Fire Escape cast #57

Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the fire Escape cast. It is a rare daytime recording, as you can kind of see if you're watching our video version lights streaming in. I'm drinking coffee instead of got a coffee instead of beer or whiskey. So different for us to all be drinking coffee instead of booz It's like seeing your teacher at the grocery store. It's very out of context. I think we're gonna make up for the booze part in the coming week, though. We'll be all right, Yeah, you two, are

you making the tripe? Well I do, I did not right now. Maybe by the time we're talking about video games. Yeah, you two are flying. You two and Jake are flying out here in a few days we're

recording. It has been well, we'll talk about what we've all been up to, mainly you two, but um, it's been busy for basically all four of us here at fire Escape the last two and a half through well, I mean the last year really, but especially the last two weeks hence are Tuesday publishing if you're used to on Monday, as we apologize, but a lot of people have Monday off anyway here in America. At least so. I mean, it wasn't just me and Mary and Jake. I mean

we we had you on the couch and Jake. All four of us were on the Giant Bomb couch and so yeah, that's true. I was there. I was drinking wine as usual. It was fun. I was there quiet, you're required than normal. Yes, snowbike Mike was there. It's great to meet him. Um, Mitch. Mitch had no shoes on. I got to see his feet finally, I've been asking him for years.

Oh yeah, Mary was next to Mike, who could forget? Yeah, so for I assuming everybody knows, but for those who don't know, Giant Bomb did their their perennial couch at Summer Games fust the not E three but the new E three. I believe it was called Giant Bomb at night. I have the mud look at that. I mean, aside from when I was there, how did everything go? Because it seemed fun? Oh my

god, it was so good. Honestly, it felt it felt amazing after like you know, I've been doing you three for a long time, but nowon the Giant Bomb couches since twenty eleven before I worked there, and it just felt so good to like I kept thinking that, like I left the industry for three years and somehow never missed a couch, you know, like I because the pandemic and everything, and now we're back and oh yeah twenty

one we didn't have anything. Yeah yeah, And I mean if for anyone who saw it, like Jeff Grubb did an incredible job put in the couches together and hosting and Jan keeping everything together and everyone from like bandom with Emma and Bailey and it was just it was honestly, it was amazing. It was just the green room situation was great. Tons of people just hanging out having a good time. It was a man, it felt great. And Mary having you in there was awesome. That that particular couch that we had

with me you Manati, Snowbike, Mike and Mahardy. Of course that was a highlight for me. That was fun. Yeah, it was super fun. I was in and out. I literally came just for that segment. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate you flying in. I love that you went and got a glass of wine right before we went live, just to make sure that you had that glass of wine as we were doing our segment. I thought that was you know, made sure you had it, did you? Guys know I like wine. I've seen you with some wine before.

Yeah, you're we're doing our So we're doing our joint bachelor bachelorette kind of big just weekend away in like a week from right now, and you two are flying out for it. Dan, describe it. Describe it to the folks. How you've been describing it to me. I've been telling everyone that I'm going to a wine fort in the Lacrosse Fields of State in New York sort of a little bit. Yeah, um am I wrong with any of

those By the way. By the way, I'm not going to say the street that you're on, but I mean it is the level of self parody. It is the level of self parody that when I saw the address, it might as well be like two to four Sailboat Avenue or something. Listeners and viewers do us a favor if you if you have a guess as to what I'm not going to tell you whether it's correct or not, because I don't want people stalking us. But what is right in what you think?

Then if a street that we're on is a self parody of me, right in what you think, it's called. I'm very curious what people uh to firescape cast at gmail dot com. You texted the address that Tolstoy. Of course, of course that's yeah, of course, yeah, it's dostayesky Lane. Yeah, I'm curious how people think it is. And again I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but um yeah, we're excited. It's it's been very busy. I've been, uh, I've been doing of all

things, Tribeca Film Festival. I believe it's just called Tribeca Festival now here in New York. Yes, I went to that documentary that we talked about this the day before, Dan can I mention that you just uh can? I wish you a happy belated on the show. Thank you you happy belated birthday. I saw you birthday. Why was that? I chose not to too fucking busy for us. I made the active decision not to go. Yeah, she didn't say she was busy. She's like, no, I

don't want to come. I didn't feel like it. Yeah, I've done a couple of things. Um I I'm trying to say this diplomatically. So I went to a screening of an upcoming Hideo Kojima documentary. It's about an hour long, and it's largely centered around forming the independent studio and then Sony picking them up to put the publish, et cetera. For def stranding. Uh wait, sorry what the person who made the documentary they're known for anything? Oh? Um, I thought you were doing a Cogima joke. Um.

His name is Glenn Milner, the director. He I think from what I gather, his specialty is kind of like behind the scenes esque documentaries of certain movies, like he did he did one for Rogue, one with with with a People. It was I think it was made largely for more casual people, like was it made for Hideo Kojima? It felt like it? And then guess who showed up and we didn't know he's gonna be there.

I guess who showed up to moderate? Is Kojima's best friend, mister Jeff Keely Keely And also I've seen him in a Nicholas binding reference Nicholas around New York City, just taking a million Instagram photos together. It's relationship. I have no qualms saying what I think about. We've talked about William viinding refer on the show before he introde the documentary and here's how he introed it,

and he goes up, He's like me and Hideo. I'm not going to try his accent, but me and Hideo Kojima are similar artists in our outlook. We also have similar glasses, and we are also very awkward in conversation with the opposite sex. Without further ado, here's the movie. I'm like, what the wow, Yeah, they're terrible with women, and yeahs, what did mister Cogima think of that fucking intro um? And then there was

an hour long panel after. Obviously with interpretation it's a bit shorter, but it was Keiley, the director, Glenn Milner, Kojima, and his interpreter. And again it felt kind of maybe, and I will fully admit maybe we are just a bit spoiled in the sense that we have attended a lot of things like this. We've interviewed a lot of cool people. We get we are just around cool video game creators, film directors, etc. And

it's awesome. I think it was more for the like Kojima stands, the movie was made for people who really just wanted and I don't mean in like the in like the in depth, in the way that you know Cogima's work, Dan, Yeah, like a Maya Cogimastan. Yes. But so I think it's more for people who like appreciate it, less for the specifics of the work and more just like to kind of slobber over Kojima, Um like he can do no wrong, etc. And I mean I'm the first persons.

Obviously we've talked about that stranding for I love that game now, but the documentary just felt the documentary felt a bit. There's an undiplomatic term that I will would use if we were not No, I don't want to say it, dick writing. I didn't say it is that the term was close. It's close enough a circle. I was gonna say a circle jerk. But it's like it's close. But in the sense that I was like, Okay, come like, there's not much of substance for someone going for work.

I'll say for me Um. However, earlier in the week I did go to something super fucking cool. Mary, you'll especially appreciate this. Mike Flanagan, the horror miniseries direct well Gerald's game Hush director but also director of House, Haunting of Hillhouse, Haunty of Blind Man, or Midnight Mass Midnight Club apparently is a huge fan of remedy entertainment and specifically Sam Lake's writing and

his games, the games that he's directed. So apparently Mike Flanagan was heavily influenced by Alan Wake twenty Xbox three sixty game and the sequels coming out. So they did a panel like a, Q and A, and that was fucking awesome. I could listen to those two talk for hours, Like they talked about horror in general, they talked about Stephen King, they talked about each other's work, like, yeah, they gushed about each other's work,

but they also dug into specifics of it. And then I got the I chatted with Sam Lake the next day, and they're doing some really cool stuff with Alan Wake two. Maybe week this is better for the video game segment, but all it's like they're doing some really cool stuff. They're doing the dual protagonists. You've got Alan who spoiler alert for the end of the two thousand ten game. It's been caught in this like limbo dark place since the

end of the game. The game the sequel actually plays takes place thirteen years later in real times twenty twenty three and this new character, Saga. She's an FBI agent sent she's a criminal profiler, sent to investigate stuff in the pack Northwest setting of Alan Wake, Twin Peaks, etc. That is largely inspired by True Detective Season one, like rural occult kind of Yellow King killings. Yeah, and then right exactly, it's oh, I mean, but

it's yes, building on that, it's also super survival horror. Now it's no longer like Allen Wake was more action horror. This survival horror. And then the other half of it is Alan in the Dark Place, which takes the form more of control, like urban dark, gothic New York City. And Sam was saying during the Q and A or the panel that it's largely inspired by Taxi Driver, like that vibe of urban isolation and neon kind of seventies vibes. And you can switch once you unlock both those characters, you

can jump between their timelines. They're they're parallel timelins, but you can jump between their playthroughs at will, because you're also going into what they call Saga's mind place, like more and more detective games are doing this. It's just represented as this room with like Charlie Kelly mail Room, Pepe Sylvia, clues and leads and suspects and whatnot if you want, which I feel like note

of if people are talking about this, because it's super fucking cool. If you want, you can play Alan Wake's story the entire way through until like the end of the game basically, and then you have to get Sagaut to that point. But you can both jump back and forth between them or just stick with one the entire game, and there will be foreshadowing between them.

There'll be these like shared mirror to clues and imagery and whatnot. But I'm kind of pumped for that game in a way I was not before that panel, because the dual protagonist thing is cool, but I assume you'd be jumping

back and forth between them. Yeah, you can jump back and forth anytime you want, but like at a certain point, wouldn't like Michael, like his storylines or his available missions wouldn't progress unless you did a Trevor or correct right, and then how that worked where I could go all the way and then go back and do all the way with it. We're in the exact same way of Liketh. They literally have a story on Polygon right now.

That I wrote based in the interview. That's it's taking GTA five's character swapping to a weird new place. It's yeah, imagine if you could play Michael all the way basically till the end, and then go back and do Trevor's stuff before Franklin. But also they're not like in GTA five they were sharing the same physical space, and it sounds like this they will be like correct

totally different like realities. Right, Yeah, saga is there, I think largely because Allan's been missing and there's more stuff happening, so she is aware of who he is. But they are very like she's very resonable for True Detective season one survival horror, he's more like control Allan wake one vibes of I think that's still survival horror, but it's like New York City urban,

dark, weird, surreal Dave David Lynch stuff. That sounds awesome if it's less action, because like, I love the vibe of Allan Wake one, but like the action of it did not really work with me at all, So if like give me that vibe but also just make it more actual survival horror, And that sounds like exactly what I want out of that. Yeah, but I actually replayed it recently. I still really the remastered one on PS five Series X, and I really like it. But yeah, by

the like third chapter, the Flashlight Shotgun interplay gets kind of old. Very nice play Devil's Advocate though, and say that one of the things that I liked about requiring to jump around between characters and GTA is that I got to see perspectives of other characters lives and how that influenced the larger world. And

so not having creators like players do that, could you care? So you can ask them, but if you're not making them, sure, and I could just play one character, couldn't I be losing like really good context of what's going on and probably the value add of that game, which is you're seeing dual issues that are happening in different universes and how they play off of

each other, for sure. And Sam Lake himself was like, we're really fucking nervous that we're giving players this much control to exactly what you're saying, because he's like he was saying to our interviews, like you've played my games, you know that, by and large we tell fairly linear stories, and there is like the amount of kind of directing the player where to look at certain times, so to speak, is valuable. And yes, I think

I'm excited for the structure. I definitely think it's way riskier because you could lose a lot of not everybody might be recognizing these like parallels between the storylines throughout the whole thing, for sure. And what are the two characters Again, There's Alan Wake who's been stuck in the Dark Place quote unquote since the end of the first game. He's in that like surreal mindscape, nightmare or

New York City and then like a new character that no one knows. Yeah, he's to stand in for the audience whether you haven't, like even if you played the first game, it's still been thirteen years. He said. They didn't want people to have to do homework in order to get ready for the sequel. So it's the FBI. He's the guy who's like, so you're saying Alan Wick has been in the Dark Place for thirteen years, that's

crazy. This writer goes into the woods. He's got a plash like, yeah, he's like, it helps that she's an FBI agent because she's also kind of doesn't know a lot of what's going on either. So she's coming in and her partner is Alex Casey, but it's Sam Lake like he did with Max Payne one and two. It's him acting, And I remember if there's actually acting an equivalent to the term meet cute for where you're trying to

explain a synopsis really quickly. For newbies, a meat cute is the concept in a film, in case anyone isn't familiar of, when two protagonists or at least two people that are meant to have a romantic interest meet and it's called a meat cute in film. I wonder if there's like that kind of

concept for how do we explain the entire fifteen year backstory quickly? And it's like, well, our main protagonist is a writer and he's explaining to his wife the synopsis of his book, which is the entire story, so that he can get fucking into it immediately. Yeah, whatever that is. There's entirely a chance that they might fuck up Alan Wake too, But I am definitely more excited for it than I was, um, because it the fact

that they're doing like True Detective season one kind of stuff is awesome. Um, did they say that or did you come to that conclusion. No, they they've said it. He said true everybody fucking loves True to Secive season one and it's so funny. Is the only show I can think of where you have to specifically say season one? Yeah, like what everyone knows? Like no, one's like, no, I didn't like season one, but two is where they got me. Yeah it's gonna be Yeah, True Detective

season two, that's really when it took off. Someone didn't like season one of True Detective and loved season two. I just don't ever want to talk of that person. It's qualified from being a person I'm interested in. They're out there and the fact that I don't know them. I want to keep it that way. Yeah. There, we're all we all have different life paths and outlooks on art, but what the fun I would have loved if on stage? Sam Lake's like, it's very inspired by True Detective, not

season two. I haven't seen three yet. I hear it's good, but this is one with rust call and flat circles and yellow kings and Reggie Ledou not Colin Farrell, and really inspired Simpson's season fourteen. Yeah, yeah, Allen Wake three is going to be four. Yeah, right when it gets right in the sweet spot. Oh, the best season of rest of development,

the fourth one. I'm super I am very excited for this one because, like, I've always loved the vibe of Remedies games, but I feel like the vibe is at odds with like, like I love the idea of Quantum Break, and the gameplay was not good. Um Control was the first one where I was like, Okay, they nailed it. Were the vibe and the actual gameplay. I like both of them. And so now that I'm like on board with Remedy, this sounds like a very good one.

Yeah, and he said, like he fully knowledge like Survival Horror will actually allow us to tell a story that's kind of in concert with the gameplay, where our past games have not always done that. But yeah, I'm hoping their post Control career they just keep the hits going. Control was successful, right, Yeah, they went from after Control, he said. Then they're working on other projects. They announced that like um nebulous kind of like uh,

what do you want to call it? Live service shooter based in the Control universe. They also are doing that. They're they're working with other studios, but they went from like one hundred people to four hundred after control. Oh geez, okay, I don't know how many people of those are working on Alan Wake two, but yeah, I'm excited that comes out mid October, along with every other game ever aside from Starfield, we're doing doing all

this game analysis. Twenty minutes into the show. I know it's weird. Uh, that's not what we do. But everything that we've been doing has been gaming adjacent and everything that I've had less time to play games in the last two weeks than I've had like every But you're right, like summer getting you've been observing games at summer games. First, I'm certain. Yeah, I'm doing what if I've been doing. Beside, I've been busy too.

I didn't see what I've been watching anything fun. Oh I finally watched I think you should leave season three. It's good. It is good, and I've told people this, I need to watch it again. If I think season two is the best, I would give season two an A plus. Season one, I'd give a minus A. Season three. There are some really good sketches, but overall, and it's a sketch show. You're not you're not homework score we have a fucking score forgot okay, Season one a

minus. What a fucking it's my academic side coming up. I would give it an sent. Season one was eight point five, Season two was nine point five. Season three I would give like overall a seven. Oh wow, I like the fucking zip line sketch is really fucking good. I really liked a man. See, They're not popping into my head immediately like season two. Granted I've only watched season The dog Door one I liked a lot. Dog Door was good. Guy, the guy talking to on the boom

mic on the comedy set was really good. That was good. The wrestlers with the proposal was good. That was good. My other favorite one was when they used the Santa Claus guy again with the same shirt brothers yea and I am absolutely lost my ship. When he's running back to the auditorium to catch his daughter's solo in this like children's choir, and then she starts just rapping for her solo. It was so stupid. Um But like the fact

that, uh again, I need to watch it again. I think Patti Harrison was grossly under used her sketch, the one where she was putting stuff on the cardboard cutout of her Boss. That one I didn't love. Yeah, but there were some good ones, but overall it's it's weaker, I think. But I need to watch it again. Maybe it'll grow on me. I've seen them all just once, like all the seasons. I think, I just watched them all in like one sitting for the most part,

and to me, they're all like a solid eight eight point five. Yeah, you've probably seen all of them like a billion times, so I have a more discerning view of it. Yeah. I will definitely like have it on when Jake gets to our apartment later this week, and I'll see more of it. But it was good. I liked it. I enjoyed it.

I definitely didn't one sitting. I did an accident where I left mid season, and I came back and I watched an episode and I was like, oh my god, this episode's so good and it was from season two, and I guess like my Netflix automatically restarted an episode from season two for some reason, and oh my god, it's so funny, and I forgot how funny season two is. And I will agree. I think season two is one of the funniest seasons I've ever seen of any Netflix series. It's

unbelievable how many good sketches came out of that. But season three has its moments too. Yeah. I was watching the episode where the girl sues the city because she actually got sewed into the pants of the big Charlie Brown. Yeah. Fuck, she's so funny, and I was just like, what a good episode. I hate to Yeah, it's like she's like, I want wine and popcorn when I finished. When I drink wine the night before and I go to the bathroom next day, the toilets purple, purple and

black. Uh. She's also the one they use in the tables Freddy Krueger sketch. But yeah, the one they I think she was only in one in season three. She was also the how come when I make a joke about Santa, nobody laughs, but when he comes in, it's the funniest fucking thing. Sorry to have time to wrap at Someone sent an email into us that was very confusing, and I realized they were just every line was quoting I think you should leave. They were recording the cigar window painting when

he's just doing oh the mister who smokes a cigar like that? I love that guy. It's simply too good. Gotta monetize this, right. I watched the entire three part Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary on Netflix, and if you ever want to feel like you've never accomplished anything in your life, I would recommend that, because holy shit, that guy was good at everything you did. Okay, I'm asking this broad Strokes obviously big time bodybuilder, very extremely successful

action movie star and other movies. Governor of California, Yeah, Hotter, is there any big thing I'm missing that he's done well? I mean that that is how the documentary is framed. It is like part one, part two, part three. So it's like the bodybuilder of the movie, start of the politician. And when I say he was good and everything he did, I certainly don't know if he was good at being governor, but I'm saying he accomplished everything he set out forward. It's like I want to be

a politician. I want to be an actor. I want to be a bodybuilder. He's amazing at that. Um it is. It is mainly stuff that you know. I mean, there's some interesting I would prefer more about the movie career because like they went into like when last Action Hero flopped like he was just so used to winning everything he ever fucking did, and then when people didn't really get Last Action Hero back when it came out, he was like really bummed out about that and kind of wanted more of that.

And what are other movies he's been in? What's that? What are other movies he's been in other than the Last Action Yeah, that's the only one I know, says guy that knows La Sex. I would to meet that guy that it's the same guy as the true Detective season two guy. You've told me about Last Action year It wasn't it kind of meta? Yeah,

I haven't. I've never seen. It's at the height of his powers, Like he's the biggest movie star in the world, coming right off of Terminator two, and he makes this like self parody movie that is like a fun action movie in its own right, but it's like poking fun at himself and he's in on the joke and killing it. If you watch it now,

it is held up extremely well. Back then, everyone was expecting like, oh, it's the next big you know, arnold you know action movie or whatever, and it was like weird and meta in a way that like that people were not used to in nineteen ninety six. It is fucking awesome. It is. Was it like like Tropic Thunder type thing where it was like

it's a joke about action movies and Hollywood. It's less common. I mean, it's definitely a comedy, but it's more like there's more like earnest action movie in there than Tropic Thunder, which Tropic Thunder is just straight up a comedy, you know about action movies. This is an action movie that's poking fun at itself and its star. Yeah, Tropic Thunder is also specifically about

Vietnam era war movies too, Yeah, like Platoon. Yeah, well, I think it's the biggest joke of the whole concept is Hollywood it right, Like that's what it's constantly making fun of is actors who are trying to get awards and how Hollywood utilizes war to like say something and make fucking money. And it's the entire joke and method acting. It's that's that's the acting. And they do it in multiple ways where they take an actor and say you're

doing this to win an award and you that's all your goal is. And so we're making fun of actors that are trying to basically go places they shouldn't in order to win an award. Yeah, this is less about like the industry and more about like specifically like that big budget Arnold action movie and specifically

about Schwarzenegger and his career where it's like it's like this alternate universe. And like when Schwartzeneger's character comes out of the movie, he goes to a Blockbuster and sees a terminator to cardboards Dandy, but it's stallone, and he's like,

who's this guy? Like it's you know, it's like very action movie heavy, sounds very like, but that's like a very literal joke, whereas like when I think of a good action movie joke, I think of hot shots or you know, something like that, where it's like we are making fun of this genre of film. Yeah, it's like that if it was more of an just normal action movie as well, you know, it's you mean, not as good. I like last Action here more than hot shots.

Hot Shots is fun, but I love hot shots, But I think I can't get over hot shots and hot shots part du Yeah, I looked they were very very good. I was also the right age when those came out to find them the funniest things possible. All Right, I'm gonna look it up, because if you're saying it's on par with hot Shots, like hot Shots is infamous. I just wouldn't expect it to be like a billion jokes a minute like hot Shots. I would expect it to be just kind

of it's it'll be much smarter than I think you expect. It's not reviewed very highly. People didn't get it. People weren't ready for it. Arnold, Mike, what do you think the what do you think the Rotten Tomatoes score is on Last Action here? Shit, I don't give a shit about what critics. I'm not having seen it Rotten Tomato critic or viewers critic U forty three percent. He's good. I've never seen it. It sounds out my alley. I like for all of my flaws, or rather all my

qualities. I also a sucker for like meta movie. I think you would like it a lot. But still the number one thing that I know you would love that you have not seen this Still pig Oh Jake tells me that like Weekly as well, the most hondy movie I could ever imagine. I need to watch that. Maybe I'll watch that this week before people come so I could talk about it. He also I also Amanda, and I saw Asteroid City at the advance or like New York screening. Were there any symmetrical

shots. No, no pastel colors, no symmetrical shots. Not every actor imaginable in it. No Murray, No Bill Murray. Actually that was the one omission. Was he actually not in there? So he's not He's like the only person not He's not even like in the background at some point, not that I saw Jeff Goldblum's in it, Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is new to Wes Anderson, Scarlett Johansson. It's the first time Jason Schwartzman is a leads well since Darjeeling sort of, but the single lead since Rushmore,

which is one of my favorite Wes Anderson movies. But I like this movie quite a bit. I will say, if you are, I think there's two sides to the Wes Anderson portfolio of movies. There's one side where he's actually telling a very good story and wrapping it in his esthetic. There's the other side where he's very up his ass and like doing a movie about his movies. The more than anything asterraat City feels more like the latter, and like again, I was kind of into it, very good looking. This

was the most I've laughed during a Wes Anderson movie in a while. I love Grand Budapest, but I wasn't and it was funny. But and that's one of my favorites of his as well. I couldn't stand. I love dogs. I really like the French dispatch. This is if I'm fusing this movie, I would say like seven point five okay, yeah, not a and don't walk Maybe a wait for streaming, Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't worry too much about seeing it. Although I saw it in an old

school like New York theater, so I wasn't. It wasn't like the best visual setup to see that movie, I don't think. But it's funny. I was laughing quite a bit until this Winton made me laugh. Jeff Goldbloom, Yeah, I had the worst travel experience of my entire life coming back from Summer games Fest. Is that boring? Or should I tell it? No? Tell I like it? Because you are not alone. I feel

extremely fortunate. I had zero issues and got out of there. But I saw what happened to Greg Miller, and he was on a plane for like six hours. Oh, that would have been a delight. I would have loved that I had over twenty four hours of a thing that should have taken five hours. Wow, like Atlanta, didn't you? Yeah? Yeah, that yes, that was when things were going well. So I was supposed I was gonna do a red Eye. I like doing red Eyes. It

gives me the best chance. We're just having a couple of drinks and falling asleep on a flight. So is it nine thirty pm. I'm supposed to fly from LA to New York City. I get there to the airport. As soon as I get there, I get a thing, says Oh, it's been delayed to six am. From nine thirty pm to six am. Oh, no hotel. And that's the thing. Everyone's trying to get to

a hotel and get it comped. And that's an option. Except I had something I had to do in Connecticut, extremely important the next day that I had a person for that was gonna fuself up if I wasn't. Yeah, So I am talking to every agent I can. I'm like, I need to get on a fucking I can't fly out at six am. I'm gonna miss this thing tomorrow. And so they're like, okay, we got you on first stand by for this ten thirty flight. You're gonna be the first

person on at least one person is not going to show up. Gonna be fine, You're good to go. Great, get to the gate at ten thirty, sitting there with my ticket. Sounds like they're the guys counting. It's like, yeah, there's definitely gonna an open seat. Then some business d bag guy comes up, This guy in a suit starts talking about, hey, you waiting two you on standby and I was like yeah yeah,

and he goes, oh, yeah, yeah. I got bumped to the front because you know, I bought a three thousand dollars seat and they were gonna downgrade me, and I said, I'm not gonna go downgrade. I bought this three thousand dollars seat, so they gave me a front of the line standby. So I don't know how the fuck this happened, but this guy jumped me in line and there was one seat available, so d bag and he like talked to you about it, like it was like a really

cool, Yeah, yeah, it was ragging to me about it. But I was gonna say he he knew that it was your potential seat he took and he was imagine like a full on like like like he's like a Kendall Roy type. You could just sense it off. And he's bragging me about how much he spent and he was literally, yeah, I'm gonna jump your seat. I'm gonna get you. I'm getting there beforehand, like he thought. He was being like jokey with me, and I'm sitting here like I'm

gonna kill this guy. Yeah, you never heard of a ritual killing. Yeah, so there's one seat. He gets it, so I'm fucked. I don't get to go on that one. And so I go back to the line and I'm waiting and a lot of people are having trouble. So it's a long line, and they're like, okay, okay, okay, we got you confirmed. You're gonna be on this flight. It takes off.

I think it was like eleven twenty or eleven or something like that, and the same flight or this is a new flight, the next flight, and so like, we have you confirmed, here is a seat you this is not a standby ticket. You're good to go. I was like, thank God, thank you so much. I was like very effusive with my praiser. I was like, thank you, somebody really helped me out here. Thank you. And I go to get in line real quick, because it was pretty quick after that, and they said, oh, this flight's

been canceled. Oh that flight weather? Why is it? They say why? I don't remember. If I don't remember, why, Oh wait Tuesday, Yeah we had we had some thunderstorms around here that that week or those days. Yeah, I don't know if that was it or what, but it got canceled. And now that entire flight is going in line because they're trying to get a hotel comp for the night because they're trying to sleep and take off. Is there on a morning flight? Now? Yeah, I

can't do that. So I wait in this fucking long line and they're like, all right, we've got you confirmed. You're on this midnight flight. You're good for midnight. Good to go. Thank you so much, Thank you, Oh my god, that's amazing. Leave get a message on my phone. Five minutes later, this has been delayed to two am. Okay, as long as I have a confirmed long as I have a confirmed seat,

this is great. And at this point I've been drinking for a little bit at the airport bars and stuff, just trying to pass the time and stuff, and then they gets delayed to two am. The bar is closed, so I'm sitting here just just that's the buzz is wearing off. I'm getting pissed off. I'm waiting for two am. You're tired, Yeah,

I'm so fucking exhausted. All I want to do is get on this long ass flight home gets so by the way, this flight is going to Atlanta, and then I have to figure out what's next once I get to Atlanta. So it's not great. You haven't even solved part two. No, So at this point I'm doing a thing I never fucking do, which I never I'm never the person on Twitter that's like, hey, at Delta, this fucking sucks, But this fucking suck, and I like desperately need to

get home. And I tweeted a few times like, Hey, this sucks, this is what's happened, how can we make this right? What can we do or whatever? And I felt like an a hole for doing that, so I deleted those and then so two o'clock rolls by. No one's helping anything. I'm trying to call them. I'm trying to email them. I'm trying to the wi fi the airport doesn't work, so I'm trying to see if Delta will let into the fucking their flight lounge club so i can

just use their WiFi. And they say no, you have to have a super credit card or something. That's great, awesome, I'll sign up for the card right now if you let They were they were about to pick me on it. I literally just walked out. I'm fucking whatever. Um So two am gets there. Oh, the flight's been delayed to two forty five am. Awesome. Two forty five shows up. I see people getting off the plane. Oh my god, we got a plane here. We're good

to go. I line up zone ones. Boarding people are entering a plane. This is awesome. I am like five people away from scanning my fucking boarding pass and they say, um, attention to everyone. A gate A thirty going to Atlanta. Our scanner has broke, and our boarding pass scanner and federal regulations say that we have to have the scanner working, so this will be a little bit and oh my god. At this point, I'm

just exhausted. I just like go up to a wall and collapse sitting against the wall, and then like ninety construction workers come out with all these cones and they start yelling at me for sitting against the wall, and I'm just like, but my brain's not fucking working at this point. So yeah, three something, I get on a fly, I flies to Atlanta, and then I have to fucking work with support to get a connecting flight back to New York. And it was just, um, it was literally over twenty

four hours. I wound up doing all this shit and that sounds awful, dan fucking terrible. Oh my god, I wanted to play Zelda. I had my fucking switch with me, but at this point I was just so I was too exhausted to like, I couldn't sleep right, but I also did my brain wasn't working enough to like fucking play Zelda, So I just was into this fugue state for Oh my god, you're tired, You're you're tired, and you're like bitter and you're frustrated, and it's awful. It's

just an awful experience. Yeah. I got automatically upgraded to business class on my way home. I paid three thousand dollars. I came up in this suit, and I fucking talked to this Trump whose seat I took. I say three, I fucking rubbed it and I took a selfie with him right as I was leaving fucking Kettle Strong. Hey, hey, bro, you you go fucking nuclear. I just saw a seat. Bro, you're gonna take that, Bro, Bro, I just took the seat. Bro, fucking getty up, get on the horse. You know what I mean?

Damn it. It's just I don't I don't get angry often, like I really you guys can't test. I'm not very sounds like they broke you. But I was serious. Yeah, I was angry, and then I was just broken. I was just like, I'm never gonna get home. I'm never gonna get out. If I had seen you do the tweet thing, I would have known you were not yourself. Yeah, oh and probably text you. But I didn't see that on Twitter. Enough happened before. No, It's like, yeah, we've talked about that on the on the show

before the tweet thing. But again, like I would have been like, oh shit, Dan's out of sorts right now. There are some people that do it like all the time, like Chris Jericho, the wrestler is notorious for like that at Marriott, Well, why didn't you kick me out of your hotel? I was being fine. It's like, okay, when you

do that three times a week, you're probably not being fine. And the people in the games in the straight argument, there's people in the games industry who will tweet like, hey, I was in I was in a window seat and you put me in an aisle seat to allow for this for like this person to get close to the door when they have I was like, why are you doing this? Yeah, yeah, that's how you were doing things like that. Yeah. Yeah, but like this, I was like

literally at wits end. I like no customer support was working. I was trying everything, and like I had to fucking get home. And I'm not saying the reason, but it was a very important thing. I had to be home for that. Yeah. And Amanda goes down south for work to

Savannah fairly often. She was flying back up the Wednesday after all this happened, I think, and there were thunderstorms going on New York and they finally cleared her plane, which she was nervous about because fucking turbulence on those East Coast flights sucks in my experience going between Seattle, La San Francisco. Yeah, turbulence towards LA can get a bit wobbly, but East coast. Every

time I'm going up and down the East Coast, it's awful. And Amanda witnessed a flight attendant go airborne during turbulence and went so high that also went like backwards a bit, you know, when you're like when you're on a moving thing and jump up. She's like, I saw the flight attendant like actually go up and back, and then the captains and the co pilot the pilot was like, hey, emergency check in with the flight attendant, and

it was fine. They were all laughing afterward. But She's like, I saw this person go airborne, and then I heard the pilots get on the PA to say, hey, emergency check in. How are you doing? I would I would have At that point, I'm like, give me snatch someone's ambient and just put myself out for a day. Stop me. If I told have I told a couple of short stories about had next girlfriend who's

a flight attendant, about her weird stories working. If I said, yeah, okay, Frank, remind me like some of them was about a guy who had a scab on his leg. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, and the other one who was about a little girl watching something on a laptop. That's very from the scab one ring. I remember that. I don't want to hear about scabs. But telling me about the girl

the scab one we've definitely talked about. She watched like Last Tango in Paris, and she was, oh, she was so act was like pushing the car watching the color blue or blue is the warmest color. I don't know, somebody do something just watching she's just watching the sex scene with Halle Berry and Billy Billy sob starting from Monsters Fall. Yeah, daddy, you're wrong

with all these guesses. Okay, sorry, Okay, go ahead. She's just know the drink cart down the aisle and the little girl eight or nine year old girl that's just like headphones on, just watching something, the sweet little girl watching something on a laptop. And as she's passing by, she turned and the girl is just watching footage of the towers falling on nine to eleven. Oh my god, oh my god. That's infinitely worse than all

of the things I was guessing. Watching footage of like the plane's crashing and the towers falling like nothing says, you can't do that, but that's weird. She wasn't when was this, you know, probably would have been like twenty eleven, twenty twelve, So ostensibly this girl could have not even been born or could have been born the year it happened. Yeah, and maybe it's like, oh, I'm flying, let's see my birthday. I really

wanted to see fun. Let's up. But yeah, let's look up a list like top or worst ten airplane crashes of all time, and yeah, are top of the list. What were her parents doing? Don't I'm not a parent. I don't want to pass judgment, but don't let her watch that? Say, why do we click the X button on that? I know the Bible says judge not less you be judged, but you should probably not let your daughter watch nine to eleven videos on a plane when she's nine

or ten. Let me watch Paw Patrol or whatever the kids watch. Yeah, that's harmless. Watch car crashes for All Destruction, Derby, Yeah, the Twisted Metal TV show. Everyone's talking about anything else besides when she was watching like literally the worst cream pie porn. That's fine, just not nine to eleven videos that on a plane. Yeah, you'll definitely be asked to dissembek the nearest they hand you a pairport. Yeah. Yeah, um, do you want to talk about video games? Sure? But first Dan,

Mary. Yeah, did you guys know that I am very into wine. No, I have heard a wine trip. We have a wine trip coming up soon. I've heard your professional somalia. I'm not a licensed somalia. I would very much like to be. I'm I'm sort of getting the ball rolling on that. That's how you drink wine. We are very excited because Dan, tell people what you've been using to try out new wines. I have been using First Leave and they send me a nice box of wine.

When a dumb dumb like me doesn't know how to pick things out, it doesn't know my shardonnays from my piano grigios, I got First Leave to pick some stuff out for me, and they have been right on the money with every bottle they have sent me. It's a monthly shipment and you can also when you first sign up, take the quiz, just ask you do you like coffee? Do you like vanilla? Do you like all rose? Yeah?

And then they'll ask you do you like certain brands. It'll it'll basically taller it and then every month you can tell them whether you liked each wine or not, and Mary tell them how people can get started if they're fire Escape listeners. To make sure you've got great wine when you want it. This summer, you got to try first Leave. Just head over to try first leaf dot com slash fire Escape to sign up and you'll get your first

six hand curated bottles for just forty four ninety five. You go to try first leaf dot com slash fire Escape. That's t R y f I R S t l e af dot com slash f I R e S c Ape to get your first six bottles for under eight dollars a bottle. Try first leaf dot com slash fire Escape. What what games are you guys been playing? Dan, You were saying you have not had son of time. You

couldn't even play Zelda at the airport. No, just the last few days or when I've got my switch with me and I've been able to play Zeld again. I put in a bunch of hours in the last couple of days and I had to take a bit of a break, and I'm glad that

like the magic is back. I discovered just a bunch of new threads that I want to follow where it's like, oh, this seems like this huge, Like there's the side adventures, not just the side quest, and like I opened up some side adventures where it's like, oh fuck, okay, right, this game is like maybe one of the best games of all time, and I'm fully back in. But obviously a lot of moving parts going on right now with travel and other stuff. So that's pretty much it.

I want to play Diablo. I know you guys have been playing it. My big plan is once I'm settled in a way that I want to play some co op with Bonk. Have you guys done any local co op like on the same TV? Yes? I have. How's that it's great playing with a friend. I think as a buddy with Diablo is the way to

play it. I think not doing that as a disservice to what this game allows you to do, which is play in an area with someone as two different character builds that complement each other so that you can go in guns blazing. I'm Rogue, which is very classic. I tend to like that character build so that I can I like to be very zip zappy, which is my word for having lots of dashes and invisibility. I have a really fun upgrade for my weapon which allows me to do traps and jump backwards simultaneously.

So extremely floaty. Love this character. It's extremely fun to be a rogue builds in Diablo four and you can either choose blades or a you know, just a regular bow arrow crossbow. And doing that with a tank is clutch. Because I'm flighty and floaty, I can't take a lot of damage with my build. That's why I'm allowed to go invisible, so and get the

fuck out. Mixing that with a tank who can absorb damage while I'm setting traps and poisoning people and stabbing them in the back extraordinarily fun and such a delight. I don't know if I would have as much fun. I know, actually I do know that I would not have as much fun if I was by myself. It is super fun to go in with another person who has specifically chosen to build that compliments mine so that we can absolutely fucking wreck

in that game and it gives you the D two vibes again. Or you're just like killing hoards and hoards of zombies and well, I don't know if there's zombies, you know what I mean, they're undead, really fucked up horror things happening in these side stories. Yeah, oh it's something trying too hard, But it's still definitely feels like a reaction to the cartoonishness of D

three. That is it is so awesome is file The Blood of the Willing is like a common theme that happens throughout that game, but you do get a little numb to it, Like I remember, I think like in the first acts, you you meet a girl, you meet a woman who's like, I'm looking for my daughter, and me and me and my my co player at the same time looked each other. They're like, she's dead and she doesn't even know it. She's not just dead, she's also skinned alive.

As is often the case in this game, they get real. That's just the way it be. Sometimes, like you know, I'm Jolo, Sometimes sometimes you get skinned alive. I have become very aware that in that game, if someone's like I'm looking for the most important person of my life, I'm like a pitch, I got bad news for you. They're dead. Not only are they dead, but they're going to become the boss and I'm going to kill them in front of you, and then we're going to

eat their soul. That's it. That's just the way that game is. Are you finding it challenging, Mary, because I'm playing solo and I'm pretty varienced and I'm getting my ass kicked, not ass kicked. I'm I'm fine, difficult on the one above normal, hard, whatever, yeah, whatever, the one up is that different? Yes, I believe right, Yeah, I think they're separate. I'm unhearted. I think Uh, I wouldn't

say I'm breezing through it. I'm finding some challenge. I actually had a boss fight we had to redo six times, which I think, Yeah, that's what I guess. That's what I mean because I'm playing solo as a

Druid, and Druid has taken some time to really build up. Yeah, and there's been certain bosses i've because it's an open world more MMOs album, Like, I'm can't beat this boss right now based on the skills I have because maybe it's just like the recharge time, and also I still only have the four potions when that you get when you're level ten, etc. I'm

it's challenging me for sure. So my partner, who is a druid as well, basically does a shit ton of damage in the first three seconds, and then all their skills need to re up, and so basically for ten seconds you can't do shit. That might be a druid build thing. I

think it's based on the guides that Polygon has done. They take a bit to get going, which is why I guess they're tougher build, but later on they get more I think that's an interesting argument though, for why having a secondary is so valuable, because my skills all take time and are more lengthy. So for example, all of my traps they slow and poison over time, which gives us damage while the ten seconds are going, so that

you know the other person can build. So having two people or more, it's just a really nice dynamic to have that because you can have different types of skills over time. I find that unfortunate, but yeah, I would say that is like a very natural build for you. I've been breezing through it except for that one boss, and I unfortunately can't remember the name of the boss, but it was like I would say, we're probably like I

don't know, nine hours in and it's really fun. It's just like there's certain types of bosses where if they freeze you and I can't move, and I'm a flighty person, I'm fucked. As soon as I'm fro I'm probably going to get demolished because I'm too floaty and I just don't have the health to be able to survive. So if I get trapped, I'm in deep shit. But other than that, I'm pretty good. Mary, you were

talking about the importance of like having classes that compliment each other. I'm curious because, like I we did a stream on Giant Bomb where you know, I put a couple hours into like a wizard like lightning Magician Guy. I forget the official name of the class. Is it Sorcerer. Yeah, so I think I'm a sorcerer with like lightning powers mainly. And Bonk has already said, like she called necromancer. She's super wants to be a necromancer.

So fun would they do go together? Or are they too? Are they weak? What's yours again, Magician Guy? I mean, you guys are both magic based, um, but I would say there's a lot of options and range, especially in necromancy, So I think you'll be fine because necromancy can raise hordes of the dead. What I would suggest for your build is to have because she's going to probably do high DPS, and she'll have AoE because she's having hoards of people, which means you should have a singular attack,

so lightning attacks and stuff like that. Yeah, bold to kind of like dash between people. Yeah, okay, I just think of that. And most most of these builds, it's not which characters you pick, it's the skills specifically to ensure that they're complementing. If someone's doing AoE, you should do like a very specific type of damage. If someone is flighty, be someone who can soak damage, right, and I think you can both

do that. I think she can soak damage because if she has hoards of people that she can raise, they can take the damage on your guys's behalf. So she can be a tank maybe in that capacity. And I historically his sorcerers are not known for being tanks. So I would say, of anything, you guys might both be might be high risk for getting killed, so you're going to probably want some distance attacks. But I think you'll be fine. Cool, Okay, looking forward to it. I'm excited. I

think it's a great game. It's super dark, it is oh you know, socketing comes in right away. I think the way in which you build your character is a little annoying. So you know, have you guys seen it where it's essentially blood and each skill you do gives you enough blood that you can get your next skill. But when you want to when you want to respect, you can't undo your first skill because it it is the enough

skill points that you needed to afford all the skills in line. And so you basically have to like respect your whole character when you want to do your original skill, which I find annoying, but it's made me respect more often currently, Like respecting costs like what like it's like fifty bucks, it costs you some money, who cares? And it makes me choose different paths to try different builds of my character. Do I want to use my knives and be stabby? Do I want to go poison Bill? Do I want to

go freeze build? Do I want to you know? Like? Which all do I want? So you're constantly like rearranging your moves, and I think that the re encouraging me to respect is annoying. But it allows me to try different builds of my character, which I do like I am respecting more often this game. Have we talked about this far? I really don't like respecting ever I people I hear, yes, I hear people that are like,

oh, I respect I want to try everything in this character. I'm like, there's something anxiety inducing about that, where it's like I feel like I've put all this time and effort in learning into getting this skill set down pat and also to reset and then learn six new skills all at once just overwhelms me a bit, like in role playing games. And I mean, I know this is an action RPG, but in role playing games as well. I'm like, nope, I'm I've committed to this character. I don't

care. I'll make this pathwork somehow. There's something about respecting that I just never do it. If you could respect in real life, would you now? I'm happy with what I am Mary, There's like a there's like a mindset for that. It's like a cognitive dissonance where you're essentially like, nothing is wrong with my life. Everything is exactly the way that I planned it and mapped it, and no, I wouldn't change anything, but it's like, really, if you could, you'd probably be like, ah, I'll

change a couple things, all right. I don't want anything to change. I would put more points into like just general health and fitness stuff when I was like eighteen and could like, you know, get a head start on it and be like, hey, it's gonna suck later if you don't get ahead start on this stuff. But then I don't know, like I don't want to take points away, like from anything. And that's the thing you

don't get you there's finite points. You can't be amazing at everything. I feel like early on, yeah, we went, we went heavy into being entertainers and you know, being able to have a good time at potties. And now it's like what else do I got? You know, because I don't think I could respect and be a scientist at this point. No, I don't think I could be like in the NBA or anything. Now, well, if you're respecting, you could be if I respect now well no, no, I'm still forty No, not in the NBA. Yeah,

he took forty years worth. Yeah, I guess would it reset? I ain't gonna get in respect. I'm not suddenly like ripped and taller, right, I Do's not how respecting works, yeah, because you'd be putting all of your like entertainment skills into physic like physique and like strength and like jumping. Yeah yeah, okay, so I guess you could. But that's but I don't want to be in the NBA. I want to play video games and get paid for it. So you probably don't. No one's making you

respect, So maybe I don't respect. I just wish I liked did smart push ups when I was eighteen. Yeah, you could take of maybe you could take a few points out of I don't know what you would want to take points out of and put them into. Yeah, so you're fine, but I wish I was healthier. But our points in like what you are born with, whereas do is just go back as if you're like one of the three ghosts that are visiting at night and being like, do some crunches.

That's all you needed to do. We could be babies. If we could be babies again, I'm absolutely respecting. If you two can be babies again, of making your respect. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't know that it was at a baby. Like if we go through all that again, I kind of hated everything until I was like twenty okay, oh okay, okay, here's here's the would you rather? Okay, not really

would you rather? It's more of a would you do X? If you could erase all your points and also got let's say, like thirty extra points right now. To respect, however, you have to consciously be a baby an infant, Like you have to be cognizant of what's going on. You're gonna remember it. Oh so we have our current brains in a baby in nineteen eighty four. Maybe not current brains, but like we've all forgotten what it's like to be a baby. You're not forgetting this ship Like you're you're

oh, so, I know I'm shitting my pants. You know you're shitting your pants. You know everything that's going on. You know how extremely uncomfortable it is to be a newborn. But I'm like, I'm in a fucking womb that sucks. No, no, no, no, no. Once you're once you're out, you're cognizant. I mean, I guess babies technically are cognizant, but like it's so rudimentary, you're not gonna remember it. You're gonna remember this when you deal with the twenty year old Paul Reyger trying

to figure out how to raise me. Yes, but I want to be conscious of that at all. You have thirty extra points to put into whatever area you want. You could like put it into I don't know, financial

or like so athletic. I can have all the all the health benefits of Like I could put those points into the health stuff I want, uh, and also just live the exact same life, like keep everything else the same and like you have memories of being breastfed by your mom, but you'll be but you'll be We would be doing this podcast, but you'd be fucking stacked. I don't know if I got breastfit, I probably had mountain dew. I did enough the mountain dew in your bottle, although sometimes I wonder most

moms had memory glands. Your mom had PEPSI glands. Young brand's breasts. Our mommy's got diet doctor pepper today. That's fuck. I don't think I want to do that. There's too many fucked up things I don't want to, like knowingly shit my pants. Oh did I say you guys junior high? Awkward, and like I don't want any of that ship. Oh yeah, I would. I don't want to relive most of childhood. I didn't have a bad childhood per se, but like fucking middle school, fuck that

I hated. I hated middle school. I hated high school. If I'd be fine with doing this deal twenty one, I just all of a sudden appear on Dave clapp shoulders again on my twenty first birthday. What fuck? Oh my god, I put all my points into my penis size. It's your fucking hospital bedroomen And you're like, but my dick is so big, and every time you get a heart on, you pass out because it takes all the blood away from all of your beings. They have to like do

blood transfusions with you. Every moment you know it's got a hard on because his face goes white. I took all all the blood. I took all my points out of sphincter control and put him into Boner's size. So I'm just sitting stupid as fucks. Who's that guy with a tripod and the brown spot in his butt? You can't. You don't know your own name. Die, I die at your later. Okay, you're just explaining it takes two caskets to bury me. He died doing what he loved, getting a

herd on him shitting his pants. I need like a Nicolas cage pyramid mausoleum to house my penis. You're laying in the bottom and then just the pants tent going up. It's a it's a hollow mausoleum is actually in it. Imagine if Rigor Mortis said in when I had a boner and it's just there forever and your caskets, they could you bury him the dirt face down, so it just goes another six feet down to the dirt. And then at the morgue they can't open the drawer because I'm just like, it's like a

steak. He used to keep a tent in the grounds. Yeah, he's not going anywhere. God, what else have I been playing? Um? I've I've also been playing a game called Killer Frequency, and I'd love to describe the plot to you. Please do Okay that sounded extremely sarcastic and machi. I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about my here. It can take time to process that. Sorry, Yes, explain the

plot. You're a radio DJ and you are at a new town it's a small town and you don't think it's that cool, but you need the job. And so you're DJing for the night and you get a call from nine one one and they're like, listen, we are so busy and we are overrun and we have to leave because we're having issues. We can't take nine one one calls tonight. We're going to redirect all nine one one calls to your radio show so that you can help people in their time of need.

Unfortunately, you can't send the police out, but maybe you can help some people. Sorry about it, buy and they hang up and you're live on air and you got a little radio lady who's with you and she's like that was crazy, and you're like, I know, right. And then people start calling in and they're like, there is a fucking killer outside of my house and he's trying to get in. What do I do? And then you make decisions and tell them what to do, and based on what you

tell them, they either live or they die. Live setup. It's got a jazz punk looking vibe. It's like cell shaded seventies, isn't it. Yeah? I like look to it and then um, let me give you more. So I'm telling you all the good stuff now and then I'll tell you my problems when I played it. But like other other cool stuff, just like a DJ, you have all these buttons, like you know that are like dingle in the baby and like you know it's killer or not in

the killer frequency, that's right. And so like someone will be calling and they'll be like, I'm hiding in the closet and you're just like where wait wait, wait wait wait, and you're like using your sound effects to funk with them. You actually pick up what are they called, Oh my god, it's too music album discs. You pick up records and you put them

on. I solved it, and you put them on and you play them yourself, and you can play them while people are calling you and why they need you, and like when they're like crying and upset and stuff and you're like playing music and like you know, doing it. It's it's a crazy setup that you're able to do all these things and then they actually give you puzzles. There's live maps of the town to your right, and there's like some some people call and they're like there's a fire and it's right here.

We need the closest person that can come help us put it out. Jacob is between sixth Street and twelfth Street. Lonnie is right by the Quickie Mart and Jackie is you know, and they're like, who should who should come? And so you'll look at the map and you'll determine the closest person to the fire. If you pick the wrong person, the building burns down and everyone dies. If you pick the right person, then everyone gets saved.

It's like puzzle e like that. It seems irresponsible adventure game, Like, wait, what genre would you does it fit into a neat genre? I don't know what the funk I would call this? Uh, it's rr puzzle adventure. It's not really scary because I don't think you're ever in danger and you have to like there's almost like a level of separation because I can make there's a laugh. You know, there's a laugh track button, so like every time someone's like I'm gonna die, I'd like hit the laugh track button

and then I laugh. I never was scared playing this. There is murder in it, so I guess it's scary, but not to me. M And then there's there's the puzzle element because you're solving in your head what you should do in any person's situation when they're in danger. Um, I guess it's Indie puzzle and it's first person. Yeah, the puzzle light elements that have narrative dire conse quenses out of these mundane puzzle tasks kind of reminds you

of like papers please or something like that. Okay, it has I think one of the coolest concepts, like one of the strongest concepts of the game

I've ever heard. Now here's the caveat now that I've hyped it up, because I actually think I sold it pretty well in that first half in execution, I think they really messed up the dynamic between me and my co person, you know, like your DJ normally has I don't know the lady on the other hand, that's like, yeah, okay, they keep fucking talking about their lives and their dynamic is so uninteresting and I couldn't give a flying

shit and you can't fast forward it. And so sometimes in between waiting for someone who's getting murdered, I'm just listening to this lady talk about her life, and I'm like, I couldn't care less, like deciding the next song or anything. Welcome to my life. You can do it a lot, fucking co host talk about their life. I'm kidding, sorry, just waiting for someone I couldn't Yeah, I couldn't help. Like I have two of them. If you ever call me needing me, I'm gonna let you die.

But this is my heel turn from here on out in fire Escape. I'm just fucking sick of you two. You're gonna die in the wine for it. Oh god, I have a whole Mary. This is your room. It's just made of knives. It's so weird. Did everybody get a themed room like this or yeah? Ours just butterflies, Ours is jungle, mine is just sharp, Mine is just point pointing metal seems to be the theme. There's a bunch of mouse traps under here. Trap Did anybody else

get a baseball bat pendulum themed room? Sorry I'm in danger? Okay, so killer frequency. So the dynamic is not good. That you can do stuff. They give you a lot of stuff to do. You can you can change out records the whole time. You can. Sometimes she asks you to play ads. You got to find the right ad, which is nice. So there's like little mini puzzles like that. And then they even have wads of paper and you can throw them into a trash basket like bat there's

like a basketball mini game that you can use the pastime. None of that helps when someone is talking to you for five booblest minutes about their life story that I couldn't give a shit about, and I wish they rethought that element of it. I also think, like some of the puzzles that they give

you, it doesn't make sense logically what they're asking you to do. If there's one where there's like a house party and everyone's like, we need you to tell us who should do what task in order to survive the killer and I have a list of what all the people at the party are good at, and so they'll be like someone needs to be the one that Jack's the car? Should it be Jimmy, Donnie or Susie? And I'm reading like what everybody's good at? And it's just like this is such a weird puzzle.

You guys are being murdered, like run into the woods, you know what I mean, Like, it doesn't make sense that I'm like, Lannie's actually the best at stealing cars, because it says here he's been arrested three times is a mechanic, so you should probably he should know to go hot wire the car. That's right. But they're asking me and I'm like reading, I'm like reading their diary essentially to solve the puzzle. So it doesn't

make any sense, but it is. It's a very strong premise. I think that I don't know if I can recommend the game fully because it's so silly, But what I will say is is it's a really cool concept. And I hope that the devs are able to use the learnings from this game apply it to their next one, because it's such an interesting, unique take

on that type of game. And I love the premise. I love that I'm a DJ like trying to convince people to live or die, and and I had both where I saved someone and I felt really good about myself and I made a mistake with somebody else and watched like heard them get like stabbed to death, and I was like, I can't win them off, just like hung up, like played you know wa, and then just moved on with my life. Is this It's a crazy game. It seems like a

really solid elevator pitch that didn't really like stick the landing. It's unfortunate that in the execution phase of it, some stuff just probably doesn't work as well in a game as it sounded on paper. But I still think it's a neat concept, and I hope that they're able to apply those learnings into future games. Yeah, it's it's neat. It's an interesting way to spend several hours. Nice you've been playing anything else besides Diablo Killer, frequency just traditional

Zelda. I spent um one hour trying to get a car rock over a mountain solid video. That's very funny. What do you what do you think? Do you think of those specific core rock puzzles they'll like transport this dude over there. Sometimes I think they're fun. Things can come out of it, like Mary's video of trying to like launch this corroc over a mountain. And then there are times where it's like, all right, I don't know, I could put together a stupid wagon, or I could just use ultrahand

and just walk towards the smoke signal. You know. Sometimes it's just like I appreciate that, like it gives you an opportunity to be like, hey, make some stupid ship and see what happens, and that can be fun, but sometimes it's just like I just I just want to get my cork seeds and move on. I think the best ones are like, yeah, get him up this sheer cliff face to his friend, like all right, this is a puzzle. Other times like Okay, I see the green smoke.

I know you want me. There's fucking the monster truck parts ATV wheels next to me. We'll go up this river, sure, And then by the time I get there, inevitably the game is good enough where you see like three things on the way that you want to do afterward. But god,

yeah, I got sick of those pretty pretty quickly. I feel like if not built for that type of like cargo moving the way something like desk stranding was, or it's like that was the game, and like all of the mechanics like really lint itself towards that being fun, the A to B carrying a thing, whereas this is like I don't know, like Zelda really shines when you are building something goofy to accomplish the goal of like I'm going to get myself here from here to there, or I'm going to get myself

over all this gloom by making this weird hover bike or something. I think carrying something is not the strong suit in Tears the Kingdom, you know, yeah for sure. Yeah, I think I think my favorite thing to do in Tears the kid. I don't know. I like, I like the building is fun when I'm just like trying to be funny or like trying to find comedy in it. But those coroc ones definitely felt like a ham fisted way to encourage it. I think like you could say the same thing about

the guy that's asking you to keep the sighing afloat. But I think the thing is is that none of those things are required. They're not necessary. You can skip them if you don't want to do them. They're just things in the world that are supposed to test your ingenuity. And see each of these situations, the environment, the terrain, it's slightly different. I've had carrocs that are really close to a broken bridge and it's like, cool,

you want me to like put this bridge together. I got it. And there's other ones where, like Dan was saying, there's like a huge mountain and then the corus like my friend is and I'm like, yeah, up there, yeah, of course, he is, and it's a strap him to a rocket and figure it out. I think what's interesting about it is like it's very easy in that situation for me to have just said fuck you, fuck your friend, fuck your food, I'm leaving and just totally ignore

him. But I can't help the idea that maybe I could solve it, and now you're two core seeds and pour into getting that bastard up there. That's kind of the joy of it, is like the time the time fallacy of it all, which is, you know, do you want to spend an hour trying to come up with a stupid idea to solve this stupid puzzle from these two corks that you don't give a shit about. But I will. What keeps happening to me is like I will be in the middle of

doing something like more directed. You know. There are times where I'm just

exploring and looking for stuff to do. But there's stuff where it's like I'm trying to get to that place where a shooting star fell, or I'm trying to get to this you know, specific story thing or something, and then I will see the korak and I'll see what I have to do, and I'll be like, I don't want to do this now, but I don't want to just ignore it, so I'll just like place a stamp on the map with the little seed icon or the leaf icon and then move on.

Like so, I maybe at some point, if I'm just desperate for stuff to do, I'll go try to clean those up, but I'm just kind of marking them for now. Yeah. I think that's a good that's a really good system. The leaf icon is like exactly probably what you should be doing with that. I have such a bad system in my map for coming back to things. I saw someone online I forget who it is. Sorry.

Someone said that they wished that you could have that map icon system for Diablo four, And that's really smart because right now in Diablo sometimes you'll come across something and be like, oh, like I'll do that later, and you'll forget or whatever, and it's just like, I wish you could easily just mark that's going to be cool, but I don't want to do it right now. In other games, it's neat to be able to say I'll deal with you later. Yeah, it's probably my favorite map system in any

game. Like Breadth of Wild, it was easier in Breadth of Wild because I think there was just less variety, I guess, Whereas like I find myself in this where it's like, oh wait, I already used the star for this, so what do I use it? It's like I'll use the crystal, but I kind of forget, Like I feel like I had it together better in Breadth of Wild. Elvin Ring had something similar, Right,

couldn't you do like a skull and okay that's a boss fight? And I feel like elden Ring had a decent kind of map system that was similar. Right, anytime you have like a choose your own adventure sandbox open world, you need the ability for me to pop a little sticker on the map to remember to do something later. Yeah, Like there's a fine line between like I don't like that Ubisoft style of just like here's a map with a bunch

of just barf on it, with a billion icons. I much prefer the elden Ring Breath of Wild thing of like make your own map in your own system, but you got to make sure you give the player enough options as far as like placing those things. I still get overwhelmed in Tears the Kingdom, where I feel like there's so many things that I get decision itis and I don't know what to do. That plagues me to this day. It's

just so directionless. It's giving me so much power that I panic and I'm like, I don't know, I'll just you know, I'll get a new horse today and that's it. And I love a little bit more. I think I just do the loose thing where it's like I want to make sure I explore a bunch and I don't want to do it. I don't want to do all the dungeons and then just explore. I'm trying to pace it

out. So it's like i'll beat a dungeon, I'll get that ability, and I'll be like, all right now, I'm going to spend many many hours doing side quests, like checking things off that list. Like it does a pretty good job of like you know, side quest, side adventures, all that stuff. So it's like I'm gonna do like five or six of these and then I'll go back to like pushing towards a dungeon. So yeah, with that much agency and that much control, I am able to punish

myself. And I don't know if the game has really thought about how much I hate myself and how I will do something that is so boring and pointless for four hours because it allowed me to Maybe it did. Maybe maybe I'm learning a lot about myself through this game. Just like Fox, You're just like gonna leave me here with all these Corerox in ridiculous situations with like such

little reward, and you know I'll do it. Yeah, there's no way I'm getting every core ox seed, So like I'm placing those stamps being like, we'll see if I ever get back with this, but realistically probably not. Probably not. Zira blank and Chip says they're a sadists and there are massa chists and you know which one you are. Do you guys want to

do emails? Sure? Free, all right? As usually you can write into Firescape past at gmail dot com with questions, comments, corrections, concerns we actually do I did include It's not a correction, it's just the further clarification of Dan and hailing in a vacuum or lack thereof, So we can get into that. Mary first, though, I want toss to you.

You have something to address from last episode. Yeah, I remember us discussing at length about sports and esports and Dan specifically, you said that e sports aren't sports. Oh, and that playing a video game competitively isn't sport because it's not physical. Correct that still your sports are not real sports, Yes, and I don't. I would probably rather watch esports because I like video

games and I don't care about real sports. But they're not athletes. I would rather watch it, though, I'll say that, God, this is I forgot we had this conversation last time. But yeah, I know you've never been prepared for this argument. And can I can I clarify what I said? I think I I think I made my point clear. I think esports or sports For the record, I think it demands a lot based on

what I know. Yes, of course their schedules are rigorous practicing. Otherwise, what I was saying is that I can more immediately relate to how impressive physical sports are. Sure I had to learn more about esports. Sure I might change my mind the future, but at this point in time, I stand by. I just can't imagine something happening in esports that rivals like Michael

Jordan's flu game during the finals. My mind could change in the future, so I'm open to it, all Right, What Michael said, I am not saying like, Look, I agree rigorous training, skill, strategy, tactics, all that stuff, like it demands a lot. Like I've been playing in my whole life, i am nowhere fucking near the level and any video game of a esports of a competitive gaming player, I'm not gonna say sports. I mean, we can all agree that you guys can't do any

of the things that athletes can do. We all agree a gamer that's not true. I was, I was a college athlete. No, you have no abilities. And I think what I'm trying to express here is I'd love to get a little bit more into the nitty gritty. So I've made a list of oh of different types of sports and things that might be considered sports, and I'd like your take on why they are a sport or not? Okay, and then I'm going to ask you some questions that help me specify

what is sporty about it. I blame my father for all this, By the way, is this for Are these questions for Dan or me? Because I already said they're sports? I think sports are sports. They're just Dan because you're more I think you're more acceptable in society. So This is like a Danish show how much I've improved as a person over my father. Keep in mind he doesn't think soccer is a sport, So I am much more open minded here. So yeah, so open minded. Number one am football?

All right? American football? Football? American football is a sport. Yes, okay, why does he have skill? The skilled physical? You know, like a mental like It's it's absolutely yes. You have to be an athlete. You have to, you know, it's uh mentally like like for a quarterback and for everyone to remember all the plays and everything and run and catch the ball. It's it's of course, of course. Okay. The manager of the football team, is he an athlete? Is he playing

a sport? No, he's not playing a sport. He's not playing a sport former athletes. Maybe he's not actively like the act of managing a team is not an athletic pursuit. He's in sports. But I see what you're saying, like a would we equate management to being in sports, But he's not sports actially at that point. Yeah, but he's in sports, in sports, but not in an athlete. Hold on, hold on, criteria wise, Mary, I see what you're doing, but you gotta stick to

it. Are we are you asked trying to convinced dand that esports are sports or we haven't gotten there yet. An athlete, you know, like like, no, if you're not play in the game, you're not doing the athletic role. What I'm trying to understand is do you need skills to be the manager of a football? Of course? Do you need training? Of course? Are you an athlete? Not in that role? It's not an athletic role? No, all right? I think the players are the athletes.

There are a million roles around sports and teams and stadiums and stuff that are not athletic in nature but are inherently tied to the sport and important to the sport and the plays on the field. But that doesn't mean they're the athletes. George Costanza worked for the Yankees, but he wasn't an act Marty Schottenheimer's not an athlete, you know. I wonder what we're discussing though, is is it a sport or are they athletes? Yeah? Yeah, they're

connected, right, m let's let's continue. Okay, a person playing professional poker, No, it's not a sport. They're not an athlete. We're discussing whether or not consider poker a game, not a sport. A poker is a game, not a sport. Yes, there's nothing athletic about poker. It is it skilled? Oh of course yes? Do you require training? Yeah, in experience and yeah, knowledge of the game and knowledge of people and reading other people, and of course yeah, it's highly skilled,

of course, but not athletic. I think we're coming across the same boundary in each of these. So let's try another one. Drone racing not athletic? Is it a sport? Stops skipping ahead and answer the questions and the order in which I give them. To drone racing sport? No? No, have you? Is it skilled? Yeah? Of course, I mean all these things are gonna be skilled. Everything's required skill, you know, uh huh. But you don't need to be an athlete in order to drone

race. So it's not a sport. That's an interesting one. And I can see the parallels in you know, gaming, because oh, do you see what's happening? Let's continue. Okay, wait, didn't answer, though you can't know he didn't. I'm always up for being wrong. Good, because it's happening. What's the next one DDR professional player. Yeah, that's that's getting closer to athlete. Uh huh yeah, why because that requires a lot of Like there's a major physical element to it. Major definition of athletics,

major physical element. I'm going to write that down. You're saying that athletics is about a major physical element. Yeah, athletics. The definition of athletics are physical sports and games of any kind physical. Well, okay, physical to who what do you mean? Next? Example, mech fighting. You're controlling a mech? Is it a sport? Are you inside the mech? They're like robot fighting. I think, like like battle bots. Battle bots is not athletes. No, but there's physical elements happening, but the

person isn't physically like the person literally controlling it. Is this the thing where they're controlling actually by moving their limbs and whatnot? Are they controlling situation? Yes, because they're moving. Let me write that down in a pacific rim situation. Okay, I'm looking at the dictionary definition of athletes. Okay, yeah, tell me what Webster says. Okay, a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise. I think that's the key thing

right there. Physically, the Dictionary definition of an athlete involves physical exercise. Physical exercise, yea had to be able to get winded. I think, yes, you need to be able to get wind which I'm sure a lot of Anyway, that eliminates golf. I think golf is the one that kin comes up a lot. But that's right. There is the physical element too. I mean there is a lot of dexterity involved, you know, like that that is physical, and there is in in gaming two you know,

but they're not really breaking a sweat out there, are they. Yeah, but it's more physical than you people get like, well, I guess I got injured playing games, you know, Like so that that's out the window. Okay, how about this one professional pool? It's a game. The definition you read out included games, said physical exercise. Again, the definition of athlete a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise.

But then, what's the definition of sport? That's what we're discussing. Who are not discussing whether or not their athletes. We're discussing whether or not their sports stand. Okay, here we go, here we go here, here's the definition of a sport. Oh yeah, what does Webster say, a sport is why are you mocking the good name of Webster? Fucking you? Hey, where the authorities here? Okay, the authorities say a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill, in which an individual or team

competes against other another or others for entertainment, physical exertion and skill. I think that's the key. All right, let's talk about But then what golf physical exertion is? Yeah, like, what what does that mean? I guess that's a Windo interpretation and golf I can see, like, yes, yeah, you're not. I'm just saying I'm playing out that This whole argument has played out before within the world of professional sports, professional traditional professional sports.

Well that's the thing. It's like I've heard people cheerleaders not sport. Cheerleader should mean the Olympics. I'm not that guy. No, that's a fucking sport. They are athletes a thousand percent. It's yeah, golf, golf is I mean, I think they're athletes. I think there is there's a serious physical one to drive down a fairway two hundred and fifty yards or whatever. That takes a good amount of just I mean, aiming is not a strength thing, but like you know, just to get it down there.

Yeah, sorry, Mary, do you have more? Of course I do all right. Shooting range competition, it requires physical exertion to be able to hold the weapon properly and stabilize it in order to hit the bull's eye. That's a borderline one to me, Well, what is it requires a lot of skill? I would throw that more in like the esports category, shooting is esports? Are you saying that there's multiple categories? There's the borderline, there's the ippy ones. I don't know if I'm any closer to getting

anywhere with you. I think you're making the point that they're that the definition of a sport can be very vast. Says physical exercise. A jockey on a horse raced the horse. He's riding the horse. The horse is an athlete. Oh it takes okay, this actually, like it takes quite a bit of effort and stamina to stay on a horse for that kind of I believe that. Yeah, that's yeah, there's a real physical component there. Yes, So would you say that your opinion can be swayed based on having

more information that you didn't have previously? Sport? That's that's The way to live your life is to be open to like having your opinions, but then in the face of evidence and contrary opinions that you're willing to change. Yes. Absolutely, jockey's requires so much physical exertion to be able to do their jobs their athletes, and it's a sport. Yes, So Mary do you have I'm assuming you have more. But I think the thing that would capture

it is do you think Dan would you you answer yes or no? Do you think the golf is a sport? Yes? What separates golf from being a professional Overwatch player the amount of the physical nature of having to like drive a ball down a fairway. If it was just dexterity and just aiming, like, yes, you can make the argument that that's the same as professional Overwatch league or whatever, but it's the fact that, like you do have to have your body. There's more required of your body in golf, and

I think there's enough of it to push that over the line. Whereas esports there's not a lot required of the physical body. I think there's a lot required, it's just very specifically in the hand and in the eye coordination elements, as opposed to like, here's another one. Then this is why these these are important. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to interrupt them. Trying some throwing a professional dart player, Uh, i'd put that more

in the game. Ked that offends me as a darts enthusiast. It's an aiming thing, but it's not really golf. It's the same things a very specific professional. Oh yeah, you can be like a fat guy and be good at golf. I know. Shit. Yeah, yeah, it's like ridiculous on all darts players because it's not because they're not as strong as golfers, whom are many of our fat by our own admission. I think it's

just aiming. But you're just you're just picking and choosing at golf darts, dude, there's there's some darts players you can watch that the Yeah, I see, I see the thing you're you're latching onto, and I don't blame you. It's the the act of exerting force on an object such that you need to be strong in order to be good at something. I think you're going more towards if it requires physical strength, it's more of a sport because

that's like Michael Jordan was obviously incredibly fit, and had incredible cardio. But also there's the mental element in being able to deduce exactly how much force to put on the ball to put it in the hoop, which that's that is what I was saying. I think Michael Jordan someone and it's unfair to point out one of the best athletes ever his range of skills is more impressive to

me than esports players. However, there are still esports players to me that are And I say this just as someone who's tangentially interested in esports, and I'm not really interested in esports, but I've seen Overwatch players up close who the stuff they can pull off as a team is as impressive as like a golfer. Because in mind, in case you're wondering about my level of expertise here, I have never seen esports and can't name a single esports players.

Wait, you're arguing about something that you're not fully informed about. I know it sounds crazy, but may look was brest upon me. I know this sounds crazy, this argument was threst upon me. I really I really against a wall here? Are you guys really surprised asking me the questions I'm saying, to the best of my knowledge, I'm answering them. We're learning a lot. Yeah, DDR. I think DDR could be a person who arm

wrestles professionally. Oh yeah, I've seen over the top. I was just said, I'm just thinking of the guy's arm snapping and over the top. Yeah. But the difference to you between a person who arm wrestles professionally, which is a lot of strength in your arm to be able to go from this position down you gotta turn your hat backwards to and a person who has to very accurately and perfectly throw a dart from here to forward. Not I

don't have a stry opinion on the darts thing. I feel like I wouldn't put it in the traditional sports realm, but I could go either way with that. I just don't one goes this way, one goes this way. Yeah, but there's and then there's you know, it's a different thing. They are herken those down there, they are going down the line. Everyone you're describing is way more of an athlete than me. Let me make that

clear. We're discussing sport, whether or not it's a sport. I think I think Dan, you keep coming back to equating it needs to take you need to be exerting force on another object or like whether it be like I think you're equating the amount of movement and exertion a person is putting into it with it being a sport. Hence you're not you know, saying I think there are rules to what a sport like. For instance, I consider professional

wrestlers to be athletes. I don't consider wrestling to be a sport because it's not. It's not for real, you know, it's scripted. It's a performance, you know, like, but I do consider them athletes just because of the level of physical Like there's a lot of physical demands and being a wrestler, so I consider them athletes, just the same way I consider cheerleading to be you know, they are athletes, but I consider that to be

a sport because that's real. You know, there's actual competition there. Competition is a key part of sports, moving around physical exertion. Competition. Yes, I yeah. So Also maybe another thing you're coming back to, Dan is in all the things that you're calling sports, the person is doing something with their own body, whereas esports there's a bit of separation because they're controlling an avatar, which is doing things which is obviously being reductive. They're they're

aiming the gun and overwatched their encounter strike. But like it's the fact that there's technically the digital divide between their body and what's happening. Is that what's giving you pause? Because golf like your and there is a sedentary nature to it, like it's it's physically sentenary. Obviously mentally there's a ton that has to be going on, and obviously there's a lot of like finger dexterity in a hand eye coordination. But like what other sports do you see where somebody

who's just like sitting in a chair not moving anything but their fingers. You know, you gotta lean uh F one Formula one racing, Like there's a lot of like fighting the wheel and fight like curling curling. You gotta be able to skate. That's more than sitting. They don't fucking skate skate with a little curl. You're just standing around none up with not that guy, then the other guy, the guy who throws it. You gotta do a

little slide. You dropped to a knee. Again, everything you're describing there is more physical activity going on than esports. I think. I think that's the key thing is that you're just sitting in a chair, not moving anything

at your fingers, Like, that's I think the thing right there. Everything else you're describe, and even if it's not constant moving around, not everyone's Michael Jordan, but like if you're up and moving around in golf and you have to make contact with the ball and the strength to put it down the field, like that's more than sitting in a chair. But it's not always strength. It's really more about dexterity and focus and like getting it to do

what you want to do. And the ability to do that precision with a mouse and keyboard and to have the ability to have that convert to a digital space is extraordinary. It is, and it's extremely impressive. I just think it's a different thing than sports. It's its own thing. Like I wish it had its own name that was not esports, because then people would just say, oh, it's it's competitive gaming. You know, it's a different thing. It's in a different category. This is a genuine question, Mary,

you would probably be the best equipped to answer this. It within esports, is there still a push for them to be considered do they want to be considered sports or most esports athletes and organizations like cool with just being nowhere esports. I think, I know there's college scholarships and shit, now it's a fucking serious thing. Yeah, it's a legit way to make a living now, and so I think they just want to be I don't think they

actually care if it's sports specifically. I think they want to be legitimized as someone who is a contender in the space. So just as you know Lebron can make a deal for one hundred million, I think esports players are making really big million dollar deals and would like to be respected in their space for hitting that deal. Does it need to be because it's a sport, Probably not as important as this is a competitive race and I am the best in

the business and I and they want validation for that. I think also like validation for the sport in general, because when you're seeing, you know, a sport on your cable news set network, they would say, like StarCraft deserves to have a channel, no different because people watch it. Okay, okay, so you guys seen the Whiplash the movie. Oh yeah, it's one of my favorites. So we talked about it on this podcast several times.

Yeah, so it is that. I mean that requires incredible there's a physical element, there's a you know, there's the timing, there's the training, there's the skill involved. But I don't see a lot of people saying drumming is a sport. It's music. It's a different thing. That's how I feel about. I think the lines there blurry as well, because it's

technically for entertainment. They're getting paid a lot. But yeah, then you would say, like, well, they're artists, they're expressing themselves creatively. You could like there are a lot of professional, like legendary baseball players who have said that was a big part of the sport for them was expressing themselves creatively as well. So there's blurred lines there as well. I'd say, yeah, not everything that requires skill in training. Sure I would. I

wouldn't. I wouldn't go to a jazz show and say I'm going to a sporting event, right, I'm going to go see the athletes, but I'm going to see these athletes compete against each other club in New York with your chest pain and cheering. Yeah great, you know what I mean. It's like, Yeah, I would never deny the training and skill involved, but it's just not everything that requires training and skill and execution as a sport. That's it, right, That's where I think. That was where I was

at last week. But my thing was just like I still I can more easily. And it's funny because in the gap between Michael Jordan's skill set and mine athletically is like the distance from here to the Grand Canyon. I can still more easily relate to what he's doing because it's just he's still using a human body, even if it's nothing like mine at all. Whereas esports,

to me, it's harder for me to be impressed. But again, I don't have the knowledge base that someone like Mary does, so I'm sure if I put a lot of effort into understanding esports more and of which I have, Like I was covering overwatched League for a while and I was watching at and as someone who played a lot of Overwatch, it was easier for me. It understands, like, oh fuck, that was what they just did as a team was nuts, right, very difficult for this Widowmaker player to

have pulled off that shot. After all this had been happening, and it was frantic that was incredible. But yeah, again to me, it's not. To me, I think it will still the range of skills involved to do what the Denver Nuggets just did, I think is still more impressive. On a base level. Yeah, slash can play a great solo, But do you say wow, what an athlete afterwards? I like, no, no one does that because it's a different thing. It's a different role.

And that's not saying anything is above or below anything. It's just saying these are different things. I would still classify competition as sport even though it might not have athletes, and I think that's the difference. I've recognized that every time you don't classify athletes, you're saying it's not a sport. But I would say that I that's where I am different because I don't think it requires

athletes for it to be a sport. Are competition sport then yes, by that definition, absolutely, But I mean sport is jeopardy, didn't The definition is we'll afford to a sport. No no, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no. I don't mary correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think that you were saying any competition as a sport, she's saying the opposite. A jazz

competition, you would not consider a sport even though it's competition. She's saying that you can be an athlete even if you are not playing a sport. Like Dan, you yourself said that wrestling our athletes, but it's not a sport. That's different. But no, But the reason I said that is because they're doing crazy scripted. Yeah, not everything is a sport. But what I'm saying is is whether or not it contains athletes, isn't the unique

identifier of whether or not it deserves to qualify as a sport. There's other things. We all agree that the sports players are not athletes, but e sports or sports? Is that where we landed. Yes, okay, I would say I wouldn't. We'll see, Hi. The thing is is, I would say that you they're athletic in other ways. I think that the dexterity extremely and the hand eye coordination is athletic ability. So I would disagree

with you a little bit. Yeah, okay, like you're assuming athletes athletic ability is something like you can see and you can understand and comprehend, whereas like a lot of athletic ability is anate, right. You can tell when someone is strong and when someone can jump really high, but it's also really crazy for someone to be able to I'm trying to think of a better example. Like the dart example is really good when they're just extraordinary because of their

experience. They're able to hit a bull's eye a lot better than you, and that's a lot harder for you to maybe comprehend as skilled and training and dexterous. But that is very similar to someone being able to to make a

lot of actions on their mouse very quickly. But that all that goes to the music thing too, like a master drummer or what is your point with music though that Like if you're saying that it's just the dexterity and the training and all that stuff, that all that applies to the musicians that I don't consider athletes. You know, Yeah, what if they were competing on a guitar off like a jazz competition like in Whiplash there's a jazz competition in it.

Yeah, still don't think that's sports. Yeah, I wouldn't call it sport, but technically by definition I guess it would be. But it is a sport. Yeah, but again, music is its own, bigger thing that has more, its own vague and nebulous. I think that's just competitive gaming. I think that's you know, it is its own the music. There's sports, there's competitive gaming. It's just all right, Dan, You and I were both playing cookie clicker and the winner got one hundred thousand dollars.

Is that a sport? No? Why not? Again the same same reason these words aren't. It's just we're just clicking a button. But I can click it faster than you and win. And it required training for me to click my finger as fast as humanly possible. And I've been training for weeks. I've been training. I've been training for that my whole life, you know what I mean. Oh my god, I hope people weren't watching the video when he did that filthy gesture. Cooky Jare is not even an

option. Oh my god, he passed outlet he said, I rest my case. I think we all learned something. Shit. Oh, I think we've all really grown from this experience. That the basis of this podcast is none of us learned shit. That's why I love you guys, because we can get to a point where I think we know less than the don't. I think Dan seeded some ground to Mary. Mary. I think I think Dad made a few good points. Uh. I think this was a healthy

exercise in being open minded. I think so like my sockers, so I'm the open min Oh god, Paul like, oh no, oh God, no. Yeah. Let's rest assured we pissed off everybody in this episode, then good mission accomplished. Yes, if we could piss off both sides of an argument, then we've also succeeded in our own Are the people going to do with the Blackhouse going on? Oh? God, I can't read their thoughts? Okay? Um? So what am I doing here? What did I did? I? Oh? I did? Did someone add this?

I might have added that? Okay? Um? Dan, do you want to read this? First one from justin? This is? This is not a question, but it's just more of a you help them out in a roundabout way. Yeah. Big shout out to Dan for his random swerve into a detailed discussion on the makeup of raw sewage. At the exact moment, I was sitting down with a piping hot bowl of mushroom bisk the creamy brown broth of the bisk the little hidden pieces of mushrooms swirling beneath the surface with

every stir. I'll bet it was delicious. Keep at it, Dan, I'll be real thin by this time next year with this book approach. That's justin from San Marcos, Texas. Why was I talking about a sewage? You just asked, is sewage poop? And then we talked about it. I still don't know the show. We're all I can promise you it's not a sport. Sewage is not a sport. I'll agree with a new merch line. Sewage is not a sport. Get it at Fourth Wall under Fire

Escape Um. Mary Nick is from Perth, So do you want to read this one? Dan? This is a reaction to you, or rather, as long as we're being open minded this episode this is one about your taking a large inhale right before you get ejected into space. This is a way to explain it in a way that maybe we'll make more sense. I don't know, but Mary Nick is from Perth, who you've had beef with lately, so I'll let you read this. I feel bad about the Perth talking

for it. You've got just as many support as detractors, so all right, well good, I'll take fifty, All right, deer fire escape ease. In regards to Dan's confusion about breathing in space, I think in order for Dan to quote unquote get it, he needs to experience it. Is this guy gonna murder danced into the atmosphere. Get a strong vacuum cleaner, Grab the hose extension, turn on the vacuum, pop the whole thing in your mouth, make a seal around it, plug your nose, and try

taking a breath out of the end of it. Space is a vacuum, get it. It sucks all of the air out of you. Return. It's not a literal vacuum cleaner. That's where the name vacuum cleaner comes from. Okay, well, okay, who invented the vacuum? You know what I mean? I was looking around. I don't see a vacuum cleaner around here. Bottle bottle would work too. Yeah, So let's say I squeeze this right, so there's not much air for the video this is. That's

not a vacuum. There's still air in there, no matter much. Right, hypothetically shouldn't run out of air, and then I can't know that is literally not a vacuum because there's always going to be auction there. Vacuum. Literally, there's nothing, there's oxygen in there. Hang on, Yes, hypothetically if you were to suck all of the air out a vacuum. But I'm kind of understanding, yes, all right, squeeze all the air out of this bottle. You're just like making your own rules in the science experiments

that you can win. Yeah, but you're getting it, you see what I mean. Like, I've never understood it until just now. It's like you're It's like you're literally I can't even make the can't do that? Holy shit? Was this Nick from Perth nailed it? I can solve it. It would feel this way in space terrible. I don't feel anything. They're dead. I've never seens Yep. That's I can't I can't reach shit in. I can't even make Nick from Perth. I hope you're a science teacher

because you are changing lives in high school. I squeeze this bottle. So there's like no space in here at all. So that's why I wasn't able to bring anything in because there's nothing in there. Space is nothing but space. Space is nothing, but space is nothing but a big breath of oxygen. You want to move around in it. I can't move around on this bottle now, I made it too. It's a it's a huge empty hint

bottle. Mhm. But I could move the fact that there's no space, so yes, But imagine you are you were going into space and you're trying to take that one last breath. That's what it would feel like, because there's terrible if that was real. So there's another email we got which just explained it more scientifically. If your lungs are punctured, the reason you can't you can't breathe is because there is no differential between the pressure outside of your

lungs and inside. So right now there's no difference between what's inside the bottle and what's inside you, So you can't exchange oxygen or expel oxygen into it. What happened there's literally lungs like what's going on with the pressure situation there? When you inhale, the pressure would decrease to allow for air, I believe, and then when you're exhaling, you are putting higher pressure in your

lungs to get rid of air. I might be swapping those on your lungs like a couple of shaken up like beer cans, and then like when you breathe, no no no. So if your lung is punctured, say there's a hole at the bottom of your lung, you can't really inhale because the air would just be going back out into outside of your body, and thus there's no difference in pressure. I think I'm getting more confused. That's I know. That's why this one made more sense, because it's like a physical

experiment you can do feel so bad. I know. That's why you don't want to get launched into space. It'd be fine there, but this is bad. Okay, Thank you Nick from Perth, and thank you for reading it. Mary. I'll read this one. This is an old school West from Baltimore is always very good. He eat gets us with his questions. What is the best fruit in its most ideal form? Pineapple? In the

up form? You get the little clear tupperwork thing at the grocery store, and it's cut up, and it's the kind that's like if it's just like too white, you know it's gonna be kind of like tough and flavorless and watery. I think you want the ones that's like fucking like uh, dehydrated pea yellow like that, that type of yellow, just like just deep yellow and wet and juicy pineapple. That's it. I was gonna I was gonna

stress the criteria even further and say apple pie is pretty good. I realized there are other things involved, right, But I'm just stretching the criteria if we're just sticking specifically, are you? Because it says it says um it's a most ideal form and a form could be like sprinkling sugar on it, and then what's the difference between sprinkling. I think the form has to be with nothing the fruit in and of itself. I would say really good batch

of peaches I think are my favorite fruit, and that's as is. Oh yeah, but we're talking like like recipes involving something or like something that's based heavily around like an apple pie is based around apples. Oh fuck now, I'd say peach cobbler's pretty good. I'm just thinking about desserts with fruits in it. Cobbler. Never had a cobbler they're good, or like a fucking orange peel in an old fashioned always gets me as well. But you're not

eating the orange peel. Oh wait a minute, Wait a minute, fucking West got me. I'm gonna go wine. Wait, not just grapes, right, Don't they add stuff? Yeah? I mean more often than not, there's other stuff in it. Yeah. Do they add the alcohol? Or is alcohol in the alcohol? Is when the yeast breaks down the sugar produces alcohol or is the yeast in the grapes or no? Sorry, does get that wrong? That's the that's all alcohol. I believe we've talked about

this before in the show, like episode thirteen or something. Alcohol is the result of yeast digesting sugar. It's like pumpkins outside too long. Right, you're looking fun of someone not knowing where something comes from. You've read Webster's Dictionary like five times. Stop people telling people on the Somalia for people, but a dart sexpert either, I just really like it and I'm bad at it, so I know how hard it can be. Uh. Wine, I would say, is the ideal form of a fruit, but it adds

stuff to it. Yeah, but like pie, because they're adding That's that's why I said. My answer to the basic of fruit in and of itself and its best form is a peach okay, okay, peach close second is a BlackBerry. Good. Blackberries are really fucking good, perfect tartness, perfect sweetness, good texture, chewier than blueberries, which I also like. Blueberries don't have enough flavor for me. They're always so neutral. I've soured on

blueberries, no pun intended. Over the over the years, blackberries have supplanted blueberries is my favorite berry. I started having cherries and for the first time, like I thought, I've been real my whole life that they're the Marrachino cherries. Bank got me in on the ones of the actual like nuts in the middle and stuff and those are kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, the cherries are awesome. Oh dude, my my my mom used to get the whole bunch of cherries in the bag, rinse them, keep them in the colander in the sink, and like throughout the week we would just pick out. Yeah, yeah, they're good. It's good. So yeah, if you get, if you get good, like if you're having a Manhattan certain companies like Bullet makes its own Maraschino cherries and those are a bit if you're thinking like the spectrum of Maraschino cherries too, And I don't

know what makes a Marischino cherry Marichino cherry. I'm assuming it's some sort of it's the sugar involved or whatever. But you can get bullet Maraschino cherries, which are darker and closer to real cherries, to put in your Manhattan's old fashions, et cetera. Yeah, they're good. Marichino cherries are good. Um. I like blackberries, and I would even advance that to the Marion berry, which is a BlackBerry only grown in the Portland area. I've heard

of those because that that. I've never had a poison berry that wasn't like on pancakes. I've never had it like again in and of itself, but I've had it as like the syrupy drizzle they put on pancakes. And I've never had a Marion berry on its own. Marion Barry. Are they named after the crack smoking mare. I don't think they're named after the crack smoking that's the same phrase, Marion Barry. Is it not a jokey name? I think it's not exist before the scandal in like nineteen ninety five. I

don't know. I feel like it might be a jokey winky like hey, it's like the crack smoking mare. Marion Barry joked about him high school high it was named Marion Berry High School. That was a that was a big reference in nineteen ninety five. Ninety Marion Barry was developed at Oregon State University in nineteen forty five. Okay, so a pre dates the crack smoking Mare. Yes, it was Marian Berry. Berry was the crack smoking mare. Oh god, holy shit. Yeah, his teeth. Oh my god,

this dude smoked some crack. Yeah, I'm not I don't. He's an Arkansas's first No, he was a house he was in the House of Representatives. Yeah, and he smoked crack. I've never seen a white Arkansas dude that like clearly smoke crack as much as this guy before. Wait, are you looking at the same guy? I think so. I don't think we're looking at the same guy. Wait, seriously, I n B A R R Y. Oh Oh my god, I am so sorry to mister Barry. Oh my god, this dude just died on May nineteenth, too,

crack smoke. Let me I'm posting this in our discord right now. The guy up, this guy, the guy I'm looking at, just died like three weeks ago, and I was just making ripping on him. I'm so sorry, not a crack smoking man. I apologize to anybody who knows Marion Barry, who knew there were two people named Marion Berry who are like Sorry, the Americans represented for Arkansas's first congressional district from nineteen ninety seven to twenty

eleven. He was a Democrat. Sorry that we assumed you were a crack smoker and maybe a berry. Look this guy up. He separated in November nineteen nineties, soon after he was caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine with an X model and propositioning her for six many Marion Berries are there? Okay, this guy's body isn't even cold yet, and I was just ripping on his teeth. I am very so. I don't have great teeth. For what it's worth, I shouldn't be crack. No, oh, man, I

feel bad. I mean that there would be another Marion Berry is beyond you, Jake Marion Berries. Two dudes in a berry, one of which is a crack fiend. What did this guy ever? One day they'll make a movie about this and it'll be called Dude God. This guy's is long the Berry Your Personal Life and Death. Barry resided in Gillette, Arkansas, with his wife Carolyn, Carolyn, I hope you are don't listen to fire Escape. He identified as a Methodist. He died in Little Rock, Arkansas,

on May nineteenth, twenty twenty three. He was eighty, justifying, Wow, he fucking destroyed the other dude dead Barry. Oh, I see the other Marion Barry. Oh, Robert Marion Barry is okay. Oh, but he went by his middle unbelievable. We have the same birthday. No, we don't. Just kidding. That's not even a joke. Um. That was the first guy that popped up when I because I spelled Barry b r o y and it popped up. Yeah, okay, all right, we got there. I think we're we've all learned. You know, we say

we never learned anything on this podcast. I've learned a great deal to way types of Marion Berry. Today we wed without questions. Webster's Dictionary define Marion Berry as Dan. We just fine sports. Today. We taught Dan how he would suffocate in space with a bottle. I taught myself because I'd like to teach myself things. Uh we uh we got a new merch line. It's Marion Barry and Marion Berry and Mary and Barry on the shirt. Two

in a Berry shirt, two duds in a berry. Um, Mary, we should just we should get a merch line that's just the political campaign for Marion Barry but Ash Berry. And it's up to whoever's reading. It could be a Berry, it could be Marion Barry, it could be Mary and Berry. Mary. And then new under media a podcast called Mary and Barry where our friend Barry Smith talks to Mary about fruit and politics and crack back to Mary and Berry episode. All right, all right, how we talked

earlier. Right now, since we're not drinking here, it's gonna be really straight lace game. Yeah, we did say that, probably a more boring episode. If anybody's wondering what we're like completely sober, this is a pretty good indication. All right. Do you guys have the wine for it? Yeah? Yeah, you have the wine for it. For the listeners.

For viewers, fireskate cast at gmail dot com. Also you can go to fireskatecast dot com, which is also our Patreon, and you can sign up for several tiers if you just want to treat as a tip jar because you like what we're doing, which we always appreciate. Go do that. You want to get ad free episodes, go do that. If you want to get video versions, go do that. You can see Dan sucking on a empty what kind of what drink was that? It was a hint bottle?

A hint hint? Is that a hemp drink? It was a hint of water. Mott got a hint of said a hint because that's his it's his favorite form of fruit. Yeah, yes, yes, the ideal water. Actually my favorite by ideal form fruit is great fruit lacroix um. Yeah, go to our patron do that. Patrons are basically what fund our end of the year party extravaganza, game of the year stuff, which, if all goes according to plan, will be in Portland for at the end of this

year. We keep inviting ourselves and Mary doesn't object, so we're gonna keep going through that. Patrons kind of make those happen. Um. Outside of that, Dan tell people what they can do on Spotify, iTunes, et cetera. Give it the old five stars on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. It's pretty easy. Just Spotify, click the star thing, the rating thing click five fuse us, Just fuse us and then divide that

score by two and then give us that many stars. That what, no, fuse us, you give us a ten whichever sho Okay, okay, yes, yes, yes, don't don't give us an eight point seven five. I don't want to run. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. There is a function that iTunes Spotify introduced that lets the creator know where you live if you do fewer than five stars. And I take full advantage of it, so I hold the keys the account. My dad's a skeleton. This is bad radio. But Dan just went to adjust himself and full on, like

I'm just selling some video subscriptions right now on the Patreon. That's he went to like smoothly readjust and kind of like changed hands he was resting on and just like punched the desk. Yeah, that feel good. That's good radio. Mary. Tell people where they can get some hot merch. There's so many places where you can get hot merch. But there's the main place, and that's fire Escape merch dot com. That's the one place. There's so

many places. Well, maybe Marion Barry on there in the future merch on fire Escape. Uh, merch dot com. There's lots of good stuff on their bottles, mugs, t shirts, cropped sweaters. Let's see that belly um, see that widow belly button. We want to see it. Show me your eight pack, baby, Show me your eight packed your little infant. That baby's ripped. That baby put all their put face at me. Look at that ham, Look at hunkle meat. Maybe it's fucking jacked.

The baby must be an athlete. One arm push ups. The baby's playing darts, flexing its twelve packs. It's APMs are really high, and it's really good at Overwatch League, just the most jacked baby becomes the StarCraft two champion I'd start, and then he's an athlete. I'm wrong thanks to what would his name be for? Samous Coridian Junior third, We're also gonna be I don't have anything to transition to. I think we did it all day. We did it, Dan, What do you have going on at the

meantime? Giant bomb dot com and then just Dan record and everything. But I'm kind of have to take a little break for a bit from the personal streaming, So just checkmut on giant bomb dot com and uh yeah, that's it. Mary what about y'all nothing, I'm a shell of my former self. This is a no go. It's been a few weeks again, it's been it's been nuts. But if you're not a subscribe, we should also plug this. I guess if you're not a subscriber to the fire Escape YouTube

channel, go subscribe to that. That's where we've been putting up resume Force, so you'll know the moment it goes up. And it helps because the scheduling, the publishing schedule for that show has by design been pretty sporadic, which we want it to be because it's very much a side thing. But you'll get those notifications when we put them up if you're a subscriber, and also when we do future stuff on our YouTube. It'll help Ben. You'll know the moment it goes up. Yes, like Game of the Year,

that'll live on that one. So go ahead and subscribe now, and uh yeah, we'll have more stuff up there. Correct, All right? This is a good episode, yea like second ever daytime episode. I think this is like morning for you, Mary, it's early afternoon for Dan and I. Yeah, I think it's a good I got the rest of my day ahead of me. Nice all right, I'll see YouTube soon at the Wine four on the lacrosse fields. Please remember to write into fire skipcast gmail dot

com with guesses as to what street our airbnb is on. That's a self parody of my interests. And I'm very curious what people think or tweeted at us. I don't care either one. I'm curious what people think of me one thousand dollars Bill Avenue, Yes, am I, I guess I do make mad gosh. I think your interests imply is certain sailboats and wine and cool lots drive. I've got expensive tastes and I for expensive paste, cufflinks circle, that'd be sick. What do rich people have? Dan boats,

boats avenue. That's the most boring one ever. Git, Look, I'm not an athlete. I can't think the find me at eighteen twenty seven boat Avenue. Bitches rhino meat, all right, tax to circle. Well, so I've got mad all those rich people with all their taxidermy homes. No, they're like, they're like rhinos and stuff. We will be back in a couple of weeks, July three. We'll be back, U will we? Yeah, we'll be back then it will be the holiday weekend here in

America, we'll be back. Thank you for joining us, See you later on ms ST