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Tom’s Tips Podcast: S4E3 – After Hours with MagHub: Mortal Kombat, Brendan Fraser, and Release 10.3

Written by Zach Gilbert

Published: 05/10/2021

Transcript

Announcer:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tom’s Tips podcast, your place for obscure movie references, catch backs, and everything MagHub related. And now your host, Mag Hub product manager, Tom Bellen.

 

Tom Bellen:

Hello everyone. Hello, jugheads and welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, the 10.3 to 10.4 edition. My name is Tom Bellen, product manager for Aysling. I am joined by always our marketing coordinator, Zach Gilbert. Say hello to the jugheads, Zach.

Zach Gilbert:

Hello, jugheads.

Tom Bellen:

Oh man, this is a special edition of the podcast. We are doing this late at night. It is after hours podcast action. Just because some of the new schedules, just put my kids down, and I have drink in my hand. Zach, do you have a drink in your hand?

Zach Gilbert:

I sure do, Tom.

Tom Bellen:

That’s right, we are drinking tonight on the podcast. Zach, what are you drinking?

Zach Gilbert:

I am drinking a Corona Premier, because it was left at my house and it was free.

Tom Bellen:

Oh.

Zach Gilbert:

There are worse beers than a Corona. Thank you very much.

Tom Bellen:

Well, and it’s a Premier.

Zach Gilbert:

It is a Premier beer.

Tom Bellen:

What does that mean, it’s a Premier Corona?

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t know. It has-

Tom Bellen:

Does it have like a different sensation to it, a different flavor profile than Corona?

Zach Gilbert:

I think the Premier is their version of light. No, there’s a Corona Light. I don’t know what Premier is.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, there is a Corona Light. I was going to say if it’s lighter than Corona Light, it’s basically, just air.

Zach Gilbert:

There’s 90 calories. I honestly don’t… It tastes like a light beer. It tastes more of a light beer than Corona Light does. I’m not a fan of it. I’m not going to lie. I don’t know… I’m not-

Tom Bellen:

Does it even taste like beer?

Zach Gilbert:

Oh, man.

Tom Bellen:

Well I guess… Sorry. I just got a texts, our Corona sponsorship just ended. I forgot they were a sponsor or we were talking about sponsorship of the podcast.

Zach Gilbert:

Yep, I forgot all about that.

Tom Bellen:

Corona Premier. I thought you were going to live it up. I made a little cocktail myself. I was baking with rum this weekend and so I had to buy rum, and I don’t buy alcohol really to drink that often, we’re a wine family, but I bought it, because I need it to bake with. So now I’ve been mixing it with some juice and LaCroix, so that’s what I got going on. So rum, juice, and LaCroix,

Zach Gilbert:

Ew.

Tom Bellen:

What?

Zach Gilbert:

That’s disgusting.

Tom Bellen:

Not worse than Corona Premier. What’s wrong with that? It’s some rum with some pineapple mango juice, and then I had a little bit of fizzy just to add a little bubble.

Zach Gilbert:

What kind of rum as it? First of all, before we go too far into this sink hole.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, it’s not good. It’s a Myer dark rum. I don’t-

Zach Gilbert:

Pass.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. I mean, it’s not good. Both of us have failed our… We should stop this at this point on our podcasts, both promoting, we are not good promoters of other products. So this was going to be our offer to get someone to sponsor it, but after this, wow, we really just hooped on two companies, Corona and Myer’s rum.

Zach Gilbert:

Sure. Before we continue on, I have to share what they, so Corona Premier is the lower calorie, lower carb, Corona beer, more so than Colonel Light. So it has no flavor of Corona. It’s not great.

Tom Bellen:

What is a flavorless, flavorless drink? That’s like diet… something.

Zach Gilbert:

Water.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah-

Zach Gilbert:

It’s water.

Tom Bellen:

… so you’re drinking slightly colored water. I’m going to stop myself, because I’m about to make some jokes and my jokes aren’t usually good and they can be offensive. but we’re not here to promote other companies, we’re really here to promote our product. But even before that, let’s promote some other stuff.

Tom Bellen:

Because this weekend we both partaked, I don’t know if it was this weekend or not. We were talking before this of, we both watched the film Mortal Kombat, which was on HBO Max, a sponsor the show. And we had somewhat different opinions of Mortal Kombat. Now, before we talking about the new one, how did you feel about the original Mortal Kombat film?

Zach Gilbert:

So I like all of those really blockbuster-y movies where… I mean, they’re not great movies. They’re not going to win any massive award. I know like the Transformer movies and all that, they’re not amazing movies, where they’re just like, “Oh, Megan Fox is just holding that entire movie together. Shia LaBeouf, best acting performance in the world. I get it with the Transformer movies and the Mortal Kombat movies fit into that same vein. The Godzilla movies fit in that same vein. They’re not great movies, but they’re fun. They’re enjoyable to sit back… So I enjoyed the old Mortal Kombat movies, the old Street Fighter movies. I enjoyed all of those movies. I really did.

Tom Bellen:

I mean, yeah. I think they’re… I always thought that there should really be two different types of ranking systems of movies. There should be the rankings of the films as we get through the Oscars, the ones that were up for Oscars, and you should be ranked based on what you’re trying to be there. And then there should be a ranking of movies. And I really view that as films versus a movie, and that’s how I break it apart and they really should be ranked separately. So yes, I agree that if you try and say, “What is…” I don’t know, if you think about movies going through this year, I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7. I think it’s a good film. But a lot of the movies that were nominated, I can’t get myself to watch, because I have to have like an emotional level to watch them.

Tom Bellen:

Versus a movie, like I was like, “I’m watching Mortal Kombat tonight.” But the other night we watched like Promising Young Woman. It’s like, “Okay, am I in the mental space?” And that’s why… Yeah. So I enjoyed Mortal Kombat from that side too. I thought the acting was worse than most, not better than most, but I enjoyed it. But again, I think it only works because it was really setting up the next films. And without those, if it bombs, and they don’t make the next film, it’ll be even worse with time. But what is your favorite, if you can think of your favorite video game movie of all time?

Zach Gilbert:

Oh, man.

Tom Bellen:

And you can go least favorite, what’s your best and worst video game movie?

Zach Gilbert:

Well, that’s the problem, there’s not like a ton of video game movies, and the ones that are out there are pretty much all awful. I mean, there’s… Uwe Boll is the director that makes a lot of like the… He made the Far Cry movie, Postal, I think he made BloodRayne, all these like really kind of adult oriented action movies. But he’s like known for being the most hated director for video game… Video gamers, whenever they hear a video game company is working with Uwe Boll, they just protest. They just absolutely hate it. So any of his movies are pretty much awful, unfortunately. And they are, they’re just terribly done. They choose poor actors, poor scripts. They don’t follow the games at all.

Zach Gilbert:

It is just, Hey, we’re going to throw our name on there and we’re going to hope we get some gamers. And the gamers, by now, have learned this, where it’s like, okay, it’s not going to have anything to do with this. So anything by him is just awful, garbage. I will say the original Mortal Kombat was probably one of my favorite video game movie adaptations. However, they’re making an Uncharted movie based on the PlayStation series, and I am very much looking forward to that. It’s got Tom Holland. It’s got Mark Wahlberg. It’s got a lot of great actors in it that I’m really looking forward to. And Sony’s spearheading that, and it was the Sony Studio that created the game. So they’re not shopping it out to somebody, they’re working on it together.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. So the only way… I didn’t watch many of the video game movies, but that reminds me somewhat, and I never saw it, because it’d probably be terrible, and this kind of one ranks that it was trying to be more of a film, was a movie was when they made Assassin’s Creed with Michael Fassbender and that is supposed to be awful. And I never watched it, because I was like… Well, see, that was one of those where I wait to see, let me see the reviews on this, because it seemed like it could have been something really good. Because I understand the Assassin… I never played Assassin’s Creed that much, but I understand the story and it had these good actors, which is unusual, and it bombed. So Uncharted, when you mentioned like good actors in it, I’m like, okay, that’s one that could go down real hard, real fast.

Tom Bellen:

I personally, and it’s my podcast, I love the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. I thought that was fantastic. That is a-

Zach Gilbert:

That is a good one.

Tom Bellen:

… very good movie. I’m looking forward to the sequel. I liked that original Mortal Kombat movie. I think probably the worst might’ve been the freaking Super Marios, whatever the heck that was. That still, I think I have nightmares from, but I didn’t understand what you said on some of those like… I don’t even know if those are. So those must have been so bad, that they didn’t even get released in normal theaters or something, maybe like side theater, so yikes. But I am looking forward to, like I said, the Sonic Two world. Is there any game that you would hope they make into a movie? Something that you play that make it into a movie.

Zach Gilbert:

So there’s always one series, the games themselves are pretty much like movies already and they’re called Mass Effect. And it’s a scifi space opera type of game, has a very good storyline, like I said, the game itself is one of those ones where I would be playing and my wife would just watch me play. So it’s a very gripping storyline. It has a lot of famous actors doing voiceovers in it, which is great. It also has a terrific score. It’s just a beautifully, well done game. A very interesting plot. It keeps you moving along, which is really nice. So the mass effect series, I think would make a really good scifi movie trilogy kind of thing. And they are doing a remastered Mass Effect series for the PS5 that comes out, I think, next month. So now’s the time to do that.

Tom Bellen:

To make the movie.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah. Start it up or announce it at least. Just announce that you’re going to do it.

Tom Bellen:

Just get it out there, just say it, and make sure you do it, because once you say it, you’re forced to do it. Speaking of which, let’s talk about something that we said we were going to do a long time ago, that we were forced to do, which is Dark Mode. Which getting into the release, if some of you saw our April fool’s joke, there was a mention of Dark Mode. You might’ve clicked on it and your screen might’ve gone 100% black. That was a joke. Hilarious joke, by the way. I wanted to turn into a Spinal Tap reference, but that’s too obscure. And we all know that most of the things I say are only meant as jokes for me, and maybe like two of my friends. But that is something that we said we would do like 70 years ago when the original Mass Effect came out and we are almost done with completing it.

Tom Bellen:

That’s actually not in this release, but it will be in next release. So that’s another thing, you just say it, you build that buzz, you build that hype, you build it up, and then maybe you deliver it eventually, and that’s what we were going to do. So we got that going on, but let’s not talk yet about things we haven’t quite done, but are being worked on. Let’s talk about some things we did do in our April release that are not jokes.

Tom Bellen:

One of those is actually start a new integration with a partner Adcellerant. I know you know the fine people Adcellerant, Zach, we’ve been on calls with them. Very nice chaps. They do a lot of fun things, in terms of helping you be able to sell other digital products all across the interwebs, where the mice run around in tubes and provide information. That’s how the internet works.

Tom Bellen:

And so we’ve started our first integration with them and created a new digital media product, which is more based on a flat-based selling, like I’m going to sell it for this period of time for a flat fee. Most of our digital media has been either slot-based, which is more newsletters, day by day, week by week. This gives you more flexibility and now can allow you to pull in information from Adcellerant into your proposal. So you can have, again, instead of having… We have customers who use both and they’ve had two different systems and we were on a call the other day, and one person’s like, the proposal in one, the proposals almost never match, because sometimes it’s hard to copy and paste, so now you don’t have to, pulls right in.

Tom Bellen:

And so we have a lot of other exciting things to plan with that, but we’ve started our first version of that. We’ve already gone through some discussions with customers on what we could do next, including Adcellerant. So similar to our HubSpot integration, it’s something where we’re working closely with that company to make sure that we get the best out of both systems. So that’s exciting.

Tom Bellen:

We’ve also given even more ways to help incentivize payments coming in the door. So it’s been something that we started doing with some customer help about having other ways to provide discounts to customers for earlier payments or payments by certain point. And so it’s kind of like anything, build one thing and then just tweaking and building upon it. So now we have another way to discount it at the customer level, based on more of a payment term,, you have net 30, 15, 10% crazy terms where if they pay in a certain time after the invoice, they get a discount. So you can provide that now to customers, again, helping incentivize cash in the door. It’s all about cashflow, baby.

Tom Bellen:

And then along with that, we’ve continued to expand some of our project features. Again, this is important for us and more customers who are doing more project oriented, need to track time, profitability of projects. We’ve had more customers talking about, how can we turn the digital media campaigns into a project? Because it’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of tasks, when you sell one thing on a social media platform, you got to do all the different things. Zach knows, you got to find out the audience, you got to proofread it, you got to edit it, and all that stuff that I don’t worry about, because he has to. So projects can be helpful for that.

Tom Bellen:

And along that, in order for a project to be profitable, you can’t go over time on it. So now we’ve created the ability to, basically, if you are the PM on it, be notified if someone is going over time. Zach, lollygags and lollygags and lollygags, so I need to be alerted when he just is lollygagging around, researching his video games and thinking about, who’s going to star in Mass Effect. Who is going to star in Mass Effect? Who would be the superstar in Mass Effect? Who do you… Your big hire?

Zach Gilbert:

So it could be anybody. The character is customizable character for male or female? So I would actually hope they’d actually go down the female route, because I think there are some pretty cool candidates they could do. And it’d just be a little bit different. I think they were doing some figures, talking about like, they took all the online data of all the people that played the game, and I think like they said, like 60 to 70% of the people chose male characters. So I think they should just create a female main character, instead, and just really mix it up a little bit. I think it would be fun.

Tom Bellen:

Well, who would it be though? Who would be-

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t know. I don’t know the actors names, and then it’s funny, because whenever I watch a movie, I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, I love this actor. If someone ever asked me, who’s your favorite actor? I’m going to say this person.” but then a week later, I forget exactly who that person was ever. And then I always kind of stuttered in these moments. For me, if it was going to be a male character, I’d want Brendan Fraser. Not because I think he’d fit well in the role, just because I love Brendan Fraser. And I just love to see him get more movies again. That’s all I care about.

Tom Bellen:

Gosh, yeah. You’re not going to be a casting director. Anyway, along with the project stuff… My apologies everyone for that, I thought he’d have a better answer. Along with projects is a new view of things. So a different view or perspective on it. How I have a different view or perspective about what actors and actress should be in movies, because Zach would probably just cast someone from a terrible ’80s film, Brendan Fraser, and think it’s a hit, would be our Gantt chart view. So it is obviously very poor project managers being able to have that drag and drop, visual view of tasks. Again, it’s allowing us to use another technology that we’re going to take advantage of and hoping to put in other parts of the site as well, that type of drag and drop functionality, so we’re looking into that, that has been added.

Tom Bellen:

And then we, again, continue to expand on the dashboard and the widgets. So trying to consolidate pages in functionality is the initiative that we have. So in this release, we’ve taken the digital media calendar page, it is no longer a page, it is a widget. Same with the issue calendar page, no longer a page, it is a widget, so you can continue to expand on the dashboard functionality, so other things that we’re excited to do with that. Again, more areas of the site that we want to kind of… If we have two or three pages that do kind of the same thing, just make one improved version of that page. So fewer places to go and more functionality in one spot.

Tom Bellen:

And we just have did one thing, it’s earlier, it is as part of a grander plan of, now, you can take a barter type of payment and apply it to anything. Barter on services is always a hot button topic. Talk about it way too much, but we’ve started moving down that with a new process where you can apply some barter to a trade account and then apply it to any type of product. But right now it’s a little different than how the ads work. So we are working with customers to figure out the way we want to adjust it, but we’re hoping to have one consolidated process going forward. Now, Zach, I don’t know of any of those that excite you in the 10.3, Before I give a little bit of preview of 10.4.

Zach Gilbert:

I’d probably say the most exciting part is the Adcellerant component. It kind of builds our relationship more with the media industry that we’re such a big part of. We always see Adcellerant at conferences. We know their tools are out of this world. We know a lot of our clients are using them. We know a lot of people that are prospects are using them. It just seemed like a really good way to strengthen our relationship. Really take on what they do best, combine it with what we do best, and just make a really great package experience for our clients and prospects. So I think that component is really going well. Their team is very similar to ours. They have an in-house development team, just like we do. They pride themselves on support, just like we do. They are a US-based company, just like we are. So overall, I think the Adcellerant stuff, we’re very similar companies, so I think that’s the most exciting part of 10.3, for me.

Tom Bellen:

It’s always nice to have friends. And as, yeah, we’re moving on to 10.4, again, still a little bit work in progress. But again, one of the big items that we are going to be doing is, obviously, Dark Mode, there will be a Dark Mode. And then some of the other initiatives we’re working really on is, again, we want to move more people to digital media. There’s a lot more functionality in there, but we understand, as we’re going through that, there’s things that we kind of “clean up” or merge more together. One big item on our plate, we hope to get to, but we’ve already starting it, is a consolidated production report.

Tom Bellen:

A couple of releases ago, we did the snapshot report. So in one snapshot, you can see everything, instead of having to print to digital, digital media service. This would be the same idea for the production report, instead of having your print and digital look, one way, it would take more of the functionality and the filtering that we’ve added recently, and then apply this to all items. So you can go to one production report and see everything as far as ticket statuses and sending reminders and all that fun, fun stuff. We are also working on cleaning up a few other things in digital media, adding some different elements here. We were adding more information on certain pages to make it clear what it is, so to make it less look service-y as it has in the past. So that’s one other item we’ve added.

Tom Bellen:

We’re working with the customer, in terms of being able to allow you to take advantage of our tear sheet functionality without using MagBuilder. We’re also, again, trying to find ways of grouping with a tool card connect to provide a more secure payment processing option. We’ll be reaching out to customers too about that. If you are not vaulting credit cards, to making sure that you are, it’s for your protection, it’s our protection, it’s just making sure your customer’s protection, of making sure that people are handling credit cards the right way.

Tom Bellen:

There’s always emails about payment processors and different rules and things in place, so we’re trying to make sure that’s clear for everyone. And we know that it can be a bit annoying and unfortunate sometimes. I know when we had to, basically, not allow anyone to see any credit card numbers anymore, people were not pleased, but it really is the best thing to do to avoid any catastrophes. So we’re going to continue moving on that with some security items in the credit card world.

Tom Bellen:

From an automation standpoint, we are adding some additional features to our ticket automation, which now allow you to go down to the ad size level and do more things within the digital media space. So if you set up some products in your publication that should go to Joe and other ones to Jane, you can do that now, more granular automation workflows for tickets. That’s on top of the fact that you can send internal emails to cut through the automation workflow, and some other little odds and ends in the release as well, but it’s still building.

Tom Bellen:

And one other big one that I think is going to be pretty exciting for subscription users that we’ve been working with a subscription group on is in, hopefully, that if you have subscribers who renew via a link with a renewal code, instead of just going right to the page to renew, and they can’t really see anything about their profile or log into anything, we are going to take them to a page to just verify their information. So that way they can check the first name, last name, address, and also put in an email. So if you don’t have their email as placeholder or a Maghub or something, they can update it right there and create their login. So that way you can capture a lot more of those subscriber emails for continual renewal notifications. And it could help them know that they have a place to log in and view all of their subscriber data.

Tom Bellen:

So that’s some of the fun things in 10.4, which is just a few lovely weeks away, just got to… Got Cinco de Mayo coming up, and then after that, I think it’s May 13th. Are you doing anything exciting for Cinco de Mayo?

Zach Gilbert:

No. I don’t think anything jumps out. Are you doing anything fun for-

Tom Bellen:

Why are you not?

Zach Gilbert:

… Cinco de Mayo?

Tom Bellen:

Well, of… You should be. You want to come to my mom’s birthday party?

Zach Gilbert:

No.

Tom Bellen:

Oh my God, you’re so mean.

Zach Gilbert:

I’m sorry, I don’t know your mom.

Tom Bellen:

Well, she’s like me except older, and my mom.

Zach Gilbert:

Not interested. Thanks though.

Tom Bellen:

Oh my God. That’s really mean. That’s really mean of you. But yes, it is my mom’s birthday on Cinco de Mayo, plus we get Chela’s, which is a local restaurant that’s very, very good. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that, if you have time-

Zach Gilbert:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. See, you got a problem with that too.

Zach Gilbert:

No, I enjoy it.

Tom Bellen:

Well, that’s good. So I’ll, probably, do that. And one of my… Getting into my movie trivia, this somewhat relates to my mom, because the answer to this question was one of her favorite actors, at the time and a very good actor, taken too soon. And their final film was actually the movie Street Fighter. So do you remember… Were you a big Street Fighter the original movie game? That movie with Jean-Claude van Damme.

Zach Gilbert:

Movie was good, I enjoyed the game more than the movie. I thought Mortal Kombat was a better fighting movie franchise, personally.

Tom Bellen:

So do I, yes. I didn’t think it was a good movie. Which kind of bittersweet as to this, but this actor, his final film was Street Fighter. Sometimes that happens, so that’s a little sad part, came after one more of his famous roles, where he is very well-known. I don’t know if you know who I’m talking about. Probably not, since you don’t know a single actors name, but-

Zach Gilbert:

I do. Nice try though.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, you do know who I’m talking about.

Zach Gilbert:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Bellen:

Oh, wow. So you got one there. So anyway, who’s the actor, fantastic actor, whose final film was Street Fighter? And that’s the trivia question. That’s a trivia question for this week, and that’s all I really have.

Zach Gilbert:

Wow.

Tom Bellen:

It’s Monday night. I should be asleep by now, but I’m not now. I’m just revved up from this podcast. I don’t know, Zach, is there anything you want to talk about before we wrap up this first Maghub podcast after hours.

Zach Gilbert:

First of all, your hate towards Brendan Fraser makes me sad. Primarily, because you are such an HBO Max and Warner Brothers kind of person, and DC person that I don’t know if you didn’t know this, but he is in Doom Patrol as a main character, HBO’s movie or HBO’s TV series, like mini series. And they just got renewed for season three. And it is probably one of DC’s best kind of adult-ish TV shows. And it’s got Timothy Dalton, Alan Tudyk, Matt Bomer. It’s got a lot of great actors.

Tom Bellen:

I think you’re taking this a little personally.

Zach Gilbert:

I am.

Tom Bellen:

I am not anti-Brendan Fraser. Again, I think we both agreed that Blast from the Past is both a top film for both of us. I thought that’s fantastic.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s true.

Tom Bellen:

Encino Man, great film. I once shared a clip of, one of my… A very underrated, what is it? School Ties has Brendan Fraser in it, which actually has a lot of amazing young actors in that film. It’s one of those movies you look back and realize like everybody was in that. It was basically, anyone could have been the lead actor, and they were like, “Oh man, all these people are great. We’ve got to find a role for them.” Also, great. So Monkeybone, not so much. But so I like Brendan Fraser, The Mummy, great. But I don’t think he classifies to be like a top person anymore.

Tom Bellen:

I’m sorry, that’s just… It’s kind of like some movies, like Fight Club where people are like, “It’s the greatest movie of all time.” And it’s like, “No, it’s not. Stop saying it.” So that’s what it is, it’s not that I don’t like Fight Club, it’s not that I don’t like Brendan Fraser, but I think you need to shoot higher in your Mass Effect.

Zach Gilbert:

Nope.

Tom Bellen:

Okay. Fine.

Zach Gilbert:

Nope.

Tom Bellen:

But that’s fine, we can disagree on that level of it, but let’s not spin it, Strawman, that I hate Brendan Fraser, that is far from the truth.

Zach Gilbert:

I think you do. That’s fine. That’s fine.

Tom Bellen:

Let’s see, you know what I really hate-

Zach Gilbert:

What?

Tom Bellen:

… was that show Firefly. That’s terrible. I just want to make you real mad now. I just want to make you get so angry, you’re going to go out and buy another pack of Corona Premier.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s fair. That’s fair. Also, you’re a movie trivia. Apparently, you’re not counting his TV movie movie, because that was technically his last movie.

Tom Bellen:

I don’t count TV movies. Maybe I should have said-

Zach Gilbert:

Wow.

Tom Bellen:

… it’s a film.

Zach Gilbert:

Mortal Kombat-

Tom Bellen:

The last film.

Zach Gilbert:

… is technically a TV movie, but you’re not going to count that one.

Tom Bellen:

Mortal Kombat’s a TV-

Zach Gilbert:

The newest one.

Tom Bellen:

Is that technically-

Zach Gilbert:

I think so.

Tom Bellen:

Is that technically… Well, see, that’s different. Either way, feature film, let me be specific, feature film. A film that was released in a movie theater, and for those listening who don’t know what a movie theater is, because it’s been so long, it’s this large building with a big screen on it, and a bunch of seats and you sit in it. And then you’ve got to get there early enough, so you don’t get in the front. And then it’s always the thing of awkward people spacing it out, leaving gaps. So if you’re late, then you kind of have to squeeze in there. But, now it’s… Those are what a movie theater is.

Zach Gilbert:

We miss them. I miss them.

Tom Bellen:

I miss them very much. I hope to one day go again to see Sonic Two.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah. Me too. And I look forward to going with the team because it’s always a fun dynamic, because you always have our lead developer, Mark, and Mark works on Maghub stuff, and he has a whole routine. I got to stop here. I got to order food at this time. It’s got to be delivered at this time. I need to do this. My seat has to be here. He’s very routine oriented, which is great. He’s very efficient. And then you’ve got Jeremy who falls asleep during every movie in the theater known to… I’ve never seen Jeremy sit through an entire movie and not fall asleep in the theater, and he snores. It’s amazing. And we always make fun of him when he does it. It’s great.

Tom Bellen:

It’s also probably the only time Mark is ever happy for consistent like two and a half hours. Maybe he’s not happy in the middle of the movie or something, you don’t know, but he’s excited to go get his food, excited afterwards. So yeah, it’s probably the only time when you’re just like, it’s a 100% happy Mark, which is a rare occurrence.

Zach Gilbert:

It is.

Tom Bellen:

So that case, and Jeremy is asleep, so he’s kind of also in that way happy, because he’s asleep. So it’s really the only time you can pretty much guarantee that both those two are happy. So that’s why we need to get back to that, to those happy times. And then we can watch, I can watch a movie, and think about how I’m going to use it in trivia. And then you can watch a movie, and just be sad that Brendan Fraser’s not in it.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s fair. I will be. Cool.

Tom Bellen:

So now I got to think of a trivia question with Brendan Fraser that I’m going to somehow stump you on, but now it’s about Brendan Fraser, so I’ll have to figure out how I’m going to stump you. Even though you know in advance, it’s somewhat Brendan Fraser.

Zach Gilbert:

Good luck.

Tom Bellen:

I’m ponder on this one.

Zach Gilbert:

We got May’s. Let me know in May, if you can figure out a good Brendan Fraser trivia question, and I will not Google it. I will actually sincerely try to think about it and see if I can answer it.

Tom Bellen:

I will think about that. So that’s what, I guess, we’re leaving everyone on with this one is what kind of trivia question… This is like a cliffhanger, this is our first podcast cliffhanger. What trivia question will I think about? So if anyone has any ideas, I would say, tweet at me, but I don’t know if I know how to use tweet or tweeters. Send in a support ticket, Brendan Fraser questions. I wouldn’t do that either, but you can. You can. Anything else?

Zach Gilbert:

No, I think my mind is on Brendan Fraser now. And I think that’s where it’s going to stay for the rest of my life.

Tom Bellen:

All right, are you going to go watch a Brendan Fraser movie right now?

Zach Gilbert:

My wife is actually watching George of the Jungle upstairs, so ironically-

Tom Bellen:

Oh, my God.

Zach Gilbert:

… yes I am. And then I probably will watch Blast from the Past and then The Mummy and then Encino Man and maybe… I don’t know, he just has so many great movies. I mean, just, yep. Nope, not even going to go through the amount of respect I have for that man, but we’ll end it at that. It’s all good.

Tom Bellen:

Okay. Everyone have a great night, including you Brendan. Maybe we can get him on the podcast.

Zach Gilbert:

Maybe. I’ll try.

Tom Bellen:

You work on that.

Zach Gilbert:

I will… We’ve mentioned his name about 40 times. So in the transcript, he’s going to trend very well with the Maghub blog.

Tom Bellen:

So if he Google’s his name tomorrow.

Zach Gilbert:

He might see us.

Tom Bellen:

We might pop up on number one.

Zach Gilbert:

If you Googles his own name, yes.

Tom Bellen:

Who knows? I mean, he probably, Google’s his name. I don’t know. I don’t know what this man does. Everyone Googles there name at some point?

Zach Gilbert:

That’s true.

Tom Bellen:

Maybe tomorrow’s his day.

Zach Gilbert:

Maybe.

Tom Bellen:

I did Google my name once. It’s not very helpful. It’s not very good. I think there’s like some soccer guy who does there, but anyway,

Zach Gilbert:

I mean, okay. I can’t end on this note without sharing the story. So small, really quick story, and I know this is a long episode, but I don’t… It’s fun. It’s all good. If you’re sticking through this far, you’re going to stick to the end anyway. In the small town that I’m from called Big rapids, Michigan, I was actually small… a village nearby, but Big rapids is where I’m from, basically, there is a person with the exact same name and I mean, first, middle and last name, all three of them spelled exactly the same, born in the same year as me, and lived their entire life in Big rapids. So needless to say, my birth certificates got mixed up, marriage licenses got mixed up. I mean, basically, any important document, hospitals thought I had like chronic asthma, which I don’t, but they thought I did because of that Zach Gilbert had chronic asthma. And I mean, it was anarchy. And it’s crazy how many things this individual and I shared in our life experiences.

Zach Gilbert:

And we’re both from the same town, and just so everybody knows Big Rapids is not, I mean, Ferris State University’s, there it’s a big college, but once summer hits that entire population is gone. So then it’s like, a couple thousand people living in a relatively small town, where you know everybody there. So it’s crazy. So yes, there’s a Zachary, I’m not going to share my middle name, Gilbert in Big Rapids, Michigan, and I’m pretty sure he’s still there. So if he’s listening, I’m sorry, because I’m sure my important paperwork got mixed up with yours as well.

Tom Bellen:

Funny thing about Big Rapids, too, it’s a small town. Two of my friends in college, both worked in the Big rapids courthouse at some point in time-

Zach Gilbert:

That’s crazy.

Tom Bellen:

… as lawyers, maybe they help mix up some of your files.

Zach Gilbert:

I can blame them now. Great. Thank you.

Tom Bellen:

You can blame Colin McIntyre, and you can blame Evan George. I mean, we’re just going to get these names up on here. Was there ever a time that somebody was like, “Zach Gilbert did it,” and then they came after you and it should’ve been the other guy or vice versa?

Zach Gilbert:

No, I did not have a lot of legal run-ins, thankfully.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, did something good-

Zach Gilbert:

Did not have-

Tom Bellen:

It didn’t have to be legal. You jumped to the legal thing, geez.

Zach Gilbert:

You said, go get him.

Tom Bellen:

Well, go get him and give him a prize. I don’t know. And again, that’s where your mind took it.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s fair. I did. I took it down…

Zach Gilbert:

So that’s true.

Tom Bellen:

No, I still… Well, that’s very interesting. We were just talking about, today, somewhat related of the fact that, we were talking about birthday math, that we had two people who have the same birthday in our company of 23 people, and the math paradox. How that happens. How the odds, if you have a room of 23 or 24 people, two of them will have the same birth date, math. So do you think that your parents and his parents knew they were doing that and did it on purpose? Do you think they like went out one night, be like, “Do you know what would be hilarious? If we named out kids the same thing.” Or did not know.

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t know. They might have. I mean, we weren’t related to them in any way, or at least not that… I mean, I’m sure, I mean, we’re all related in some way. But no, I was not related to the Gilbert clan from that area. So we didn’t even know him. In fact, I have never actually met this Zach Gilbert in my entire life. I never came across him.

Tom Bellen:

So if Brendan Fraser on the podcast, let’s get Zach Gilbert on the podcast.

Zach Gilbert:

Sounds interesting. I think, I mean, I’m all for it. I’ll try it out.

Tom Bellen:

That’d be an interesting podcast series. And then we get a Tom Bellen on the podcast, and be like, this is Tom Bellen interviewing Tom Bellen. What is your life like in that case? Man, no wonder before we did this in the middle of the afternoon, not with a beverage, because otherwise, this just goes. This just goes.

Zach Gilbert:

I have not had one sip of my beverage yet, though-

Tom Bellen:

Well, I had time to refill mine.

Zach Gilbert:

… so I cannot say I had a beverage.

Tom Bellen:

Well, plus you’re drinking water.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s true.

Tom Bellen:

So on that note, cheers to everybody. Enjoy your Monday evening, if you’re listening to this live, which you’re not. So if you’ve listened to it on a Monday, enjoy that Monday evening, if not, enjoy that time as well. Thank you for listening to Tom’s Tips Podcast. We promise to do better the next time.

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