd never seen before.

My dad's normally like very, very, very reserved kind of guy. Just, you know, just happy to exist. - What do you mean? He wears the like hentai t-shirts. - Yeah, yeah. He wears the opai t-shirts. - Your dad lives off of the vibes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just vibing a lot of the times. But he's also like a big history buff as well. And I've never, so we did, we actually just did like a normal touristy thing. We just had this,

had this moment where we went on the architecture tour where you basically, you go on the boat on like the river and they just basically have a tour.

talk about the architecture and talk about the entire history of Chicago. And I've never seen my dad so giddy like he was a kid. Like he was like nerding out. He was like, "Oh, that's the place where the Chicago fire started." And they're like all this and like all the things that he'd read about. And there was this fucking adorable moment, right? There was this adorable moment that I've never seen my dad do before where it's,

where Sydney could see how excited he was. And he was like, normally my dad doesn't care about photos. So Sydney was like, "Oh, dad, do you want me to take a photo of you?" And he's like, "No, no, no, I don't want a photo. I don't want a photo." - He wants a photo.

But if you're insisting, if you're insisting, I mean, I guess I'll do a photo. I guess I'll do a photo. Ends up taking about 50 fucking photos. - No, no, get the right angle. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, he's like, I don't want a photo, but are you getting that building? Are you getting that building? - Make sure it's 0.5 zoom, 0.5 zoom, get the whole background. - Yeah. Meanwhile, meanwhile,

My dad's out there geeking out and then my mom, the one time my mom- - Snacking on cheese cars. - My mom, other than snacking on cheese cars, the one time she freaks the fuck out, we're walking and I just hear, "God!" And I'm like, "What mom, what mom?" - Heaven!

So here's my dad being like, "Oh, it's all this architecture, it's all this building." My mom freaks out seeing 7-Eleven, thinking that 7-Eleven was only in Asia. And I'm like here like, "Mom, you know 7-Eleven came from America, right?" - Your mom is so adorably Southeast Asian.

- That's the one thing I didn't expect. I thought it might've been Nando's or something. I didn't expect 7-Eleven. - I think the one picture my mom took was of 7-Eleven. - Oh my God. - Middle of Chicago, right dead in the center. We're like blocking people walking. And I'm sure people were like looking, why the fuck is that woman taking a picture of 7-Eleven? I'm like, mom, all right, can we make this quick? And she's like, mom's like,

- Yeah, yeah, you know, it's seven. - I found it. - I found it. I found the promise place. - There won't be any more of those. - Yeah. - More of those. - Yeah. I did have, I had this moment, I also had this moment in Chicago that is probably gonna live with me for the rest of my life. - In a good way or a bad way? - It's one of those moments where I'm gonna wake up at 3:00 AM. - Oh no. - Oh shit. - And my brain's gonna remind me of this. - Okay, okay. - So.

Everyone was getting ready and we were about to go out for dinner. And so I was, we were in the hotel and I decided just, you know, it's a holiday. I'll just chill out at the bar and maybe have a pint to myself, whatever. So I'm just at the bar, enjoying my pint, take a few sips. And then a guy comes

comes to sit next to me, right? And keep in mind, this is just after AX, right? So in my mind, there's been moments before where I don't know if the guy recognizes me or if he just wants to talk to me or something, but he looks me in the eye, just like, and I couldn't tell if it was,

a site of, oh, I know you or I know you're a YouTuber or if it's just someone who just has like this friendly look on them. - Sure. - Whatever, right? So they sit down next to me, they don't say anything. So I was like, ah, okay, it must've been just a friendly look. So I'm just here enjoying my pint and it's a sports bar. So there's a game of baseball going on. And so he starts talking to me. He's like, damn, I don't really watch baseball. And I'm like,

- Okay. - I'm like, okay, that's a weird way to start a conversation. I'm like, yeah, I mean, I'm from out of town, so I don't really watch baseball myself. And he's like, damn, Darryl, that's how you know he's a baseball lad. If you have a name like Darryl, of course you need to baseball. And I'm like,

- Yeah, I mean- - Do you? - Do you? - Sure. - Yeah, I was like, yeah, I mean, I guess so. I mean, like I said, I don't really watch baseball myself. - I don't know any Darryls personally. - Yeah, I don't even know any Darryl guy. - Yeah, I don't even know any Darryls personally. I'm from out of town and he's like,

Yeah, I'm out of town. It's, you know, we have this whole team that's with us. We have some people from Texas, some people from Minneapolis, and some people from LA. And I'm like, oh shit, where are you from? Because I'm from England. And he's like, yeah, I'm only staying here for like a few days. So I'm like, oh, okay, I'm in town for a few days as well. Whereabouts are you from? And then he looks at me.

And then he goes, "Oh, sorry, I was on a call." Sorry, what did you say? - Oh no! - And, and, and, and.

- Oh, I'm so sorry you went through that. - And I was just like. - You went through like three dialogue op-nots. - I know. He said that and my heart just sank. And what made it worse was because right afterwards he was like, "Oh, I'll just put this piece down in case you wanna talk to me." And then he immediately goes, and then the next thing I hear is like, "No, no, I have friends. Come on, you know I have friends. Everyone likes me." And I'm like.

And I'm looking at my pint. My pint is three quarters of the way full. And I'm like- - I just leave it. - And I'm like, how quickly can I down this pint right now? How quickly can I just fucking die? I'm texting Sydney. I'm looking at my phone. I'm looking at my phone. - Oh, that's so cringe. - I'm like, mom, dad, how much longer are you guys being? How much longer am I waiting here?

And so I have to sit there finishing this. I basically just fucking down the pipe. - I would down the pipe and then blow my brains out. - Yeah, absolutely. - Oh, that's so painful. - Oh my God. - And I just, I- - You didn't see the earpiece?

- I saw the earpiece, but- - But it sounded like he was talking to you. - The dialogue options, like, I don't know. I don't know. - It was like, you were like, there's no way he's not talking to me. - 'Cause I've been in America enough times, right? If I was in England, 100%, I would just assume a guy's on a call. In America, I've had it so many times before, you're sitting at a bar and someone just,

Someone just starts a conversation with the most random way. - Yeah, that's true. - Damn, I don't normally watch baseball, but I'm doing it today. That just sounds like an opening for like a- - It does sound like an opening. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I'm so sorry, Yarn. - That's not any person's worst nightmare. - Pretty cringe. - That is cringe. - Oh, go on, go on. - Yeah, I'm just saying, I'll live with that for the rest of my life. - I played basketball for the first time. - For the first time? - What do you mean first time? You never played basketball before? - No, I'm British, bro. - I'm British. - I'm Australian. We don't play basketball. - I didn't play in Wales. - You didn't have a basketball court in your school?

- No, no, no. - Oh, okay, okay. - No, we have badminton

- We didn't have that. - But badminton is just a net and two poles. - Yeah, well, basketball is just a net and a ball. - Well, you gotta like set up like a whole like hoop and something. Like the badminton, you can just have these little metal poles that pop up. - Yeah, I guess so. Just no one plays badminton. - Badminton's fucking sick though. - No, it is fun. I'm just saying no one in my school played it. Anyway. - Well, I'm a loser. - So you played basketball for the first time. How was it? - Yeah, so I went to like a court with Ludwig and he was teaching me how to play. - Yeah.

I'm okay at like two pointers. Those are pretty consistent. I was just practicing and he was telling me the rules. I didn't really know. And then these two beefy dudes walk over to us with like, I think they had like really, they like, one of them had a really thick accent, but like they look like goons from like a movie. Like imagine what you think like a Russian goon man would look like. Not to be mean to them. Like they look jacked. And they came over, massive dudes. Must've been like-

20 kilograms heavier than me. And they come over, they're like, do you guys want to do a 2v2? And I'm like, Ludd, I'm learning here. Ludd's like, yeah, sure, let's do it. I'm like, what the? He's like, yeah, it's easy, it's easy, just block. And I was really terrified because these guys had like...

mad scary aura. - Yeah. - They were intense. I was like, dude, I'm like fucking white boy, British guy here just trying to learn how to fucking dribble. I'm like, is it dribbling like this? Is that how you do it? I didn't even know you couldn't like move after you like stop. - Yeah. - So I didn't know that. So I was breaking all the rules. I was like dribbling, stopping, dribbling. - You were just traveling? - I thought when I got the ball, I could dribble and then like walk like two or three steps or something. Is that true? - No, you have to pivot on one foot.

- I didn't know that. - And- - So I was breaking all the rules. - So you're allowed to take two steps if you're doing like a layup or something like that. - Okay. - Before you need to start dribbling. - And I would just panic. And every time I got the ball, I would just throw it. I would just throw it. I would just go for a shot. 'Cause I was like, I don't know. - Bro play netball. Bro, you're playing netball, man. - Yeah, that's it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then like, I was trying to block this dude, but like, I...

- So I do a lot of exercise, but I haven't sprinted in a hot minute. - Oh, basketball is fucking intensive. - So I was sprinting for like 10 minutes in this 2v2. And I was like, "What school are we going to?" They were like, "Oh, 11." I was like, "11?" And it was like neck and neck. I was like, "What the fuck, dude? Can we not just like lose one-sided so I could be done?" I'm sprinting, I can't keep up with this guy. And he's big and he's like pushing me around. And I'm like, "Holy shit, what the fuck?" I'm not ready for this. But they were very sweet. They were very like very,

to forgive me for my transgressions. - Sure, sure. - 'Cause I told them I'd never played. So I broke all the rules and they just let me. They were like, "Ah, he's not hitting the shots anyways." But I try to learn. It's hard. Basketball's hard, man. I was knackered. - I was on a basketball team in high school. - Another gun, law dump? What the fuck? - I mean, I was as well. - What the fuck? - I played basketball in high school. - I did not. - I feel like if you were over just a certain height, you automatically got- - We did not have a basketball team.

- Yeah, I mean, your school. - I mean, yeah. - We had a badminton team. No, we didn't have a badminton team. - You had a badminton court. - I played for the local team. - Oh, okay. - And then the local squash team. And I played for- - I mean, I started playing boss. I've said this on trash. I started playing basketball after I read Slam Dunk.

- Of course she did, Joe. - I think I would like basketball if I played more. I do wanna play more, but- - Basketball's fun. - It's very fun. - But him and all his friends do these weekly get togethers with everyone and they all just go and play basketball. - Hell yeah. - Oh, fuck yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. - Did you get better at it by the end of it all? - I'm starting from zero, so presumably I had to get better. - Did you make a shot? - In that two v two, I don't think I scored any.

But I did when I was practicing, I had a lot of twos. - Well, yeah, when there isn't the pressure of another player, it's a little bit easier. - So what was like, how far did you shoot out from when you were practicing?

- The two line. - The two line? - The two line. - And then like I tried the three and I hit like maybe one out of four. It was hard. - Three is a lot harder than it looks. - Three is hard. - I thought like the distance, I was like, "Nah, it doesn't look that bad." And then I tried it, I was like, "Holy shit, this is fucking hard." The two felt so easy. The two I felt like I was getting pretty consistent at, but the three I just couldn't get. - Could you do any layups or slam dunks?

- Dude, I'm not tall enough for slam dunk. - I could never reach the net. - Bro, I could touch the net. I could touch the net when I jump, but I couldn't touch the hoop. - It's insane, right? Because like when you watch like a basketball game or like a basketball anime or something, it makes it look so easy. They're like, oh, it's just like right there. - If I were an extra human being of length, I'm sure I could do it. You know what I mean? Like that, I was working with what God gave me here. You know, I could have a whole lot. - Exactly.

- Running is hard. I'm bad at running. Running is really tough. - Oh yeah, for sure. - Yeah, we'll see. - Running is tough, man. I got a dump truck too, so I feel like my legs hurt when I run. It feels like a lot. - At least you did exercise while you were there though. When I was in Australia for the wedding, bro, I drank.

copious amounts. - Yeah, I saw every story you had, it was a beer. - Oh yeah, no, but dude, the beer was the best part. We fucking bought goon bags and we were like fucking sipping from goon bags in the Airbnb. My friend Luke, who's from Northern Ireland, it was his first time in Australia, right? So I was like,

I said to my friend who was getting married, he was like, "We need to give him the Aussie experience." So we were staying at this Airbnb before, like it was just right across the road from the wedding venue. And we were like, "All right, we gotta give him like an Aussie boy dinner." We bought, you guys remember the shapes? - Yes, of course. - But it was the Vegemite and cheese flavored shapes. - They're good. - Which is like the most Aussie you can get and a single goon bag. And that was boy dinner.

- And so we made him- - Nobody gets fed at Joey's function. - No, no, it wasn't my function. It was my friend's function. He was like, "No, no, this is what we're eating today." - This is the pre-dinner. - So you didn't try to stop this? - Oh, no, no. We had to initiate our boy into the culture. So we were like, "Eat some shapes and then fucking get on your knees and we'll pour the goon bag into your mouth."

And he did it and he loved it. And I was like, you were born for this country bro. - It was Northern Ireland man. - Oh yeah, nah, he was already used to that drinking. But yeah, there was this one thing that we did at this wedding, which was the most Australian thing ever. And I think Kai might know about it. We did this thing called a meat raffle. Do you guys do this at all? Do you know about this? So apparently it's a very Aussie thing. I'd never seen it before, but it's basically this event where

So the day before the wedding, we went to this butcher and we bought essentially this giant tray of meat. It's like maybe about that big and has like sausages and steaks and different cuts. Like we're talking like $150 worth of meat, right? Like it's a fuck. It's like enough to probably feed a family for a week. All right. So they had this thing and I was like, oh, is this what we're going to be eating at the wedding? And he was like, no, no, we're doing this for the meat raffle. I'm like, what the fuck is a meat raffle? Essentially what it is is like a raffle,

during the wedding ceremony or after the wedding ceremony, after the dinner, they pull out everyone's, the attendees names out of a hat. And if you get your name called, you basically just win a meat of tray, like a tray of meat. - What's the point of this?

just as like a fun little celebration game thing. - Now I have $150 worth of meat on my hands. - Yeah, yeah. So, well, I think like some uncle wanted, and I've never seen a man in his 50s or 60s that happy in my life. He stood up and he was like, "Yeah, let's go." And he's just fucking- - I have a feeling it would have come into his possession one way or another. - Yeah. - Yeah, well, I was really worried 'cause I was like, "Are our names in that?"

And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, we got your name in." I'm like, "What the fuck? I'm leaving in two days. What the fuck am I gonna do with $150 worth of meat?" - You just have to throw it away. - I just have to give it to someone. - Have a proper meal. - Yeah, have a proper meal. - I've been eating sheep's and drinking goo. - That sounds like a weird tradition if that's real. - Yeah, I had never seen it before and apparently it's like an Aussie wedding thing to do. Yeah, I was just like, okay. - Bizarre. - Yeah, really bizarre. I didn't even know it was a traditional thing. But yeah, this middle-aged man want a fuckload of meat and...

If you wanna see a man mega excited, just give him that. - I'll go and ask him about it. - Yeah, yeah. - Try it. - Was it fun overall? You had a good time? - Yeah, it was good. - We all traveled for like a month basically. - We did. - Yeah, we did. - That's why this is our first time coming back. - Yeah, but July was full of travels and fun and exciting adventures, but now we're back in Japan. We're dying from the Japanese summer.

and we will try and survive another month, I guess. But hey, look at all these patrons though. - Look at all the patrons. - I hope you guys are having a good summer if you're in Northern hemisphere or winter if you're in the Southern hemisphere. But yeah, if you guys would like to support the show, then you can head on over to patreon.com/trashtaste. By the way, we have a brand new patron exclusive video for you guys that you can go and watch

right after this one. But hey, if you want to check that video out as well as a bunch of other weekly patron exclusive content, you guys have been enjoying it a lot. So thank you very much. You can head on over to patreon.com/trashtaste. Also follow us on Twitter, send us some memes on the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify and we will see you guys all next week.

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