#0005 Justin Laser

Summary: Transcript So, our audience can’t hear that track, but I put the call out a few episodes back that I needed more music and I have, everybody knows Max. Maximus Troy on Facebook, you can go on Facebook. Corvo Well, he has his mythical persona too. So I have Max on [Unintelligible] Corvo. So I have to call you Corvo now? No. Or that’s your stage name? Yes. Corvo? Yes. So, my guest for the day is going to be Justin, my brother. But I wanted Max to talk about, just a little, briefly about his music there. Yeah, well, obviously you heard it wasn’t very good [Laughs]. Oh, no, I thought It was awesome, that’s why we played it. Everybody liked it. So, what’s the background on it? And I’m gonna have Justin talk about it a little bit too. I just made it on Garage Band. That’s not really anybody playing an instrument or anything, like… But you did some of the instruments? Well, in one of my other songs, I did some Ukulele, wasn’t very good. No, but I mean, like you did the Garage Band and the instruments, manually though, did you? Right. Yeah. So that’s an instrument. But I also did the loops. Sure, so does everybody. Yeah, everyone uses loops. So, our audience is saying: “Don’t have Justin at all, just have Max.” Oh, well… Yeah. OK, did you say yeah? So, ok, but this particular song what was it called? What’s the name of that song called? Well, that was “Fist Full of Caps” and if you play “Follow” then you’ll probably know what that’s referencing. Nice, ok, ‘cause I had no idea. Yeah. Caps is.. Your uncle knew, but… Caps is a currency, in like, they’re bottle caps. So, it’s “Fist Full of Caps!?” exclamation point, question mark? Yes. So, it’s like a question? Yes, ‘cause it’s like weird; they use caps as money. They use bottle caps as money. Cool. It’s weird. That’s awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So, let’s hand this over to Justin. Hold on, hold on. You have some more, yeah? You have some more songs coming up, that are gonna…I’m gonna play another one. Yeah. By another artist at the end of the show? Yeah. But then we have some other songs in upcoming shows that people can look forward to, right? Yeah. Awesome. I believe “Trail of Paradise” and there’s one other song that I can’t remember what it’s called. I’ll get it later. That’s OK. We’ll figure it out. No, I think I can figure it out. It’s very important.So…So, it’s this one, right? “Brink of the Nun” “Brink of Dawn.” Yeah. And which one did you play the ukulele on? I think it was “Trail of Paradise” my favorite when. Yeah. Well you’re a great singer and I can’t wait for you to get produced by your cousin Jordan. That’ll be awesome. Yeah. For a real album, right? Yeah. So look forward to “Light a Rocket”, “Brink of Dawn” and “Trail of Paradise” Nice. OK. Thanks Max. So then we had, Tricia wanted to say one more thing since I cut her short last time. She was… Well figured She was offended that I didn’t ask her the question that I ask everybody else, which is: “When you come back to co-host”, which in my defense you did say you were moving to Indy so I just thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to.. But I said I’m keeping my office. But, right, right. There’s all that extra stuff that I didn’t actually know, so. So anyways… You don’t listen because you’re my friend. So, fire away. I know you have a few people you wanted to bring back, so give me a couple of names. OK. Well the person I want to co-host with the most would be John Maino. Him and I have done some shows together, he’s asked me to, and we have done some events together and he is just a wealth of knowledge and he is a fun guy and he gives so much to the community for the vets and that’s just my person. Yeah, he’s a good guy though. So, I’m putting a shout out to him. Almost like when we did the challenge, the bucket The ice bucket challenge? Yeah. I’m putting a challenge out right now: John Maino I want you to be on this podcast: “Ideas By Elliot.” Thank you. OK. So if you tag him on Facebook or something you gotta make sure to tag the right episode, so this is gonna be, right? I got it.OK. Thanks Elliot my tech person. OK, thanks Tricia my Law person. [Laughs] Peace out. Bye Nick. See you later. OK, so we got all of our special guests out of the way now we can come to the main event, which is, you might not know, but he’s my brother, he’s name is Justin, but his…go ahead. Hey, how’s it going? And, so, first thing we’re gonna do is: what’s your full name Justin? Oh, it’s Justin James Laser. So, tell me about your name. Oh, my name? Well… What is up with that? Yeah. Well, I switched my last name right after I got married and part of it is my name used to be Justin Christenson and then it got shortened to like J-Christ and things like that and I just really didn’t like it and it didn’t really fit me, it’s not my style and then I talked about switching it and a number of different names came by that we thought about switching to and my wife and I both came to Laser and we both liked that, so that’s why it became Laser. So, it’s not your style. So, like when you’re up on stage, you know, you want people to be showing “Laser, Laser, Laser,Laser”? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. What is it that you do that you’re up on stage? Oh, I’m not up on stage. [Laughs] I was just about to say this Beam Major Laser. [Laughs] Are you in the military by chance? It would have been cool to switch it; you know my first name and middle name, as well. Yeah. It could have been like Sonic Laser [Laughs] But I didn’t want to switch the middle name as well, so. It was a bit too much. OK. So what is it that you do? Like this is what guys talk about, right? You introduce yourself, you’re like: “I am Justin” and “I’m blah” and “I’m Nick, and I produce awesome podcasts”, and “I’m Elliot and I sand the beach and wear my sunglasses at inappropriate times.” So what is it that you do? So that’s all that you do is sit on the beach? No, we don’t have a beach. We’re working on it. Working on it, yeah. I’ve been to some other beaches, went to Sheboygan. Yeah. Went to Michigan. No, I don’t hang out on the beach all the time. But, what is it that you do? Well, right now I’m a courier for FedEx. That’s a pretty recent job that I’ve gotten. But I went to school for is… So, it’s very important that people have the right last name when you’re delivering packages. Yeah. Actually, they don’t even see your name. Right. This is my point. Well. [Laughs] You know, I think that air is important sometimes. Right. It adds atmosphere. I added a lot of atmosphere there. So, yeah, I’m making fun of you a lot. Yeah, cause… You are my brother and that’s whatever. So, but what is it that you did before that? Oh, I was teaching at a charter school earlier. Yeah, so talk about that. Charter schools. Yeah. So, at the beginning of last year’s school year I found about this teaching job, I teach Social Studies, so it’s always been tough getting a position teaching Social Studies and I teach either the middle school or high school level, so this is at the middle school level and it was eighth graders, and it was great. It was U.S. History, I thought: “Well, this is going to be wonderful.” Ended up getting the job and the school started off under that: “Well yeah, there’s some rough kids from inner city Milwaukee area” and yeah it was a pain ‘cause I had to move down to Milwaukee to teach, but I thought: “Well, you know but, you know, you do things correctly and the kids will fall in line” and, yeah, things started swinging at you, throwing things at you, they swear all the time and it got pretty rough. So, it was rough. Yeah.It was really rough. And then when you come to the administration and say: “Hey, listen, it’s just unacceptable behavior” and they say: “Well, you just have to deal with it. We’re not going to do anything to the kids.” Yeah, so this was a charter school with Milwaukee Public School District, right? Yeah, it was. So, you know, it’s widely recognized, I think, I don’t think I’m talking out of turn, Milwaukee doesn’t have one of the best school districts in the world or in the country, right? Yeah. And I had no illusions that the kids would be wonderful kids, but well, we’re still gonna hold the line, you know, what’s appropriate, right? So, I know you’ve told me some of the stories about that, why don’t you share some of the stories. Yeah, I mean, during the first week a kid tried to punch me in the face, right, in the first week. So, and I knew it would be pretty rough, but I thought: “Well, a kid like that, they’ll discipline them, something’ll happen.” Absolutely… You were hitting on his girlfriend, right? No, I actually I think, if I recall correctly, I asked him if he could sit down. Interesting. And you were a teacher? Yeah. And this was a student? Yeap. OK. Yeah, so he took a swing at me and…But you know there was the very situations like that; I was tackled once by one of the kids and then he was put right back into class the very next hour. As if nothing happened. So, yeah, it was pretty frustrating to deal with those situations, but generally, you know, they’re kids, they’re not just evil people trying to do bad things, so, on a day to day basis, they weren’t trying to do bad things, they just kind of did whatever they wanted Yeah. And you had to try to control that and keep them in line, and it was difficult at time and you had to have a lot of patience, but… But you had no authority and there were no consequences. No, there were no consequences. So, Trisha was talking about Tom Brady and you know he’s got his quarterback job and he has the NFL and he broke the rules and there were some consequences for that, and you know, this is a professional at the top of his game, top of his career and this is a guy who’s earned some of his notoriety and some of his, you know, he’s earned some breaks potentially, right? So why do you suppose it is that there’s no consequences? I, mean, without consequences I don’t even know why you bother having the role. I don’t, I mean, you have to have consequences and you have to stick firm to them, so…but, when kids do things, there would always be idle threats, but the kids would see right through them ‘cause they would see that nothing would happen. So, you gave me a slow starter about walking on the pole. Let me think. I don’t remember the whole story either. I was hoping you’d remember. [Laughs] It’s something about, like you’d ask the kids to… Oh, they’re supposed to walk in a single file line down the hall, and stay down the right, and they had no “what happens if they don’t do it?” Right. But then some of the kids didn’t call you out on that one? Yeah, and I mean, obviously it disappoints me. And you could tell them that, but they don’t, you know, they don’t care if you… From some extent you seen that they’re used to disappointing people, so that doesn’t make a big difference to them either. Not that they want to disappoint, but yeah, they were no real, they wouldn’t get, nothing would happen to them. I think the worse was if they were swearing, we brought it forward to the administration, and hey, if they’re swearing, you should be doing something about that, and they said: “We’re not going to do anything about swearing. They just do it too much. There’s nothing we can do to curve that.” And after that, one of the other, one of the special ed ladies that was working in the building, she quit after that ‘cause she just couldn’t take it. So, yeah, I was wondering about that because you’re bleeding her liberal. So I don’t think, that’s not a slam I’m just saying you’re of your own one in politically , or maybe towards the middle, but there are people who are on the other end politically: “Do we want to completely disenfranchise a wide array of viewpoints as teachers?” ‘Cause there are people that’ll be like: “This is off the charts insane”, and they might use stronger language than that even, and, you know, what do you do about that? Because then it becomes an eco-chamber of, you know, only teachers who are like: “Well, I’m gonna stick to this no matter what. I think these kids deserve...they have a right to an education”, you know, that mentally, right? ‘Cause that’s the whole thing: they don’t want to kick the kids out, ‘cause what do they do then? There’s a dollar value associated with each kid. Oh, tell me about that. Yeah. So, and I don’t know the exact dollar value, but each kid, you know, a kid could so many things wrong and it’d be obvious that we just don’t have the staff on hand to be able to handle a kid with that many problems, but they’d still want to keep the kid in some fashion because there’s a dollar value associated with them, and if you don’t have enough kids there, we don’t have enough money coming in and they can’t run the school. So, from some stand point that’s a business decision, but at another stand point you’re recognizing the education of all the other kids that do want to learn, and there were many of them that did want to learn and were good students, so I don’t want to paint a bad picture on all of them. But it makes it really difficult for, let’s say it’s 80% that are good, if 20% are vocally horrible, you know, they’re horribly bad, and I feel very strongly if you kicked out just a fraction of those and show that there are some consequences I think that would curve some of that. I completely agree. Yeah. So, what did you do about that? Well, to be fair, the ones that were the worst offenders, the things that were illegal like: brought drugs to school, brought other people into the building that they let into the building to beat up and fight other people, when they pulled acts like that they were removed from the school, so to be fair when they did things that were completely illegal or completely dangerous. So what happened to them then? They would remove them then. So, they would remove them for how long? They would expel them from the school. OK. Well, that’s good. And you need to show that. There were a couple, but those were really extreme situations and that’s what you’d expect. So, I could be completely wrong, but the whole time I was in school I don’t recall any of that, at all. You didn’t have fights every week? No, when I was in high school I don’t recall there ever being fights on school grounds that weren’t just immediately, like, broken up. Oh, I agree. Like, because before it would even become an issue, no teacher would ever be touched at all. I remember a girl in middle school said something to a teacher and she was out, she was suspended for, I don’t know, a few days anyways, something like that, right? Yeah. Me and you would expect a pretty harsh reaction, you know. And that was just words, and it wasn’t, there were no f-bombs, it wasn’t even really, really strong language and that sticks out of my memory. Like that was such a, not traumatic, but it was a big thing. So, I don’t know. I know that I have a lot of friends who are, they would claim, pro-education and I think that paints people who have a different view as being anti-education. I don’t really think that anybody is really anti-education. No, I don’t think so either. I think that there are some people who see some of these problems and they have different approaches to how we should’ve fixed those things. So, you know you have the typical person, Scott Walker, that gets painted as a villain in education I think a lot, and then you have people on the other end that want to do nothing and are like: ‘They’re just kids. They deserve an education.” Well, I don’t know if that’s the case, this was a charter school and Scott Walker promotes charter schools, so I don’t know if you would want it to be run that way or not, I don’t know. You think you would..? I don’t know. I don’t think he would, I don’t anybody would want it to be that way, but the system that was created encouraged running the school that way. So, because of the incentives that…the cost incentives? Yeah. The cost incentive without enough incentives to create a meaningful learning environment versus just trying to pack kids in, even if you can’t handle them. Yeah. I’ll cut to the chase a little bit. So, what happened to that school? Well, it did close down, but not because they didn’t teach kids; because of financial reasons. So, I think they could have been, that situation could have been improved if they would have taken out some of the bad seeds. I mean, that’s probably oversimplifying it a little bit, but I think that, anyway I feel like that those are some little stories to share about that I don’t think a lot of people realize how bad some of our schools are, and that’s probably not the worst school in the district. I kind of question that myself: “Could this be the worst?” I don’t know, but what are the odds that it’s the worst, that wouldn’t even make sense, like I randomly ended up in the worst school; and I don’t think it is. And there were some days that went fine. Yeah. But you’re in, like what I consider to be a nicer part of Milwaukee. Yeah, it was. You were right in the border of Milwaukee and Brown Deer, which is where you lived for a while. Yeah, and that area is pretty nice. Brown Deer is very nice. Brown Deer, Menominee Falls, that whole area is, yeah. I liked it. Now, a lot of the kids came from the inner city area, they’re all bussed up, so, quite a distance, actually. Sure. And it’s probably to their benefit, to get them to a nicer area to go to school, safer area. You think that that helped at all? Yeah, I think that that helped protect those kids from the things around them. Yeah. So at least they had a little island of escape. Yeah. Yeah. Nice So. OK. And the kids felt safe. You could tell. They felt much safer being at school than they, and they’d say that, than they do most of the time. Yeah. So, it was a safe place for them. Right. Right. So, why aren’t you teaching now? Oh, I didn’t get another teaching job right away. Afterward the school shut down I didn’t know it was going to shut down, we didn’t get much notice, and I just, sort of, came across another job randomly because of a friend right afterwards, so, at FedEx.That was really pretty handy to pick up another job right when you were left off like nothing had happen, especially when we got about a week’s notice that the school was going to close, so otherwise I would have just been unemployed for a while. So, I hear that a lot from teachers that it’s hard to get a job. Well, in certain areas. OK, so why? Why is that? We created too many teachers. I mean, that’s long in charge of that. OK, so, this becomes sort of circular logic, but I hear at times, I saw on Facebook a comment on the “Stadium Tax”, Stadiums will pay for when there’s some extra money left over, very first thing was “Put it into education.” So, if you over-simplify that, everyone would agree with that sentiment, right, I think that almost everybody is pro-education, they might not be pro-spending on education, I think that some of these stories bring to light some of the reasons why some of them might feel that way, but I know when Ben was going to college there was extra money put aside if you would promise to go teach in an inner city for, I think, two years, something like that. Oh, Ok. So, he was able to, if he wanted to, go for education to get extra money; so, I mean, we as a State, as a society, whatever, we’re putting money in to education, at the college level even, to foster more and better teachers, I guess. So, like, what do you think we should do? I mean, plenty can be spent on education, if that’s a good thing, it’s just the way you go about spending it. In what way though? When you’re talking about there being an excess of teachers for a certain area part of that is just class sizes are very large. When you have classes that are very large you have people sitting on the side with no jobs and you could be spending the extra money to have them teaching kids and most studies will show you that the smaller the class size, the student to teacher ratio, that’s always a benefit to have that as close as possible to fewer students per teacher. So, are class sizes larger than they used to be? Yeah. Yeah, they are. Yeap. So, why do you suppose that happened? Do you want to spend more money on it, you could have more… But, we’re spending more money than we ever had on education. Well, part of that is inflation, like in the Green Bay’s school district we’re not spending a ton of more, but down Milwaukee they are. Right. So, they’re spending a lot more. So, how do you answer that? How do you address that? I don’t where all that money is going down there, it’s pretty terrible. They spend a lot more per student in Milwaukee than Green Bay ever has. So those are the criticism on the other side, right? It’s neither to say that we need to spend more money, right? Yeah. But, I don’t see that working. Yeah, I don’t see that working either. And there’s… And I see a good teacher in front of me, without a teaching job. Yeah. Well, down there there’s a fundamental problem with other things. I mean, you could have the best teacher in the world in a classroom, but if the kids have a really poor upbringing, you’re not… But you’ve lived here your whole life, why don’t you have a teaching job here? Oh, here? Well, there haven’t been a lot of openings here. Why not? I think a lot of Social Studies teachers are hanging on to their jobs until they’re to the better end. Until the better end…But they’re so under paid. Aren’t they anxious to get out of it? But they’re passionate about their career. So, it’s all passion you think ok? I mean, I don’t know. You could understand why someone could be cynical about that. Yeah. No, I agree. So, they get paid so poorly but they’re gonna hang on to their job. They get paid so poorly, but there’s a waiting list to become a teacher. Yeah. I struggle with that, when I hear that we need to spend more on education. I’m like: “We have a waiting list of teachers.” Well, my reference again is to spend more, to have more teachers, not to just pay them more. Sure. But why don’t we do that? I think we should, I actually think that if you have a really great teacher and you have a classroom of 30 kids and if you could hire two reasonable teachers and have fifteen kids each that would probably be a better outcome for the kids and, I mean, they’d have more interaction on that student-to-teacher ratio, and you’d also be employing twice as many people. So, I’ve told you my theories on education, right? Where I think things are going to go where things should go. Yeah. Technology should take over. Well, yeah. I think that’ll happen in a lot of areas. So, I think, third world countries like wherever, Africa or like India even, there not really third world, but whatever, the developing world, right? They can get iPads and cheaper technology, cheap. They can get, even if they drop on the most expensive iPad, that’s going to be about a thousand bucks, even there, a teacher is going to cost more than that, and that’s just in year one, you know? So, I feel like they, you know, you can get the best educators to produce some videos and you can throw numbers at that, you know? You can’t tell me that an average Social Studies teacher can be whatever in any school district, I’m not going pick on Green Bay or Milwaukee, but anywhere is better than one of the ten best. No, one of the things you’re getting at though is if you put a computer or some video screen in front of the kids and they’re going to watch videos, and they’re going to do the activities on their own, you’re really talking about that the best kids that are going to thrive in that environment are the ones who have self-motivation, their own drive. And I think a lot of kids would… So, I think then, you would I have to change the focus. Yeah. And you have to adjust that. But I will tell you that anecdotally, Max and most of his friends will sit and watch YouTube for a hundred hours straight if they could. So, like watching videos and taking some tests, I think, online, getting through the program that way, and then using school like more like people talk about you need the social thing, I’m not saying delete the schools, I’m saying we could spend the money a lot better and not necessarily have large class sizes, but you know, we could accommodate that as we have it and be more effective. We could just have social activities for kids. Social activities, but allow them to ask questions. Like that’s the time to get some help, to get some hands on help; but the teaching, like standing up in front of the class, demanding respect and silence, and, I feel like, the case of the charter school, I feel like, because of the disruptions caused by that 20%, I fell that 80% aren’t even getting a below average presentation given to them, whereas, they could go home and get it on their iPad and it’d be great. To be fair, you’re talking about a video or presentation, and a lot of times you’re not even doing that anyway, you’re doing activities. OK. Especially in middle school, and younger kids you have a lot of activities that involve them, hands on learning, they did great into it. OK. So, they can kind of sink their teeth into it and that’s a little bit different you got to prepare the activity for them, and if you just have them watch a video, the video could give them the instructions to that activity, but they might have questions and a lot of kids have a lot of questions about how to do things, so, depends on the nature of the teaching. So, the thing that people get hung up on, the same thing with self-driving vehicles, right? They get hung up on, well that’s, they think about today’s technology applied to classrooms the way they are now; and I’m saying that we can shift faster than we are but we don’t have to take, you know, yesterday’s technology and utilize that in the present day classroom, things should change. The interaction with teachers should be a little more natural, a little more the way that it is in business, like, you know, teachers should be able to text their… teachers and students should be able to text each other in the school, out of the school and out like we do in the work place. There’s a lot of systems to communicate in and out of school; but as far as using technology, having it replace teachers. No, I don’t think…I’m not advocating that and I don’t think anybody would allow that to happen, but I think that we could make better use of the resources that we’re already utilizing; and I know, you have anything else to say about that? Yeah, I mean, there’s some schools that are called “Google Schools” and I went to a program about that and all the kids have their computer with them and they take it with them to every class, and they take it home with them and they can communicate all the time with the teacher through that system and they can do all their assignments, all their homework, right through the Google classroom system, and it’s really nice. They don’t have all their textbooks to lug around with them and they can communicate back and forth with the teacher and a lot of it is still self-paced learning, that they can do extra activities on their own if they’re ahead or if they’re struggling they can do different activities right through that entire same system. So it’s really great, and you still need somebody monitoring that, and that’s where I think the teacher might be more of a monitor or a task master… And I get you were in a Milwaukee district were a lot of the parents were hands off, do you know that I want to be more hands on, we just don’t always know how, and every year we go to the conferences and talk a little bit about this with the teachers, but I feel like they’re not understanding what I’m saying, you know, I’m like: “Max wants or needs more help. He needs more practice in Math,” and I’m not the teacher, so I’m not following the curriculum, the daily curriculum, like the teacher is,”I would like some guidance on how we can best augment that, and best work as a team on improving Max’s Math skills”, for instance, right? And I’ve had you help, like, I don’t know, maybe he needs some tutoring and I think he really needs just more practice and… I’m surprised they wouldn’t be able to give you more practice assignments for him to do. Yeah. It’s always a struggle, and then it’s always optional, it’s like worksheets, and I’m like: “I just need something that I can keep track of” Yeah. That’s why I love Kahn Academy. I think that, I feel like they have teacher resources, you log in, you can track it, no: “Oh Max did only three videos today” and you can do any of the practice stuff, so, like that, for me, that, I feel like, for me and a kid like Max, I feel like, for learning Math at least, maybe not everything, but for learning Math, it’s pretty awesome, pretty great. No, it is; and, I mean, but again, you’re going to be there kind of monitoring watching him, checking up on him, ‘cause you can put all the best tools in front of anybody and if they just sit there and don’t do them. Right. You know, that’s true? Yeah. And I think more and more those tools will be involved in education and teaching, I just think, we probably have an older generation of teachers that are still out there and they’re going to do things the ways they’ve always done ‘em and they’re argument will always be the same: “Hey all the last kids learned with this.” But yeah, I’ve always try to incorporate technology in the classroom, as much as I’ve had available. So, I don’t want to spend the whole hour blabbing about [unintelligible] We could talk about [unintelligible] Well, you know I could. So, I’m super passionate about that. You went to…spent your life in college, you know, putting your life into education, you know, I know we both care deeply about education. So, I’m just going to change topics real quick and then I want to do our “Thank Camera Corner Studios” spot. So give the few minutes intro to Justin Laser. So, a little bit about me. So, primarily lived in Green Bay all my life, so I was born in Green Bay, lived here for many years and then I went to school at UW Oshkosh and when I finished school… UW-Zero. UW-Zero or UW-Oshkosh, however you want to call it; and great school, by the way. No, it is actually. Yeah. For education and computer science they, it’s considered one of the top. Yeah. It’s really great. And probably other things too, I just know those. Nursing too is big there. Yeah. So then, went to…ended up living in Menominee for a while and I taught, actually, in Michigan technically, cause it was the Menominee High School, so I taught there for one year and I did some subbing in the area, a bunch of subbing, at the Menominee high schools in the area, and then I ended up working doing the corporate gig, you know, I ended up getting a job at Shopko for a while and then I worked for Humana for a while, but I always wanted to get back to teaching or education roles and I tried to get into more educational roles at those companies, especially at Humana when I was there, but nothing really came up, so then, when I did find out about this teaching position, I was really excited. I know you were. And I knew it’ll be a challenge, it’ll be a struggle, boy and the school was closed. That’s frustrating. Yeah, absolutely. You know, as much as a challenge it was, you know we were trying to make strides to make things better. So, yeah it kind of left me hanging. Do not shake. I just got handed my beverage from Gina. Yeah. I’ve never seen that doing it. I think one is for you and one is for me. You wanna pick? Yeah, I’m fine either way. I think they’re both for you. Well, I was…Thank you. I’m gonna use them both. [Laughs] You can have my empty water bottle. Ok. So, I’m sorry. OK, so I think you were in Fond du Lac for a little bit too. Well, that’s where I did student teaching. So, that’s right ‘cause you were in Oshkosh [unintelligible]. So was it in Fond du Lad and in Marinette or Menominee that you had me come in and talk to the students. No, that was when I was doing student teaching in Fond du Lac. Fond du Lac. I don’t remember, if it was, ‘cause I know I went up and maybe met you at the school once in Menominee, I don’t remember. You might have, I don’t know. This one Fond du Lac was kind like callous. Yeah, it was a massive school. I remember that. So, that’s where some of the money goes? Yeah, the administration, the building; and a lot of it has to go to that. I mean, you sink money into a building it’s going to last a long time, so, I mean, I understand that. So, you know what? I’ve actually changed my tune on that, ‘cause I remember when we were in high school we had the relos, remember those? Yeah. I don’t know if they got rid of those before you were there or not, they were like trailers and they leaked and, you know, it was horrible. You still learned. Well, we did still learn. So, I have mixed feelings on that. However, I do sort of subscribe, you know, ‘cause I’ve been involved in Downtown and some historical renovations and all, you know, and retaining character, and one thing that kind of stuck out in my mind, a couple of things. There’s the ‘broken window theory’, that Rudy Giuliani subscribed to in New York City, kind of don’t know how I feel about that and that’s the idea where you take care of things to such a micro level that things that crime doesn’t happen it’s kind of where it came from. So they would prosecute people for, you know, cleaning windshields in the roads when they’re not supposed to, things like that, right? And the idea is if a building has broken windows nobody’s going to care if anything else goes wrong, they’re not going to care about crime, all that stuff; and, I can see that point, but also, on sort of the, taking that to a different extreme, people talked about if you’d spend the extra money to build a good building that you know is going to last, it’s worth maintaining, you know, if you build a crappy building, you know; and you see that, you see that actually happen. It’s really inexpensive to go out to an industrial park or a suburb and build a whole building and some of those are not really well maintained and then you have a building even like this one that we’re in right now, the Camera Corner Studios, and the walls are concrete and they’re sort of non-descript, but it’s very functional and it works well and they end up being maintained. I think a big part of the reason for this studio even being here is because we wanted to reload, not we, but Camera Corner, wanted to reutilize the building rather than tear it down for a parking, you know, they purchased the property, I think for parking, I don’t know, Nick can correct some of that if I’m wrong. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, so, it’d be a shame to tear this down ‘cause it’s a very…for what you have here, this is a perfect use for this as a studio. Yeah, it’s very nice. So, Nick has talked about this in the past and I talked a little bit about it, but I thought it was really interesting last time when I had Tricia talk about some of the facilities here, ‘cause I kind of want to get your quick take on it. Yeah, I mean, it’s really nice, it’s easy to use. Nick helped to take care of everything, actually he took care of everything for us, so that made it even easier and everything is real comfortable and it’s set up really well and I think if you don’t know how to use a lot of the equipment, like I look over and I see things that I don’t even have a clue what they are. That just lets you plug in microphone’s, that’s all I think. You know it’s a lot of microphones. You know, Nick, people that are experts in a certain field they tend to discount their own level of knowledge. I remember a thing, I feel like I maybe told you about this, I’ve said this before, this anecdote that sticks in my head. Eddie Van Halen was talking about: “Playing guitar is not like brain surgery”, and then a brain surgeon said “You teach me how to play guitar like that and I will give you brain surgery lessons.” So having expertise and being a professional at something, that is hugely valuable. Yeah. And that’s why we’ve structured the studio in a way that you build it around what you need, so maybe you’re shooting a video and you already own the camera, but you’re not familiar with lighting and green screen, so we have the screen, we have the lights and if you want someone help you with it, we have technicians available, you know, I’m one of them, but there’s also Dan and a few other guys at the store that can help out, but… So that’s something that we really haven’t touched that much, is the expertise is invaluable. You have this, whatever you want to call it, deep bench, so you have you, and I assume Dan is almost at your level. Oh, yeah. Dan actually comes to us from WLUK- Channel 11. Oh, OK. So he has a lot of broadcast television experience. He still works Packers Family Night, you know, so he’s… So, I was selling him short? So he’s right…he’s…. Yeah, and honestly, I’m the guy who picked this up in the field working as I went. But ultimately that’s what everybody really does. Yeah, you know, when I do my show I’ll talk about how you can learn things in college, but you really don’t know anything until you get a job. True that. True that. Especially if you go to UW-Zero. Ohh. Well, I mean, until you’re in the trenches, yeah. So, but that deep bench is hugely valuable, and that’s something that we really haven’t talked about, like you have, I don’t know, there’s 120 people over there, maybe more. The last count I think was 165. Yeah. And obviously all those people aren’t going to be audio-video professionals, but all of them can help. You have a huge wealth of knowledge, like that’s, I don’t think that you’re going to find that anywhere. You’re not going to find that anywhere in this area anyway. Right. So, that’s huge and I feel horrible that we haven’t really talked about that at all. The person out there, and I know a handful of the people there, but one thing that is true of every person that’s ever been there, as a whatever, an outsider, everyone there has always been, everyone at Camera Corner has always been professional, they’ve been kind, when they’re not knowledgeable they will try to seek out the knowledge, and I’m probably the worst possible customer that they could ever have, right? So, but they’re always accommodating, I’ve dealt with John I think, he deals with the Apple stuff. Amazing. Like, he’s actually genius, you know contrary to what Tricia said about me, an actual Apple genius. Well, he goes to the genius classes, you know? We send him. And that’s one of the things about Camera Corner in general, is that, all of the vendors that we work with have certain education requirement, so we get training from Extron on Crestron, Apple, HP, Nikon, Canon, they’re here all the time, and one of the things we work on doing and that I’m working on focusing more with the studio is the education side of it, so we have an area in the studio that is designed to be a classroom for eight to sixteen students, and coming soon, I don’t have anything on the calendar yet, but coming soon we’re going to have classes that are actually going to teach how to do more of your own video and audio production. We should collaborate and put out a class. Sure. Like for real. I mean, we have a teacher right there. We should figure… We do! Yeah, instructional technology. Well played. No, I think we should think about that. So, I don’t want to use up all of our stuff. No, you’re good. I mean, like I said, the studio is here and it’s available for pretty much everything you could need. We have audio recording capabilities, we have video recording capabilities, we have photography capabilities, and all of these can be combined into multimedia, and even if you want it we can do live internet broadcast or a live to tape and take that to a local station or cable provider, so lots of opportunities for you at the studio for you if want to learn more about it, feel free to reach out to me. You can get me, or anyone on my team, at rentals@cccp.com or you could also calls us at 920-272-0148 Awesome, you’re the best. Thanks. So, I always joke, and Tricia has my Elliotisms, I always joke that it’s your show, I always try to say, which by the way I have to give credit to where I stole that in a second, but really it Nick’s show, he does everything. He does the whole job. Yeah. We really did just sit down and go at it. Like, I told him that I finally got it on iTunes and I think he was a little disappointed ‘cause it took me a few weeks to even do it and then it took a week for Apple to approve it. Well, I will be honest, when we got to recording like episode 5, if I haven’t seen episode 0 out yet. It took more than a week to get on iTunes. That’s no joke. And I think that they’re doing that on purpose, I think they’re trying to keep podcast from kind of, I think they’re trying to keep the quality up, like they would say. Probably. Yeah. It’s interesting. And I should say where I totally stole the “It’s your show” thing. There’s a great podcast that I recommend to everybody it’s called “Back to Work”. I don’t know if you’ve heard that. Yeah. So, Nick has heard that. Justin probably hasn’t… Well, I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts. Well, you’re not working right now; we’re going to touch on that. Oh, that’s true. But it’s very much about productivity, so they joke about it, partly I think because the two main guys, there’s Dan Benjamin, who owns the podcast network and then there’s Merlin Mann, who’s a well-known Apple enthusiast and a well-known productivity guru, and he actually came up with the term “Inbox Zero”, which means “clear out your email inbox and don’t let email run your life. And that’s where he got sort of his notoriety from, but he’s so well-known he could probably go off and do a show on his own, I think that’s what they’re joking about when they say ”It’s your show” and they actually banter back and forth about that. So I totally stole that, and I think it’s awesome that anybody thinks that that’s a funny thing to say, because I think it’s hilarious every time they say it, because there’s just this emotion that you get that you don’t know. I think that they have a good working relationship and I’m like: “I don’t know. Maybe Merlin’s going to run away.” I don’t know. It’s really strange. So, what I wanted to touch on, Justin, is you’re not working right now, what happened? I got into a little bit of an accident right in my scooter and I busted my toe. Hit a big puddle, flipped over, skidded into it and the scooter landed right in my foot and it was pretty bad, but I mean, overall it could have been a lot worse, I was wearing my helmet I had my gloves on, things like that and I didn’t sustain any life-threatening injuries or anything like that, but I got banged up pretty well. So, it’s really frustrating, the medical system, how slow it works, like I could tell I’m in pain, I have to go in, go have a doctor tell me that: “No, you won’t be able to work,” like I know I won’t be able to work, so, I can tell. But see, that’s one of those rules that could be abused otherwise. Yeah. The outcome is quite [unintelligible]. Yeah, and just the cost of it all.It’s pretty frustrating. But, else is there to do? So, the only reason that I care about that, not really, I mean, I care that you’re in pain, you’re my brother, but whatever is right, but I am thrilled that I got to have you in here, because… Yeah. Normally I’d be working, and for the last year… You’ve been in Milwaukee, so I hardly ever see you at all. So, when we first started talking about this, even though I knew you were coming back to Green Bay, I knew you’d have a new job, you’re moving, I though you would be the last of my four brothers that I would get to have on, so you’re the first, I don’t know if you actually realize that. Oh I did realize that. So, which is pretty weird and interesting, ‘cause… Yeah, ‘cause I’m not into the technology aspects like you an some of the others are, so. Well, as I was kind of mentally preparing for today, I was thinking about and I feel like we have so much in common, but yet I few had to itemize the list of things, like there’s, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of overlap. So, you know, it’s awesome and I guess I’m just saying, I’m thrilled to have a great relationship with my brothers, I see other families where they’re not like we are. And we all get along pretty well. I think really well. I think really well. I think the number of times where there’ve been disagreements, almost negligible, you know even Erik worked for us for a while; he worked for us and lived with us, and even then there was no real huge anger, we would get into some squabbles about work, but that’s because we both cared about it. Well, we can have different political views and not beat each other up just because sort of: “yeah, that’s your opinion,” “that’s mine” and kind of roll with it and kind of banter back and forth with interesting arguments without having in turn into a like: “I hate you for thinking that way.” Nothing like that. Yeah. I had Ronda as a guest a few weeks ago and , you know, she’s very similar in that regard, where we seek out people who have different points and we want to talk it through, I mean we want to convince ourselves and I think everyone’s not like that. I think some people view the way we are, I’ve had people tell me that, that they feel that I’m confrontational and that’s just because I want to state things the way that I understand them and if it’s different than that then you gotta tell me. Yeah. Yeah. Break that understanding, that minimal understanding that you think you have. But that’s very true. How else are you really supposed to learn? So that’s interesting. So, we don’t have a huge amount of time left so I did want to leave you time to talk about your big event. Yeah. Upcoming event. So I have LaserCon coming up and I’m really excited, this is the third year and I guess I’ll give a little background to it. It’s a mini gaming convention and I thought it up because, I was at a convention with a good friend of mine, and we were playing a board game and I looked around and I said: “You know, there’s only like a handful of people playing board games at this gaming convention.” If you don’t know a lot about gaming conventions one of the biggest is GenCon, so if you need to look up, find out what a gaming convention is. Where is GenCon? GenCon is in Indianapolis. There’s gaming conventions throughout the State much smaller than that though, ok? So when we were at this other gaming convention, real small one, it was actually in Green Bay, and it was so small I said: “Geez this could be at my house. We don’t have to pay an entry fee and pay money to rent some place and things like that. There’s enough room. We can just set up the tables and play games just like we always do and invite a bunch people over. Heck! I could make my own little gaming convention.” So I did, and I have t-shirts for it and the first year we didn’t have a theme to it, but then we’ve going with themes; so, the second year we did a sci-fi space theme and that went over really well, we had a lot of great games that go along those lines. This year it’s going to be sort of a medieval fantasy theme to the games, so a lot of dungeon crawling games and things like that and it’s always a lot of fun seeing what different games people run and I always want enough games going on that, like, there’s multiple games running all the time and it’s been like that. It’s been fun, and it’s invite only, so you got to get invited to it by somebody. So how can you get invited? Well, I invited you, so. Well, I know, but you’re talking to thousands of people right now. Well, like maybe hundreds of thousands. So, everybody that’s been invited in the past gets a free invite to invite someone for the next year. So, it kind of will spread from there. So, how many people can I invite? Well, you, I don’t know if I trust you to invite anybody. When, maybe one, clearing by me first. So, anybody listening to this, how can they get invited? They would have to, I guess they contact me, I mean, ‘cause I’m running it, I can always invite more, so. That limitation’s really to have there as a guideline, so. So how would someone get in touch with you? To get invited? Well, probably the easiest way. If you’re going to talk about this big giant game convention… Well, it’s not giant yet, but it could be, who knows? OK. So tell me more about it and then we’ll talk about how they can get a hold of you. So it’s coming up on September 18th and 19th, and the easiest way is probably to go to Facebook and look up LaserCon 2015. How do you spell LaserCon? Just how it sounds. L-A-S-E-R-C-O-N. All in one word. And throw the 2015 in there, just to specify it, to make sure you get the, ‘cause there’s some other LaserCons out there for other, like there’s one in Australia, they’re for other things though. Like lasers? Yeah. So, laser light shows and things like that. Nick, and I we have a telepathic connection. Yeah, it’s exactly what you think. So, I wasn’t surprised to see that. But this LaserCon is better, ‘cause it’s more fun. OK, so, it’s, you said, the weekend of the … 18th and 19th, yeah. The 18th and the 19th, so Friday and Saturday. Friday and Saturday, yeah. Friday night and Saturday all day. And where is this? It’s actually, until it gets too big to have at the house, it’s going to be at the house. SO, you prefer they go to the Facebook page… Yeah, they can go to the Facebook page and look it up, so. So, it’s LaserCon and if they’re in the area I think Facebook will filter it out so that’s probably the top thing that will come out. Yeah. Well. If it’s not the first thing that comes up when they type in LaserCon, they’re probably not invited. Yeah. Right? Is that fair to say? That is fair to say. But yeah it’s been a lot of fun. I always have a lot of fun creating the t-shirts for it. So, do you want more people to come? You know? It’s kind of a fine line, like I want more people, but they need to be people that want to have fun and game, so. So, game. Yeah. That’s a whole another subject. Yeah. So talk about the game stuff. Real quick. So, like a lot of people think of board games and they think of Risk and Monopoly and think that those are some of the big ones that you might think of, we don’t really play those games, we play other board games that might be more of a Euro-style game or an Ameri-trash style game, which if you don’t know what those are… You’re not invited. Well, no… ‘Cause I don’t…I think that I know what a Euro-style is. I’m thinking that that’s like a Settlers? Yeah. Settlers of Catan is a popular one that would be a Euro-style. But, I wouldn’t know how to describe that genre. There’s more like…Yeah…It’s more of an abstract game that uses tiles and pieces to show an abstract concept and usually you wouldn’t buy victory points in those types of games; and an Ameri-trash game would be something were you just have your own armies, your own pieces and you just overwhelm and crush the other side. So, Risk would be an example of that, but it’s an easier example. There’s a lot more dents or complex versions. So, what’s your favorite game? So my favorite game right now is….So my favorite primarily Euro-style game would be Caverna, it’s a pretty new game that I got. Do they make coffee there? That’s close, it does sound like Kavarna. But Caverna it’s basically like a little building game. You build up your victory points and you try to out maneuver the other players; and it’s a very Euro-style game. And then my favorite Ameri-trash style game, which would be like just pieces and battling and so forth, would be the Axis and Allies 1914 edition, which if you know your history, you know it actually doesn’t make sense: The Axis and Allies 1914? OK. It’s a brand name. But it’s a brand name, yeah. OK, interesting. So those are your two favorites. Yeah. So different than favorites, what’s popular? What are some games, that people hear this, that don’t make it to LaserCon, because either they couldn’t figure out how to get there or they here to it after it happened, what would be some ways they could expose themselves to that culture? If you want to look up anything about the board games that I’m talking about, best place to look is boardgamegeek.com. There’s a lot of great information in, and if you don’t find out right way, whether you’re into these board games or not, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about, the types of board games. I like to watch this YouTube video by BaseTower and it’s really friendly, really easy to watch videos and I really love their Top 10s and they talk about their favorite types of games, so they’ll talk about a genre of the game and then they’ll go through their Top 10 games of that genre that they really like and I love watching those videos ‘cause they really tell you a lot about those games and then you can tell if you’re going to like that game and that helps give you some information about it and you don’t have to read about it, you could just watch a video, have a good time, and learn about all these board games that you might want to get. So, would you recommend that people go to there’s Gnome Games in town, there’s Chimera in Appleton, I think they’re still around. Yeah. And, I forgot the name of the place in Milwaukee. Well, there’s actually a bunch of them. Well, there’s one right at the Berkshire Mall. Boardgame Barister, I think. Yeah. Max love that’s place Yeah. I mean, if you’re in the Green Bay area Gnome Games will definitely be. So you would recommend those to people? Yeah. You can checkout those games, you can find other players at those places. That’s, those are great examples. By and large still though, Magic the Gathering … That’s still the hugest? Yeah. That’s still the biggest. So, yeah. The cross-section of those two things we talked about, the gaming and the teaching, so if you’re a parent and you want your kids to be learning stuff when they’re doing that , what do you think are some…? I think a lot of the Euro-style games teach a lot of skills to kids. I in fact, when I taught Economics I used Settlers of Catan. I had a bunch of copies of it to show some of the different supply and demand, different vocabulary from Economics, I showed it in the board games. Excellent. So they can learn? Yeah, they can learn tons. And they’re not just learning about it, they’re doing it. Right. So, it’s more meaningful. Right. Awesome. So, almost ready to wrap up. So the thing that I forgot to ask Tricia last night. Yeah. So go ahead, take it from there. Alright, so if I had somebody else on the show that both you and I interviewed? Yeah. OK, just want to make sure that’s clear. So, the trick. You said I can’t pick Erin [//]. So, I haven’t, well I did give him a high-five. Oh you did? So I can’t? I’m not sure if he would remember, so I’m not sure if that counts. I’m sure he wouldn’t remember. Because he had bigger things on his mind. That was a the Super Bowl when they got the Lombardy trophy back I got to touch the trophy and he gave high-fives. So that’s why I doesn’t look the same ever since. Right. What did you do to it? [unintelligible] No, you touched it. So, in a roundabout sort of fashion you could…whatever, he’s on everybody’s wish list, right? OK. OK. So who else would you like to know? In all honesty, our other brother Erik. I think that’d be great because I think that if you and I were interviewing him, you would as all sorts of technical questions because he’s a genius with computers and then I could ask him all sorts of gaming questions, because I know more about gaming than you do and not that you don’t know anything about it, but just I know that he knows a lot, so those would be two areas that we could… Interesting. That’s why I think he would be a good person. So, the trick is I’m not going to have you back ever. OK, that’s fine. I might have you back. But I mean, I might not. If, this is an if. So these are just to invite other people. Ohhh. We’ll see, we’ll see. You don’t need to invite him. I’m just being sarcastic, but anybody else you want to mention? You like Brian? He’s on my list. Of course I’d bring him. Yeah. I mean, let’s be real, he’s my favorite brother. Well, no. He’s my favorite brother. Touché. You have that all wrong. No, I shouldn’t say that. Anybody else? Well, let’s see. No? Alright we’re cutting the music. Yeah. Yeah. You snooze you lose. Yeah. So, for the record Nick, the only person that he could invite that’s not Aaron Rodgers is his brother. I’m so disappointed I thought about other people that game a lot, but I didn’t think you’d have nothing to say to them. So, part of the things is, realistically, whether you come back as cohost or not, which I think would be great for, if it applies especially, but it’s to broaden the scope a little bit. Yeah. The chances of me doing this show at all was, I have all these people that I know on Facebook and either I don’t know them well and I question whether they should be my Facebook friends in quotes, right? Or I know them well and I want to spend more time with them and talk with them about cool things. So. I’d have to keep looking, ‘cause I wouldn’t… I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. So that’s it, I want to broaden the pile but whatever, we got two votes for Aaron Rodgers, that’s fine. Two votes? That’s… Well, you and me. We are two people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn’t think your vote mattered. In this project it really doesn’t. No. No. Because I’m going to wipe out what you say and put whatever I want anyways. Oh, Ok. Yes, I do have keys. You were expecting to say “You have keys, right?”So yeah, we can cut to the music Nick, if you want to. Yeah. So this one is…Oh, oh, you might have to help me out. Let’s see, like the number, no the name of the song. Oh, “Michigan and Lake ph 2.0” Yeah. You lived there for a while. Yeah, I know. So this is by [unintelligible] Who? Right? Is that not right? You didn’t give me that info. Oh, oh. Yeah, and he’s going to be playing at the Food Truck Friday. On Friday and that’s where I talked to him quite a bit and you know, picked up a couple of CDs from him and I think he autographed the CDs for Max and I have to get some MP3s. He sent this over, so thanks Curt for putting that in there. We’re out. Yeah. Have a good one. Thank you.