# Meet The General of Gen X Talks: Mark Mendenhall - Episode 79

- Podcast: genx-adulting-podcast
- Published: 2026-10-04T08:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/19905793-meet-the-general-of-gen-x-talks-mark-mendenhall-episode-79.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-79
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode79.html
- People: Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host), Mark Mendenhall (guest)

## Summary

In Episode 79 of the GenX Adulting Podcast, hosts Brian and Nicole interview Mark Mendenhall, also known as the Gen X Dad and the General from Gen X Talks. Mark shares his experiences growing up in the San Fernando Valley, his family's history, and the unique cultural landscape of being a Gen Xer in Los Angeles, including insights into his family dynamics and the impact of his father's military service.

## Key takeaways

- Mark Mendenhall was born on December 25, 1967, in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles.
- His family has deep roots in the San Fernando Valley, with relatives having settled there during the Great Depression.
- Mark's grandmother worked at Lockheed during WWII, contributing to the war effort by riveting airplanes.
- He experienced significant freedom as a child, typical of Gen X, often being unsupervised for long periods.
- Mark's father served in the military but did not see combat, which affected his mental health and family dynamics.
- He had a unique childhood experience, being surrounded by the entertainment industry and often interacting with actors and film crews.
- Mark's journey reflects the challenges of navigating adolescence without guidance, leading to missed opportunities.

## FAQ

### What year was Mark Mendenhall born?

Mark Mendenhall was born on December 25, 1967.

### Where did Mark grow up?

Mark grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles.

### What did Mark's grandmother do during WWII?

Mark's grandmother worked at Lockheed, riveting airplanes together as part of the war effort.

### How did Mark's father's military service affect their family?

Mark's father served in the military but did not see combat, which led to mental health struggles that impacted the family.

### What was Mark's childhood like in terms of freedom?

Mark experienced significant freedom typical of Gen X children, often being unsupervised for long periods.

### How did Mark's upbringing relate to the entertainment industry?

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, Mark frequently interacted with actors and film crews, as the area was a hub for the entertainment industry.

### What challenges did Mark face during adolescence?

Mark faced challenges navigating adolescence without guidance, which led to missed opportunities in his life.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7JJ9Nm2EDE)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-general-of-gen-x-talks-mark-mendenhall-episode-79/id1764838823?i=1000793064263)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4x3jLmEC8n1EpBhS43yZSl)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/19905793-meet-the-general-of-gen-x-talks-mark-mendenhall-episode-79)

## Transcript

GenX Adulting Podcast: Welcome to Gen X Adulting and today we have Mark Mendenhall, also known as the Gen X Dad and the General from Gen X Talks. Welcome, Mark.
Gen X Talks: Hey, thanks for having me on.
GenX Adulting Podcast: We're so happy to have you. And our first question is always what year were you born?
Gen X Talks: I was born on december twenty fifth in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty seven.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Nice. So you are Gen X. Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent Gen X. Christmas baby too. A Christmas baby Gen X. One of the first one of the first Gen Xers, right in the beginning of it. so where were you born?
Gen X Talks: I was born in the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles County. If you not familiar, if you guys everyone knows where the Hollywood sign is.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yep.
Gen X Talks: that hill that it's on, I was born on the other side, right on the other side of that hill.
GenX Adulting Podcast: No way. Okay, so when you were growing up, did you ever go over to the sign?
Gen X Talks: yeah. Well, I've been to the sign a couple of times, but even back then you really couldn't get to it easily. Now you can't get to it at all. They they
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: have fences and and and monitors on it. But yeah, back in the day, 'cause it's it wasn't too far to go.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Were you was it when you were older and you'd go there and have some beers or when it was it when you were a a feral
Gen X Talks: Ha ha ha.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Gen X kid and no one was supervising you?
Gen X Talks: Well, it was it was too far to ride on your bike when you were eleven, but just over that hill, you know, when you w as soon as one of my friends got a driver's license and we had access to a car, we were over into Hollywood and Santa Monica Pier and you know, we we would jump over there all the time. It was literally a a ten or fifteen minute drive to be over the hill. So the Maholland drive runs around up that way on the other side of the hill also.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: So, you know, yeah, you you hang out quite a bit there at night looking over the valley.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is so awesome. That is really cool. Okay, so how far back do your generations go? Like why did your family settle there? Was it your grandparents, great grandparents?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, the my my family moved out there. my one one side of my grandparents moved out there during the depression in the in the thirties and we stayed. The both sides of my grandparents just moved out there and stayed and tried to make cut their cut their path out in LA. There was one time in the San Fernando Valley when we counted it up. My mother and I counted up, we our family had sixty-five homes in the s in the San Fernando Valley. Just because of relatives, you know, brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and things extended. Now there's none. Not one not one our family doesn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: own anything there anymore. Every we're totally erased from the San Fernando Valley.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Okay, so you guys were one of those first families there you're saying basically in the thirties that settled
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: and and so you must have had a very large family f from both sides.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, it I mean, you we ha my one grandfather had four brothers and sisters and so you just you know, you're starting to get they get married and have kids, it expands pretty fast.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Do you know why they went out to I mean, obviously to make money and have a better future, but do you know what they did?
Gen X Talks: Well, my one side of my family w moved out there and worked down in San Pedro, which is where you guys everyone sees on TVs and movies the big green tall bridge that goes over everything where the where the cruise ships are. And he was actually down there trying to drill for oil. He kept he kept and all he kept finding was water. He kept dr get water wells out of there. My other grandfather, when he was a boy running around the Midwest, he was in a traveling circus. That's the only way they could make money during the Depression. And they had a traveling circus and then when he came out here, he came out and was you know, joined the army and and and then just started working around LA trying to carve out his path. And back then it wasn't too tough to do and both of them just stayed and had families.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did your one grandfather who joined the army did he serve?
Gen X Talks: He was he was at Fort Ord. He signed up after Pearl Harbor, was in Fort Ord and then he got sick with something. I don't wanna I don't wanna say it was malaria. It was something other than that. But he him and some other guys got it and they discharged them right after they got it. They'd for some reason they didn't think they could continue serving. So he never saw any action.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: But he went through basic training and was, you know, learning his skills and then they all got sick and like I think eight of them had to leave.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow, what a trip. So your
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: your grandmothers were they stay at home moms?
Gen X Talks: one of was and one of was a she worked at she was kinda like Rosie the Riveter. She worked at Lockheed and Burbank, riveting airplanes together.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is so cool. So how long did she do that?
Gen X Talks: The whole war till they shut it down 'til we won the war and Lockheed started, you know, scaling back production.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So she was one of those women that went to work while the men were at war.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, absolutely. And then when my grandfather got discharged, she was still working there and he became assistant postmaster at the at one of the branches in the San Fernando Valley and that's where he stayed the rest of his career.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow, that's amazing. Did you ever did you know your grandmother very well as you were growing up? Did she ever tell you
Gen X Talks: yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: s did she share stories with you about those times when she worked?
Gen X Talks: Those that grandmother and grandfather raised me quite a bit. Like I lived there quite often when I was younger. and th there wasn't a lot of discussion about it. I mean, they used to remark there was a Bob's big boy that used to have pictures. Old you go sit down in a Bob's Big Boy and there's pictures of what the old days used to look like in the San Fernando Valley. One of the ones that I remember seeing so often, then she would tell stories, is Lockheed as a plant. They took and they made fake fields and bushes and little farmhouses over the top of this thing. So if the if Japanese aircraft came over, they looked down, they'd say, Well, there's one little tiny house in the middle of a field. So she talked about that, going to work every day and you're you know, you're under this big massive canopy, to make it look like there's no there's no production facility there. That's about the most she talked about. I my grandfather didn't talk a lot about his buddies that were in the war, not too much. Neither did my grandmother. And then the girl I ended up marrying, her dad was one of the original designers from beginning to end on the S R seventy one. He wouldn't talk about his stuff at Lockheed either. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Locky's a bunch of quiet people.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, definitely. My two uncles were vets. They didn't talk much about the war. That that that generation. You know, veterans and mental health. Well what's interesting is being in California there, that was sort of the front line, right? The peop we don't have that concept today as much, but back then that was the front line of a of a world war. Very dangerous
Gen X Talks: Well,
GenX Adulting Podcast: times.
Gen X Talks: my grandfather did he took me camping and driving all up and down California when I was younger. I think I was probably seven and we were we were hiking along the coast someplace and he points out it was kind of over some cliffs, not not too tall, but there was a big concrete ring. I mean a huge concrete ring like you could put, you know, thirty five or forty guys in it and it's down near the water and then if you look down the way there's another one broken and fallen in the water and you look up and I go, What are those for? And he goes, Those were machine gun nests. And they built them all up and down California. Well, all up and down all to Seattle. I've seen them in Seattle.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And those were meant for machine guns that you could just spray machine gun fire if people started to try to land. That took me by surprise
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a trip.
Gen X Talks: because I was like, whoa, it got a little closer to home than I thought.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I feel like I've seen them in Oregon too. Yeah, maybe. Along the Oregon coast. Yeah. I'm from Oregon. Yeah, so I think so. Yeah. No, that
Gen X Talks: I wouldn't I wouldn't doubt it, yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: that is such a trip though. I never would have thought about it that that we were kind of a fr front line on the West Coast. We have that dominance concept like we do today.
Gen X Talks: Well there was a there was along along Highway One, and it's right up against, you know, as everybody knows, it's right up against the Pacific Ocean. But there are stretches where there's nothing but the road. You know, it's it's you're out in the middle
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: of nowhere. And I always remember when we went camping, we'd head out to the one and either head north or south. There was this little tiny oil refinery. I mean, all by itself, just kind of tucked away right up against the hills. And just remember seeing it as a kid and one day out of nowhere we were driving by it, my grandpa goes, You know, they don't talk about it, but that got shelled by the Japanese. And I went, What? He goes, Yeah, a submarine pulled up and shot a bunch of shells at it and blew up part of it and then the submarine took off. And at that time, I was a little bit older. I'd never heard that. I'd never heard that we actually got attacked on the mainland and we did.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. No. No, that was nothing that we learned in school. What part of Cali was that where you were?
Gen X Talks: Probably just somewhere a little either a little bit above or a little bit below Ventura, you know. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow. What a tri that is such a trip. Well there were the Japanese internment camps too. Yeah, no,
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: we learned about that, but I I never learned that anything reached. I did not
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: know they reached, but I knew I feel like I those you know, the turrets on the on the coast pointing to the ocean. That's what a trip.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Well, the other one was you guys would know this, they there was a Japanese plane that dropped one single bomb in Oregon and I forget where it was. It was he was it's kinda funny when I lived in I lived in Bend for a while and
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: the they told us I read about it where this pilot missed the town and hit the hill, hit the mountain behind it. And you know, fifty years later they gave him a key to the city and said, Thanks for missing the town because that you know, the pilot lived through the war.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. That's funny.
Gen X Talks: And so I knew I knew about that one too, but that was that really wasn't talked about much either.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I never I'm from I grew up in Portland. I never well, Beaverton to be exact, but I never learned about that. And no one
Gen X Talks: There's one.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I grew up with talked about that. So
Gen X Talks: Look looked that up one time. I'm pretty sure that story's true. I've heard it a bunch since then. One pilot with one bomb, he dropped one dumb small bomb, it hit the hill, and then he flew back out to wherever he was. And years later they, you know, they figured out who everybody was. They thank they thanked him, said, Hey, thanks for missing the city. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's hilarious. What a tra do you know what city it was in Oregon?
Gen X Talks: can't remember. It had to been it had to have been something south just south of Portland. I'm it I'm sure it was somewhere between Portland and Eugene, I'm guessing.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ye okay. I I'm gonna look that up tonight 'cause I that's like I'm going to
Gen X Talks: See if that's right. See if that story's right.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I'm going to 'cause my family goes back, my great grandfather was like in Kansas and arrested the James brothers and all them. He was a sheriff and then he moved to Portland. So they settled in well we did my mom's tour. Well they came out on the Oregon Trail and like stagecoach and Yeah. So so my family's been in Portland like feels like since the beginning of time. So
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: it'd be interesting if that to tell them about that 'cause I unless they already know, but I don't know if my family even knows about that. So I'm gonna
Gen X Talks: Well they know
GenX Adulting Podcast: look it up.
Gen X Talks: you guys probably know about the balloons they sent over too then that landed in Oregon on the beach.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: You know, that was a thing where they just they floated balloons with bombs and figured the
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: air current would take over. I guess I guess I guess a few landed there, but one landed on the beach and a kid grabbed it and blew himself up when he w little kid did, but you know. Yeah. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hm. I never knew that either. Yeah, that's that's pretty big thing. Did you know about that? I did, yeah. I mean, let's face it, China just launched a balloon that floated half across the country or maybe even
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: out across into the Yeah, but growing up or maybe I just 'cause I didn't really pay attention
Gen X Talks: Well
GenX Adulting Podcast: a lot in school, so that could be it too. yeah.
Gen X Talks: They kept that quiet, you know, mostly. They didn't they didn't let anybody know any of that stuff. Just so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Of course, of course. Well now you gave me some homework mark for tonight. I know what I'm gonna be doing, but okay, so do you know how your parents met?
Gen X Talks: yeah, they when my both sets of grandparents they settled in the San Fernando Valley, of course, all over, but on the east end of the valley there was a little canyon called La Tuna Canyon Road, which is part of when you hear about all the fires and the canyons there that they're sometimes included in that. It was a little road that went from the San Fernando Valley over to Pasadena. So it was, you know, it at the time it was a very small road. But that was a a very secluded part of the valley. There was not track houses. And my my one set of grandparents bought a piece of land and built a little house. And my other grandparents built up the road about thirty houses. And so my mother and my father, they grew up together. They grew up in the same neighborhood. They went to the same schools. My grandfathers were best friends years before my parents got married. You know, they did everything
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Yeah, that's cool.
Gen X Talks: they did everything together.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is so cool. So do you so were they actual friends or just neighbors and knew of each other, your parents?
Gen X Talks: no, they were they were good friends junior grade school, junior high and high school, and then it was kinda like it was destined they were gonna get married, and then they did, and then my dad went to Vietnam and really wigged out in life, and my mom had to divorce him when I was two. But up until then everything had looked like it had come together quite nicely.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well the and that actually makes sense. So so when they graduated high school, was did he go straight to Vietnam?
Gen X Talks: believe so. It was pretty pretty close to gr right after graduation, I think, is when he went.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Were they married before he left?
Gen X Talks: Yes, I believe so.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So they got married right out of high school. He goes
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: to Vietnam. do you know what she did? Was she did she work?
Gen X Talks: She was a she was a beautician and what was what we found out later was the place she was a beautician doing hair and nails for I don't know, probably eight or nine years ended up being the same place that my wife's mother went and got her hair done for those same eight and nine years. We didn't know
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: that they were, you know, they had crossed paths, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did your mom do your mother in law's hair or nails, do you know?
Gen X Talks: I don't th that's one thing we tried to figure out. My mother came down there and s and I I think my mother in law had said, Well, this was my hair lady the whole time or these two and then of course
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay.
Gen X Talks: my mother says, yeah, well they were right their stations were right behind mine. I don't think she ever did. If she did it was like on accident, you know, where someone called in and she couldn't get done or something,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: but not that they remember clearly, no.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a trip. I mean think about like you that's the golden era of California, right? And the and as big as California is, it's probably a small world. Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: The Valley It was a really small community back then, probably from nineteen forty to nineteen eighty. there was a place called Roscoe Hardware before there was big, you know, h no home depots and things like that. And her family, my wife, and my family, that's where everybody went. And there was places like that right at that end of the valley where we we finally caught up with each other about all the places our family had been and worked. And my family worked at Roscoe Hardware, so all of her family knew the the guy who ran the plumbing, the guy who ran, you know, the the the the wood cutting area and stuff. They they all knew each other and a lot of those were my family members working there. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's cool.
Gen X Talks: this leads into my wife and I have known each other since we were five. We went to the same private school, our fifth and sixth grade class pictures, we're standing on the same bleachers.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. So you guys were in the same classes. Were you friends? Was
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Yeah. She didn't like me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: she like you to kn now or no? Yeah, okay.
Gen X Talks: She likes me a little more now. And when she we were not high school sweethearts. She wanted in high school she liked to date football players and I was the I was more the leather jacket fast car guy. Used to like to beat up the football players. and it
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: was very much like that, you know, the Throughout dark like even in school, you know, you're in second and third and fourth grade, you may not be in the same classroom, but you eat lunch together, you're at recess together, you're standing
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: in line together, auditorium stuff. I mean, I knew everybody in every class because we'd from
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: kindergarten through seventh and eighth grade, you have the majority of those kids all staying together. So we knew each other really well. She just didn't like me, but don't worry, she came to her senses.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Just had to work work it out. I'm
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: sure it depends on the day. you've been presently. I s and I can speak from
Gen X Talks: A little bit.
GenX Adulting Podcast: experience. Yeah. Okay. So basically if you guys went to the same school together, that means I'm if I'm assuming correctly, when your parents got married, they settled in the same area as your as where they were from. Like it was it the same neighborhood? Was it the type of thing where
Gen X Talks: Right. No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: it's just down the street?
Gen X Talks: Not not just down the street, but it was, you know, it was a few miles away, but it's within, you know, you could ride your bike to all the houses and I told you that in La Tuna Canyon, my one grandparents and my other grandparents weren't you know, they were thirty five houses apart up the canyon, and then when my mom divorced my dad and got remarried, she married a guy fifteen houses away in the canyon, someone she also knew growing up. And their
GenX Adulting Podcast: Huh. Okay.
Gen X Talks: family had houses in that end of the valley.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So it's almost like that little area was a small town within Los Angeles, it feels like.
Gen X Talks: It was in it was a very incredible thing all the way through. I I hear the stories of my grandparents, my parents and aunts and uncles, and then even up to when I was there with my friends, it was really even in the seventies and eighties when it was super saturated with people, it just was a very unique canyon area to live in. You know, like where okay, in in the in the s late seventies and early eighties, even when I was there, and you know, things had changed quite a bit. We were still riding horses right up the straight into the hills. And you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, it's cool.
Gen X Talks: how many places can you do that in Los Angeles?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, that's amazing. Okay, so your dad they get married, your dad goes to Vietnam, your mom's a beautician.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: How long was he in Vietnam?
Gen X Talks: I think he I I think he did three tours or I'm I think he did three tours in Vietnam.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And what would that equate to as far as length?
Gen X Talks: I guess the tour was like a a ten or eleven months.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So really like three years. okay.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, yeah, people round those up. I was in Vietnam three years, but I think the tours were a little bit less.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. But still a significant amount of time from for 'cause
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: did he come home in between tours?
Gen X Talks: That I don't know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. So then I assume were you born are you the oldest?
Gen X Talks: I am.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Were you born once he was done serving in Vietnam?
Gen X Talks: yes, I was born r not too long after he came home for the last time.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay. So he comes home, they start their family. Are you an only child or do you have siblings?
Gen X Talks: I have with that with it with my dad and my mom I'm the only one. And then my mother
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: got remarried and I have two younger brothers in that family, and then throughout life I've learned I have multiple brothers and sisters from my dad with from all over the place.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. So th so he went on and continued to have other relationships, obviously.
Gen X Talks: Apparently so.
GenX Adulting Podcast: You have something in common. We have something in common. Okay, so he comes back, they you're born, they start their family, but obviously he must have been struggling with some major med mental health issues after the war.
Gen X Talks: I don't know. I asked my mother about that and she says it really wasn't he wasn't in a lot of combat, he didn't have a lot of issues, but he very quickly learned that many soldiers did, so he just played along with it and that he blamed anything he did wrong on the fact that he was in Vietnam. That's how she puts
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: it, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: So instead of taking accountability, he used that as kind of the scapegoat a little bit, it sounds like from her from her perspective.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. He really wasn't a good guy because I reconnected with him after when I was about seventeen and of course I was a very impressionable person and he was running with the Hells Angels Santa Clarita chapter and there was probably three or four years of my life when I was allowed to plug into that lifestyle and he wasn't a good person. So I'm gonna say most of my mother's my mother's stories were accurate.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. So they get divorced and you said she did she when they got divorced, did she move back in with her parents, Dina, or did you guys stay in the house? You okay.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Now we moved back in with my grandparents, which is where I remember them beginning to raise me along with her 'cause she was gone working a lot.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Was she still a beautician? Okay,
Gen X Talks: She was.
GenX Adulting Podcast: and then he your father was not in your life then, he kind of split, would you say?
Gen X Talks: yeah, he just was gone, period. I mean I think I have four memories of him between when you can remember things at four years old, probably till eight or nine, I probably have four glimpses of when he would show up for something and it was for just a few moments.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay, so your grandparents and I assume your grandfather was then the main male figure in your life during those formative years.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: so your grandparents are there during that time 'cause I assume they're pr c probably keeping a pretty good eye on you as grandparents do, but during those years, did you still have that Gen X latchkey feral out on the streets experience?
Gen X Talks: not as much being on your own because my grandmother, of course, she was staying home. My grandfather had re was retiring shortly after we moved in. But there was a lot of freedoms with Gen X. You know, you could just my grandmother, I could tell her I was taken off and I could be gone, you know, eighteen hours in the day. They never looked for you. They just waited for you to come home at night. there was there was I never had the latch key part where there was no one home.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: But it was the the freedoms that we were afforded were just insane, you know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes. Yes. Now did you have the rule of be home when the l the street lights came on or any type of curfew?
Gen X Talks: W yeah, when my mother remarried, and we moved out a little bit a little bit a ways from the canyon. yeah, 'cause there was streetlights there. We didn't have streetlights in the canyon. where the streetlights
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: were there, that was yeah, the fur one of the first rules is you can she gave me a block radius. You could play on all these streets, but you have to come home. When the streetlights come on, you gotta be home like within five minutes. Plus my mother could whistle and you could hear her ten blocks away. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. She got a little tighter in the new territory, probably. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I guess, yeah. Well she she just reined me in a little bit, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: How old were you when she met your stepdad?
Gen X Talks: S they met when they were in grade school. They all knew each other.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Was he friends with your dad?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, they didn't like each other too much.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: Different friend groups.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So your mom and him reconnected, I guess, is the right word once she after her divorce. Do you know how long from the time she got divorced from your dad to when she remarried and married him?
Gen X Talks: This is a about seven years or so.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. And then you guys all move in together and then they have your brothers. So
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you guys are fam are they still married?
Gen X Talks: They are.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's cool. during and then you went to a private school, was that like a Catholic private school or just a private Christian? Okay.
Gen X Talks: Christians, yeah, pretty close. Christian private school.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. And during those years of was it like K through eight or K through twelve?
Gen X Talks: It was K through twelve, but I didn't make it all the way to twelfth. I was I was asked to leave twice.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Really? Which gra which grades were you asked to leave?
Gen X Talks: I was asked to leave in seventh grade and said, Please don't come back. They took me back in eleventh grade. I made it about six months and they said, Okay, now we're really serious leave and don't come back.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. So during the early formative years, let's say K through fifth, did you have any special interests like sports, clubs, art, drama, anything like that, music?
Gen X Talks: I just I was the class clown and I was it it was a small school, so when I tell you I was the best athlete of all of us, yeah, you're a big fish in a really tiny pond. You know, when
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: I all of my class clown and all of my I was the greatest football player, the greatest basketball player, and then you get to public school and realize you're nothing. You're not you you're not even
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: close. You could you couldn't carry those you couldn't carry water and towels for the guys, you know, the athletes that were out there in public school. But at the time I thought I was the greatest thing ever. Was not.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So then when you entered those middle school years and you said you were asked to leave in seventh, was that just from normal middle school hormone male ego stuff? Or did something in particular trigger that?
Gen X Talks: something in particular made me leave. Yeah, there is I thought that in seventh grade I could sneak into the girls' locker room. the and
GenX Adulting Podcast: No
Gen X Talks: well hold on, I had a plan. I had a real plan for this.
GenX Adulting Podcast: It seems reasonable so far. I'm with you. Speaking of
Gen X Talks: They had they They had these big carts that they would push full of towels. I mean, there's, you know, four hundred, five hundred towels in these carts. And they would wash them and and dry them and then they just throw them in this thing and then they would wheel them in. And I'm assuming just like with us, and there's seventh graders all the way up to twelfth grade guys taking showers. And, you know, and then they would just push the cart all the way in actually to the shower. And as soon as you were stepping out of this gigantic group shower, they would just toss you a towel. And I thought. If I could sneak in there under all the towels,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: all I gotta do is pop up and there's a bunch of high school girls naked. That was the plan.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And so I got in the cart and they put all the towels on me, my friends did, and they're wheeling me thinking, okay, now I'm outside the door. Okay, now I'm getting pushed down the sidewalk. Okay, now I'm going into the other. I mean, I could tell where I was, and then all of a sudden this hand reached in through the towels and grabbed me by the back of the neck and yanked me out. I really didn't have a good story at that point. So yeah, I had to leave.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Who who yanked you out?
Gen X Talks: This six foot eight big black guy named Mr. Plaisance, who was actually the nicest guy, one of the s was super nice guy, but he was a football coach and he wasn't playing. You know, he
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: grabbed my scrony little seventh grade white and narrow ass and shook me around like a ragdoll and said, Come on, you're leaving and that was don't know, never found out. Somebody did. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Who sold you out though? Yes, somebody did.
Gen X Talks: I kinda think I if I had to guess, they you know, some some teacher walks or a student walks the cart halfway and then a girl takes it, you know, the other halfway
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, no.
Gen X Talks: into the girls I think the girl pushing it went, This is heavier than usual.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. It actually sounds like a scene from Porky's. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, no, it a hundred
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: percent sounds okay, so they ask you to leave. Okay,
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: so when that happened, was did your mom freak out?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, everybody was mad. I was like, okay, it was just a joke. Relax. I was it no one was laughing at all, not even me. Yeah. And I had to that was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right.
Gen X Talks: my first experience at public school. I went to Madison Junior High. And that was the most eye-opening experience of my life. and not just where you in public school, where everything was different than private school. 'cause until then I'd only gone to, you know, a church on Sundays and church activities and Village Christian school. And the guess where Village Christian was? Up in that canyon. So I never left. Everything was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: up that way. And going to a public school, the f the two things one number one, you're going to a public school in the early 80s in in LA, but that was when they had busing. And they were busing, you know, 12 busloads of kids from Watts and you know, down near Crenshaw. And so you got all these black kids being bussed in and they didn't want to be there. I remember talking with them, like, we don't want to come here. There we want to stay home in our neighborhood with with our schools and our friends. They didn't want
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: to come up there and we're like, well, we don't want you here. We don't know you. And it wasn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: a racial thing. We just looked at each other like they didn't want to be in our neighborhood at all. They couldn't it's not like they could make friends and then hang out with them after school. They were being bussed back over the hill. So, you know, it just
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: we didn't understand it at the time. there was actually there was a lot of race fights there, but it still seems like the blacks and the whites were on the same side. in our school and was fighting somebody else. So but we never
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: had any problems with them. It just it seemed dumb to us and it seemed dumb to them why we were all there.
GenX Adulting Podcast: It's so interesting. You had a like you were right in it. You had that real time experience and can speak to it. You weren't an adult on the outside talking in politics or any of that crap.
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Like you were boots on the ground and I'm sure that's how it was probably in every situation that that was happening. I'm sure the kids all felt like
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: that.
Gen X Talks: It had to be, but they make it out now when you listen to people talk about the history of it and and how great it was and how everything worked and what it was supposed to be doing. And I'm like, that was not what it was like at all. And you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: know, there was no the we're trying to overcome the racial divide. We didn't dislike them because they were black. They didn't hate us because we were white. I sat with them and had lunch and I'm like, you know, wh why are you guys here? And like, we don't know. They told us all they said we gotta bust us up here and I'm like I'm thinking, I don't want to get bused down there. I wouldn't want to go down to those schools. This is my neighborhood. I I want to
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: walk home when I'm done and see my friends at seven eleven on the way home. I mean, it it just it was a very big disconnect for those kids because they couldn't they didn't want to make friends because there was nothing you you couldn't hang out with them afterwards on the weekends. They didn't want to be there because you couldn't do anything after even after school around the neighborhood. You had to get back on the bus quickly and go home. It just seem it
GenX Adulting Podcast: God.
Gen X Talks: just seemed odd for all of us and we just shrugged our shoulders. Nobody I don't remember I was there two years doing that. I don't remember anybody hating anybody. You know, it just didn't work.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Were there big brawls, big fights?
Gen X Talks: There were a few. I probably say the two years I was there there's probably five. and it always it always ended up being some sort of racial fight, but it it seems like it was the blacks and the whites fighting like Mexicans and somebody else and I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: don't know how they started. I don't know, you know, I wasn't directly involved in it, but you you can see it happening. It breaks out on the field and you're on the bleacher standing there, but you know, it I don't know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well,
Gen X Talks: it's just odd.
GenX Adulting Podcast: there were I assume there were gangs, right? That's if they weren't then they were shortly on the heels of that time wise.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, there wasn't there wasn't I don't remember any gangs like there wasn't gang areas. No, there
GenX Adulting Podcast: Like the Crips and Blubs or anything.
Gen X Talks: wasn't any of that that I saw up there. There we didn't have any of that. It was just if there was ever a fight it was always groups fighting other groups racially.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: But I don't remember any gangs of any kind. And like I said, the the guys that I w I did sit with at lunch or, you know, in between classes or something or at P E that were on the busting program, we all got along fine. You know, they didn't nobody cared.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a true what a huge shift for you though, to go from this perfect idyllic, like renaissance type town where you're utterly protected, not just in general, but then there's a
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: re Christian religious protection there too, right? It's all everyone you know, and then to be thrown into this not only just normal public school, but then this whole movement of busting happening at the same time, and then so much diversity. How did how did you how did that affect you mentally? Would you say that you transitioned well in that experience?
Gen X Talks: No, I failed miserably. I I mean there was things I loved about it because in the private school, girls always had to wear dresses and they had to wear, you blouses and stuff. And here, you know, they could dress how they wanted. I mean, they were much more revealing. Everyone's wearing loud makeup. There was girls walking around looked like Pat Benatar. And I mean, it was for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: me as a as a teenage kid, I'm like, okay, there's some parts of this that are really cool. The adjustment was very hard. because you if you opened your mouth in the wrong way, you got your ass kicked.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: nobody was gonna kick my ass at my school. Like I said, I was the big fish in the small pond. And when I got here, I was nothing. And I learned it real quick that I was nothing. But I also started to carve out my way to fit in with all the teachers and I it's goddess how long of a podcast do we do and how long do we got?
GenX Adulting Podcast: We have as long as you want.
Gen X Talks: I've never told any of these stories. You guys, I thought you were gonna say, so how did Gen X talk start? You started like, where were you born? What time was I'm like, wow, they're really going back. I've never
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's in like hour eight.
Gen X Talks: told all the stuff we've talked about till now, I've never told on any of my shows, and no one's ever asked. You this is all
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: fresh material for people. But in
GenX Adulting Podcast: Thank you. Thank you.
Gen X Talks: at Madison Junior High, I kind of got in the first few months you start figuring out that you're in way over your head. And I got in good with all the teachers. I got into audio video. I had an audio video class,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: it was first thing in the morning. But in that I learned that when you're in charge of that, and there was only three of us in the whole school that did it, I had the keys to that room. I could come and go. And every teacher on campus would be like, Hey Mark, can you can you get me a projecting screen? Can you get me one of these? I've been putting a request, but you know, no one's got, you know, you overhead projectors or televisions for the room or I mean anything to pencil sharpeners. They're Well, we turned in requests, but we're not getting it. It's been a it's been three weeks. I'm like, let me see what I can do. And I made friends with everybody and made friends with the janitors. And the janitors, we had the same keys to the same locks, and the janitors were cool with me, and they had they had ten thousand supplies, everything desks, chairs, pencil sharpeners, staplers, it was all in the in the maintenance area. So I became the guy who could get everything for everybody on campus. I could get
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: anything to any teacher anytime. And I had a lot of leeway with the teachers. So I'm kind of building my credibility in the first six or eight months real fast there. And then my mom comes and sits me down in the vice principal's office. Now I knew the print who the principal was. His name was Mr. Starrer, and I knew the vice principal was Mrs. Gilliberto, but I never was I never got in trouble. I never went anywhere near him. I think the teachers kind of were like, well. Leave him alone a little bit. You know, he's he really does help everybody around here. So, you know, if he's running around and everybody kind of looked the other way. And then all of a sudden I found myself in the office and I knew I didn't do anything wrong. And I walk in and sit down. My mother's already there with Mrs. Gilliberto, and they're talking away. And I'm like, do you guys need me to be here? Cause you guys are getting along just fine. And come to find out that they've been best friends. For decades, my my mother at Sun Valley Junior High near La Tuna Canyon, Mrs. Gilliberto was one of her teachers all those years. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I end up at the one school.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: And so now Mrs. Gilliberto's making it her primary mission, you know, to watch me. I'm like, great, that's what I need, is I need, you know, an extra set of eyes on me. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: she'd already known everything. She told my mom, well, he's carved out quite a little empire for himself here. running around doing stuff. He doesn't even have to show up to half his classes. Because my teachers, if I told Mr. Googus was my history teacher and I said, Hey, I need to leave about halfway through the class. There's a couple other teachers that need a couple of things kind of off the books. I'm gonna go help there he was fine with it. You know why? 'Cause I did the same thing for him. You know, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: you could just I was I really did well and then the thing that made me really enjoy going to Madison was I got into a stage crew class, which is in the same class as drama. And but we were running the lights, running the soundboards. and at the time, I was, like I said, I was always been the class clown. And Mr. Mikowski was the was the teacher there. And he was he had put together some drama class that he was really proud of. I mean, you caught on real quick that he had like recruited people to actually the class maybe had 25 people in it. And he pulled in like 15 of them were his like knocking on the door to the parents' house. Hey, please make your kid come do this. They're very talented. And you kind of catch on to that. You're like, okay. And we did some there was a bunch the the things Mr. McCowski would have the drama class do, a lot of it was improv. A lot of it, but it wasn't comedy improv. It was serious. He's like, okay. I'm gonna set a scene and there's a dead body and there's a detective and you and he would whisper to everybody what their what their job was and you had to go improv being in character and he would watch all of these people that had no idea what each one was doing interact with each other. And I asked him later, he goes, That's the best way to get these kids to develop acting skills is to do improv and let them develop whatever character they're in, and then
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: interact with the other kid who's developing his character.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I thought that was great. And there was one time we they had to they were doing something in front of it wasn't just teachers, it was at like ten teachers and maybe thirty parents and it was an after school thing and Mikowski had asked me, said, Hey, can you just help out with the lights? We don't really have much, but can you help out with a few microphones? We're doing something after school. And I Yeah, I'd help you out. And it was it was blind for the students there. so we do this this setup, and I forget somebody didn't show up. And Mikowski goes, Hey, can you can you fill in here? And go, what do want me to do? Because well, you've seen us do this a hundred times. I go, yeah, but you know, I'm not I've never been one of the guys. He goes, Well, he goes, You're you're a guy who's a drunk businessman who stumbles across this scene and you know, the cop you you gotta I want you to antagonize the cop on the scene. I was like, All right. And so I did it. My first time I'd ever done that was in front of the all these parents and teachers, and these the kids were doing it to show, show their chops. You know, he had
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: taught them and taught them and taught them. And Mikowski was like, You gotta come see what the dramas kids are doing. And before I finish that part of the story, it turns out that in that class was Danny Nucci. I don't know if you know who he is.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: Danny Nucci turned out to be, he was in The Rock, he was in Crimson Tide with Gene Hackman.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: He had a a series on I mean, he's been d turned out to be a very great actor.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Josh Koenig was in that, and he's Walter Koenig's son. He played Boner on Growing Pains.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: And Walt his son his his dad was Walter Koenig, who was checkoff on Star Trek. So so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: Walter Koenig's in the audience watching Josh, Danny Nucci's parents are out there, Shawnee Smith, who's an actress, she's been on a lot
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: of shows, she was in this and it turns out there's like out of these fifteen people, there was like eight of that became super famous, really cool people in the world, in the world of acting. And he threw me in there and I knew who they were. We were all friends. Nobody was really famous at that point, but
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: You know, growing up in that area, you ran into actors and actresses and watched people film and I mean it was a common for us down there. So you weren't really starstruck anyway. And we got done and they were, you know, the show's over, we're putting everything away. And Mikowski came up and he's like, I want you to quit everything you're doing and be an actor. And I said, Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. And it was it was not easy for me to do the way he had me do it, throwing me in there.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: Had I changed my mind I might have been able to hang out with I mean I hung out with them anyway as friends. We all got along. Shawnee even lived on my street growing up. She lived just down the street from me. but I think I look back and go, you know what, if I'd have just taken Mikowski's advice and spent some time doing that, maybe I'd have got picked up to do something back then. And I just
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: an opportunity missed because I didn't, you know, I didn't think much of it. But yeah, my that's what made the junior high became very easy because we there was no sports teams obviously in junior high, but everybody knew the kids in drama and everybody knew the kids in play production and everybody knew the kids in in stage crew and so when I ended up there, yeah, you were at that you were at that level where the whole kind of the whole school knew who you were. And I was also dial
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. That's wild.
Gen X Talks: I was dialed in with the teachers in in
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: the way I did. Now I'm dialed in with all the kids to know who I am. So yeah, I think my ninth grade year is probably one of the one of the better years of my life.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. I mean, you became a big fish in a lot of ways. Like, you know, you you carved out that space. And I was just thinking, what a life skill you learned in kind of working everyone with, you know, well, I'm gonna go pick up this. I gotta leave early for this. That's a that's a great life skill that you you I'm sure you have applied numerous times going forward, but to
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: have that time in middle school to hone it like that, and then your your
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: drama teacher definitely saw something in you that he was probably like, my God, okay, this kid can act
Gen X Talks: At the time he thought there was something to like he could improve me and do something with me, but I just wasn't willing to put in the time. And I I knew I had arrived when carving out the spot when they handed me the keys and said, Just go do it and quit you know, quit coming to us. You got keys on you and I put the keys in my locker
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: at night. Every morning I get there early, I got the keys to quite a few doors, you know, so that
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: worked out well. The other one was was that when Mrs. Gilliberto was looking in on me. And she did she really didn't spy on me as much as I thought. but I think she did keep keep people away from me also. So it was just
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: a a series of very fortunate events. And then because I was able to carve out a few little niches, it all fit together like puzzle pieces. I got very lucky with that. I really did.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Absolutely, because all it probably, like you kind of alluded to, protected you from some of the upheaval from whatever's going on with the diversity within the school. You probably kinda had no one messed with you because you had your own little thing and it none of it and your thing. Yeah, didn't threaten anybody else in a way, you know.
Gen X Talks: There was a I just thought of something else. I dn I don't think I've ever told anybody this. There was a row of shop classes at the very end of the school. It was there was metal shop and and wood shop and a little automotive thing there, very basic stuff. And then a print shop and they all those teachers were shop teachers. And I remember I forget exact something happened where one of the teachers grabbed three of us and they thought we were stealing something and I'm like I remember being I'm not even with them. I don't know who these two guys are. And like, well, I you know, the two teachers grabbed us and I remember saying, you know, I don't know what was stolen and I don't know these two guys. And I guess they did steal something from one of the classrooms, from one of the shop classes that was ex some expensive tool. I don't know if it was a drill or something. And we're sitting out in front of Mrs. Gilliberto's office getting ready to go in, and one of the shop teachers, he said something about and his name was Mr. Baker, and he said something about his daughter. And I said, Is your daughter Sharon Baker? And he goes, Yeah, why? And she didn't go to that school. It wasn't there. And he goes, Yeah, why? And I said, Does she go to Village Christian? And and he goes, Yeah. I said, I was in her class three years in a row. I'm Mark and Mark Mendenhall. And she's he's like, What? And I said, Yeah. I said, I and I listed all the teachers at village, all the kids in our class. I knew her best friends. I knew them all by name. And all of a sudden he comes in there and he's like, he pulled me right out. He goes, Yeah, this guy wasn't with him, it's just these two.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, nice.
Gen X Talks: That was it. Now what are the chances that I'm gonna be in trouble with a teacher who's the father of a girl I used to go to school with? I mean, ha you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right. But
Gen X Talks: talk small world.
GenX Adulting Podcast: well also though, I think there's integrity there, right? So it's it sounds like as you traveled along here, you were building some sort of integrity. So you had some integrity that came from your Christian school and then you created integr integrity within this middle school just by having all this responsibility.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I I never did anything wrong. I didn't steal stuff. I mean I didn't I mean, I probably skipped classes and moved around a little bit of that, but I never did anything you weren't supposed to do, you know, and didn't light anything on fire. I didn't do any of that stuff, you know. I was I was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: I was just I was enjoying, you know, having the power of having friends that would let you do a little things like that, like like skip half a class, you know. And then you'd get out
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. That's harmless.
Gen X Talks: I was on bike patrol. so we get out, we could come in late because you had to lock all the bikes up after the classes started, and you got out early to go let all the kids out who rode their bikes to school. And the other guy who did that with me was his name was Rodney Beck. And Rod Beck and I were friends for years afterwards and he went to grand high school and Rodney ended up being one of the greatest relief pitchers for the San Francisco Giants. and, you know, the people you know, you know, it just was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Interesting. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: odd. It
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well, you found purpose. Like it sounds like you found a purpose there. but also you found a great way to not be in class a lot. But it was excused. Jealous. Yeah. But it was
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Well
GenX Adulting Podcast: excused, you know. So it I mean, that's what I'm saying. That is a skill, that is a talent to be able to float through like that, but it's all on the up and up, you know?
Gen X Talks: It was. It it's kind of funny that I did I did an interview with Mark Pellegrino about a month ago. I don't know if you guys know who he is. Mark
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: he was on Lost. he played Lucifer on Stranger Things. so I did an interview with him and I was about to cancel the interview because all the interviews I had seen online, I can do some homework and you learn about someone. And I'm like, man, he's done like a hundred interviews. He's very gracious with his time. And everybody who interviews him. Is like they're like, hey man, in in in this scene, on in the movie in the TV show Lost, on this episode of this scene, when you were doing this and he'd very interested in answering and and they knew every show he'd ever been in, and I didn't know any of them because I didn't watch Lost. I didn't watch
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: Stranger Things. Literally every TV series he was in, I was unfamiliar with. So here I'm gonna do an interview, and I realize I don't I don't have any way to connect with like like these real fans do. I thought, because one of our staffers sat me up. He's like, hey, you to interview this guy. I said, Yeah, far out, man. I'm I'm I'm game. And literally 15 minutes before the interview, I was thinking, I just gotta cancel. In fact, I told my wife, I said, I can't do this. I don't have anything to say. I'm gonna sound stupid. And she goes, just do it. Just do it anyway. So we start the interview, and I I literally opened the interview jokingly, saying, you know, the only thing I know about Mark Pellegrino, well, it's nothing other than what you read on the internet. I knew a Don Pellegrino. He was a friend of mine at Madison Junior High, but other than that, I don't know if they're related or not. And that was how I opened the first two minutes of the interview. And Mark goes, I don't know a Don Pellegrino. I said, Wow, just throwing it out there. He goes, Well, how did you know I went to Madison Junior High? I go, I didn't.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: I I didn't know that. How would I know that? I just threw it out there because I knew a Don Pellegrino. It turns out we missed each other by one year. It turns out he
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: knew Mr. Mikkowski. He's friends to this day with Shawnee Smith. It turns out we spent 40 minutes of the interview and all of a sudden we both kind of were shaking our heads laughing and we both looked up and went, shit. We're supposed to be doing an interview. We literally
GenX Adulting Podcast: huh.
Gen X Talks: got off of, Well, did you go here? Did you go there? Were you at the mall? And you know, did you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: go here? Did you and we just got off on two guys talking at a bar for 35 or 40 minutes and we both I remember vividly going, shit, we got an interview to get to. We total we
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: got sidetracked completely because we knew so many of the same people. And we literally we were traipsing around the same neighborhood all the time. We just we just never bumped into each other. Yeah. So again, small
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a trip. What a trip.
Gen X Talks: world. What the chances I'm gonna do an interview with a guy that I know nothing about. And now, you know, we exchange cell phone numbers and you know, like we wanna go hang out sometime and we both have some free time together.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's amazing. That is a ma that man, those years at that school just I keep the gift it keeps on giving, it sounds like that was even though that was a huge
Gen X Talks: It was something.
GenX Adulting Podcast: transition for you, it sounds
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: like what a positive experience. So okay, so you and you went through ninth grade there.
Gen X Talks: Yep, graduated from James Madison Junior High. I think it was eighty eighty three.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And then you go into public high school from that?
Gen X Talks: Yeah. I went to John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, which is right there on Roscoe Boulevard, kind of in the heart of the valley. And I was ready. I was ready for high school at this point. It's like okay, you know, I don't care if there's busing, I don't care what the rules are. Now I got it figured out. I had two
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: years of training down in at Madison, I was ready to go. So I literally kicked in the doors to that public school knowing what angle I wanted to play with everybody. I knew exactly I was gonna be in stage crew or drama. I knew that I was gonna get in with the janitors and I was gonna get in the audio video people. I mean, I knew right where to go to start work and all that stuff. lot
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: lot of weird stories in Huh lot of weird stories that came out of came out of Polly. they had a God, I don't know. Do you guys wanna hear these or you I don't have to? I I can just
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes. We this is what we love. Yes.
Gen X Talks: There was these are all out of order, by the way.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: they had closed down by eighty four, Polly was following along LA Unified School District. They were closing a lot of their shop programs. They don't need anymore. Shop shop isn't gonna be
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: what you do. And they had closed quite a few classes at the edge of the campus. So there was just a row of rooms that that nobody used. They were just empty. I mean, quite a few of them, probably fifteen. Fifteen rooms or so. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: sometimes you'd walk by them to get somewhere, but because they were on the end of the campus, they were the only doors of the classroom. You were not very many people walked by there. I I was in tenth grade. I had just just got into poly I d I guess it was in the first few months. It was still cold outside, so it was still winter time. And I was running by there and in and the the the doors to the classrooms are kind of indented, you know, the little cubbyhole. And there was four guys messing with some girl. They had kind of had her pinned up there. And I was running by and I saw it and they didn't see me. And I I ran up and flew. I just went into a rage and I was going to save her and beat them up. And they kicked the shit out of me. They they
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: they beat me in the next week, but she got away. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's wonderful.
Gen X Talks: in my eleventh late eleventh grade, maybe that or maybe it was twelfth grade. I was running by that same spot. And the same thing was happening again. F like two years later, the same spot. And I like, You gotta be kidding me and I ran over and this time I didn't do so bad. She got away and I d I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: kinda held my own. But that was kind of always a weird thing. I look back and go, What are the odds of that happening to the same
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: guy being in the same place two years apart?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. Well you you would think also that any of that would have yeah, that it would have been reported and the school would have maybe monitored that part of this but it's the eighties. So yeah. It's not like now. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, they didn't know but it was like just and then Yeah. And then another one was running along that same area. I was I had I remember I was late for something. I think it was late for the PE area, the gym area, and I was running along there and it was a quicker way to go. And there was some guy on his knees kinda huddled up, like he was on his knees messing between his knees, and I'm I'm running toward jogging towards this guy. I'm like, what is that guy doing? And he had lit a pipe bomb.
GenX Adulting Podcast: jeez.
Gen X Talks: And threw it on the roof of the administration building because that was I was we were on the back side of the of one of the administration buildings and he threw it up there and I remember just tackling him. I remember getting him in
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: a headlock and I drug him around the building. He was fighting with me and I just punched him in the face and I had him in a headlock. I took him around to the administration and I said, Hey, this guy just threw something on the roof. I think it was a pipe bomb. So quickly, you know, they call the police or security on campus and they go up there and look. And it had landed in a puddle of water on the roof. So it it didn't go off, but I sat
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. Wow.
Gen X Talks: there holding the guy till the cop came up and put him in handcuffs. That was one.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Now when you that's amazing. When you when they beat you up in tenth grade, was that your first
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: time getting in a fight?
Gen X Talks: No. I I opened my mouth in junior high and got punched a few times, realizing, okay, you know, you gotta watch what you say. That's one of the things growing
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: up Gen X is you learn you get your ass kicked
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: if you just run your mouth. A lot of kids today don't understand that. There are so many kids today, it's like you need your ass kicked,
GenX Adulting Podcast: You yes. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: you know. You if you get your ass whipped a couple of times, you'll behave better. You'll learn you can't just say what you want. You know, it's like there's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: freedom of speech, but there's also consequences, dipshit, you know? So Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Absolutely. We learned to self regulate pretty quick. Whether w you were
Gen X Talks: Pretty fast.
GenX Adulting Podcast: getting your ass kicked or someone else was and you didn't want to be that kid, you l you learned. Or
Gen X Talks: Right. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: it was your a parent or uncle smacking you upside the head type of thing.
Gen X Talks: There was a deal at a there was there was a radio station in Los Angeles, just a pop forty station called K IQ Q. And there was a morning show, Bruce and Tony in the morning. And when I was in junior high, they were like the number one show in the morning, everybody listened to And they would have, you know, little call in guest things and they would ha they had a talent show and and you could call in and and do something. You know, people did, you know, voices or they'd sing. It was actually looking back, it was a s pretty stupid thing to do. over the radio on a telephone. But I called and called and called and called and I finally got through and they said, Okay, hang on. And then they come back on the air and say, before we introduce you, they're play the the background music was Little Red Corvette. I think that was the song that was playing.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: And he goes, Okay, when you come back on what's your name? And I didn't want to tell him my name. So I said Napoleon for some reason. I have no
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: idea why I said that. I said Napoleon. And so they get me on the radio and they said, Okay, somebody named Napoleon calling from the valley, Napoleon, are you there? And I said, Yeah. I says, What do you do? Well, I didn't even have a talent.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hmm.
Gen X Talks: And I mean this is eighth grade at medicine. So I said, I can juggle. They're not gonna know. How are they gonna know if
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: I'm if I I could tell them I'm juggling seven things right now? So I said, I can juggle. And Bruce Chandler goes, All right, start juggling. And then Tony goes, Wow, he's really good.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my
Gen X Talks: And
GenX Adulting Podcast: god.
Gen X Talks: I took up the entire break. I took up the entire break doing that. And then I called back again a week later. I did something else equally dumb. And they said, keep calling us, call once a week. So I did.
GenX Adulting Podcast: No way.
Gen X Talks: And then everybody at school figured out it was me. So for all of eighth and ninth grade, there was a ton of people just called me Napoleon. And then
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's hilarious.
Gen X Talks: there was a thing out at Cal State University of Northridge. they had big carnivals and stuff out there. And one of them was Factory and Nightmares for Halloween. I forget which event they were at. All of a sudden I walked my parents just took us all out there. So we're out walking around. It's this big, huge thing during the day. And I noticed that KIQQ had a booth. And I ran up to the booth and nobody was there. They were kind of in the back. They had a it was kind of a setup canopy, but it also had a a draped off area for whoever was running it and they had an out front area for, you know, autographs or whatever. And I could hear them back there and I knew the voices. One of them was Bruce and one of them was Tony. So I stuck my head in. The guy says, you can't be here. And I said, No, I'm a friend of Bruce's. I didn't even know if he was really there. It just sounded like him. And the guy
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: goes, Hey, Bruce, is this a friend of yours? He goes, I don't know. Do I know you? And I go, I'm Napoleon. He goes, No shit. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: he goes, You gotta stick around. So they do this big presentation, and now they had five disc jockeys from KOQQ, which everybody knew who they were. And Bruce and Tony were signing autographs, and there was a line, 700 people waiting to get autographs from these disc jockeys. And Bruce and Tony sat me between them and said, sign autographs. I go, then no one's gonna know who I am. They go, look, you've been on our show so much. So they made an announcement that I'm Napoleon, and there was people asking for my autograph. I'm sitting there, well, I'm there for
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. my gosh.
Gen X Talks: two hours. My mother walks up and she goes, What are you doing? And I said, What? She goes, We gotta go. I go, I'm busy. And I'm sitting, she's looking around, going, How are you behind a booth? Who wants your autograph for anything? And I go, Mom, come on, you know, I'm 14. You gotta leave me alone. And I always thought to this day, there's some girl with a hope chest full of things, and she's got
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: a thing that I signed as Napoleon, you know, way back then. So in Polly.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my god, I'm dying.
Gen X Talks: Bruce Chandler was kind of at the end of his KIQQ career, but still really popular. He does this big event in the auditorium. And, you know, by then I'm dialed in. I'm I'm the auditorium guy. I got keys to the auditorium. I'm in drama and play production. And he comes up there and the auditorium fills up because this guy, they go, Yeah, they got some radio guy coming out here. So I walk in, I'm late, and they're the audio the the whole auditorium's packed and he's just doing some Some comedy and talking about things he's doing and he'll he'll do autographs and stuff. And I walk back to them. I'm Well, who's the who's the radio guy? And they're it's Bruce Chandler. And I'm like, No way. So I walk up and I say to I say, Hey, Bruce. Now remember, I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. I'd grown up. He didn't know who I was. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: I said, You don't remember me? He goes, No. I said, I'm Napoleon. He goes, No shit. And again, drags me out on stage.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: And there we go again. And I had no idea he was even showing up at that school. We hadn't talked in a long time. I hadn't been on his program in two years. I just did it for a while that one year. But all of a sudden what are what are how lucky was I, you know, that that happened?
GenX Adulting Podcast: my god. Wait, what grade was that in high school?
Gen X Talks: I think that was that was the beginning of eleventh grade, I think. So it was eighty five.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. And your mom didn't know back in eighth grade that this any of this was going on, that you were calling a radio station and all that?
Gen X Talks: she knew about that because the phone bill was long distance to Los Angeles. She was mad. She by the time she
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay, okay.
Gen X Talks: got the phone bill, but she was kinda like, All right, I get what you're doing. You're gonna you're gonna work it off. You're gonna pay me back and But yeah, it was it
GenX Adulting Podcast: Probably able to sit on hold. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: was a huge you know, phone bill quadrupled. But she was she was actually kinda cool about that. And and she ac she was pretty good about not yanking me out. She goes, Well, I'm gonna go get something to eat. When I come back we're leaving, you're not signing any more autographs. she was
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome. That's
Gen X Talks: pretty good about that kind of stuff.
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, that's very so I'm just I'm dying over the fact though that you repeatedly called, but you didn't have a tal you didn't even think ahead of a talent until they
Gen X Talks: Nothing. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: until they answered. So it's almost like you were just calling just to try to get on and
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: then you were gonna figure it out from there. Yeah. And
Gen X Talks: I remember one of the times I called, I told him I had an invisible dog that could do tricks. His name was Billy and they're like, Well, what does Billy do? I Anything you want him to do And then he goes, Well,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Huh?
Gen X Talks: make him sit. I go, He's sitting. He goes, Well make him roll
GenX Adulting Podcast: Uh-huh.
Gen X Talks: over. He just did it. You know, d stuff they couldn't verify, but they thought
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah,
Gen X Talks: it was hilarious.
GenX Adulting Podcast: yeah. It is. So once they started having you on weekly, did you start then preparing and thinking, Okay, well this week I'm gonna have this and
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I I knew that if I called in 'cause it gave you a different number to call in. I knew that if I called in, I had to have something dumb that I thought was funny. And so, you know, we just would do something silly like that. And it was always something that people couldn't hear over the radio. So it was always something, you know, different like that. So that was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right. What
Gen X Talks: that's what it turned into.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a great bit. That's that's amazing. Okay, so you so you it's just I keep you have all these touches with stardom already. You know, if you think
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: about it, like or you know, it's there. You I can see why you are where you're at now just from these beginning, you know, because even the audiovisual, like you just got your hands into that, and that obviously
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: plays into where you're at now. But okay, so you continue with audiovisual drama into high school. You were Napoleon. and but Then you had said that eleventh grade you went back to your Christian private school briefly. Why why did you go then?
Gen X Talks: I don't know. I just thought, you know, I felt like I was missing all of my old friends. you know, it just had been a few years and I'm like, God So I talked my parents into paying the money and trying to get me back into the school and I did not fit. I did not fit in a Christian school with those rules. I just n you can't get dialed in like you can in the I just didn't fit. It didn't even come close. I just had to walk away.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, I think it's incr our our kids went to private catholic. And I know the older they got when kids would come into those older grades, it was very hard. It's easier tran in a weird way to transition from the smaller to the bigger school than the bigger to the smaller school. It's just a hard transition. Yeah, once you're over
Gen X Talks: I would agree. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: that hump, I think it's a little Yeah, and I mean you had been exposed to so much, not just diversity, but finding your space, finding your purpose, learning all these skills, being Napoleon, like all these things, the dr the exposure with drama, like that's personal growth and it's hard than to go into back into that strict box when you've had all those experiences.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. And you touched on the stardom thing. you gotta remember growing up in the valley, they filmed everything you could film out in the streets of the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles. We were
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: there was always film crews out there commercials or TV shows, and someone would call and go, Hey, they're they're doing the incredible Hulk over here on this street for three days in a row and you'd we'd all ride our bikes. There'd be they have to push you off where the cameras don't see you, but there's a hundred kids. with bikes because the word spreads fast. So we got to meet or at least see all the actors. We watched them film the A Team. We watched him film Chips. We watched
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: him film The Incredible Hulk. I mean, from the mid seventies on you to the early eighties, you were there it was everywhere. So it really wasn't I here's the way to describe it. I thought everybody was doing this. I had
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: no idea that you know we were fifteen minutes from Dodgers Stadium. I thought everybody could go watch the Dodgers play. I didn't know there was towns that didn't have filming, that didn't have baseball teams. When you're 10, you're living life. You just think every kid in America is doing what you're doing. I had no idea how special it was to, you know, you're an hour away from the beach. You're an hour and a
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: half away from the mountains for skiing or snow. I had no idea. This is just what we did growing up. So I figured everybody was doing it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well, so much too though of where you grew up was being shot across the rest of the country, the rest of the world. So we all looked in from afar, like, Wow, that's really cool. You were you got to see the the lot itself. That's wild.
Gen X Talks: And we could see every T V show we knew where they were filming, you know, you know, like you could tell by the backgrounds
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, that's crazy.
Gen X Talks: like well, I tell people a lot of i in this day and age, a lot of kids had asked me or younger people have asked, you know, what was it like growing up in the eighties in the Valley? I say, if you want to know what it was like being Gen X back then, watch two movies. First, watch the Breakfast Club. That'll give you the basic start on the character study. And then watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High. That was all filmed in the San Fernando Valley. I could tell you where every
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: place was there. And that is so true how each character behaves in fast times. There's always a jock. There's always a Damone. There's there I knew every one of those guys, you know, there was always guys like that. And it was filmed in the Sherman Oaks Galleria where we used to hang out. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: for us, you know, those not only were they they were spot on, they were filmed in the right right location too.
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, it's amazing. And now would you say, 'cause all of us were so fascinated by T V shows, like you named a lot of them, chips and all
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: that. would you say having that behind the scenes ex organic exposure took away some of the mystique of the T V shows themselves for you? Okay.
Gen X Talks: No, it just felt normal. It just felt like I mean, you just knew they filmed here, you watch it on TV and it was all fun. It was just it was just part
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: of how it goes. I woke to another Madison thing was that I knew a guy named Kenny Panchuk and goofy looking little guy. And he didn't get along with anybody really, but I had him in a couple of classes And he tried to tell me one time, he goes, I'm in a movie. I'm in a I'm in a real movie. I You're not in a movie, who'd hire you? You're ugly and you're little and you got goofy hairs and no and turns out he was the kid, it was when I saw Fast Times at Ridgemont, I'm Holy shit, that's Kenny. He was the one who walked up and I think he asked Damone for the blue oyster colt tickets. He
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: and he goes, I ran out of those. That was that was a month ago. Where were you a month ago when I had thirteen extra tickets and that was Kenny? He had one line in the
GenX Adulting Podcast: my
Gen X Talks: movie and walked away. So I had to go back to Kenny and go, All right, you're right, you're in the movie. Ha ha ha.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I know exactly the scene you're talking about. What a trip. What a trip. So
Gen X Talks: Just odd.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you brought up Breakfast Club.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: out of those characters for your high school experience, which one would you say you identified more with?
Gen X Talks: Bender,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: I would guess. That was those that the leather or the Levi Jacket kinda guy. I mean, there's a to be fair, there's a little bit of nerd in me, you know. there's a little bit of jock in me at the time, but yeah, if I had to pick one it'd be the troublemaker guy.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did that because it sounds like that wouldn't have started in junior high, right? Because you had a lot of responsibilities in junior high. Did that more surface in high school?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, probably at the end of high school when I told you that my dad had come back in my life and was running with Hell's Angels. That's a whole nother that's a six hour conversation, but became more of that persona. Even if I wasn't acting it out, it was the it was the jacket and the glasses you put on. I think I related in end of middle of end of high school that more than anything.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What an experience though with like the Hells Angels. The did you
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: get into like riding motorcycles and stuff at all? Or was there a
Gen X Talks: yeah, I I rode, but it was just honestly, that was a that was such a weird time. Like I don't even I try I don't even try to remember it and talk about it too much because there was so much weirdness that went on. I'll set a s the the only thing I can do to set the stage for you would be my dad was not in the Hells Angels, but he was so dialed in, he was at every meeting, everything they did, every decision, he was right there with them. He was lockstep with them. And He was known as a as a badass motherfucker. Like y there was respect, there was fear with with my biological dad. So when he brings me into that and I'm still kind of fresh out of Christian school, making
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: my way, you know, through public school, I'm still, you know, there's I'm still going through learning curves of what the world's like. And you know, you're sixteen or seventeen, you still don't know what's going on. And all of a sudden I'm sitting next to him. at places I should not be, listening to things sh I should not hear. And I knew to be quiet because all of a sudden everybody was afraid of me. They're like, Whoa, if this is his son, we better watch out. And we know what this guy's like. I can't imagine what the son is capable of. So I just had to be quiet. And a lot of people respected me and feared me for a few years that shouldn't have. I d had no business being there at all.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And you're a teenager, yeah, that's pretty good. Was that mainly
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: in the Hell's Angel community, or did that s go into yeah, translate into high
Gen X Talks: Well,
GenX Adulting Podcast: school?
Gen X Talks: the problem was is that as soon as I learned that if you if you put on that jacket and you behave that way, you could fool a lot of people into leaving you alone. I drugged
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm. Mm.
Gen X Talks: that back into a little bit of my high school time and because people knew that I hung out with them and did things with them and I did ride a motorcycle once in a while, they they just assumed it was all true. And I could just play that part quietly, and all of a sudden I took on a whole different look to people. So I still was dialed in. I was still goofing around and having fun, but it always seemed like everybody in the public school looked at me like, Yeah, he's funny right now, but don't don't make him mad. You know, don't don't don't have
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, don't fuck with that guy.
Gen X Talks: him turn him don't have him turn around on you, you're gonna have a problem. He was the guy who tackled the pipe gom bomb guy, remember? I mean everybody knew that. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: there was stuff like that. It just kind of brought it in from one aspect, but I I didn't do any of those things. I d I didn't I saw a lot of stuff that was horrible, but I didn't do any of the things that were horrible.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Do you do you know why your dad wasn't in Hells the Hells Angels?
Gen X Talks: I don't know, he never got a tattoo and they all had tattoos. He never pledged, he never was a prospect. I don't I don't know why he didn't go through the steps. Probably because he got in far enough without having any responsibility. You know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: he didn't have to go through any of the trials that those other guys did. I would guess. That's what I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Would you say that that transition 'cause you left public school sophomore year and did a lot of this exposure go on that eleventh grade year that you were back in Christian school?
Gen X Talks: E yeah, the end of tenth grade through eleventh grade and twelfth grade was all was a lot of moving around. It was a lot of for me, not physically moving, you know, in different states or cities, but
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: there was a lot of back and forth between schools and churches, different friend groups.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: very lost. It was very confusing looking back and very not knowing what I was doing. And because I couldn't I never had a coach of someone pointing me in the right direction, this'll make you mad too. Like I said, there was a lot of st like you brought up, there was a lot of stardom stuff around you just growing up. And it wasn't just me, there was everybody. It was everywhere. So I was working at a gas station, probably probably the beginning of my senior year, I think. a little Chevron gas station right near the one seventy freeway, Whitsit and Victory Boulevard, I think, which is about a about a stone's throw away from where they filmed the lethal weapon Christmas tree scene.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: And I would pump gas for these two Porsches. There was a white Porsche and a black Porsche. It was a man and a woman. They were older, you know, what was I was s eighteen or whatever I was, seventeen or eighteen, and they'd come in, you know, once every ten days or so and they'd pull up and it was a man and wife, and I would fill up each of their cars and we'd talk and I'd wash their windows and check their tires. And, you know, after a few months you get to know And the old man tells me one time, he says, What do you what do you want to do working at a gas station? And I said, I don't know. He goes, You ever thought about cinematography? I said, I don't even know what that is. He goes, I am I am the lead cinematographer at I think he said Warner Brothers or Paramount or something. And he goes, Would you be interested in learning that? I said, Yeah, kinda. He goes, Well, we film everything. He goes, we decide what we film, how we film, all the camera guys. He goes, and that's what I do. He goes, I'll give you a pass and you can come on and just follow me around. Carry a cup of coffee for me for a week, and I will show you all the insides of what we're doing here, and I will start teaching you how to be a cinematographer. And I remember I'm I'm I'm maybe barely 18. And I was all excited. I'm like, well, yeah, that sounds great. So the next time he comes in, he goes, What do say? And I said, and this is where you'll this is where the interview will will end. You'll realize you have no No desire to finish talking to me. He says, all right, I'll set you up. You come down there. So, well, what what shows are you working on right now? He goes, we're in the middle of a show called Scarecrow and Mrs. King. And I went, You got anything better? Maybe
GenX Adulting Podcast: no.
Gen X Talks: something like, you know, you're doing the A Team or Airwolf or something? He goes, Well, no. I said, Well, yeah, I think I'll pass. I'm I don't want to work on Scarecrow. I don't even like that show. I missed missed my chance.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Wow.
Gen X Talks: N no one was in my life to go go do that no matter what. Go say yes.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: There wasn't one friend I told about it, one relative, nobody, that said, This'll pass, this show will be over one day and you you can move on to something great, but you gotta put
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: in your time. No one told me that. So being around to LA, being around the valley, my whole life had been filled with opportunities, my bumping
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: into people. I just knew there'd be another one coming along shortly. I didn't you know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: Something will come up. It always does for me. It always works out. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. It's amazing. That's amazing, 'cause that's this that in my mind, that's kind of the second time because you had your drama teacher, right? That would have been something right there if you had said go that route. And now this it's almost like it kept getting sent to you. It's like this is what you're supposed to be doing. But you're right. And I think Gen X in general didn't have guidance in almost anything. We were really out there, not only feral literally, but also figuratively when it came to opportunities, even getting into college. Like there was no help for anything. So it kind of makes sense. No one was there to say, listen, this is a career move. You need to just not care what show it is.
Gen X Talks: Right. And I bef so you we'll skip to the end of the interview. I have missed ev I missed every opportunity. There's not one of
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: I look back on and took. And I told my kids that. I've sat down and said, I want you to listen to these four or five things that were right there in front of me and I was too dumb to take And so my life didn't take any of those directions. Don't miss them when they're presented to you. Cause I did. I didn't take one of them. Everything that came along in my life, I said, I'll pass. And then I'd go on to the I'd said the next one's coming. And guess what? At some point they stopped coming.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Would you say some of that is from where you grew up? You just kind of assume that like you said, you said I thought everyone grew up like this, that you didn't understand the uniqueness of your situation.
Gen X Talks: No. There'll be more stuff that comes so many things came along in my life by the time I was eighteen that I just knew more stuff would come. It's like, well, it'll I'll wait for the next one. There'll be more. 'Cause they were
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: coming though from the time I was fourteen till eighteen, it seemed like every three or four months in my life something cool happened. So I figured it would never stop. And then it did.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So you thought, well, I can I can afford to wait for the next thing because there
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: always is that next thing. And it's almost like the adults in your life also were living in that area and maybe they didn't even fully comprehend the importance
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: of taking those opportunities.
Gen X Talks: I just I wish I'd had somebody that grabbed me by the face and that listen, I'm telling you, you need to go try this. If you don't like it after a month, then you quit. Just try
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: it for then I probably would have stayed. But you know, Mikowski could have done the same thing. Just give it a month. Come do this with
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: me for a month and see if you like it. I just I just thought stuff like that would happen forever. I invented a game one time that the guy who invented Trivial Pursuit wanted to buy from me for fifty thousand dollars. And I was I was n almost twenty years, nineteen. And I asked him, I said, Well, don't I don't wanna have you sell you the game. Can I just have a dollar for every game that's made? 'Cause I think it'll sell millions. He goes, No, I don't want to do that. I don't I just want to buy the game and I may sit on it and I told him no. He walked away, never turned from the guy again. Why didn't I sell it?
GenX Adulting Podcast: What I love it. You're going for a license deal. Yeah, that's brilliant brilliant. Yeah. You know?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, but it I ended up with nothing.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. No, it it's what was the game?
Gen X Talks: it was a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons, but it was it didn't have anything to do with spells. It was a it was at the time there was almost no role playing. Dungeons and Dragons was the thing and I had made my own game over years and this guy had come down and said he'd heard about it. We talked on the phone a bunch. He says, Well, I want to watch you play it. So I brought a couple of friends over to my house and he sat and watched us play and he said, Just watching you play, he goes I can't believe he he looked at his watch, he goes, We I've been watching you for five hours. He goes, I can't believe I've been entertained for five hours just as a spectator. I go, We'll go until we have to go to the bathroom or eat something or go to sleep because the game can go twelve hours and you're just in in in immersed in it. He goes, I get it now. He goes, Now I see. And I mean, we you know, we tried really hard to put on a good show for the guy, but it's, you know, make it a good game. But he got it and he immediately he's like, I just need to write you a check. Well, you know, I'm night almost twenty years old and a check for fifty thousand would have been a game changer for me. You can almost buy a house for that back then. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I just was like, Well, could we do something else? He's like, Look, let me just buy it and then let you and I develop some other stuff. We can talk about some things. And I was like, Yeah, I don't want I'm I'm not interested in that. Another dumb thing. I just walked away from it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Do you do you think that's a personal thing for you or or even like an LA thing? A SoCal thing? Yeah, okay.
Gen X Talks: No, it's it was me. It's just me being immature and I was immature and stupid and didn't know opportunities when I saw And, you know, later on in life you get to be about thirty, you're like, Jesus, any one of those could have been a game changer. Any one of and didn't do
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Mm-hmm. Right, right.
Gen X Talks: any of yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I'm just curious how this man would have heard about a board game back in what's this the eighties when the like how 'cause not like he had social media to even
Gen X Talks: Yeah. No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: so there must have been a game a board game community and he must have heard something. Small world. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Well, I'm sure I'm sure there was, but I was playing in the valley. We were playing with a bunch of different friends and I had like a core group of friends that I played with all the time. but then we'd bring others in. And I remember
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I I I think the I think the only way it could have happened at Grace Community Church, which was a huge church and I was I was there a whole other story a lot for many years. And I think it was a very I don't say a rich church, but it was a rich church. Very people
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: of affluence were there. And I think one of the kids came home and his dad was not only a lot of money, but I think he worked with Milton Bradley. And I think but Milton
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: Bradley didn't do games like that. And the kid was going on and on about this game
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: until he told his dad and his dad said, Hey, we don't do that here, but I gotta he knew the guy who was developing some other stuff and that I think that's how it came about was Some kid that played it a few times told his dad who knew a guy. I think and I think that was through Grace. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Have you ever thought about making it into a video game?
Gen X Talks: I did once. I had a cousin. she was she did pretty well for herself with in life with money and stuff. And she knew about the game 'cause of course you know, she didn't play it, but my cousins and I did all the time. So she goes she was looking for something to get behind and do something. So she had called me up and I said, I don't know that we could make this a video game with the technology we had like in the in the I think this was even the late eighties or early nineties maybe. And so she had me sit down with a programmer. Who programmed games. I don't know what he he he had famous games that he had done and I don't know what they were, I don't remember. But I told him what the game was like and he goes, I don't think we could I don't think we could do that. I don't think we're there with that yet. And even now it's tough to do the game, my game, because even Dungeons and Dragons is difficult to have a real Dungeons and Dragons game on a video game because you so much of it replies relies on the one guy running the game, you know, the dungeon master or the game master.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: So it's very difficult for a computer to be that side of the game and then play with four or five players. I don't think today they
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: even can do it quite right. And I know they couldn't do it back then, but she looked into it. So we it had been a conversation, but I finally just gave it to my youngest son, the guy you see in the video, Briggs. I go, you can just have it. He plays with his friends. He takes it now and plays with his friends. They just a couple months ago, seven of them drove up from California to where we are. And they all sat here for a weekend playing he's got his version of the game, which is just it's my game but different adventures. They sat here for three days playing it solid straight all the way through. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay, that has to be really cool to see your son and his friends. Yeah, to see them playing your game that you made like decades
Gen X Talks: Yeah, it's just it's a it's a fun game, yeah. yeah. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: ago. That's that's a full circle moment right there. That's pretty
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: cool. I mean, I wonder if you I don't know, but like almost marketing it with your branding as a retro this retro board game of getting it out there. I
Gen X Talks: I don't know, maybe.
GenX Adulting Podcast: don't because I know Gen Z and I and Gen Alpha they're flipping back to more analog. They're wanting more analog life. So that's something that I I could see actually working.
Gen X Talks: He f he found a way to play it over the internet. Like they do a zoom call and he
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: found a way to point a camera down at the playing board where you draw stuff so everybody can see each other and they can see the playing surface. It's pretty close to being like here in the room, you know. And he f he found
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right, right, right.
Gen X Talks: a way to do that. It's yeah, it's kind of funny. Sometimes he'll come to me and go, 'Cause I I started making the game in nineteen eighty-two. It was the first adventure
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I ever made. And then he comes to me and he goes, Hey, I'm looking at this one adventure and you got all these cards and stuff. He goes, Whose writing is this? And I go, What do you mean? He goes, This isn't your writing 'cause it was all neat. And it was some girlfriend I had in junior high and she had helped me make a lot of the game, you know, write the stuff down. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I was like, Well, I hadn't thought about that in a long time. So just
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is really, really cool. Yeah, right. Okay. So
Gen X Talks: A whole other story, yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you're back at public school senior year in your bender era. Ki I w I'm just gonna sum it up. during that time, were you thinking of college? Did anyone talk to you about college? Was college part of your plan?
Gen X Talks: I had four months to go in high school and I quit. I never graduated. I just walked out.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And what was the reasoning behind that?
Gen X Talks: Didn't want to go.
GenX Adulting Podcast: You were just done.
Gen X Talks: Four months of being able to graduate, and I just walked out and said I was gonna do something else, and nobody was there saying, Hey, just go four months, get your diploma, and then you can walk away. Just finish
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: it out. I just walked out and everybody kind of threw up their hands and said, Well, you are the black sheep of the entire family, which I was. So everybody just didn't bother raising a finger to me, just said, Well, all right, quit if you want. And I did. I never didn't I walked out, never got a diploma, never got a G E D.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Would you say some of that was rooted in the experience you just had with your biological father, that time with the Hells Angels and everything?
Gen X Talks: Well, like I try to tell you, it was a very confusing time for me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I was I'm not sure what I was doing, where I was going. I was bouncing around between friend groups. I just there was no I by my own doing there wasn't really any stability. There was a problem there. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: So then did you continue to live with your mom and stepdad at eighteen or did you end up moving out and getting your own place?
Gen X Talks: I I moved I moved out of my parents' house probably at sixteen, but I moved into my grandparents 'cause I'd already been they said, Yes, you can live here and there was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: very loose loose rules there. So as long as I, you know and they loved all of my friends. That core group of friends I had from village or church, they loved so whenever I was around those group, we'd always hang out up there. They would you know, my grandmother would cook and do stuff for us and they had a swimming pool in the summertime and you know, they were they just kind of were hands off. They were just letting me do whatever I wanted. I think I probably needed some more guidance. I don't know if I'd have taken it. but it was like I said, it was a very confusing time all the way until I was about I probably probably began screwing up not paying attention to my life at seventeen and a half all the way till about twenty four.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: it was just a very jumbled time.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What did you do during that time? I assume you worked.
Gen X Talks: I was a mechanic and I would quit. Every j I would get a job. I learned how to be a mechanic and I followed some people that taught me a lot of stuff. And then I would get jobs at car dealerships, brand new car dealerships or garages, and I'd roll in my toolbox and I'd spend a few months. And once people said, Hey, you're really good at this, I'd get bored. I'd quit and I'd I'd move to a new town. We counted up one time, I moved seventeen times like in five years.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I just got bored. I wanted to I I was on the road. I wanted to go to a different town. I wanted to be a a hero. I wanted everybody to look up to me at the next shop. You know, once people
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: say you're really good here, you're like the best mechanic, and like, okay, well now I'm bored. I want to go someplace else. So that's I I moved. I just moved around
GenX Adulting Podcast: You conquered it. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: all the time. But there's no girl that wants to be with you during that. There's no girls who want to sit around while you're moving around town to town or job to job. That's you know, that's instability. And girls at
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: that age are starting to look around going, I need to find a guy who's can provide and, you know, be stable. Well, that wasn't me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did you stay though in California during those years or did you leave the state?
Gen X Talks: mostly in California, then I went up to Central Oregon for about s six or nine months. Then I went to Sacramento and was there for about four months. I hated Sacramento area. And then I ended up in the high deserts out in Victorville, Palmdale area for about two years, then in Vegas for two years, then back to Bend, Oregon. that's a whole nother messy story, but I went to Oregon for about eight or nine years, then I ended up back in Southern California again.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Eight or nine years in Oregon?
Gen X Talks: Yeah. I was trying to reconnect with my family. My mom had moved up there in eighty seven, my mom and stepdad and my brothers, and I had just like I said, had been the black sheep. So finally I was like, I just wanna go home. And everyone had moved out of the valley, so I didn't really have a home to go to. My grandparents had moved up there also, so there was nowhere to go. I had to if I was going home, I had to go back up there and carve out a place to live and a job and so I tried to do that. It just you know There was weird complications, like I'll I'll tell you something dumb that I don't think I've ever told anybody. I was such a black sheep and I didn't I didn't know how much of a black sheep I was. I moved to Bend, Oregon, which is a which at the time was a pretty small town. I get a job
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: working as a mechanic, I'm doing well. And my p my mother's friends started taking their cars to the shop I worked. They're like, you know, he's a good mechanic, you can trust him, he'll do a good job, okay. And I remember one of my mom's closest friends I finished your car and we're doing something and I said, Hey, thanks for coming by. She goes, You know what's amazing? I'm so glad I got to meet you and talk to you. I never knew you existed. And I was like, What?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: And I didn't notice it. She goes, There is not one picture of you in your mother's house. She never mentioned you that she had another son ever. And my parents had lived up there 10 or 15 years. And I remember that feeling of like my mom just she didn't deny I existed. She just didn't bring me up.
GenX Adulting Podcast: When so was this der do you think that break happened and the whole black sheep th 'cause it doesn't sound like you were black sheep through junior high or beginning of high school. So was it that
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: break where your you kind of spent time with your biological father and moved in with your grandparents? Is that when that break
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I think
GenX Adulting Podcast: happened?
Gen X Talks: like I said, that that confusing time of bouncing around quite a bit, you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I think that was where my mom just kinda gave up and said, Okay, whatever, do what you want And I don't, you know
GenX Adulting Podcast: And so then and now what was did you have a relationship with your brothers during that time at all?
Gen X Talks: well they were s they were a lot younger than me. They were ten year first oldest one was ten years younger than me, so we never
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: hung out and did anything. But when I moved to Oregon, they tried very hard to do stuff with me. They wanted their big brother back. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: yeah, we did stuff then, but different different type of relationship.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Was there healing during that time when you were in bed with your mom?
Gen X Talks: For no. My mom's my mom's always she always she's very cold and distant. and she would and if someone ever told her that, she'd get mad, but she'd say, Well, that was the way I was raised. Your grandmother
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: was never affectionate. So we there was always very a very distant relations with my brothers the same way. My brothers and I will get together and go, Yeah, mom never hugged us. I I told my mom the only time I've ever made my mother cry, I told her one time, I said, You remember that big black coat that you had a big black fur coat? And she goes, you used to love to feel that coat. And I said, I didn't care about that. It was the only excuse to hug you when I was nine, is I could hug you in that coat and go, Your coat feels so good. But that was the only time I could ever hug you. So that
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: was it. And she started to cry because she realized that I wasn't making up stories about being distant. That's really the way it was. And, you know, to this day to this day, my mother has never told me she loves me. She tells my wife she'll tell she'll hang up on a phone
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: call and tell my wife, but not me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And that was all through childhood too. It's it just never
Gen X Talks: yeah, never. She never heard it. I don't think I don't think any of us kids ever did. me or my brothers. I would
GenX Adulting Podcast: What about your stepdad? Was he more warm or was he the same?
Gen X Talks: No, my dad well, my dad my stepdad was very work a holic. You know, he w worked for a big a moral he worked for Morrill Meadows, big electrical contra general contractor, electrical contractor down there. So he worked, you know, twenty hours a day, never miss work. He'd work seven days a week. And he just wanted to come home and have a beer and watch golf. He was a nice guy, super nice guy. now
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: that he's older, he looks back and he he'll say things either to me or around me that I would have never knew he felt back then. He goes, I've always loved I've always loved Mark. He's always been so and I'm like, Well, I didn't know that. And y you tell
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: he's being honest. He just was too busy to ever sit down and he'd he was a type of guy, he's not sharing feelings. He was the type of guy who would stop off at the Moon Gate and have drinks with his buddies on the way home, which men did back then. You know, they had they stopped
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: off for drinks and then he'd go home. He Never beat us, never hurt my mom, never cheated on my mom, didn't do any that stuff. But, you know, he wasn't overly overly affectionate either. But that you kind of expect that from your dad.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right. And well, especially how we were raised from our parent like especially I think for Gen X boys, there was zero attention to any emotional development whatsoever, other than anger, right? You guys were allowed to be angry. But
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: there wasn't that connection or that space created for any type of emotional IQ, essentially. I mean, for girls hardly at all as well. But at least we were allowed to cry, you know, and that was accepted. But I think it was normal to think, Well, I'm it you you wouldn't have thought there was anything weird about not getting emotional connection with your parents growing
Gen X Talks: Well.
GenX Adulting Podcast: up for a lot of us.
Gen X Talks: So whatever the disconnect was, I wasn't a I probably wasn't a great child for I've heard her tell a bunch of stories of things I did that I don't remember doing, but I probably did And just upsetting her about things when she had friends over or I'd say something or do something, I guess. And then I g I think during that a very jumbled up four or five years of my life, I think that's when she just kind of said, Okay, well, I've done all I can. You're out on your own. You're done. That was it. Just there w the distance just kept there. It wasn't she wasn't mad. She didn't call me and yell and say, Don't come home. It just was, you know, just didn't call. She didn't call me anymore.
GenX Adulting Podcast: What a trip. I th and it started earlier probably, right? They you're f way earlier.
Gen X Talks: yeah, you yeah, there you could yeah, you could feel that when you're a little kid that there's just something off, but you know, again, you just think that's normal. Maybe every kid feels that. I don't know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Well, she had you and then she gets remarried, has two more kids with a big age gap and you're kinda probably left to your own there a little bit and and
Gen X Talks: Quite a bit. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you knew it and you're like, Hm, okay.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, the focus was definitely on my brothers. They were the young babies and everybody
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: and so I was kinda like, I'll just do my own thing, I guess.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So during those years in Bend, it sounds like you definitely were able to cultivate a strong relationship with your brothers, but things kinda stayed the same with your mom. Like there wasn't Okay.
Gen X Talks: Right. But but my grandparents lived up there too. And so I spent a ton of time up there. My grandfather had had a stroke years before and w had a little trouble walking and doing things. So I spent all my free time helping him. Just walk in, go, What do you got going on? What are you what are you building, cutting, moving? I'm I'm there. And I just tried to reconnect with him, really plugging back in to the family.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: And I think everyone goes through that. I think especially guys, I think as when you become a young man and your life you think your life is more stable and you're on the right track and you're doing what you're supposed to do. I think you kinda look to your parents and grandparents and go, Do they need help? 'Cause I'm the guy. I I need to I'm
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: the guy to go do that. I'm that's my job. And I did. That was a big thing for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So then what made it so you left Bend? Like why did you decide to leave Bend?
Gen X Talks: Well, that's that's when I got married to the woman I'm with now. And we had spent you know, we knew each other, we kinda stayed in contact, but then there's probably I don't know, eight or nine years or so that we you know, I I didn't talk to anybody of my friends down in Southern California really much at all. And I remember thinking I wanna go I wanna it was only thirty thirty two or something at the time, thirty one or thirty two, and I thought Okay, I want to have the wife and kids thing that we're getting into some areas that are long conversations here. And I've been I've been I've been avoiding ones and you guys haven't caught on yet, so that's good.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ha ha ha
Gen X Talks: I said I'd like to have that wife, that those kids that I know what life I want now.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And I'm not living it right now, and I want to. And that was when right about when classmates.com came out. And I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hmm. Yes.
Gen X Talks: I went on there and I went to the village Christian, back to the private school thing in the valley. And I had, I think I had five names of girls that I remembered. And I said, and I knew, I knew they were they were probably gonna turn out to be good girls, good women, good mothers. I I remember typing in there, I said, Does anybody know where these five girls are? And you know, I didn't had no idea. And one of the girls, her name was Sharon Garver, and she was married and she saw it, and she called my wife now, who's Mary, and she said, Hey, Mark's looking for you. And she goes, Why? And she goes, I don't know. He's on classmates. He put down your name, my name, Anne's, and somebody else's. And she goes, Huh. And she was just at the tail end of a very bad marriage. She was in the process of getting divorced. And we connected on the internet through classmates.com. And then we had exchanged phone numbers and we talked. I'll bet we spoke on the phone off and on for the next two years. Never saw each other. I never went down there. She never came up to where
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I was. But you learn so much talk when your day is over and you're winding down, you're just on the phone with a girl, and you're talking about everything you've gone through in the past ten years or so, everything she's gone through. You literally learn everything about that person, you know. I I telling you after two years, I could tell you which clothes in her closet she liked to wear and which she didn't. I just knew because we talked about it. I knew what food she liked at every restaurant, you know. I knew what parts of her marriage she didn't enjoy and which things she wished she had. And she knew the same about my life. So when we finally started to say, well, and this is the part I can't skip over anymore. I can't hide this one. I finally got to a point where I filed for divorce and I said, I'm done with this. And I'm I had I had foster children that I had adopted and I found a way to get divorced and keep my kids. I said, I'm not leaving my children. And I got divorced. I was the day I filed for divorce and I got it all signed and my wife at the time wasn't allowed to be around my house or around my kids. And I called her and said, Well, I filed for divorce this morning. she has to leave and go someplace else, which she did. The kids are with me in the house and I'm just gonna figure out a way to take all these l all these little toddlers to work or to school every day and go to work. I had a business of my own by then and come home and I'm just gonna figure out a way to raise them. The first words out of her mouth, she said, Marry me. And I was like, What? She goes, just if you I wanna be the first in line, if you're gonna get remarried, marry me. And I said you probably don't wanna be married to me. She goes, No. I think you s obviously you I wanna know you more, but I think, you know, two years of talking all this time and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: she's like, Y and you're not gonna leave your kids. She goes, you don't wanna leave your children? I said, I don't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, that's that's a huge green flag to a woman.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, she's like the fact that you're sitting there fighting for them and keeping them, she goes,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: I get it. And it just grew from there. We still didn't see each other for a long time. I mean, I couldn't just pick up and go, and I couldn't bring some woman into my house with my kids. So it was still a long time before we met for the first time in person after all these years. But remember, you guys already know the story. We're building this relationship on our families have already been interacting for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: You know, thirty years we
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: were interacting for decades and we all knew the same friends, we all knew the same places, we liked the same movies, the same music, we went to the same beaches, we I mean, we there wasn't one thing that I was like, Hey, I used to go to Disneyland and and she's from Wisconsin going, what's Disneyland like? She she'd already been there. She knows. There was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And you both were vetted. You were both already vetted before you even started, you know. So that and there's a lot to be said for that. A lot.
Gen X Talks: Huge amount and you don't know that until you go through it. But we look back and go, Wow, that was that was one thing. We literally became best friends.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Because during that two years she had tried dating another guy and I, you know, she didn't work out. And I was like, Well, you gave it your best shot and you know, I agree with you on I mean, we were best friends. It wasn't like I just was keeping her on the side to be my girl one day. You know, she was dating, going out and and coming home and talking to me about what was working and what wasn't. I was going through problems with your kids going, well, you know, since there's not really much of a dad in the picture, here's here's what I think and I was helping guide things on her end. You know, we
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: were plugged in as best friends for a long time, which was really rare.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well, I think I always say I've said this on numerous episodes, I think friendship is the foundation of a good marriage. Because life is gonna throw you everything and sometimes all you have to lean on is that friendship. It's gonna get down to the studs and the friendship
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: is what's the foundation and keeps it going.
Gen X Talks: It was and when it was time to leave I packed up everything and moved moved down to we went actually she had she couldn't move too far away because her kids still had visitation with their dad and I didn't have to worry about that. I got sole custody of all of my children. So we ended up being in the central valley of California, which is the farmland area. people always say, Bakersfield and Fresno and how terrible and shitty, shitty little towns and she didn't want to move there because of that. And I'm like, let's just go look. There's new places, there's farmland, you know, there's there's little
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: communities out there that are salt of the earth people still, still working working the ground. I go, let's find that. So we ended up doing that. And it was close, it was about two hours from my grandmother, who was one of my grandparents was living on the coast and she was dying, aging and dying. My biological father was about hour and a half another direction east, and he was aging and dying. And her parents were about an hour and a half south. So where we ended up was right in the middle where everybody could visit everybody and we could still take care of them. My grandmother eventually passed away, and then my dad passed away, and then her parents passed away, and then we moved. But we ended up in a spot where we were useful to those three parts of the family. And raising our kids in a very rural environment, they turned out very well. And they met all of their spouses. in that area and they're all from good families with good people and it it worked out to be where after we got past the stigmatism of where we were moving and how everybody made fun of us for moving there, we had a pretty comfortable life for twenty some years.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's I one and Fresno, that area has grown crazy, crazy.
Gen X Talks: If you and if you get out on the s outskirts of Fresno or Bakersfield or Merced, you know, the outskirts of any town are always newer. You know, there's malls
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: and their stuff. And so that's where we were. When we first moved to we were outside of Bakersfield, but we were way east. There was farmland everywhere, you know. And we just happened to get there right after the housing market collapsed and we picked up a house for nothing, you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: because it just was fortunate was we were lucky to have that and it was a big house and with put in a swimming pool and we we raised those kids there. They had a time of their life all the way
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: through their elementary, junior high, high school. We had this blended family that got together and these kids, I w I was envious of the life they had. And I had a good life growing up. And I thought
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's that's awesome. If we can go back a little, because you know I'm gonna ask, because I know you had said, you know, during those years when you had moved 17 times and a woman isn't going to want to be a part of that, but you must have met your first wife during this time. Is is that something you're comfortable talking about?
Gen X Talks: I have no idea what you're talking about. I did. she followed me around for quite a bit of it. She did not get along with my family at all. and mainly it was dumb because it was political reasons, you know. she was a hardcore Democrat and they were Republicans. And I'm like, well if I can be married to you, why do you guys care? And she just she just she was I'll tell you to sum up all I'll sum it all up.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: I caught her one time talking to one of her girlfriends and she was describing me. I walked in the house and was putting my keys and stuff down, and she was in the kitchen talking to one of her friends, and she says, Let me tell you how to keep a man. This is how I keep my man. She's talking about me. She told this girl, this woman, she said, You just treat him bad. You treat your man horribly. And if they stay, they're yours. And the girl goes, Well, how does that work? She goes, it's simple. You treat them bad every day. And then if you think they're about to leave, you think they're getting fed up, you just give them one good day where you're loving and kind. And they are so grateful. They are so happy that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. There's a flicker of hope. Men will stay and fight for more of those days. You don't have to be nice. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to try. You can just be cold and distant the whole time. And if you ever think things are going wrong, be nice for a couple of days and they'll stay. And that was the moment I said, I'm done. I'm I'm I'm not doing I didn't say anything, but I knew I was o I was like, Okay, if that's a f you like this isn't just you. This is
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: you trying to be this person. I was like, God, I really thought I was fighting to keep things together, but you're you're doing a plan. I had no idea.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah. Well that's that's mental and emotional abuse. I mean men do it to women too. That's just that's abuse. It's a it's mental and emotional abuse and no,
Gen X Talks: Well, I didn't like it. I was done.
GenX Adulting Podcast: it's good you got that's it's so toxic. It's so toxic. and then but you were able to keep your children and that's an unusual situation.
Gen X Talks: It was it again, I had some things go my way. One of was during the divorce, it was a tough divorce, but and I'll just summarize here so we don't spend four hours on it. But when I had foster kids, she had left. She had she had got drunk, smashed everything in the house one night. I had gathered up all the kids, put in one room, and I said, Just put your hands over your ears and sit here and I'll be back to get you in a little while. And I shut the door and I just stood on the other side of the door. And I told her, I said, go smash everything you want in the whole house. As long as you don't come in here and hurt the kids, I don't care. And so she did. She broke everything I owned, smashed everything, got in a car and drove off. And I was like, Okay. So I picked up everything in the house and cleaned it up. and that was when I filed for the divorce.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And because at the time I had adopted some children, but I also had foster kids that I was raising that were like four, they came immediately to take away. And they said, We can't have kids in this environment. I said, we're coming out to pick them up. There was like two, two children, and they said, This is, you know, they can't go through this. And I said, Well, why not? They said, You can't do it. We're coming to get So I hid the kids.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: I took them and I hid just those two. And the the workers came and then the cops came. And by pure coincidence, I had made a friendship with the guy, I forget his name, I think his name was Pat at the time, and he was in charge of the whole social services in Oregon. He sat at the in the governor's office. He that was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay.
Gen X Talks: it. So I bumped into him like a few times at some social events or something with that had to do with foster kids. And we hit it off. I had a cell number. and before I could call him and ask for help, he called me and goes, What are you doing? He goes, You're hiding the kids. And I said,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I said, okay, before you get you go, because he knew I wasn't hiding him for anything dumb.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: He but he remembered he calls me and goes, What are you doing? He goes, it's he goes, You can't do this. I said, Hold on a second now. I said, You gave me these kids to To love and protect and raise them. He goes, Yeah, but you're in an unstable home. I go, Well, is that a reason to take the kids? And he says, Well, yeah, I gotta get them out of there. I said, Well, then you better take mine. He goes, What do you mean? I said, You better take my kids. My kids are now in an unstable environment with a psycho woman who take my kids too. If you're doing this to protect children, then you take them.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I said, How come my kids can stay, but these kids can't? They're all in the same predicament. I said, You're ripping these kids. Apart when there are lessons to be learned here. They are gonna look at me and go, I was a foster kid and my foster dad kept me and he raised me. I was in a house where the the mom left and I went through it 'cause my brothers and sisters loved me and we all hung together and my stepdad my foster dad was there. I go, How about I go through some of that? He goes, That's against every rule in the book. And I go, Well then you guys wrote the rule book wrong. I go,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: because this is dumb. If it's so bad that these kids have to go, then you're you're you're putting my kids in danger. So he hangs up with me and he the the lady who was there, the supervisor of Deschutes County, was there by now, and her phone rang and she was on the phone like one minute and they walked away. They let me have the kids. And he agreed. He goes, he's right. He goes, if we're gonna go he go and he I think he presented to them like, hey, he could sue us. You know, we can't take these kids. Why aren't we if it's so dangerous, why aren't we taking these other kids out of a dangerous situation?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: He goes, We're actually pretty dumb for how we've got this worked out. And so they let me keep them all the way through till I was leaving Oregon. And I had arranged some of my good friends to become foster parents. And and they took the two children because they'd already known these neighbors so well for years.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: And I said, Look, I gotta go do this and you're gonna go here and it's gonna be okay. And of course, my kids were a little sad, they were a little sad, but they got it. They were like, I get it, because they had been bounced around so much.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: You know, they knew moving, but they I said, Trust me, this is gonna be a great place and it worked out really well for them. But yeah, went through went through that. she had taken she had at one point this is the this is the I keep telling you I get lucky with things. I got lucky that I knew that how the chances that I'm gonna know the director that sits in the governor's office.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, right. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: she my ex had come up and grabbed my youngest daughter from school and taken her. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: so now we're like, okay, everybody's gotta go find her and bring her back. And this was a ploy 'cause she was losing the divorce stuff. And nobody knew where she was. And you could we could call her on a cell phone. But you couldn't really track them back then or you they didn't. And so she'd answer the phone or she'd listen to a message. But anyway, she calls me one day from this hotel. Now, you guys remember clicking over a phone, you can go from one line to another, call waiting.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yep.
Gen X Talks: And every now and then, and I don't know what made this do this back in the day, but every now and then, if you clicked over, sometimes I would hear like on hold music. You know, if I was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: If I call some place, it was like s the radio was playing or something. So it didn't happen very often, but I knew what it was. Well, she got mad at me at this hotel, said she was not bringing my daughter back, not doing this, not doing that, and she slammed the phone down, but she slammed it down so hard in the hotel room, it hit the receiver and fell on the floor. And she saw that, obviously, and picked up the phone and then rehung it up. But for about a second and a half it had clicked over, put me on hold and clicked over to Whatever hotel the radio station was on. And all I heard was, well, today's gonna be 105 in Reading. And so I called my lawyer. Yeah,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Wow. She left the state. Wow.
Gen X Talks: I called my lawyer. He goes, We know you've left the state. We know you're in Reading, California at a motel. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: we've now contacted the FBI. She drove straight home and gave me my daughter. What are the chances she would fumble the phone? What are the chances they had on hold music at this hotel? And what
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: are the chances the one and a half seconds of something I would hear ended up not being a song? It was
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: a guy saying what the temperature was gonna be in the town she was in. I mean,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: there's no way that could happen. You couldn't you couldn't write that into a movie script. The
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yep, yep. That's amazing.
Gen X Talks: the last part of it was was that my attorney said. In the state of Oregon, if you can get her to sign sep a separation agreement, we can make it into a divorce. And I What do you mean? He goes, That's gonna take you two years to get divorced. I was like, Two years from today? He goes, Yeah. So this is the I've I've never told this story to any soul, anybody at all, ever. But the attorney says, if you can get her to sign it, if she if you let her move back in for three months. At three months and one day, I can take this signed document and make it a divorce and it's over that minute. Otherwise, this will take two years. So you can fight her for two years and she's not in the house. Or you can somehow deal with her for three months. And if you can get her to sign this, three months and one day you're divorced. So then I had to call my best friend and go, hey, how do you feel about my ex moving back in with me for three months?
GenX Adulting Podcast: w what is the reasoning behind that? I don't understand the law there or why why.
Gen X Talks: I don't know if well in every other state, if you if in California and most states I guess I learned, if you signed legal separation, you're trying to work it out, but you're legally
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: separated, you're trying to work it out, but here's all the rules, and then in most states it's like, well, I don't care what I signed. Now we're gonna go back to the divorce and the whole thing starts over. Except for Oregon. If she signs it and I say, Let's try to work it out, and in three months it doesn't work out. They simply walk this document in and go, there's no more discussing, it's over. They can, they can turn that document into a divorce decree that second, with no more,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: with nothing else. But I had to convince her to sign it. I had to convince her that to move back in and so I could get this all done in three months and one day. And I had to convince my current wife, who by then was like, Marry me, marry me, like, hey, you can't call you can't call me for three months.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right. Right. Right. Now did your did your first wife know the intention behind like was she on board with getting divorced and knew okay if we do this for three months we can get divorced quicker or No. Okay.
Gen X Talks: She would have never she would have never signed no one would ever sign that knowing that you could do that. I had to say, listen, here's the trade off. You wanna come home, I want these documents signed. And she goes, Fine, I'll just tear up. If it doesn't work out, I'll
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: I'll just tear up and go for the regular divorce. And in my head I'm going, not in this state, you're not. You know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay. It's like an iron iron second how
Gen X Talks: Irreconcilable differences.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, that's that makes sense. We tried. Yeah. Didn't but tried for ninety days. And so
Gen X Talks: Right. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: so then did it go that way after three months, then you were able
Gen X Talks: I had I had to I had first I had to convince Mary, like you're just gonna have to trust me on this. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: she even tells people now, she goes that was the hardest thing to do was to trust that he wasn't getting back together with her. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: I'm sure, I'm sure.
Gen X Talks: then then convince her to sign it and move in, then convince my kids and say, Listen, just gonna give this a try, be normal, act normal, just let's put everything back, let's just see how this goes. I'm not leaving, I'm here. And the kids were like, Well, okay, you know, mom's coming back home. I guess we could all right. They were actually okay with it. They were a little leery, but they knew I was in their corner every
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: day. I'm like, How did things go today? Are you guys okay? Is everything all right? And they're like, Yeah. They knew I was with them 'cause I spoke to them every day individually. Every single day I would spend time with them. So they knew that doesn't matter what happens, I still got my dad. It didn't matter. I still got dad. We're good.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: So yeah, then at nine months and one day I called my attorney and he goes, All right, I'll file it tomorrow and he did. And then I told her, I said, Look, this isn't working out. You gotta go. She goes, Fine, I'll file for a divorce. I'm getting half the house and half the stuff. I said, Yeah. I I said, Well, knock yourself out, you know. I just said,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: That's that's d and then she called back like four days later after she went to an attorney and the attorney told her, said, You're done. It's over. And then I had to listen to the you tricked me and you did this. I'm like,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I really don't I don't have to listen to this anymore. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, so then was so then you were able to to leave the state, right? With well
Gen X Talks: Yep. Yeah, I could do whatever I wanted.
GenX Adulting Podcast: but she's their mom, right? Like could Yeah, yeah. Right.
Gen X Talks: Well, no, she was their adopted mom. We adopted all these kids through foster care. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So then legally you were still able to leave with them, even though she was their adoptive mom, there wasn't a issue there. Okay, okay, I see. Okay, okay, okay.
Gen X Talks: That's what she signed. I had her sign all of that up front that we're not sharing custody, you're not getting half. And she signed it going, who cares? I'll just undo it and make it a divorce afterwards. None of none
GenX Adulting Podcast: Gotcha. Gotcha.
Gen X Talks: of this matters anyway, so I'll sign whatever you want. Good. So I got the house, I got everything was mine.
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's amazing. Okay, so then you wow. So then how long from when we're moving to Oregon next month.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So so how long from when that happened till when you were able to move back to California and you guys got your homestead down outside of Bakersfield area?
Gen X Talks: It was it was it was about a year, maybe a little longer. I just couldn't pick up and go. I mean, there was so much to do and then we knew we knew this was gonna be a permanent thing, so we began introducing ourselves to each other's children slowly.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: very because we knew it was a permanent thing we were shooting for. It wasn't just, hey kids, this is my new girlfriend. I didn't do that at all.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right.
Gen X Talks: there were some really weird stories that happened. right after I got divorced that were not my fault again, but some some things had happened. But we began introducing ourselves and I would go down there, she would come up here, and it worked out very well, very slow introduction. And then when we moved, it when we all moved in together, everybody kinda knew each other and this had been going on for about a year, year and a half. So it was a very good transition.
GenX Adulting Podcast: How many children did do you have did you have from with your first wife, your adoptive children?
Gen X Talks: one, two, three, four, f well, I had six when she first left and then I we moved two out into other foster care after the dust settled and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: I had so I had four that I I showed up with I showed up to the new marriage with four.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And how many did Mary have?
Gen X Talks: Three.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay, so seven so seven.
Gen X Talks: And then we had a baby.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And then you so a family of ten. I have a question. Wow. Eight kids and the and the two of you. Yeah, go ahead. Just to rewind, how did you get into the whole fostering kids and adopting kids?
Gen X Talks: my wife couldn't have kids and I wanted kids and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I said, Well, then maybe I could go through the adoption thing and so I took we took all the classes to adopt. and it's a very rigorous process in in
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Oregon to do that. And during that you realize this classroom of like fifty people you're sitting with, half of aren't there for adoption. Half of are there for foster care. And I'm like, well what is what's I don't understand why are they here? They said, Well, the classes for being an adoptive parent or a foster parent, they're almost identical. Most of what you guys are training and doing and testing on is the same. And then at the very
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: end, the foster c parents, they take an extra so many classes that you have for legal things you do. And at the very end of it, I just I walked into a class one day and I said, I want to finish out the rest of this course, finishing the foster side. There was just such a need. I saw this as a big
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: thing and like it like had happened my whole life, I got really dialed in with the people there, even the judges. 'cause remember I'm I'm a foster parent delivering children for their parental visits and the and you have to you you don't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: have to go to the court hearings, but I always did. And I saw I knew all the judges, I knew all the attorneys, and I knew the good parents from the bad parents too. You know, you could just tell. And the judge's name was Mike Sullivan. And he got to a point after so many years of me doing this, he'd listen to the state talk about their case, what they want to do with foster kids. They would listen to the attorneys for the parents. And they'd have all these stories and stuff, and the judge would have to decide, well, are the parents really complying and being good parents? Should we should we move forward? Or there's something going on here that we can't quite figure out. But the state, I I remember going to the attorneys for the state going, you know they're doing this shit. You know he goes, We can't bring it up. We're not allowed, even if we saw it, we can't say how we saw it, what we saw, un unless there's like physical abuse where they're in a hospital. I go, Yeah, but they're doing all this shit wrong. They're they're th this is you know this is bad. He goes, Yeah, but there's nothing we can say. I remember the first time I stood up in the back of the court and the judge goes, Who are you and what do you want? I go, I'm the foster parents of these kids. He goes, Well, you're not you're not invited to speak. I go, Don't you want to know that these parents are assholes? And I'm in the back of the court. The judge goes, What are you talking about? And after that first visit, I go, They're lying, Judge. Everything they're saying is that they're they're leaving out all this shit. All the stuff that went on, I was there. I was standing in the hallway. I was I was there. They're leaving all this stuff out because the state's not allowed to bring it up. Well, I can. And Judge goes, Well, what happened? And I tell him this whole story. He goes, Well, we're gonna back up and revisit this. Well, guess what? Every single time I show up in court, they'd get all done with their arguing, differ I raised I don't know, thirty kids through foster care. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: the the judge would always go, Hey Mark, you got anything to add? And I'd say, No,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: they're really good parents, man. They're on time, their kids are happy, the kids cry when they gotta come back to my house. They don't wanna go. Things are working out really well. And the judge go, Okay. And he would just ask me. And there's no other foster parent I saw that would go to all the court hearings and the judge had never heard him ask anybody else, but I'd give him I'd give him the lowdown, man. I didn't care. I used to sneak into places that they were having visitation and And they had convicted felons on the most wanted list in Oregon that were relatives that were not supposed to show up, and they'd show up and I'd take pictures of them and I'd take pictures license plates. And it was really easy for me because I had an automotive shop. I had all kinds of customers' cars and they'd let me take their cars to go do these things. So they'd say, You gotta watch out for the foster parent. He drives a red van. No, not today. I'm driving a blue Toyota. And I'd go into court and I'd show them, I go, This asshole was there the whole visit. He's he's a child.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. What a world.
Gen X Talks: He's a child predator and he's not supposed to be there. And the judge is shake his head and go, and the and of course then the attorney's like, We're gonna sue you. I go, for what? He goes, You're not allowed,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: you're not allowed to do that. I go, I don't work for you, and I don't work for the state in that capacity. I can do whatever I want. And I remember one argument I got in with an attorney. I said, the state puts these children in my care and says, be their father. Feed them, protect them, clothe them. Well, guess what? This is the package you get. When you ask me to be the dad. This is what you get. I'm a very protective father. When they're on a visit, I'm showing up. I'm walking
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: in, I'm kicking over cans and going, Who's here? Well you're not allowed to do that. Well then don't give to me. Don't don't put me in charge of and say treat them as your own 'cause I'm doing it. I remember that argument in court, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: So what when did you so what a j a journey during this time? You became a champion of children, really. and you also You didn't ha really have a blueprint on how to be that type of dad. That came from you inside of you. So
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you kind of went through this whole growth, I think, in yourself, right? You became this father, not just to your children, but to 30 foster kids, but
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: but such a protective like everything a father should be. That had as as much upheaval's going on in other areas of your life, like that seemed to be a true path you were on during the children. Right.
Gen X Talks: It wa I think looking back, I think that gave me a lot to do in a marriage where I couldn't I d wasn't happy. I looked back
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: and go, Well, I had a business to run, I had a little automotive repair shop and I'd pour a lot into that and I'd come home and I had these these kids that had a lot of needs and I'd spent a lot of time doing that. I think for me that filled a lot of the void where I didn't have a good marriage and I think I look back, I didn't I don't I don't made it didn't make a conscious decision back then. You know, back
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: then it was just, Well, there's kids in need and I think I could do something here. That was it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: But looking back I think I did it that way.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did for your adoptive children, did they start out as fosters or did you get them as babies?
Gen X Talks: y it's you can you can set rules. I didn't know you could set rules when you're a foster parent and not many they don't really teach you this because they don't want you to know. But you can say, I don't want babies if you don't if you don't want to be responsible for a baby. You can say I don't want any any children under three or one of the rules I had is I told them I said, I don't want any children older than my kids and they said, Why? So you're gonna put some fourteen year old boy in here who's gonna molest my daughters or something.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I'm not d I'm not doing that. You know, it's you whatever, you know, wherever we get set, I'm never having any I don't want any kids older. You can tell you don't want special needs medical. It's like, well, there's one you have to put a hose in their nose and pump their stomach once a night and they teach foster
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: parents how to do that. I'm like, I don't want to do any medical condition I don't I can't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: do that. So you I could set rules on there and put in place that help start you out, like, okay, you know, I'd I told them I said I'd like kids the same age as my kids that go to the same school district. That'll help
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: me. I don't want to drive all over town, like in the same school, same so that was it was a they helped out with that a lot because it was an easy transition. Not that they don't call you every night and say, We have an emergency, can you take a fifteen year old sexually abused, you know, male? I go, No. They they still call you all the time, but you you can
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right, right, yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: you can set rules.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And and did you and your wife go through the traditional adoption route for your four children?
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Well, when they came up for adoption, there was there's a program in in Oregon where after you adopt you get adopt and assistance money to be an adoptive parent and it's not very much. But when these kids can't there's a sibling group of three that came up for adoption at the same time. We'd had you know, two and a half, three years. And we go into court and now there's relatives coming out of the woodwork and they want to adopt well, I'm a second cousin, I'm a third uncle twice removed and They're all fighting in court over these kids. And at the end of it, I told again, I stood up and told the judge, I said, Look, I said, everybody who I this is what I said in court, I said, everybody who wants to adopt these kids, stand up. So eleven different people stood up. I said, Any of you willing to take these kids and sign a piece of paper foregoing the adoption assistance money, stay standing. But if you if you're doing it and you want that money, sit down. Everybody sat down. I was the only one. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: said, Judge, I'll take them. They've been part of my family for all these Christmases. All these birthdays, they're already part of the family. I don't need the adoption
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: assistance money. They're here and they want the money. We'll save the state and leave right in the home they they already should be in anyway. And he gave to me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay, so you guys go down to California and you create this an amazing family. did you start another auto automotive repair shop down there as your business?
Gen X Talks: I didn't want to. I didn't want to. I told my wife, I'm not doing that anymore. I hate that. I hated the stress. So I just went to work for people. And but it wasn't enough money. it was really tough because she had to stay home and she got pregnant right away. So there was a time after our the baby was born, she had a newborn baby and then seven kids under the age of under the age of twelve. And it Yeah. And so I'm
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Right. Yeah, no, she was working. Wow. She was working.
Gen X Talks: like, just stay home, let me go do this. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I I remember working for a guy, I kinda I went to work on he worked on a lot of European stuff. I'd never worked on it before and he was kinda teaching me and I was I was pretty good at at twisting a wrench, but just different, you know, when you're working now you're working on Porsches and BMWs and I didn't know all the stuff with that. So I was making okay money, but a lot of customers he this guy'd been at this this particular guy's working for had been in town his entire life. He knew everybody. So people would always come in and say, Hey, you know, you'll you're doing my European stuff and my Toyotas and my Hondas, but you know, what about my Ford? He goes, I'm not working on your Ford, I'm not working on your Chevy,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: I'm not working on your Dodge. And finally one day his name was Tom and I Hey Tom, I don't you know, can I do that stuff on a on my own? Can I just do it after hours and keep the money? He goes, Yeah, go ahead. I care. It's work. He goes, I'm not doing it. So I spent two years working on everybody's everybody's cars and starting almost my own business working on their other cars that he wouldn't do. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: fleet accounts would come to me and finally I just told Tom, I go, I gotta rent the building right across the street. I got so much sidework I got to t I'm just gonna have to turn it into a business and do it. And then he didn't have luck signing on new mechanics. So he used to just drive cars across the street to me and go fix it and give it back. And his customers didn't care because they already knew me. But it was still going through
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right, right.
Gen X Talks: him. And here's another dumb thing. How lucky did I get? Working for a guy who'd been in that town his entire life and grew up with everybody all the way through high school, I'm working on all these and now I'm working on European stuff. So I'm working on lawyers and I'm working on judges' cars. And my ex wife moves to s California and she tries to sue me or whatever you call it to to I want more visitation. I wanna undo what he did and of course California's like, Well,
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: let's start this process and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: All of a sudden, one day there's two court there's many court cases or morning court days. One of them I go into court and I'm standing there and this judge comes in, Judge Hoover was his name, he's retired now, and he comes in and he slams down, I mean, a three foot stack of files, you know, that he's got to get through today. He goes, Well, let's bring some joy and love to Kern County. And he sits down and we all sit down and he looks over at me and he knows he recognizes me, but can't tell from where. And at some point During the day, he figured out who I was. And so the lawyer from my ex-wife comes in with all this stuff and says, Well, we're asking for all these things and he's got all these reasons. The lawyer talks for 20 minutes and Hoover's like looking down and he's looking around. He's waiting for the guy to get done. And he goes, yeah, denied. And he goes, Well, you didn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hmm.
Gen X Talks: even ask. You didn't you didn't have a conversation. My lawyer didn't have to say anything. He goes, Yeah, it doesn't seem like a good fit. I'm sticking with the recommendation from Oregon. And a week later he comes into the shop, he goes, Yeah, I can't be your judge anymore because I know ya And I said, All right. So there was another one did the same thing. There's another judge, Judge Green comes in, did the same thing. He knew me, listened to them talk and just goes, Yeah, no. Just it just
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's amaz so
Gen X Talks: ruled
GenX Adulting Podcast: how many times did she try? How many times were you brought in?
Gen X Talks: we were in court thirty times, but the second judge just stayed the judge. He didn't dismiss himself. He didn't care. He's like, I he knew me. He knew that I was raising. He knew my wife. He knew the family. He's like, I don't
GenX Adulting Podcast: okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: know what this psycho bitch is doing, but it she is not I'm not ruining these kids' lives. the
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: last ditch effort she said she got a county a j a judge who's not a real judge. They call him a a commissioner before they become a judge. I don't even know how they get appointed, but it was a guy and he decided to listen to everything she had to say and said, Yes, we will start visitation. Told her you have one year for drug classes, alcohol classes, parenting classes, all this stuff it's a pretty strict thing. And you get one year to complete it. So a year goes by, we end up back in court and I said, Man, I'm doing some homework. I told my my attorney who was like he was the most shyster attorney you could ever had. He was like, he's like better call Saul, but he was He was on point. I mean, this guy knew everybody, every backdoor deal that could be done, this guy did it. And he was a great attorney. He never lost, ever. But I said, hey man, we're gonna, she's gonna come in with all this stuff. He goes, let's just see how it plays out. So of course her attorney comes over and gives him all the classes, all the signed documents, all the written statements from all these people in these classes and these instructors, just glowing reports. And he goes, Okay, we got this. I go. I look like a stack of paper that makes me think we don't got this. He goes, You trust me? I said, Yeah. He goes, Then don't blow up and get mad and don't say anything. Cause this particular commissioner didn't know me and kind of didn't like me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: So I just sat there and so her attorney says, put her up on this witness stand and said, We've done all the classes, the anger, we've done all the we've gone through the twelve step program, been to every meeting for all these times and all these glowing letters of recommendation. And so my attorney gets up there and says, I only have one question. And I'm thinking, one question with all these documents, he's only got one question. And he says, I just have one question. Says, can you let us know what what sort of time machine you own? And my ex wife goes, What are you talking about? Time traveling machine. I mean, is it like Back to the Future? Is it like a DeLorean or is is it like Bill and Ted's? You got a telephone booth? And she goes, I don't know what you mean. He goes, Well, you have you signed and you have all these people that signed all these documents. They're all dated next year. She goes, what? He goes, where did you get these documents? She goes, Well, I printed out the documents and then I took them to the people and they signed them. He goes, How'd you print them out next year? I question every signature on here right then. Her attorney's looking through it, going, shit. And she had forged every document. She put the wrong year. She put the put the
GenX Adulting Podcast: But put the wrong ear? A dumbass. my god.
Gen X Talks: wrong year on there and she had forged every letter, every document. And my attorney came back to her attorney and says, I know all these are fake. He goes, Yeah, they probably are. He goes, So you better convince her to shut up and go away and the judge dismissed it and yelled at her in the courtroom and said, I never wanna see you going after this guy again for anything, ever
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. It's amazing it got past everyone though. Then no one noticed it was next year. Eve her attorney,
Gen X Talks: No one.
GenX Adulting Podcast: no one. It took your attorney to know even you had seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excuse
Gen X Talks: I didn't see him. I looked at him and went I didn't notice. No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: me.
Okay, so how far into your marriage did these battles go? You said you went to court like thirty times. How many years were you guys dealing with this after being newly married?
Gen X Talks: Probably we probably had to deal with it for three years.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. All right. And then it things were settled and then you guys were able free and able to move on with your lives.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. What yeah, once that last judge went, Okay, I've seen through all the stupidness we're done, that was kind of it. There was no other no other issues. The only
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay, so
Gen X Talks: the only thing that came up with her later was my wife Mary now got cancer and they gave her three months to live.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my goodness.
Gen X Talks: And my ex wife called and said, I hope she dies and hung up. Actually told
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. When w
Gen X Talks: Told all of our kids that too. Told our kids I hope I hope your I hope your stepmom dies.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. my gosh. Wait, w so how long had you guys been married when that happened, her the health scare with the cancer?
Gen X Talks: nine years. Yeah, about nine years in.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And what type of cancer was it?
Gen X Talks: She had leukemia.
GenX Adulting Podcast: My goodness. And so so she has all these children, you guys have all these children that are young still, young, especially
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: the youngest. And now you have this cancer battle. How long did she fight the cancer?
Gen X Talks: it was about a year and a half and because they said they said she wouldn't make it till Christmas. They w they weren't super young kids. They were teenagers. A couple of the kids had already moved out.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: Briggs, the youngest one, was eight, so the other ones were, you know, a little older than that. But she they told her it was we she got diagnosed in September and they said you won't make it till Christmas and so they aggressively
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: started doing everything and then now I had to raise you know, the six kids that were home and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: run a business and take care of her in the hospital.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: so that was a little bit tough. And then we she it was about a year and a half of like full blown, you know, chemotherapy and battling and getting after it and getting it done. And then during that time my ex had found out and called up and told all the kids, got on the phone when I wasn't home and said, I hope she dies, you know And so she obviously lived and we got past that and everything was great. And then in two thousand and sixteen, she calls me and said she was dying of cancer and she wanted to visit all the children one more time. She she hadn't seen him in, you know, forever and seen him in a decade now practically. But she decided that she was gonna, you know, she wanted to plug back in, wanted to say goodbye, and I told her, No. I said I'm not doing it. I said, I'm not disrupting their life and you're a bad person. And don't forget you told my wife to die.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: You hope she dies of cancer. So guess what? You're dying of cancer. And my kids came to me and they said, Well, why can't we go see her? You know, they were ten or eleven or twelve or thirteen. And I said, Listen, and that they were old enough where you could explain some things. I said, I don't know if I'm right or wrong. This is how I feel. I said, You guys had a mom and a d and several dads with that mother when you guys were running around in and problems when you were little and they took you away from those that mother and all those dads and put you with me. And you've had that mother or two different mothers trying to get you back. And then you had this mom here and I said that had part of your life. And then you had the stepmom you have now, which is the mother you know and she's was fighting had fought through cancer. I said, but what was the common denominator through all those moms? Me. I was always the dad with you since the the earliest thing you can remember was me and all those moms. I said, so I made a bad choice bringing you into with this one mother. I made a good choice by bringing you into this other mother. And you know that she wished your mother now was dead. She told you guys, I'd hope she dies. I said, She not been part of your life. And I said, and this was an this was an argument that I had to make with my ex. I said, you're not their biological mother. A judge in a piece of paper made you their mother for a few years. A judge in a piece of paper said you're no longer their mother. A judge in a piece of paper said this is now their mother. So that you can't claim you have any more cla you haven't you have no more claim on them than anybody else because you're not their biological mother. And I said, plus you're a mean, terrible person. And I told my kids, I go, the reason we're not there anymore, the reason that I chose this life versus that is because she was bad for you. I don't want her around you at all. She was only just part of your life for a three years. You've been here, you know, nine years now. It's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: it's it's way different. All that's gone. And I said, I understand you want to do this, but I'm telling you, I'd rather you not do it. And every one of them said, okay. They didn't even fight me on it. They hadn't seen her in nine years. They did there wasn't anything,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: but they got it. And and later in life, they said the same thing. They came back and said, because she did die. She died within a month.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: And I didn't make a big deal about it. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't talk about it. it just it just it nothing had nothing really changed for them. She passed away and they came back years later and said, We get it. We understand why you did that. And I said, Was it did it really affect you? And they're like, No, not really. You know, a a person dying, I think it bothered them that someone was dying they knew, you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: just like it would anybody. But they said we didn't have any connection to her. And I said, Well, I did my best after I realized I made a bad decision. I kept all of you. I found another mother and she's been wonderful to you for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: all these years. And that's that was my choice. And I said, If I did it wrong, you can be mad, but I did the best I could. And all of them were very happy where they ended up.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, you're you were protecting them. Cause again, I go back to she was abusive. And so she would have her last swan song would have been to leave them with some sort of digger abuse.
Gen X Talks: Guilt. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And they would have been battling with that one whatever she said, that would have been a thing she left with them and they would have still been trying to resolve that. So you truly
Gen X Talks: Right.
GenX Adulting Podcast: protected them of that last jab she was gonna try to do. So yeah.
Gen X Talks: Well, we'll never know. I don't know whether what she would I just assumed it was not good. I didn't see any benefit to doing it and I just it walked away from it and kept the kids away. She passed away and that was it. I didn't really think
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: about a sentence. But in my in my head I was like I was so pissed. I'm like, how dare you tell me I hope my wife dies, but you want a favor
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: from me, you're out of your damn mind.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. can't I can't believe you're you've fostered and adopted kids. It's not something I could do. So I really I admire the fact that you've done that and really just stuck with it and been so tenacious. Yeah, it's amazing, man.
Gen X Talks: It was not easy. It was not it was I think looking back, I think that helped me raising a blended family. I think there's a lot
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: of training in that that you you know, things you deal with with, you know, biological parents and exes and you know, you there's a lot of things that you learn a lot. But I ended up the last year I was up there I was teaching the classes, the foster and adoptive classes, and more towards the end of the when when they had a class of fifty people come through, I would the last week or so I was teaching some of the final classes about what's the practical application of being a foster parent. And I just I they had a curriculum they wanted me to talk about. I'm like, y I'm not doing any of that. I said I really if you want me to come in here and tell what it's like, I'm just gonna tell what it's like and people may leave 'cause it's not easy.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And the person who was in charge of the Deschuse County said, No, go ahead. And they they watched me the first couple nights to see how I would say things 'cause I painted a very real picture. But I remember, I don't remember half the stuff we talked about, but I do remember my opening line. I said, Being a foster parent is going to be the best and worst experience you've ever had. I said, There are there are highs and happiness that you will feel raising a foster child, you're never gonna get with a biological child. You're never gonna be able to feel it. You're never going to feel some of the places it takes you because they're not yours, because you're helping out a stranger. There's just there's just some places that you're gonna you're gonna feel better than you're ever gonna feel. But there's also in foster parenting, you are going to feel worse in some instances than you'd ever feel with biological children. There are things that will happen to you emotionally that you hate, that you disagree with, that make you cry at night. And you'd never be put in these positions with biological children, but you're gonna be with foster children. So it will be the best and the worst experience of your life. I promise you. And I remember that's how I started beginning to tell them whatever I could.
GenX Adulting Podcast: You know, I see such a common theme here though, like from your junior high days up until what you're describing now is you're a natural leader. Like whatever you're doing, you raise rise to the top of it and then you talk to others and teach others from experience. It seems that y that's a common theme for you. And I and and even with
Gen X Talks: If it's
GenX Adulting Podcast: your current platform, if you think about it.
Gen X Talks: If there's anything like that that's true, then it's it's only been because there have been people in my life that I have been able to draw from that it's it's that are better than me, smarter than me, wiser than me, and you know, and I'm never gonna measure up to them. And I remember there was I was working with a guy, he was older than me, he's probably in his for late forties and I was, you know, early twenties. And we just worked together for a couple of years, but I rode to work with him every day. And his name was John Eppolito. And twenty years after we just have conversations as two guys driving to work. That was it. We didn't hang out on the weekends. That's all I knew him was from at work, but I listened to him. And I remember 20 years after the last time I even saw him, I using the internet, I found a way to look him up and I made sure who I was talking to. And I said, Do you remember me? He goes, Yeah, yeah. We rode to work. I said, Yeah. And I remember calling him saying, and I repeated like five things he told me, out of many. And I said, I want you to know I took those to heart and they saved me. There's certain decisions I made in life that if you hadn't passed that stuff along, I'd have really gone the wrong way. And I just wanted you to know that you counted in my life. Never went and visited him, didn't talk to him after that. We talked for a couple hours on the phone. But there's been people like that around me, otherwise that I've drawn from that they don't even know they've given me examples or stuff that they did. And it's that's maybe the only reason I got to where I'm at.
GenX Adulting Podcast: You what though, what a gift you gave him. So many people don't circle back to thank the people that have had an impact on their lives in in those small in those small but large ways. And the fact that you gave that to him is is an incredible gift. But the fact that you're open to learning from others in that way, taking it in, learning from it, applying it, and then regurgitating it and teaching others from your own experience. I that's a real gift and it is a s such a strong sign of leadership. And so I Just had to mention it's there's a common theme here for sure. No,
Gen X Talks: Well, I appreciate that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: for sure. Well, you have to have humility. Yeah. I mean, I I think one of the signs of a good man is self-awareness and humility, and from that, real alpha alpha males that they have that because they're secure enough in themselves to have humility and self-awareness and learn. And so, yeah.
Gen X Talks: Well, I appreciate that, but just realize I've screwed up just as much as I've been suc like successful in life.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Well, yeah, of course. Of course. Well, yeah, that that's where the life lessons come. That's where you can be secure and your You could have sold your game for fifty grand. Yeah, exactly.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: a cinematographer. I mean, that's a just a wonderful was that a big turning point at all for you guys and changing the trajectory
Gen X Talks: Could have been.
GenX Adulting Podcast: of how you were approaching anything in
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: life?
Gen X Talks: It was kinda odd. If you if you kind of look at how we all of a sudden we're a blended family. She's taking care of eight kids, all into the age of twelve. One of them's a baby. It's a new town. It's a new house. It's a new environment. I got new jobs. We're throwing all this together, trying to make everything work. And then everything that in the first probably the first 10 years of our marriage, everything that others go through in 40 years of marriage, we crammed into eight to ten. We had parents die.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: We had in laws
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: die. We had a cancer that the whole family had to work through. Cause when you when she got cancer, we all got cancer. Every
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: one of us suffered in in a in a in our own way. I mean, terribly. You know, I'm not gonna say it was as bad as hers 'cause that was life and death, but people don't understand that. When you when someone that you know or your family gets cancer, you got it too. know, you have to deal
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: with it i in your own respect. So We went through quite a bit and we had one unruly teenager that was just terrible and was in and out of jail and we couldn't you know, couldn't talk to her and couldn't figure stuff out. And by the end of, you know, like it was almost at year ten when she had just finished and had beaten the cancer, we looked back and went, I'm done. I'm I'm exhausted. This you know, we've we've
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: we've gone through so much stuff with all these kids and their friends and we were lucky, we're blessed that the kids turned most of them turned out so well. We really were. And it just I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: we look back and go, God, we just I know we started late, but I think we're getting punished. It's like, Well, you're starting late. I'm not gonna spread this out over forty years. Let's just give it all to you right now. Yeah. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're on the fast track. And during this time you're also managing your business, which has grown y you know, exponentially here. so
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: w so when 'cause I know with Gen X Talks. Briggs was older when this started because he's part of that. So up until
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: the start of Gen X Talks, were you working your business and she's raising
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: the kids and that's kind of how life was going? And
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: then i is that accurate to say?
Gen X Talks: That's correct. Yeah. Just I just went to work and, you know, I put in as many hours as I could and there was a lot of times that she would bring me dinner down to the shop and sit with me or bring the kids down and we would all sit and eat and I'd go back to work till eleven or twelve at night and she would take the kids home. There was many years because it was it was tough to pay for everything. So a lot of mouths to feed.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. So then Gen X Talks is born how? Like what was that first step towards that?
Gen X Talks: My idiot son. He's an absolute moron. TikTok came out when he was fourteen and a half or almost fifteen and he wanted to be TikTok famous like
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: every kid did. So he's running around trying all these things and I mean he was just trying the stupidest things ever. So we got very used to him running around the house with a camera, 'cause that's all he did. You know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay.
Gen X Talks: and he he did it for about a year and he goes he I guess he went to his mother first and said, I'm just not I can't I can't figure this out and she says, Well, I don't I don't know how to help you. And you gotta remember too, at this point, we are considered older parents. You know, we're not, you know, she had him when she was thirty six. You know, it's late. It's it's you know, we weren't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: i he he did have a disadvantage of having older parents. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: he comes to me and he says, Well, I don't know. I said, I kind of know what's going on with social media. Just find something. I knew there was trends. I said, Find a trend that's really popular and do it different or do it better. And he goes, I can't. I said, Well then you gotta find a niche, man. You gotta find something that no one's doing. He goes, Well, I don't what to do. Well, I I'll tell I can help you with. But his mother had sat him down and said, You know, dad's kind of an old radio personality from the eighties. You know, he's n he can be on the radio. He's done that kind of stuff. and we skipped over a lot of that. But he said, he sa she says, So just ask him some questions. And he goes, All right. He walks up, he goes, Dad, I'm gonna put you on a stool under a spotlight and I'm gonna ask some questions. You're gonna answer as generation X. I go, Yeah, we're not doing that. Not a chance. I'm not getting under a spotlight. And he went back to his mother. She said, No, no, don't, you know, interrupt him while he's working on something, but not super concentrating. And, you know, he knows you're doing this. He'll just kind of give you the answer over his shoulder and do that. So he says, Okay. So he comes out one day. I was working in the garage and he goes, You know, do you ever wonder what a Gen X thinks? Welcome to Gen X Talks. And Dad, I got a question. I said, great. Now remember, I'm I know what he's doing. He's had this fucking camera for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: a year and a half. I go, What do you want? He goes, What do you think about what was his first question? He asked three questions. One of them was, What do you think about self-driving cars? Because they're coming. I go, the first time I see one, I'm gonna put it into the wall on turn four. And when the cop's gonna get there, I'm gonna go, hey, I got it. I don't know how it got out, but I got it. It's right
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: there. You give me another truck, I'll go get the next one too. He says, What do you think about common core math? Because common core math was all the rage. I go,
GenX Adulting Podcast: yeah. Yep.
Gen X Talks: Common core math is bullshit. It's two plus two is green, and how do we all feel
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: about it?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: I go, that's that's common core math. And he goes, Well, what do you think about millennials? And I go, other than the two that are still home living in my basement, sipping lattes, wearing a onesie telephone in the afternoon? Yeah, I think millennials are fucking awesome. And he got 700,000 views on that video.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: And so the next day, guess what he was doing? I got another question.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yes. Yes. And he's a Gen Z, right?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, he is.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. And what year was that when that first viral video?
Gen X Talks: I think I think the first time he got it to work right he actually tried a couple things. he tried he wanted to do a channel where he followed me around and we did things together. We worked on cars, we did a little woodworking, we did a little electrical, we did you know, he goes and he c had some name for it, and that he he decided not to do that. There's actually the th Gen X Talks became the third name of what he was trying to do. and then he then it was so that That was I think his first video that he posted was January of twenty twenty one. So it's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay.
Gen X Talks: been a little over five five and a half years since he started.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So okay, go ahead then. I just want to go back because you touched on the radio thing. Yeah, I was gonna ask that too. You've got a radio voice. You've d you've had to have done this, right? What do you have a background in radio, even if it's like a story? What's the story there?
Gen X Talks: Other than calling into the radio station, which is what I did at 14,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: the opportunities came up through junior high and high school to do the dances, to do the big shows if they had things going on where they needed some sort of a DJ, they needed some
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: sort of an MC. So I started MCing events. I did some at our big church, which had 10,000 members. I did so the high school stuff. If they had a special event come in. They just give me the cards and I'd either do it from a booth quietly or I'd just walk out on stage and in you y introduce people. So I was very familiar. And then some of the local things they would do, they would broadcast them locally in the valley or LA. They weren't really on any mainstream media. But again, I had the opportunity to go back with with Bruce Chandler when he was leaving K IQ Q and doing some stuff. And I could have tagged along with him and got into radio and I didn't want to. I said, yeah, I don't want to leave right now. I don't wanna drive. I'm still doing some stuff with my friends. We're still going camping. I gotta go camping.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: So I missed the chance to be in LA radio because I didn't wanna I didn't want to go right then. I was like, yeah, I could go later and then I lost touch with Bruce and you know, you know, I did I actually interviewed Bruce as part of Gen X Talks about two years ago. I got a hold of him and we talked about all those things we did and all those memories. And it's the it's
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is awesome.
Gen X Talks: the only interview I never I never posted.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Really? Why?
Gen X Talks: was boring. He did not
GenX Adulting Podcast: Really?
Gen X Talks: he did not ha come through with one story. Nothing. The only and I it was
GenX Adulting Podcast: interesting. Really?
Gen X Talks: so I played it for my friends. They go, this is a dry. And I go, I know. And the guy has done so much. And it was just the and then I worked here. And then this guy didn't like me so he fired me. And then I worked here and I was there for like four years. It was it was horrible. It was it was absolutely the worst interview ever. I had it just
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Wow.
Gen X Talks: it didn't come out good at all. And I never posted
GenX Adulting Podcast: Were you
Gen X Talks: it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: and I bet he has a whole collection of stories and memories, but doesn't know how to tap in.
Gen X Talks: I don't know. I or I I don't I he told me one story. He goes, I moved to Valencia, it was out by Magic Mountain. the last part of my career was out there for ten years, and they used to have the the radio station built a special room to bring in guests that were gonna potentially be something one day. And he goes, So I was I saw a ton of people come through and I said, Well, is anybody famous? You know, this is where I'm going with it. It like, Come on now, this sounds like a pretty
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: good story. He goes, Well there was one this girl came in and she played for about an hour and they did some recordings and we had pizza and everybody shook hands and I never saw her again. And it was Taylor Swift.
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh. Okay, that could be such a story.
Gen X Talks: But but that was the that's the only but the I mean, it's I told it to you about how he told it to me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Did you guys at least before you start a recording have a good time reminiscing about like your time with him? Or was he dry there? Okay.
Gen X Talks: We did. We t we talked about a ton of stuff and I tried to go down. I didn't live too far from I said, We should go grab a burger or something. And remember, this is just as COVID was getting done and all that. He was a recluse. He didn't want to see anybody, talk to anybody in person,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: nothing. And I actually sent him a gift and said, Thanks for being my friend back then. I had two complete identical sets of original Frank Sinatra albums. they were like a they were like a a a five or eight album thing and I had two of them and I sent him one. I said, just you can have that 'cause he had a big record collection and I said if you don't have this one you can add it to your deal and that was kind of where we left things was like that
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's a cool gift, jeez. Wow, very cool. So as far as wait, I do want to ask before I forget the general. Did that nickname come before Gen X Talks or post Gen X Talks?
Gen X Talks: that was during Gen X Talks. That we had done videos all the time. He got really popular. he has a video on TikTok that has like twenty six million views on one video.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: and it's the most embarrassing video ever. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: and he and he in fact, most people who d ask me to do an interview, they start with that. So let's talk about the dead horse video. It's always what they lead with.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ha ha ha.
Gen X Talks: and along the way he goes, We should do He he wanted to try different stuff and he said, We should do a podcast. I said, What's a podcast? And it was, you know, back when Rogan was just starting his. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: we did it. We did it every week for like, I don't know, four months, but it just wasn't getting any traction. So we added Mary to it and it did a little better. Then Briggs goes, I I don't want to do it anymore. So Mary and I kept going and now it's probably the fastest growing thing in Gen X Talk still is our podcast. it's unbelievable
GenX Adulting Podcast: It's awesome.
Gen X Talks: the amount of people that want to listen to her beat me up for an hour, but they do.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And then he says, so we we then he said one day he said we should try live streaming. I go, What's that? And he goes, Well, you just point the camera and the mic and talk. He goes, It's just imagine you're on the radio in Los Angeles, Dad, but people can see you. I go, What for? What are we talking about? He goes, Whatever they want to talk about. Well, he wasn't on it. He wanted me to do it. And he was just sitting there. So I remember the first
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: time we turned on the camera, he goes, Okay, you're live. I go, Who fucking cares?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ha ha ha.
Gen X Talks: I go, well yeah, I'm here. Whatever you guys want to talk about, I'm just gonna have a sandwich. If you guys want to talk about something, you better ask, because I don't even know what I'm doing here. That took off really well. And then we did we did a bunch of live streams and one time I d I would drink during the live streams.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I would drink Jack Daniels. And about the three after three hours, people
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: were calling my wife going, You need to get him off the air. And so I woke up one morning and or one day I woke up in the morning and we're doing some stuff, and I had another, I'd just done a live stream that night, and for some reason we never did them two in a row, but somebody wanted me to do it the next day for something, so we did. And everybody was in the comment section was referring to me as the general. And I go, Why are you guys calling me that? And they're like, dude, you don't remember? We had an epic night last night. And I go, What are you talking
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's amazing.
Gen X Talks: about? I had to go back. And watch the show. And like two and a half hours in, somebody on our staff said, Hey man, you guys are like a cult. And I'm like, Yeah, we're a cult. Far out, man. What do what do what do we do? Does there what what happens when we're a cult? Well, first you gotta have a name. You gotta have names. But in the comments, I can read this. You gotta come with a names. So there's all these Generation X. And I said, Well, if we're Generation X, can't we be extras? You know, no E, just extras?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: yeah, we're we're we're a bunch of extras. And someone wrote, We're the Legion of X. All right. We're the Legion of X and we're all a bunch of extras. And then they said, We got to give you a name. You're Generation X. So you're General X. And I go, That sounds stupid. And they said, Well, we'll just call you the general. And I said, All right, I'll be the general. I don't remember any of that. So in one
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: night we became a Legion of X. We became, we're all a bunch
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: of extras in life. And I became the general and it just stuck to this day. There's people that still call me the gen a ton. A ton.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And you have and you have a fan you have fan base like how people call Swifties, you have extras. And that all happened at once. That's amazing.
Gen X Talks: Tons. Yeah. And I didn't even remember it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's amazing I love that you had to go to the tape. Yeah, yeah. You just didn't remember. Blacked out.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Ha Well, there was this there was there is another one that happened about the same time. a I guess th it was in fact it was the same night. And a guy had called in and or had had had not called in had had been in the comments and said and I was this is about hour three and he call he texted and he says, how do you get over a girlfriend who cheated on you? He goes, This is real and I'm really struggling with this. So everybody wanted me to answer. And I mean, if you go replay the chat, it got real quiet. And I said, and I and I and I did I had to go look this up because I don't remember what I had said. but I apparently I had told him, I said, getting cheated on is a lot like having a pomegranate stain on your kitchen counter. You can bleach it, you can scrub it. He goes, I told him it's never quite gonna go away. You're always gonna be able to look and know it's there. You may clean it so much nobody ever else ever notices. No one be if people be in your kitchen all the time, they're not gonna ever see it. But every time you walk by, you can look and you can see that it just faintly coming through. You know it's there and it'll it'll always be there. And there's you're never really gonna truly get rid of a pomegranate strain on your kitchen counter. I'm sorry, it's not gonna go away. And I said, you you can learn to deal with it. You can ignore it after a while. It doesn't bother you as much, but it's a stain that's always gonna partially be there. And I guess everybody went bananas over that thing for that guy, and that guy really took it to heart and it helped him. I didn't know any of that. I didn't remember saying any, I didn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: know where I got that from. I was three sheets of the wind and said all that. I'm like, I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Love it.
Gen X Talks: don't remember any of that. So two years later, we're doing interviews for staff because some people want to come on and be moderators. They want to do some stuff for us. And we're like, Yeah, you can. And so they they brought on like two new people and we're in a a Zoom call type staff meeting. We're talking and This one guy named Josh. He goes, I want you to know I really like being on staff. I felt like I was destined to be here. And I'm like, Far out, man. That's that's cool. And he says, I'm the guy you helped with the pomegranate stain story. And I went, What? He goes, Yeah, you remember
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: the pomegranate stain story? And then you're like, you had to go back and look it up 'cause you didn't remember and I was like, Yeah, he goes, That was me. I'm the guy who called in. That was my story. And I was like, far out. I didn't I didn't know who he was back then, you know, before, but he ended up being on staff for a couple of years.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is awesome. That is awesome.
Gen X Talks: Well
GenX Adulting Podcast: Did Briggs think of the name Gen X Talks?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, he came up with that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Very smart, very smart. So so it started out with him just randomly asking you questions like ask a Gen X dad anything and then it sounds
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: like then the podcast, then live streaming.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: when did you start having guest songs? It was you and Mary, right? It was you Briggs, you or and then you and Mary, and then now you host?
Gen X Talks: We we still don't. We don't have guests on our podcast at all. It's weird. We did we did different live streams. The the best one we ever did was c thing called the big show. and we used to do those once a month and Briggs and I would do it together and it was a live stream and we invented I told him I said, Look, if you really want to do something, you gotta be like Andy Kaufman. And he goes, Who's Andy Kaufman? I go,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ha ha ha.
Gen X Talks: Andy Kaufman used to try to play jokes on his own audience and get them involved. And Briggs goes, I don't understand. So I played him a clip of Andy, who had they had a little variety show he was doing. And on the broadcast of the variety show, they intentionally made the signal skip around. And people would get up and go smack the side of their TV back then to try to get the damn signal. But they could smack
GenX Adulting Podcast: yes, yeah.
Gen X Talks: their TV as much as they wanted. This was how Andy was broadcasting it. And I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right, right.
Gen X Talks: and he goes, he goes, I get that. I goes, So if you can find a way. To interact with the people, this will be great. So we came up with something we had, we had it's funny, we had we had like three cell phones going and they were all broadcasting. One was on TikTok, one was on YouTube, and one was on Facebook or something. And we did a thing called paper toss. And we would wad up a piece of paper and throw it at the camera, and the audience could see the piece of paper coming. They s they he threw one and I threw one, and then the audience would decide who was closer. So the audience got to participate, and then we had a staff member counting up all the votes on who got closer. That was audience participation. We also did something called dead air, which I don't know where that came from. We'd say right in the middle of the broadcast, we'd stop and say, Listen, you guys know in broadcasting on radio and TV that dead air gets people fired. You know that happens. You try to avoid it at all costs. You guys have been out there, you watch TV, and all of sudden you can see what's going on, but you can't hear anything. The audio went away. That's dead air. It's even worse when there's no audio or video. None of you like dead air. You all hate dead. We hate dead air. But I want you to know that we've perfected dead air. We work on that. That if it comes around, you don't have to worry. We have the best dead air in the industry. And Briggs goes,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: Briggs will tell people we go around with stethoscopes and eyedroppers, man. We throw bricks through windows until we get this right. And then we would present them dead air. And we just sit there and stare at the camera and look around. Not make a sound. And then when you get come back like, damn it, that was the best quality dead air I've ever. Have you at home, have you ever experienced dead air like that?
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's hilarious.
Gen X Talks: You tomorrow when you go back to work on Monday and you say, What'd you do this weekend? Some of you are gonna be around the water cooler going, Man, I have never experienced dead air like why like I saw in Gen X Talks. Let me tell you. The other one we did, we developed one called Frozen. And we would be talking, we had a signal, and all of a sudden we And he wouldn't move and I wouldn't move. And our regular viewers knew we were doing it on purpose. It wouldn't say anything. But there's always
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right.
Gen X Talks: some newbie in the comments. Hey man, your camera's frozen. Your can't your feed is frozen. And then
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Mary would read the name and said, you know, Josiah 123 said your camera's, Well, it's not Josiah. You're just new. You didn't know we did that
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: on purpose. Ha ha. We you know, we wait for some dummy to come along and go, dude, your camera's frozen, and we got ya. So it got to
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: be a thing.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Where people would join the live streams late. They'd join the big show late. They go, they would chime into the moderators. Did I miss dead air? Have they already
GenX Adulting Podcast: no way.
Gen X Talks: done paper toss? I'm late tonight. Did they already do paper toss? And then the last one we added was we got a I got an old telephone and I wired it up where we could push a button and made it make it ring. And so the thing was was that anybody in the audience could pick any person and I'd have to pick up the phone and talk to pretend I'm talking to that person and have a totally legit conversation. with whoever they said. It didn't matter if you said it's Bill Clinton. I gotta talk to Bill Clinton for like ninety seconds. It can be an actor,
GenX Adulting Podcast: my my gosh.
Gen X Talks: it can be anybody. And the first one they chose was God. They said So
GenX Adulting Podcast: You know what? That's where your improv comes in from junior high.
Gen X Talks: That helped a lot with that. I hung up on him. I I picked up the phone and then I hung it up and they everyone's looking at me's like, Who you hung up? Who was it? I go, It was God. They like, Why'd you hang up? He called collect. I'm not answering that. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: So how long did you guys do this big show?
Gen X Talks: I think we did it probably two years, once a month for two years. And then
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: it just Briggs got older and got kinda got burned out and he was doing other things. So we kept the regular live streams and we kept some of them didn't work, some of them did. So we right now right now we're getting into winter time and so we've done all of our experimenting on things. We try stuff for a few months and if they don't seem to be taking off, we stop doing it. We're very fortunate the shows that we do do right now, they're not They're not like top they're not like Glenn Beck and Joe Rogan. You don't get those kind of audiences, you know, but like we did a bottom of the glass show last night and I looked at our numbers this morning at fifteen thousand people breeze through. So we've got four
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Wow.
Gen X Talks: shows we do that have pretty solid followings and they're all very different. And I'm very lucky that we even have four shows. There's some people that can't get one show, you know. You can't do
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: one live stream that gets traction. And we've been just we have great viewers, great fans, and we've been very lucky. So Coming into winter we've kinda shaved it down to our winter schedule and yeah, that's what we're doing. We ha we do we're gonna do another big show. Briggs wants to do one more. He wants to bring it back and set it up and and do a big show like the old days. So we'll we'll get to do that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's cool. You've created quite the community. I mean, if you think he started that in twenty twenty one, I what is that five year? That's not that long to create such a strong community, if you really think about it. that it's such a testament to the commitment you guys did right from the start. But from when you started it, when when did it become where you could stop? Are you still working or did you were you able to quit working and just have this?
Gen X Talks: Well, this is this is one of my failures in life. when I when I was doing really well, I I bought some small, tiny commercial buildings and I rent those out. And those do okay. So I could have kept working as a mechanic. I should have kept working as a mechanic for another fifteen years, twenty years. I could have put in twenty more years working as a mechanic, owning the shop, doing the stuff, and against everyone's advice, I still Mary and I just wanted to be home together. And she goes, Well, can we afford to be home? I go, Yeah, we we're not gonna sock any money away. We're not gonna have a huge retirement or anything, but we got plenty of money coming in. We'll be okay and pay all our bills and do stuff and take a few trips or whatever. But, you know, where everybody else in the in the last ten or fifteen years of their life, they're really socking stuff away, you know, for retirement. I didn't. I literally for the last ten years, because of the building situation, I just stayed home with her. We just wanted to be together and we didn't want to wait 'til we were sixty five or seventy. We're like, Well, I know people are gonna be mad at us. We'll probably be mad at us, you know, we'll probably wish we had done it different. But in fact it was so funny, we talked about it two days ago. You know, I told her we could have been a lot further along financially, like a ton. She goes, I know. I said, But we made that choice. She goes, I wouldn't have changed it for anything. She goes, I'm just not. She goes, you look back and y people often miss so much of their life because everyone's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: working the whole time. And there's some people that do the work and still have an enj a great life and okay, well th that they're that's not as common. There's so many people that we know that have worked and worked and worked and then they actually retire and they don't even like each other anymore. They don't they don't know
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: who each other are. And we just made that decision and you know, we're okay. We're not financially off as as most people our age are. We're not. But we're okay. We're we're fine. And We're just literally we talk about it going, Do you want me to go back to work? I g I got ten more I could work ten more years. I could go back right now, open up a shop or or go work for somebody, be in a service or I could put in ten more years and she's like, I just don't wanna be without you at all. I don't wanna wait for you to come home. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: it is it's a it's it's not something we just say, it's a real feeling and we're really doing it. And it has so when I tell you I fucked up as much as I've done well. Not working has changed things financially that make things more difficult at this age, for sure. But, you know, it was a trade off. And,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: you know, I'm I I I literally wouldn't go back and the stuff we've done in the last ten years, spending every day with her is just in it was an insane blessing. She is my best friend. She's a female version of me. You know, we like the same movies, the same music.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: She throws stuff at the T V during football games. I mean
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, that's
Gen X Talks: I don't know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: it's really awesome. And you and you make such a valid point that there are so many people that get to that point and they don't even want to be married anymore. They're they're like who they've spent they've spent their lives together doing, but not being together. And then when they finally can be together, they don't even know how to be together anymore because they're not doing
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: anymore. So that is such a testament to your marriage. But also Gen X Talks wouldn't be where it is if you hadn't gone all in the way you have.
Gen X Talks: That's true because we've spent we spent hours every day doing it. learning,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: getting stuff right, getting stuff wrong. It's been it's the the thing that I find amazing is because when you're in this, you get to know a lot of the other creators. You talk to people that do the same thing you're doing. And what the weirdest thing I found was I didn't realize how I actually I was talking with someone who works at YouTube and they're like deep into YouTube. And they said the thing that they that they find that's the hardest is people to stay. He goes, first of all, he says everybody who gets a viral video spends the rest of their life trying to get another one and they can't do it. You get
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: one good video and you work for the next six months to a year trying to get another hit, another viral video. He goes, so many people just they get frustrated and they it's very it's very difficult to live with that once you had that fame and then it goes away.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: He says the second thing is is once you get a solid creator, they can't they can't hang around two years, three years, five years. And you can rattle off name, well, this, this, this, they're they've been around. okay. So how many can you give me? Ten? Eleven? How
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: many people can you name that have been around for five or six years and and didn't quit, didn't give up and didn't fade away because it was just too much work and they couldn't they couldn't keep it going. There's he goes, that's the biggest thing YouTube sees is he goes, We have way more new creators than we're ever gonna have old ones. They just don't stay. They don't he
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: says it's really hard. It's difficult to stick around. Because you have to change as you go. Like right now, the videos that we put out are very different from the ones, even those ambush videos that Briggs does with me, that they're not me screaming at him like he's fifteen. Cause now he's twenty.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: And now he's almost lecturing me. Like, Hey, why are you and mom fighting about stuff? I go, 'cause your mom's an irrational woman. What do you want me to tell you? I the the dynamic has changed about the conversations, you know. And then now we moved into this one called we have Ness Security Cameras and he will go through and slice out a conversation. You know, she comes walk this is a video he put up the other day comes, she comes walking through the door to the studio and she goes, Did you make an Instacart order? And I said, Yeah. She goes, Why would you do that? I said, Because you had all your stuff on the computer for your grocery list. So I just paid them to bring it out. She says, Well, it cost money for Instagram or Instacart. It cost money for Instacart to bring out your stuff. I said, Yeah. They're not as expensive as you are. I s she goes,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I don't charge you. I go, you go to the grocery store and you'll spend an extra two hundred dollars. If I have them do it, it's fifteen bucks. Why wouldn't I? And she got mad and left, but he took that from the security footage and he just does an intro, goes, Here's one more from my parents.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Ha ha ha.
Gen X Talks: You know, he did one. She came out the other day two weeks ago or a month ago. She came out to the garage and she's looking for a Coke. She goes, Did you take the last Coke? And the security camera in the garage, you can see the Coke right next to me. I go, no. And she goes, there I know I had one more Coke. She goes back
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: in the house. I hide the Coke right as she walks back out and tears through all my stuff. And I go, I don't have your Coke. She goes, I know you took it. I go, I didn't take your Coke. But you can clearly see I had the Coke and I moved the Coke. She she does stuff like that. He does, he's clipping out those moments that we have, and it's changed. But
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's funny.
Gen X Talks: guess what? The old audience loves the new dynamics.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: So now we're kind of into a whole new area of filming. We've grown a little bit.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I think that's that is such a key because we're very new. We're only two years in. But even in those two years, we've learned this is fluid. You have to be open to change, you have to be open to growth, you have to be open minded, and be aware of so many different things that are going on and be authentic and and hold your intention and about the whole meaning behind what you're doing, but also be open minded enough to ebb and flow with what you need to do. so I can't imagine as long as you guys have been doing this and every Everything you've seen and learned. and that takes humility too, right? 'Cause you you think, well, this is what's been working and especially for us Gen Xers, we're like, well, this is what works. Why why do we need to change? So yeah.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, but it doesn't. It's just the best way I can describe it to people who ask me, I had this discussion last night with someone for about two hours, a group of someones. We were in Discord talking and they were talking about what stays and what works in social media. I said, Listen, it's kinda I said, things run their course. I go, How many television shows are still on? Well, what do you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: mean? Well, why aren't we all still watching new episodes of Bonanza or I Love Lucy? I mean,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: not that the actors haven't passed away, but Television shows run their course and then people get tired and they move on and okay, and that's it. You move on to a new show. Social
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: media is very much like that. You cannot just do the same thing over and over again. You know, at the end of it, you're like, okay, this y it it runs its course. And that's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: what YouTube was saying, telling us before, is that people will run their course and they quit. They have to walk away from it. And, you know, there's very few things that stay static for 20 years. Johnny Carson did it, you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: and there was something a little new. inside everything every episode he did, every show he did, but it was still the format was the same. Well, that's what we've tried to do is change things up some where the format is still the same,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: but the stuff we show inside is different. And it does take humility because if you get stuck on something that's not working, you you need to be aware it's not working. You gotta you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: gotta quit putting time into it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Would you say that that is a risk with niching down? You know, where people like getting stuck in their niche, will that is there more of a risk of this is gonna run its course if you don't open up to other aspects on s
Gen X Talks: Sure.
GenX Adulting Podcast: of your platform?
Gen X Talks: Well, and think about what what a terrible mistake we made in the beginning was everybody loved this is something we had to overcome. Everybody loved me being the get off my lawn dad.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: You know, don't get that goddamn camera out of my face and you know, you you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And what do you you're bothering me again? Okay. So after two years, if I start doing a live stream, guess what everyone's comments were?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: You don't hate the camera. Look, now you're doing live streams. You love this camera. This has all
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: been an act for the whole time. You want to talk about you lose followers real fast. It was a very delicate
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: bridge. Now it's not a big deal. Now people today can see the sh ambush videos and see me do a live stream and go, Wow, this is pretty cool. They get both sides. They're accepting
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: of it. They don't care because so many people have done it. But you talked about a niche. All right. We painted ourselves into, I'm this character. Now what do we do? I can't do anything else. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: can't I I'm stuck being Archie Bunker. I'm s you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: know, I'm stuck being, you know, Red Foreman from that 70s show. I I can't stop and do something else. Everything we had to work out when I could ever hold up a product and go, I buy this shampoo. It's really good, because that's not
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: what my character would ever do. Would never do that. As soon as you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: do that, you're a sellout.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: So and we I told Briggs he got some sponsorship ideas in the beginning and he's he's gotten paid to do some stuff and I said, You gotta tell your sponsors if they're gonna pay us for a video, no matter what, we have to stay in character. No matter what. If they if they and they say, Well, you're gonna have to write a script then for me, Dad. We had bad dog tools, which they make some pretty fucking good tools. And They wanted me to hold up their product and say, This is a really good thing. This is what you ought to do. And I go, I can't do it. I'm not I can't risk Gen X Talks credibility. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: we wrote a skit where Briggs comes out in the grow garage just as a regular ambush video. He goes, You ever wonder what a Gen X thinks? Welcome to Gen X Talks. And Dad, the neighbor next door, I gotta finish he's paying me to help me finish his roof. We're just doing so I said, All right, knock yourself out. He goes, Well, can I borrow some tools? I said, Yeah. just not anything, not in the top two drawers. Anything below that you can borrow. What's in the top two drawers? Those are my bad dog tools. You're not borrowing those. Why can't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: I borrow your good tools? Well, they're not gonna make you any better at your job. You're a fucking moron. You don't know what you're doing. If you're gonna fuck up that guy's house, you know, you're not fucking
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: it up with my good tools. You can use my shitty tools for that. Dad, it's just one and right I'm just right next door and I just need to I wanna go over there looking good. You ain't looking good with my good tools. You're not using my stuff. He goes, Well, how do I get don't you have some thing worked out with bad dog tools? Where there's like a promo code for a discount and he goes, Yeah, I said, then go use that and buy your own fucking tools. You're not using my good tools. Okay, that was their commercial and they loved it. And now now we're staying in character. Nobody even
GenX Adulting Podcast: Brilliant. Yeah, it's creative. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: knows they watched a commercial.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right. And if they do, they realize at the end, but they already got they already watched it. So but I
Gen X Talks: Already in it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: think I think doing it like that is actually authentic and organic. Whereas I you know, be even though you're in character, quote unquote, that is still a hundred percent authentic and organic versus you
Gen X Talks: yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: saying, use bag, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah. People are gonna turn on you. So that's something brands need to learn though, is to let their creators do that.
Gen X Talks: Well, we started doing that with brand with sponsors a little bit in the beginning and then about a year later I was trying to explain it to someone. They're like, that's already a thing. It's called like they have s like reality T V is a thing, it's called reality T
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: V. Now there's something in commercials Yeah, that's already a t that's already a thing and I'm like, Well, I was doing it before it had a name. We were doing that before it had a name. I didn't know what it was called. You say we're staying you know, it so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's in character for you too to be saying that. Be I'm You should went with that. So okay, so in addition to everything you've stated that you guys have been doing with the with Gen X Talks, what and brands, you just touched on that. Have there been other opportunities come your way as a result of Gen X Talks?
Gen X Talks: We kinda well, when we moved, it took us about a year to move out of Southern California to where we are. And we kind of just quit talking about it and we're open to it now. Like if someone called up and said, Hey, I wanna do some stuff on there, there's some stuff with you guys. There's things that we tell them that we show them that are very different from everybody else. Like number one, I would I tell a sponsor to say, Well, look, first of all, they look at our YouTube and go, dude, you're only getting like twenty thousand views. That's all you're getting. I said, Well, okay, let's have a conversation about that. 'cause I have a lot of friends that do this. I know a guy on TikTok has five point five million followers. he'll get, you know, six or seven hundred thousand views every video he does. And they went to him and said, Hey man, we're gonna pay you a bunch of money to do a do some energy drink because we want three videos and we're gonna pay you I think they paid him like I don't know, I think it was twenty grand. And said, Do the three videos and he did And the results came back, they waited like three months. They sold 12 cans. Twelve cans off of off of his link to keep track of, you know, did people sell off the affiliate link? He
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: and he and it was a rude awakening. Just because you have fans doesn't mean they're going to obey you and go buy what you tell them, you know, and he was he and then that doesn't translate into
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Yep. Yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: it. And at the end of the contract, guess what he did? He pulled the three videos. You only pay for that billboard to be up for, you know, a month or so. And then he
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: pulled the video. They did they weren't happy with it, so they didn't go back, but that was it. I tell our sponsors, I leave your video up forever.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: It's a billboard that doesn't come down. It's my content too. You know, it's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: the way we're doing it, and it's funny. I said, I just leave it up forever. And people go, wait, you're gonna leave our video out there forever with our product? I go, Yeah, why not? I don't care. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: said, I don't it doesn't matter. Just leave it up. Plus, yeah, we only get you know, ten or twelve thousand views or twenty thousand on this, but I said, I put it up on every platform.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And we got two Facebooks, we got a TikTok, we have X. And we put I mean put it up everywhere. So you you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: how many are you reaching? You probably on a hundred thousand every time. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: I say he's like, okay, I get you on that. And you're leaving it up. Yeah, we're leaving it up. That's that's another thing you approach it with. Also, you gotta tell too is you gotta say, our fans know us. And I've done this. I've gone, you walk through Disneyland and you say, Hey, I just got a question for you. You you TikTok? Yeah. How many people are you do you follow? probably six or seven thousand. Because who you always click follow, follow, follow, follow, follow. Okay.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: How many, how many can you name? And they always go, they can name like two or three by name. Then they describe five other ones. the the alligator guy, the
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: the body cam footage cop guy, and the the tow truck guy. They don't, and not only do does everybody know our name. They're like, Gen X talks. I follow Gen X talks. But they will, if we get taken out of their algorithm, they will actually write us an email or write in the comments. I had to go looking for you. I noticed one day
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm. Wow.
Gen X Talks: your videos weren't coming up. But how do you explain that to a an advertiser or a sponsor without you you like they think you're just making shit up? You're not. No, no. It's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right.
Gen X Talks: a different fan base. They actually know who we are. They know our names. They know where we used to live and where we do live. They follow us. You know, it's a real it's a real thing. You get that kind of loyalty, which means You got a better chance of them buying something that we're talking about than these other guys who just have a lot
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: of numbers.
GenX Adulting Podcast: It's quality over quantity. You have the Legion of X. Yeah, you have your extras and they they, you know, when you create an authentic community, they trust you. And through that
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: trust, they may go the brand deal may have more success because these people actually have a relationship with you and trust you.
Gen X Talks: We got I met a I met a woman in a hotel. We were having breakfast at a we went to VidCon in Anaheim one year and took all of our staff. and met a lot of creators and down there and I was in a in a breakfast caf coffee shop at a hotel and I met a lady who we're having this very discussion with and she was in charge of I think she was in charge of dove soap. And she goes, She's trying to figure out a way to advertise and make it stick and she goes, but you know, doing something with you guys, that would be you you know, that would be impossible. How could you write something about, you know, she knew she knew our channel. She like knew exactly who we were. She'd watch a lot of the videos.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: And I said, You just gotta come up with something that lets us stay in character. And she goes, Well, I don't have the time to do that. I go, I'll give you one. And she goes, You gonna make up one right now? I go, Well, how about Briggs comes in and goes, You gotta help me, mom is pissed And I said, What is she pissed about? I don't know, something in the bathroom and I said, Did you use something of hers I think I used her dove soap. Why would you do that? I go, women are very fit fickle about that stuff. There's certain things you don't touch. One of is if mom loves her soap, her shampooers, don't ever touch it. She's never gonna change. She's never gonna switch brands. She's loyal to that. It works. It's been working for her, it worked for her mother for forty years. Why would you go in there's so many things you can do. You're on your own. I am not protecting you. Dad, it was just a bar of soap. but it wasn't just a bar of soap, was it? It was dove. And and you fucked
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: up. And I'm not I'm not protecting you. And I that's all I told her. I just thought there's one idea. She thought that was the greatest thing ever. She never called me.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. No, but that and you know what? That is true because Brian, we have Irish Spring in the shower for him and I have Dove and I know when he uses my and I'm like, you know, there's like ten bars of Irish Spring in the drawer. Why are you using my Dove? So what you're quoting there is authentic. It's real. So
Gen X Talks: If what the the thing with sponsors is we need an agent. We need we would need someone who goes and looks for these things and takes a cut of what we do. But you'd
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: have you'd have to find somebody very dialed in. You know, someone
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: who does this and says, Okay, I'm in with all the brands. They like me. I'm good at this, and then let me sit with them and say, This is this is how we do it. Now go sell that. And they take
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: a cut of whatever we I just I've never run across anybody that I like. that would do that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: But if someone if someone called me up and said, Hey, this is what I do, let's have a conversation, yeah, I'd be into that because we miss that part of it. I like being creative and and trying to weave things in, but I don't think there's something I don't think there's a product out there we couldn't quickly figure out a way to talk about that would be fun.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I believe it. Now you mentioned you went to VidCon. Do you do you go to a lot of c like the con things and people will pay to see you or take pictures with you? Okay.
Gen X Talks: No. No. We we went down there for we did I think we went to VidCon two or three times because we wanted to well we knew some of the other creators we were gonna be were there, but VidCon was and still is very liberal. Young kids and very liberal. They don't want old people there and they don't want they don't want any like conservative values there when you're talking about stuff. They flat out told us, they said no. It's a young crowd and it's a liberal crowd and it's not, you know, and I said, You realize there are good creators out there that are older that you could put on a panel and talk about what it's like to be an older creator and how how you bridge some of that. That would be a panel people would go to. And they're
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: like, No, we just want young people out there. We don't need any old people on the panels. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I actually wrote they sent me a deal one time said, Would you like to be a would you like to put on a panel? Would you like to do a seminar? And I wrote back what the seminar would be about. I got back and the guy wrote me and said, This is exactly what VidCon needs and they're never gonna let you do it. So you we have to decline. Someone in their organization said, This is would be great. Talk about how an older person over fifty has been doing this for these years and what the what the problems are and what you have to overcome. But don't give up, keep doing this. And I spelled
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: it all out. He goes, Man, if it was up to me, we'd be doing it. This is what we need, but they're gonna they're gonna tell you no.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's crazy because it's just it's literally bringing in wisdom and advice from somebody who who can help them. I I just don't understand why they wouldn't take that opportunity.
Gen X Talks: I sat there, YouTube had a big room there, and they had people that worked at YouTube and they were guys in the algorithm department. They were guys who and I said, Do you how long can I sit here and talk? Do you go as long as you want? I was there an hour. I said, How come this gets banned? This gets blocked? How come this doesn't get put? I mean, this guy we had every answer. Everything every creator dies to know about how it works
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: behind the scenes. I asked that guy questions and I wrote everything down. And he knew who we were. There was two comments about he goes, I know who you are, you're Gen X Talks. And I said, Well, you say that like you're mad about something. He goes, Well, he goes, we get complaints about you that you're using copyrighted music. And I do. I did. And I said, Yeah. He goes, Well, our algorithm never detects it. He goes, and people are mad. How come you ding us for copyrighted? We get strikes. Gen X Talks is using the same music and you didn't give them a strike. And I said, Yeah, that's weird, isn't it? Now now it it
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: doesn't matter now because now you're allowed to use music up to one minute. They you can pretty much use almost any song up to a minute. And even if it's a if it's a if it's owned by somebody that says, Well, you can't make money off of it, they still it's no s no strike anymore. They still allow you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right. Right, right.
Gen X Talks: to do it. But back then, anything you did was a strike.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And s and so the frustration was that you were get getting away with something, quote unquote, more than anything else. Right, right. But
Gen X Talks: Well, I cheated. I would take I would take the music and I would put it on there I used to take the music and I would I would change the speed up to a hundred and two percent. And you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: couldn't really hear the difference, but the AI was very clear on beats per second. And it's like,
GenX Adulting Podcast: okay.
Gen X Talks: well, this doesn't match any any content. This isn't, you know, this is it would sample the music for 30 seconds and go, this doesn't match anything. No, because I sped
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: it up.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's smart.
Gen X Talks: And the ones that it did detect before I posted it, I would go back and I would just lower the volume like two points and post it again. And it said, no, there's there's material there's music here. And I'd lower it two more and post it again. It'd say, Yeah, you're good. You can post this, no problem. You can still hear it just fine. I just kept lowering it one notch at a time until their algorithm, their their stuff didn't hear it. It was, you know, it was it was either two percent faster or a little bit lower, but takes time.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Gen X Talks: You gotta sit there and mess it. But I did it every I did it on every video for three years and we never got a copyright strike on any of our ambush videos for all that time because that's what I did.
GenX Adulting Podcast: And and that's what I'm talking about is you went all in on this. Like you did quit working and go all in on this. You need that time to put in. But that's what helped bring Gen X Talks to where it is. So it's not like you could have worked as a mechanic and then spent
Gen X Talks: Yeah. No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: all that time. You just can't and I don't think people realize how much work goes into all of this. Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: Because you're experimenting too. So much of it. You d there's no guide that says, Well, here's because if I would have put out there, someone said you can get a you can get a forty million view video and make like a grand off this video, go tell people how to do this. I go, No. Then YouTube
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: will fix it and then no one can do it. Not even us. So for
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
Gen X Talks: years and years, people would meet me and go or email me and go, How are you doing this? It was a very, very big thing. Even the guy on YouTube, and I said, Yeah. And this is in the middle of it. He goes, Yeah, our algorithm doesn't detect it, so we leave it alone. You know, we don't manually review those. So whatever you're doing, I said, Yeah, that's weird. And I moved on. I didn't talk about it. I'm not gonna tell him what I did, you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: know. But he had a lot of information about stuff, things that I had no idea how it worked. And he was very helpful. YouTube was I I forget the guy's name. He's done people have have tracked him down and done videos on parking lots when they know who this guy is because he's so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: good at what he's doing and he knows so much. And he was he was the most of what I learned I learned from this guy and he was just very forthright about everything. I was very blessed that let him that that he allowed me to be as nosy as I was. He really was.
GenX Adulting Podcast: If you were allowed if if VidCon would open space for you, is is that some of the stuff you would be sharing? Is some of the advice you'd be sharing?
Gen X Talks: Well, it it depends if VidCon said, Hey, come down here, we want an old guy and Briggs to have us come down there. How did you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: guys do it for so long? What's it like being an older creator? There's a ton of stuff. Yeah, I can tell some funny anecdotes to keep people interested along the way, but excuse me, there's a lot of trial and error you can cover too. And it's not boring. You're like, this
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: is tough and you guys are running into this and and here's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: what it's like. Briggs can talk about what it's like. In fact, Briggs snuck onto a panel one year. they went down. We went down there and I was sitting in the audience and I go, This, if they get some good people on stage, this is gonna be a very interesting seminar. And he was walking up talking with one of the guys that was doing it before, and they ended up having six creators up there in six different aspects of social media. And all of a sudden there's a seventh chair and Briggs sitting there. I'm like, What are you doing? And he did the most conversating, he talked about the most stuff, and I'm like Well, that's really cool, but I already know everything you're saying. I did I'm doing it with you. But but
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, shut up, man.
Gen X Talks: that again, that was one of his moments, and he ended up being the best speaker up there, talked genuinely
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: about the the hardships and stuff and stuff he went through. And they kept coming back to him instead of the other people because he was very good he's very well spoken and he knew just what people were looking for in that seminar, and he nailed it, you know, and who knew that was gonna happen. But again, That kind of stuff happened to me growing up. I ended up just being, like I said, signing autographs at Seesawn one day. And there's Briggs.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right. No, s and spe well, and you two together would be such a great panel, you know, to have. So they're missing there's it's such a great opportunity that they're missing out on one hundred percent, you know.
Gen X Talks: No, they they they're setting their ways and they want the new the new crew. We went down there with our we had staff down there and us and we all had Gen X Talks t shirts we had made up. so out of however many tens or twenty thousand people down there, there was only fifteen people that knew who we were. Everybody was looking for the young creators, the hot creators
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: of that moment. We had a bunch of people that like, you know who you know who pulled us over and said we want an autograph or a picture? Was people that brought their kids and like Hey man, I just showed up with my eleven year old because he insisted we have to go. I didn't know you guys were gonna be here. We
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: the parents knew us.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Well do you get recognized a lot out in public?
Gen X Talks: All the time. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Do you mind that?
Gen X Talks: No. I'll talk with anybody as long as they want. I don't care. You know, that
GenX Adulting Podcast: S
Gen X Talks: that time will come to an end too. So if they want to talk about stuff or take a picture or ask questions, I'll stop what I'm doing the whole time. I don't care.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Have you had people reach out to you to express that because of what you do or something how you've changed their lives or if they were having a dark time just watching your guys's content is what helped them through it?
Gen X Talks: Yeah. over five years, thousands of people have either written me emails or commented on videos or commented during live streams. The most for various reasons, but the the most common denominator is my dad died and or my uncle died or my grandfather died, and watching you is like watching him. I really feel connected to my dad again. Just watch because he treated me the same way you're treating your son or something to that effect. that's the biggest thing. People just they they somehow feel but we're all the same generation. It's not like I'm doing anything different, you know. I'm sure if I died, my son would look at that guy and go, Hey, you're like my dad. It's it's just how we were all raised, but they miss
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right, right, right. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: they miss that and they see some of it in Gen X Talks and they've taken the time to write and say so.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's wonderful. And how has it affected your relationship with Briggs? Did you guys just become even closer through building this together?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, we've always been close. It's it's a little strained now because he's trying to get on with his life. He's really trying to be something and get out in the world. And so whenever he's around Gen X Talks, it's almost like he feels like it's a little bit of a burden. It's like,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: I know I wanna do it, but I really don't wanna do it 'cause I don't wanna do this for the rest of my life. But he's we've talked about it too. He says, Yeah, I'll probably do this like for another year and then he's gonna move away. And then that part of it's over.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Mm.
Gen X Talks: You know, there's a big part of it that's changed.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Right.
Gen X Talks: But we've already anticipated that. And the security camera footage is taking off pretty funny.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And now her brother, Mary's brother, is a boomer. And he's like 72. And he's an old crotchety boomer. So we've already done one video.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: It's an like where my wife films it and I'm like, Your brother's a fucking moron. Everything I do, he doesn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: listen. He's old and he's stuck in his ways.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: And I can't get through to that guy. And she's like, You gotta be nice to my brother. He doesn't fucking listen to me. I I know how to work on cars and we're trying to do something here. It's like working with a baboon. And then we show a clip of me arguing with him. And so now it's me. I've been for five years, I've been frustrated with Generation X. The and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: the the security videos are I'm frustrated with my wife. Everything
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: we're far we're arguing about everything. And now I'm frustrated with a boomer. It's like, God, you are
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: would you hurry up and die? Because I can't go through this anymore. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hilarious.
Gen X Talks: We're moving some things very slowly in that direction, and if it
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: works, it works and if it doesn't, then we gave it a shot.
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, but that goes back to the fluidity of the whole thing and how you need to be changing and and and progressing and growing and all of it. So it sounds like you guys and I know you're gonna be on Gen X cruise, right? Have you ever done something like that before?
Gen X Talks: No, no, not at all. In fact, I I I I was talking, you know, with Dadbod Veteran and and some of the others that are doing the professor. And I said, If you guys need me to help out with something, you want me to hand out tickets at the door or do something, just tell me. I'll fill in wherever you go. I don't wanna I don't wanna mainstream spot and anything, but if you guys need help, just that's why I'm there. And he goes, You gotta just be yourself. You gotta be running around that cruise. yelling at Briggs and, you know, arguing with your wife and so I said, Well, that's easy. I'm doing that anyway. You guys get that for free. but I I did offer, I said if there's anything you guys need, you know, if there's any bikini judging contest, I'm open for that. If anybody would
GenX Adulting Podcast: There you go.
Gen X Talks: like to drink a lot of alcohol late into the evening, I might be your guy. yeah, I've I've volunteered for stuff to to be helpful on that. And there's some people from Gen X Talks that have already bought tickets and they're they're going to see obviously us, but everything.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. No,
Gen X Talks: They want to be part of it, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's awesome. That's really awesome. So is there any other like I call it real life, but yeah, real life encounters you have planned for the next year, like any talks or any where fans
Gen X Talks: Well, one
GenX Adulting Podcast: can find you or see you?
Gen X Talks: Yeah, we d we plugged when we moved up here to northern Nevada, we plugged in locally for the first year. Every car show that was out there, we showed up and put up our our canopy. We have a custom canopy that everybody can see for, you know, miles around and we give away t shirts, we give away things just to get people to hey, we're here.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: we've done that with everybody. You brought up something about having guests on and we don't ever have guests on our podcast. But we have a whole separate thing called interviews that we just started doing
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: on a on a my wife said, You need to start doing interviews. I'm like, how will we get people to do them? So before we moved, we did a few. got some learned the hard way on doing stuff. But since we moved up here, we do them in Zoom. A lot of them we rent a studio in Reno and people will fly in or they drive in and we sit in a real studio and we'll do an interview with them. I guess I guess that's a podcast too. We We record it and we edit stuff out later. But we've that part is really done well. And we've done a lot of social media creators because you know you're in the business. You know them. You know, I got Nick Freitas on, was one of our first guests up here. and his mother lives up here at Tahoe. Dad Bod veteran, Nick the Professor. We did Kelly Manno Slim Sherries on board, Dennis Quaid's coming on the show. We just
GenX Adulting Podcast: that's cool.
Gen X Talks: it's turned out to be just a bunch of stuff. Like I told you, I did Mark Pellegrino and he's like somebody everybody knows. And that turned out to be one of our best interviews on a on a fluke, you know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: and what a great guy. What a what an what a thing I'd missed if I had canceled on that, you know. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right. Yes, yes.
Gen X Talks: the interviews are a whole separate category of what we're doing, and we fit that in between the the shows we do. We started one, Mary wanted me to do one called Off the Record. And she goes, like George, like George Norrie, Art Bell, people call in. With their ghost stories or their Bigfoot stories. I'm like, yeah, I could try that. We did like 39 episodes of people calling into the show and it was huge. I had no idea people would listen to that. And they listen like crazy. I mean, I'm I'm on camera, but the caller is is not. And but they
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: can hear him and just what a what an amazing thing that was.
GenX Adulting Podcast: You guys have so many branches off of this tree. You know, you you there's a lot that you're doing. So even though Briggs is gonna be moving on in a way, you still have numerous
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: avenues here with Gen X Talks. It's just it's just like shift making a shift, but it's definitely your workload is not decreasing.
Gen X Talks: Well, yeah. The st and the staple for keeping followers, keeping viewers, keeping subscribers are the ambush videos. If you stop doing them, those numbers slightly go down. They start going down steadily. You know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm. Hmm.
Gen X Talks: they just do. And we've experimented with it. We've tried, let's not do any ambush videos for ten days. And you look at your analytics and they're just coming down, you know, they every day they add up how many did you gain? How many did you lose?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: you're minus twelve. Now you're minus a hundred. Well, knowing he's leaving, like I mentioned, branching off into the boomer ones for a while or the
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: security camera footage, they're they're starting to take hold and they're I think with him doing them much more in free he'll come home and he'll film five of them on a weekend
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: or something. He didn't mind doing that. But
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: being able to mix them all together and have the numbers either stay steady or grow a little bit. I think that's gonna work for Gen X Talks.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. I could see that completely working out. You could do those remote too, I would think. I don't know. I don't know if it would have that same yeah.
Gen X Talks: It's not it's not easy. We we've done a couple over the phone when he was a kid. Like he had a phone recording and he had a phone calling me on speakerphone and he forget what he said. He goes, I did what you said, I dug up the backyard and I tore out that sprinkler pipe and I he and I said, Good, did you get it all? You guys I chopped it all up, put it in the trash, we're ready to lay the new pipe in there. And then I find out during the speaker phone call that he tore up sewer pipe.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: like, you goddamn moron, you know what the fuck? He goes, I thought it smelled funny for being water b you know. It's not easy to do, but we we've done a couple like that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: so I always ask our guests, from y our Gen X time growing up, what was your favorite go-to movie or your comfort movie from our childhood?
Gen X Talks: I don't know, you can probably pick music and movies from eighty four to eighty six and I'd probably be happy with I mean, there I think I I love all the movies like you know, Back to the Future and like we talked about Breakfast Club 'cause it's relatable. and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, super relatable. And then even towards the late eighties, you know, the movies like Young Guns and things, they just some of that stuff sticks with me. I I'll sit there and memorize lines and and waiting waiting to use those lines at an appropriate time for decades. And they're
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: all in the back of my head just waiting for the opportunity. 'Cause there's some of the greatest movies and the greatest music of all time. And it's just you look at it and go, There is so many hits.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Absolutely. You know, they're making new young young guns. Yeah. Yeah, they're making a
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I saw the promo for that or something. I ac I'm
GenX Adulting Podcast: new one.
Gen X Talks: they're doing redoing something with Goonies too, and I got I'm going up to the I'm going up to Astoria to talk to the owner of the Goonies house. He's redone the entire house like the original and they're talk the new movie. I guess one of our producers has got me getting me lined out to
GenX Adulting Podcast: Nice.
Gen X Talks: go up there and spend some time with them, so that'll be fun.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome. That is I'm gonna watch I I've been watching all the Goonie stuff on social media. I didn't know that the new owner did that, that they brought it back to how it was.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, they I guess they I guess he refurbished the whole thing. I think someone before him had it like a touring place and had a bunch of memorabilia and I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: guess the guy wanted to put it back to as close as he could to the original movie. And and maybe do the same thing. But I if if he did I'll
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is so cool. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I'll learn more when I go there. I don't know all the details right now.
GenX Adulting Podcast: That is so cool. Okay, so what about TV show from that time? I know you watched a lot of them get filmed, but is
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: there a go to where you're like that that was one for sure?
Gen X Talks: I used to memorize A Team movies. I I would
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: I would go to school and repeat the entire epic we had a V CR, I'd record it, I'd watch it a hundred times and I'd go to school and repeat all the lines from the show.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I don't know. There's I never got into Magnum PI, which everybody hates me for not like I just wouldn't do it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: But there's there's there's moments in shows that you live, you can relive in a heartbeat. You put on in the air tonight. by Phil Collins and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Hm. Yep.
Gen X Talks: I'm I'm sitting in that Lamborghini driving at night with Don Johnson. I'm right there. And I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: feel it. I feel I can immerse myself in the moment. And there's so many TV shows that I when when the MASH theme song comes on, I know it's time to go to bed. And I just I see
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: them like, I gotta go to bed now. It's nine o'clock. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: and there's so many singular moments that come out of all those shows. it chips is the same way. You know, and some of you look back now and they're like a little bit corny for something you used to take so seriously. I don't care. I it
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: didn't bother me at all looking at now. I'm I can it takes me right back to one of my favorite points in my life. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: all of them are like that. There's songs, there's movies.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: there was a girl that I was trying to date in high school and I was between me and this other guy, and we were fighting for and fighting for, and I had an old beat up fifty-nine Ford pickup and Back to the Future came out. And he is a rich kid and his daddy bought him a black Toyota four by four. Guess who lost the girl? I lost. So there's a part of me that gets very resentful with Back to the Future when I see
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: that black Toyota 'cause I lost the girl because the other guy had money to buy that truck. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. You know the Miami Vice, I can picture it and I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel like that scene was so epic. It it had us all in a chokehold. Just the I can see the wind blowing, the warm Miami air, all of it. It there was
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: nothing like that. Visually, audio it did the whole thing. Okay, what about music musicians, music acts? Is there a band or a s artist that
Gen X Talks: You know, I'm I'm probably everybody from Generation X like, man, I was Judas Priest. I like KISS and some people say, you know, I I was big into Duran Duran and they like got their list of all their loyalties. And I gotta tell you, I don't know if I was the world's biggest chameleon or I was the biggest liar. But, you know, if someone wanted to go to a rush concert, I was down. We go to Rush. I saw Rush play live. And you know, being in LA, you have that opportunity quite a bit to see
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: bands. And I'm in, you know, I wanna go. If someone said, Hey, we're going up to Magic Mountain, Adam Ant is playing up at Magic Mountain, I'm like, far
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: out, man. Let's go watch Adam Ant play. And if you're around a girl, I will if I was around my guy friends and I'm like, I don't know any songs by Air Supply, I don't know any songs by Chicago, I ain't doing that stuff. You're around a girl, two days later, I will recite every song to you. I will tell you every lyric and sing along with every one of those songs. I don't care.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And people say, well, what's your favorite radio station? Well, I'm with my friends. It was KLOS or KMET or K Rock. And if you're around a girl, it's like, would you like to listen to Coast 103 Love Songs on the Coast? It's I think they're doing dedications right now, you know. So I I will tell you that I have memorized a ton of songs because, you know, whatever friends I was with, whatever they liked, I I didn't care. I was into it. You know, there's
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: a lot of good music and a lot of genres out there, and Def Leopard. To Duran Duran. I mean, there's some good songs all around all around. You just gotta you gotta be around people that are willing to listen to it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, agreed. And you know, res rememorizing the love songs. That's effort. That's effort. And women like to see effort. So,
Gen X Talks: yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you know, putting in the effort to know what she's into and then learn the songs, like that's another
Gen X Talks: And
GenX Adulting Podcast: huge green flag.
Gen X Talks: and that's where you come up with making a mixtape just for them.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes, exactly. A a mixtape was such the I'm dying 'cause no no guys will admit they like Journey, but everybody likes Journey. yeah. Yes. Love but love journey. It's not something you'd admit freely though as a fifteen
Gen X Talks: my one of my favorite bands. I saw Journey play so many times. Yeah. Absolute love Journey. No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: year old boy. Maybe maybe that was I don't know. I feel like I knew guys that like journey. I think every guy likes journey, not every but to what he's saying, depends who you're with. If you're with your boys, no, I don't like journey.
Gen X Talks: The thing was with Yeah, you tell Right. And and then if some guy comes and says, wait a minute, you like Journey? And if they didn't really
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: know a lot about music, you could say, Have you ever seen a guy play like Neil Sean? He shreds. What do you know? It's like, well who's Neil Sean? Only the one of the greatest guitarists ever used to play with Santana and now he's with Journey. That's why I listen to Journey, man. okay, buddy, back off.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah
Gen X Talks: I didn't know you were okay. You really you really know. You're like, Yeah, I I know
GenX Adulting Podcast: That's awesome.
Gen X Talks: I know that much. I don't know anything else about it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, but but me meanwhile you're singing open arms at the top of your voice, you know, w in alone in your room. Okay, before I ask my last question, do you have any I I do, but I wonder did have you ever seen like the chili peppers? 'Cause they're like a local band there LA.
Gen X Talks: I never s I never saw them. I I made a quick mention when I invented my game, it wasn't like it was like D and D, but it didn't have any spells because of my Christian upbringing, because of going to Grace Church, I didn't want to do spells in my game. I just thought I'd just stay away from that. The red hot chili peppers they put off a vibe to me back then of of Satanism. I don't know if
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: it was a show, if it was a gag, or if it was part of their stick, or if they really worship say I didn't know. But back
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm mm.
Gen X Talks: then it was just like that rubs me the wrong way. I just kinda stayed away from it. But I never was vocal about it. I didn't try to steer anybody else. It's like that but it bothered me a little bit. So I just I I never pursued it. That's for my own reasons.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. How about the how about the dead, grateful dead?
Gen X Talks: Yeah. Grateful Dead seemed to follow me around. When I went to Vegas, they played Vegas. When I was in Sacramento, they played Sacramento. Then I realized they played everywhere. It just I was the one going around. Yeah,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes.
Gen X Talks: there was there was deadheads everywhere you went. Yeah. I I like
GenX Adulting Podcast: We
Gen X Talks: the Grateful Dead.
GenX Adulting Podcast: We are everywhere. We're deadheads. We're that's the saying. We are everywhere. All right. My question is she always gives me this opportunity 'cause if not I'd miss it, I guess. you talked about I'm going back to like the adoption and fostering in Have you ever talked about that before? Is that kind of new information 'cause it that's a softy. You're a softy, right, in that sense,
Gen X Talks: They're
GenX Adulting Podcast: right? You it's it's counter the gruffness, but it's also extremely genuine and and real and and selfless and
Gen X Talks: I would bet that maybe over five years of doing live streams I may have brought it up three or four times and maybe one story, you know, something small in it. 'cause there's still so many more stories in there. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: but you guys are the only people I've ever talked to my entire life that have got such a complete picture of anything. I've never spoken in s in succession at detail. and there's There's some big things that I avoided because I didn't want you guys I didn't want to drag I'm taking up your time here. you we talked about missed opportunities. Glenn Beck and Jay Leno approached me about a secret that I'm the only one who knows. I'm literally there's two of us on the entire planet that know the answer to the secret and they were persuading me to do some television stuff about it and I said no.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. And I just I skipped it. I and now I'm thinking, I should go t I should have done that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I have you ever revealed the secret or you still have the secret?
Gen X Talks: I still have and people there I've talked about it on my shows. People know what the secret is about, but they don't know the end result of it, of course. And I've talked a couple of times on OTR we had a guest cancel one night and my wife goes, Just tell the the this the mind story and I'm like, Well, we don't got nine hours. They literally Glenn Beck sent a film crew to my house and they interviewed me for nine hours. And I didn't sign off on them being able to use any of it. I didn't take any money for it and I wouldn't I didn't sign the paperwork where they could use my voice or the stuff. But they've got it. They still have it. But I just wouldn't let use it. And J
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow. Are you comfortable saying what it's about on here?
Gen X Talks: It's the last I think in my mind the last the last hidden secret in the state of California is an old Spanish mine called the Los Padres Mine. And it's been a legend for a long time. As many the Lost Dutchman, there's down the southwest, and they there's a lot of like that. But there are experts that track this stuff down that tell me I'm dead wrong. I'm not in the right place. I don't know what I'm I experts at professor level. university level have sat and said, No, you got it wrong and you're getting it all wrong. And I'm like, okay. And then I c I can prove to them in about three sentences and they their jaw drops open. They're like, wait, what? And I go, Yeah, you're you're missing a couple of key things here that I know. Well, how do you know? Because I've fucking been there. I've
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: I've I've walked, I've been there. And one of my dads from my dad old Vietnam Hells Angel guy used to run around with no t-shirt and barefoot all throughout Southern California his whole life. One of the guys he did it with is a friend of mine. I'm actually gonna go interview him in Sacramento. He has the oldest gold store in California and we're friends. And I said, We need to get all we need to get all of your story from the 70s, my story from the 80s. We need to put them all together. It can take about take us about 10 hours to do this. But I said, Once you die, I don't have any way to tell the stories of what happened in the 70s. You were there. And you don't know what happened in the 80s. I was there. And he goes, We gotta do this. We c so this is coming up in the next couple months. We're gonna sit and record all that, but it is about the Los Padres Mine And I'm never gonna I'm not just gonna tell people where it is. Be and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: the main reason was I didn't want to tell people because I didn't want people I didn't want someone to go there who just wanted to be on the cover of Time magazine. Someone wants to
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: be like, let's go in there and let's be famous and we'll be on TV. And I'm like, No, I don't, I'm not doing it. You know,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: there's there's some Indian stuff that goes along with that that we need to be figuring out because everybody they've already admitted they treated him Catholics treated him badly, you know, all the missions that we know that. But
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: some of that ended up with a bunch of them dying here. They pushed him in the cave and blew it up to hide it. So I'm like, dude, it's kind of someone's last resting place too. Shouldn't we be a little more, you know, respectful of that? And they're like, no, no, we
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: just gotta do this for posterity and, you know, be in the history books. And I well then I don't want to tell you any more than I've already told you. And I've I've walked away from it. And you know, they haven't bothered me about it. But they did for about four or five years. That's they were knocking on the door to my house, my shop all the time, going, you know, we need to get there. And I think part of it too is there's so many people that are experts on this that have in their minds discredited me. They quit looking, they've gone to those people, but they've never done anything with it. And I'll okay, I'll tell you one more thing, unless you wanna we can be done if you wanna be done. So Yeah. So here's how here's how this happened the other day I was
GenX Adulting Podcast: No, no, no, we're good. You gotta zoom in on this though.
Gen X Talks: I wanted to do an interview. I saw we're near, we're really close to Lake Tahoe. We're like 10 minutes away. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Wow.
Gen X Talks: I'm going through Instagram and there's this guy. There's this kid. And he's like, looks like he's 25 years old. And he's trying to get to the bottom of Lake Tahoe. There's big boats that have sank and all sorts of weird things, kind of a Loch Ness monster type thing. All this stuff. And this and I'm like, man, that'd be a good interview. This would be great. And so one of my staffers says, Well, let me track this guy down. So finally get a hold of this guy. There's no, there's no way to get in contact with him. Just his Instagram videos are up there. And they don't have a lot of views. He didn't have a lot of followers. But I thought, man, this kid goes out there in his spare time and and throws these little homemade submersibles in, and he's really trying to figure this out. This is a I like to interview this guy, you know, some little scientist kid doing his thing. They finally get a hold of him and he calls me, he says, or he texts me and he says, Hey, I I we introduced ourselves, of course, and he said, I'd like to have dinner with you first. I was like, Okay. Most people just they w agree to do the interview. We show up and we shake hands and have a sandwich or something. He goes, No, I wanna I want to talk to you first. So I'm like, okay. So I call my brother in law, the Sun Valley Fox, who's big in one of our shows called the Garage Show. We'll get to that some other time. And I said, Hey, I'm meeting this guy down at this restaurant here in Minden. Do you you wanna go with me? He goes, Yeah, I'll go. So we go there and I'm waiting for the I get to the parking lot, I'm looking around waiting for this guy. And this guy comes running up. He goes, Hey, you Mark from Gen X Talks? And I said, Yeah. I said, you're not 25. He goes, why would I be 25? I go, I thought you were a 25 year old scientist kid. He goes, No, I'm 40. He goes, I'm a filmmaker. I went, What? I said, you're done. He goes, well, so we go in and sit down and we're drinking. He goes, Well, what did you contact me for? I said, because you're throwing all this stuff in the water. You're looking for stuff. I thought you were a 25 year old scientist kid who's on the weekends looking for the Loch Nest Monster in Sunken Boats. He goes, No. He goes, I'm a cinematographer. I go, what? And he I go, he goes, Yeah, you don't know who I am? I go, No, I don't even know your last name. He goes, Really? And all of a sudden the mood changes. I go, why does it make a difference if I know who you are? He goes, Because everybody wants to meet me and they have some angle, some story that they're pitching me. And I go, Well, how high up the food chain are you? He goes, I got seven Emmys.
GenX Adulting Podcast: wow.
Gen X Talks: I went, What? He goes, I have seven Emmys. I've been on stage seven times collecting Emmys for my work. I went, Far out. He goes, You didn't know that? I go, No, I I didn't know who you were. I was just having a beer
GenX Adulting Podcast: my gosh.
Gen X Talks: with some kid talking about the lake. And we were there three hours. And he is he's the only cinematographer that's won that many Emmys. His wife is an amazing big producer for shows. And we became friends and I said, Look, dude, I said, I'm sorry to drag you down here. I said, I had no idea who you were. He goes, Well, that's what makes our meeting even better. He goes, you
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: you weren't, you know, sucking up to me. I said, I I'll try harder next time, but I didn't know I didn't know who you were this time.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: So now he wants to film stuff with me. He we bought a bunch of comedy stuff he wants to do. I've been out up to the lake with him, with his crew, filming our content to tie into his content. And while we're there, I said, okay, so we're all we're all convinced now, we're pretty assured. I didn't know who you were. He goes, No, you had no idea who I was. I said, okay, so can I tell you a story? And I started telling him part of the story of the Los Padres mine. He never blinked. He never moved. He didn't take a sip of his beer. He just sat there and he goes, When I'm done with these projects, you and I need to sit down and talk. And I said, Okay, if you want. And I think he's very serious in about a year. He wants to sit down, you know, he's put he's dumping a shit ton of money into the bottom of the a bottom of Lake Tahoe where there's probably nothing.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: You want to go after something big, then let's drag this out. And he goes, and he s made some comment, or my brother in law made some comment about well, what happens after you find it. And Michael looks at him and goes, They've been looking for the curse of Oak Island for twenty seasons and they don't find it. They're not the
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: whole trick is keep people going, but don't find the gold, 'cause then your show's over.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. So do you think you guys may end up doing a show just based on that?
Gen X Talks: I have no idea. He has never mentioned the word show. He's he just said, I want to talk to you later. That's it. But my feeling is is that because I could see how interested he was and I ran down the names of the people with Glenn Beck and I showed him something online where they actually did use my voice where they weren't allowed to. It was on the blaze. And that I go, that's me. That's all my voice talking there. And they weren't didn't have permission to use it, but I didn't say anything about it. And then the Jay Leno guy is approaching me. Now he knows that there's That is a serious interest with production crews, whether they're interested still or not, there was. And he's like, No, I can see why they're interested. And and he goes, I want to talk to you. That's all he said. Didn't nothing else. Didn't didn't make a promise even to talk, just said he wanted to.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: But yeah, that's and what are the chances that I'd run into that guy? Well, how lucky was that that I ran into the guy, I thought he was somebody, I thought he was a kid throwing, throwing buoys in the water. And it turns out to be something different.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean Leads me to another question. When you started all this, you had no idea the shape and form this would all take, I bet, right? Yeah, it's pretty wild.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, not at all. And especially the interviews, you know, the interviews lead to more interviews because, you know, when you're talking with somebody, I'm like, hey, do you this was I I've I will tell you one thing. I if there's ever a time in your in our talk where I'll pat myself on the back and and at the same time question you. Yeah, you didn't know that was coming, did you? I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Fine.
Gen X Talks: don't have notes. Whenever I do an interview, I have no notes, no nothing. I never have. And Every single interview I've had, people have gone away going, That was the best interview I've ever done. You didn't talk about all the this typical stuff. You know, what
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: were your notes? What did you do? And even the people I do it in studio, I tell them, I don't have notes. This is really just going to be a conversation wherever you want to go. So
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: that has turned out when people are done, every single celebrity or or social media celebrity has exchanged phone numbers with me right there on the spot after we're done.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: Like, do we need to stay connected and do something, you know, we need to do some stuff together or talk or more, or let's do this again in a year and get caught up and so
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: th those opportunities have turned into more opportunities and they're just interviews. We didn't know what we were gonna do with the interviews. It wasn't
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: part of the podcast, it wasn't part of anything, it was a whole new area that we were just gonna spend time doing and they've turned out to be great people, great guests.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I have my last question to ask you. So are you done? I think so. Okay. Yeah. No, I f I find you to be super fascinating. Yeah. Love your stories. Absolutely.
Gen X Talks: Well, appreciate it.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Absolutely. My last question is always, where do you see yourself in five years?
Gen X Talks: I don't think we'll be doing Gen X Talks in five years. I think it'll run its course in the next year or so. I think maybe my wife and I would probably still just do the podcast stuff. because that we do it every week and we have such a big following that are genuinely vested. They, you know, there's so much going on in life and they wanna they tune in and go, All right, how did this turn out? You know, they wanna
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: know, maybe in five years, I think maybe I just I kind of brought this up in our last podcast as a joke to my wife because I had joked about it a long time ago. And I said, you know, instead of finishing building our house out here, what if we stopped on that? Because we already bought the property and did a bunch of stuff. But what if we just bought a big RV and we just spent like a couple of years traveling around seeing all of our kids and our grandkids? You know, spend a month at one place and just do a bunch of stuff, you know, our daughters and San Diego or something and go to Disneyland and do spend a month down there just with the grandkids and then go to another place where they are because our kids are all spread out. I said,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: and then in between stop and see some stuff that we'd like to go see. And I was joking about it and she's like, That sounds great. I'm like, What? So now
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I've actually got that in the back of my mind. I was like, I wonder if a year from now I couldn't just do that. Let's just get an R V a big one, you know, get an R V and a little tow car behind it or something. And I wonder if we could just take a couple of years and travel around and then come back and I don't know, build the house or not build the house or do whatever when we're done because that's all my family does right now is they're like, well, you gotta build that house. You gotta have a house and a retirement and a savings account. I'm like,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm.
Gen X Talks: yeah, I I know. I've already done that. I did my house. I had my businesses. I got you and I still got a couple commercial properties left. I got it. But I gotta tell you, it's just not as big a deal for me to build that house and say, I am now In my own home. I I did that. I got it. You know, I've right
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: now I'm thinking of other things and they're unconventional and people look at me that it's cross eyed or wrong. I don't know, where am I in five years? Maybe I'll be in an R V traveling around visiting all my kids and grandkids and still doing podcasts with my wife. I don't know, maybe I'll be in that house. Maybe we'll build that little three bedroom, two bath house and be sitting over there and have chickens and be planting planting stuff in the garden. One of those two things is where it'll be. I just don't know which one.
GenX Adulting Podcast: I think they both sound amazing. And I think it's so indicative of where so many Gen X are and how we're approaching this part of our lives is reinvention and we're not doing the a lot of us are not doing the normative thing. And we're like, you know what, why not have an adventure? Why not do these things? and I think we're helping redefine aging in general. Of b a lot of us are not following that path and we're saying, Why can't we do this at fifty-five sixty, sixty-five, seventy? Why not? You know?
Gen X Talks: I will tell you there's one story in my life that that even that always anchors me that it might be okay to live differently than people expect. I knew a guy, he was married to his wife since they were like 19, all the way till they were seventy. He never had a brand new car. He had a family, just couldn't afford it, didn't work out, never owned a home. He always rented a home, he liked rent one for ten years or very long, but he never owned his own home. He never had a brand new car. He Took very good care of his family, loved his wife to death and his kids. And he got old and died. And I was there close to the end of his life. And I looked at him. I remember sitting there in his house and going, You didn't do any of the you have no savings. You got to have a retirement. You don't even own your own home. You never had a new car. He goes, I know. I felt bad about that sometimes. I said, You're happier than me. I told him that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm.
Gen X Talks: I go, You're happier than most people I know.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gen X Talks: And I looked at him and he says, That's all I ever tried to be. He goes, and I got judged my whole life by what I did or didn't have, what I accomplished. And I get that all the time because I haven't made all the greatest financial moves. I got my I could build a house. I can build I can finish building my house. I got enough to do that. I still got a couple of commercial properties. They're paid for. You know, I mean I could do something with them. But I'm I'm nowhere near where I'm supposed to be. I'm nowhere near everybody else I know. And I but you know what? I spent ten years with my wife every day being the happiest guy. I'm I ha laughing so much I almost cry every day. And I don't know I that one guy reminded me just to be happy and didn't the other stuff isn't as important. It is important. It's good goals to have. Yes, you're supposed to have security and comfort. Yep, I got it. but I always remember that one guy and I remember looking at him going, You're happier than I am and you have nothing compared to what I had at the time. And
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: he and and I had I had way more than him. And he's way he was genuinely happiest guy and happiest wife I'd ever known in my whole life. So I refer to that sometimes when I think about some of my decisions.
GenX Adulting Podcast: How how long have you two been married?
Gen X Talks: officially married two thousand and five, so twenty-one years. And then,
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Gen X Talks: you know, some time before that. And like I said, I don't it kind of feels weird that I we've known each other our whole lives. Like we feel like and in
GenX Adulting Podcast: Right.
Gen X Talks: in the times we were apart, all those all those years of talking filled in all those get all that time. I
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah.
Gen X Talks: I got all of her memories and stuff that she did. I can tell you where she went. And she can tell me my stuff. It's like we got to f That gap where we didn't know each other, we filled it all in. We told each other everything.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's awesome. It almost feels like you're making up for lost time too. By you know, you're
Gen X Talks: Yeah. It's a this
GenX Adulting Podcast: together. It's I think that's cool. Well, I think you're never gonna regret the last ten years ever, that time with her. Ever that
Gen X Talks: No.
GenX Adulting Podcast: you know, you look back and anything you guys do going forward, you're never gonna regret any of that. So I do hope if you guys hit the road that you do a podcast though.
Gen X Talks: I think we would. We've looked into things like even out where we live because there's not a lot of s there's not a lot of internet out there. or that where the house would be where we bought the land, is that Starlink seems to be getting to a point where you can do a live stream without glitching, you can do a podcast without glitching. So it it seems to be that's that would be well enough, especially a year from now, maybe it'll be good enough where you could just buy it and and do it that way without any hitches.
GenX Adulting Podcast: They you can they've got those mobile antennas now you can throw on top of an R V.
Gen X Talks: Yeah, I was just worried about the data. Could it handle it? Could would it would it work smoothly? That's the only question I really had.
GenX Adulting Podcast: It it I I've played with it. It it works pretty good. It you can y the thing if you do it, you just have to look at your home market. What happens is you sign up in Reno, let's say, and you'll get preference over if I came in from Florida on the on the roaming plan.
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: So as you're cruising around, there's probably a nationwide plan you'd want to sign up for, but that's that's down the road.
Gen X Talks: Right. I didn't know that. That's good information. Thank for that, 'cause I wouldn't even have known to look into that.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yeah. Brian's an IT guy, so if you have any questions going forward with any of that stuff, well we use it. I've tested it. It's it's amazing. It you do get like two hundred something megs down and forty megs up and that's plenty for streaming.
Gen X Talks: Yeah. You guys realize that between the two things when you splice you together, we're we're well over four hours. Is that is that typical for you guys? Is that how
GenX Adulting Podcast: yeah. Yeah. And on that note, that's yes.
Gen X Talks: long that runs?
GenX Adulting Podcast: Yes. We've had people go five hours. But yeah, that's that's typical. Like Sherri was about four and a half. I think Kelly was three and a half. Yeah, that's it's pretty our our short ones are like two hours, forty-five minutes. Those are our short
Gen X Talks: Well
GenX Adulting Podcast: ones. So this is average for us. And actually, I've asked my last question, so we're about to wrap this up.
Gen X Talks: I guess so.
GenX Adulting Podcast: But again, thank you, Mark, for coming on and spending almost four or over four hours. I think we're coming up on four hours. I think this is a real treat for your followers and fans to get this long form access to you. I think they're gonna love it. And it's also a wonderful thing for your children to have going forward. And we just, you know, we can't thank you enough for spending so much time with us. We really appreciate it.
Gen X Talks: No, it's it was my privilege to be here. Thank you guys for even considering me. I just I didn't know if I was gonna be your best guest, but I certainly didn't wanna be boring. That's what I told Mary. I said I just don't want them to go, Well, that was a waste of time.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Absolutely not. No, this was so enjoyable. It was so wonderful to get to know you and hear your story. And you certainly were not boring in any way. I find one theme I find besides the leadership is that the universe, whatever you want to call it, God, the universe, you know, threw you opportunities early in life that you admittedly said you did not take, but it did not give up on you because it continued to throw you opportunities up until even this point. And just even like the meeting the cinematographer at at
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Like Tahoe, like so I think you've hit you hit a yes point where you started saying yes to all the opportunities. And I think that's has so much to do with the success of Gen X Talks as well, is that you seem to be in a space where you say yes now to all the opportunities. So, you know, kudos to that too, right? That you it came
Gen X Talks: Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: full circle and you you do take those opportunities now.
Gen X Talks: Not as dumb as I used to be, so
GenX Adulting Podcast: I wish I could say this again. Yes, I know that we kept
Gen X Talks: I will. Yeah.
GenX Adulting Podcast: so much time. We kept you from from lunch and everything.
Gen X Talks: she's gonna be mad because at four o'clock we're supposed to start a live stream across town, a big garage
GenX Adulting Podcast: no. no.
Gen X Talks: show where we're actually working on stuff. They can't go over and set anything up because I'm using the equipment and we're supposed to be running at four
GenX Adulting Podcast: no no no
Gen X Talks: and
GenX Adulting Podcast: Okay. Okay. my gosh. All You got 34 minutes. You're fun. Listen, we know we know about okay, pressure like this. So I'm gonna wrap this up then. So everywhere you can find if you don't know about Gen X Talks, which would be shocking, everywhere you can find Mark will be in the show notes to all listeners and leave any comments or questions. Mark will see them, or Briggs or Mary, everyone over there will see them. And we always love to hear from you, so please leave us any comments or questions. And thank you again, Mark, and thank please thank Briggs and Mary as well. and your whole staff. We loved having you and we will see you next time. Bye.
Gen X Talks: Thank you very much for letting me be here.
GenX Adulting Podcast: Thank you.