Another trip down Memory Lane headed your way, courtesy of Fire Guy Ryan!
When Tom mentioned to me that we were going to start doing a blog on our website, I got excited. (I like writing. If you've read any of the other blogs I've written on here, you know they aren't short. I ramble.) But almost immediately I got the idea: What if I wrote blog posts highlighting older videos on our channel that don't have as many views? We've made a whole bunch of content over the nearly two years (!) we've had this channel up and running, and especially in that first year, a lot of those older videos haven't been seen by the much larger-sized audience we have today.
I ran my idea by Tom, and he was on board. There was just one ground rule: "Start by highlighting a normal video. Don't do one of the weird ones." I've done a few safer blog articles, and there have been numerous contributions by the rest of the talented community members we have here...so this article might just fall through the cracks. Tom might not even find out!
Ladies and gentlemen, the video I'm about to highlight below is definitely "one of the weird ones." I give you...what has been informally dubbed by our team as...THE POOPCAST.
If you don't like reading (what are you even doing here then?!), you can just click this link and go check out this video. It's sitting at just over 2,000 views, so I know it hasn't been seen by very many people (our current podcasts and Top 10 Lists usually max out around 10,000 views). If you want to hear way more background info than you ever thought you possibly needed on how this seven-minute monstrosity of a video came about, keep scrolling my friends.
It was June 13th, 2018. This was a big day for Tom and I. I had the day (night?) off work, and the plan was to drive up to Tom's and spend the whole day making content. We were aiming to record around five videos, which is an insane amount by the way. I still think, looking back, that it might have been the most Tom and I have gotten done in any one day. But before all that, of course we had to get our hair done.
Tom took me to his barbershop and we got an actual hair cut for me. For years, I had just been going in to Supercuts and telling them "just make it shorter" without giving it a second thought. Thankfully, mercifully, Tom put that to rest and introduced me to this wonderful establishment. That was the first appointment of many, as I've been going to them ever since! (I actually really need to go back in this week...)
With our hair looking the freshest of fresh, Tom and I were finally ready to head back to his house and hit the studio to record. I did end up recording five videos that day: part eleven in our ongoing Infinity Gauntlet breakdown series (a video series which I will absolutely have to spotlight here someday soon); a video of tips on How to Sell Comics on Instagram; a reaction video to the trailer for the film Halloween that came out in 2018; an update on the Stan Lee/Keya Morgan restraining order situation we had reported on earlier that year; and of course...the infamous POOPCAST.
Tom and I had a full day, as you can see. The plan was for us to record all day until Russ stopped by the house that night after closing up the comic shop (the world-famous Mill Geek Comics, in Mill Creek, Washington!) and he and Tom were set to record a video about Half-Price Books and the stickers they put on their secondhand comics.
This day - again, June 13th, 2018 - was about four months into this YouTube channel experiment. I was starting to get the hang of things. This was, however, the first time that Russ and I would be at the studio at the same time. I had seen Russ at the comic shop of course, and set up a pull list with him, but we had only known each other for a couple months at this point and hadn't ever really had an in-depth conversation that wasn't in the comic shop. He and I decided that if we still had the energy by the time we were done with the important videos, we would try and sit down and record something one-on-one - without Comic Tom! - and see what happened. The important part of that last sentence being "if we still had the energy." Russ and I were clearly delirious and/or out of our minds during this entire video. As you are about to see.
Russ and I literally sat down to record this video with no plan whatsoever. We started talking about our day jobs, which led to me explaining that I work overnight at a hotel at the front desk and that it mostly just entails people calling down to the front desk in the middle of the night to ask for a plunger.
Russ then takes the ball and runs with it. The ball in this case being "stories that kind of relate to poop." Bear in mind that Tom is in the room with us, standing off-camera, as you can tell by the shifty glances I kept making to the side, almost as if I could tell this conversation was running off the rails and waiting for Tom to yell "CUT!"
The story Russ tells here is so hilariously uncomfortable and awkward that it would truly be a disservice to try and transcribe it here in any way. Let's just say that he bought a collection from somebody and ended up with a bit of a mess on his hands. And all over his shop's bathroom.
After Russ finished his story, and with my story being long over, we both rambled for a minute or so, scrambling for some way to somewhat-gracefully bring this video to a close. It literally took Tom yelling at us from off-screen "SOMEBODY SAY 'GEEK RESPONSIBLY'!" to make us try and actually attempt to end the video. But Russ and I both wanted to have the last word, so we kept chiming in and telling the audience to like and subscribe, and, in Russ's, case, "tell us your favorite place to poop in the comments below!"
Russ finally managed to get out the final words "NUFF SAID" before we both cracked up laughing and Tom poked his head into frame to apologize to the viewers and bemoan the fact that we took a comic book podcast and immediately ran off the rails and talked about poop instead.
It's this sense of energy and laughter that makes this video stand out for me. It's special in another way too, as it was the first time I was on camera with Russ. Hopefully this video is as important to him as it is to me! Check this video out if you want to see a side of us that you rarely get to see.
-Fire Guy Ryan
Fire Guy Ryan (sometimes just known as Normal Ryan) is one of the co-hosts on the ComicTom101 YouTube channel (and podcast!). When he's not reading comics or talking about them with his friends Tom, Russ, Jeff and Eryn, he's most likely working his graveyard job at the hotel in Seattle or sleeping in the daytime, and those are the two reasons he's probably not answering you right now. He's a lover of storytelling - film and television in particular - and every now and then he tries writing his own screenplay. He totally didn't write this blurb about himself either.