Transcript

Announcer:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, your place for obscure movie references, cats facts, and everything, MagHub related. And now your host MagHub product manager, Tom Bellen.

Tom Bellen:

Hello Jughead’s. It has been a while since we last talked to you, but this is Tom Bellen, and I am the product manager for Aysling, joined by Zach Gilbert, marketing consultant for Aysling. And this is… Oh, what is it? What is it, Tom’s Tips Podcast? Is that what this is called?

Zach Gilbert:

Is it.

Tom Bellen:

It’s been so long I forgot about it. Man.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah, nearly two months.

Tom Bellen:

Two months. And people were just… The emails, the fan mail, it was overwhelming. We had to bring it back.

Zach Gilbert:

Yup.

Tom Bellen:

So we’ve been off for a bit, obviously summer’s happening. Nobody works in the summer, including us. So we’re deciding to do this. But one last time, before really the biggest day of the year, do you know what’s coming, biggest day of the year?

Zach Gilbert:

I think I know what you’re going to say it is. But I’m curious, go ahead.

Tom Bellen:

What do you think it is?

Zach Gilbert:

I think you’re going to say it’s your birthday.

Tom Bellen:

Of course it’s my birthday. Well, that is the biggest day of the year. Obviously, you’re correct, July 6th. Share the birthday with Sylvester Stallone, and President Bush. So we call each other, we talk about it. Big day. Also, some people think about it, birth the nation, all that, Independence Day weekend’s coming up. So that’s exciting. Mostly because you get days off. But with that said, long weekend coming up. Zach, how are you celebrating my birthday with this long weekend that the government’s given you?

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah. So I’m going to go kayaking a little bit. My wife and I just got a new patio set. So we’ll be playing some board games out on the patio, which is lovely. And then I’ll probably smoke some meat.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, you’re smoking meat. You’re copying me. Is that the case?

Zach Gilbert:

Sure. I-

Tom Bellen:

I created smoking meat.

Zach Gilbert:

Yes.

Tom Bellen:

What meat are you smoking? And on what contraption and with what type of ingredients? Like what is the plan?

Zach Gilbert:

Sure. Okay. So I will be likely smoking pork butt. I’m a big pork guy. So I’ll be doing that. I will be doing it on my pellet grill. And I used to have a wood, the log grill, but our condo/apartment association does not allow that, but they did allow me to use pellets. So it’s something, better than nothing, because they are pretty strict here. But I’m able to use that. And then I’m using, oh my gosh, I’m blanking on his name, he’s a Texas guy…

Tom Bellen:

Aaron Franklin?

Zach Gilbert:

Yep. Yep. I got his cookbook. So I’m doing his, so it’s very minimal, but delicious.

Tom Bellen:

Manifesto?

Zach Gilbert:

What’s that?

Tom Bellen:

The Manifesto cookbook?

Zach Gilbert:

Yes.

Tom Bellen:

Yep. I’ve had that for a while. So we’ll probably be making the same recipe then, because I also am doing a pork butt eight hour smoke, generally. But again with him, Texas barbecue is all about no barbecue sauce. They don’t like barbecue sauce. You can make it, he makes it. But if you have to use it, it means that you screwed something up, and all salt and pepper. They do add a little bit of paprika for color, but not really for flavor. But usually, yeah, it’s a four hour smoke and then wrap in foil and then about another four hours. So yeah, I’ve done that recipe many, many times. Love the Aaron Franklin. I was going to do brisket this weekend, but just timing with kids and everything, I just don’t have it.

Zach Gilbert:

True.

Tom Bellen:

But pork butt’s great. And I’m going to do a couple brine chickens. You ever smoked chicken?

Zach Gilbert:

I have not smoked chicken. We used to do beer can chicken, when I was on the fire department.

Tom Bellen:

Gross.

Zach Gilbert:

Oh, it’s not gross. Calm down.

Tom Bellen:

No, it’s fine actually. But actually, the better way is you’ve got to brine it. If you’re not brining your chicken before you smoke it, you’re making a huge mistake in my opinion.

Zach Gilbert:

Okay.

Tom Bellen:

There’s so many different recipes for it, it’s not crazy. But usually it’s brown sugar, water, some salt and you just brine it overnight. It makes a huge difference. You can add other spices, generally you jam some lemons and thyme and onion in there. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but a brine the night before and then smoking chicken, is the key.

Zach Gilbert:

Great tip.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. And plus the amazing thing, I always find this crazy with smoking meat, it makes sense if you get in the chemicals and all that, but let’s ignore logic for a while, is chicken is the meat that, in poultry, you have to be most careful in terms of making sure you don’t it eat raw. But takes far less time than doing pork. So when you smoke something, it takes far less to do chicken than it does meat. But if you kick it in another way, like the grill, skillet, whatever it takes less time to do beef than poultry.

Zach Gilbert:

Interesting.

Tom Bellen:

What’s up with that?

Zach Gilbert:

That’s interesting.

Tom Bellen:

But a lot of that is because of with brisket, it’s a tougher meat. So it’s about breaking things down. So it takes more time to break that down. Whereas chicken or poultry is a leaner meat and you’re not really down as much, you’re just cooking it through.

Zach Gilbert:

Wow, that’s a great lesson.

Tom Bellen:

You got in my wheelhouse. It’s one of the few things I do well, is smoking meat. So I got into it before kids, but now with kids, I am afraid. Because I’m going to burn the house down, burn down Manchester by the Sea. Don’t watch it, if you haven’t watched it, but spoiler alert. So that turned depressing. So kayaking, do you have a one person, two person kayak? Do you race against your wife, Emily?

Zach Gilbert:

So we have all one person kayaks. We have three of them. So that way when my daughter comes, she can kayak. We actually have a fourth one that we’re loaning out. But they are all one person kayaks, because I would probably tip people over, just to be that guy. We don’t really race as much. My kayak is quite a bit longer than my wife’s. So that does actually increase speed.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah, it is. When you have a longer kayak, it goes faster, I’m just saying. So we do not race. We just cruise the lake in style.

Tom Bellen:

Cruise the lake in style.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah.

Tom Bellen:

That’s interesting. I used to kayak. Birthday thought. Though my kayak story is, I used to go up to Grayling, Michigan, which you probably know. You’re a whatever. There’s an army base there. So my dad was in the military and so we got the privilege of staying there over the summer, for like a week or two weeks in like little cottages they have up there in the army base. And they would rent out kayaks and they would tell you very specific rules, keep it on the outside of the lake. And what we called, was an “island”, which basically is a sandy beach and the other side of the lake, we one night, it was my birthday because I wanted to do that, I wanted to go across at night… You can see where’s this going, foreshadowing the story, to the beach, to the island as we called it. Which normally would be okay, but we were breaking the rules. But another group of people was also breaking the rules. They were doing speed boat racing at night at the lake.

Tom Bellen:

So that was a bit of a scary moment for my mom. She saw that going on. But spoiler alert, I survived. Here, right? We also sank a paddle boat, I think that summer, at the bottom. Like it sprung a leak and it just went to the bottom. I don’t ever know what happened with that paddle boat. So if anyone knows, if anyone’s listening and remembers what happens to a paddle boat that sank to the bottom of a lake and Grayling about the year, I’m going to say 1996, call in, let us know. Because I don’t know what happened to that paddle boat. But you know what I do know?

Zach Gilbert:

What?

Tom Bellen:

The last few releases have been fantastic.

Zach Gilbert:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Bellen:

We might be taking two months off. My transitions are still very, very good. So I guess people listened to us talk about the MagHub releases. So let’s talk a little bit about that. And I know it’s been a while, so some of this might be rehash or not. But one of the big things that we did finally release after about 85 years of messaging with our software’s storyline, which took about as long to release dark mode, as it did for George Lucas to release his terrible prequel to the original trilogy. But we didn’t release it. So there is dark mode in there, and I know that a fair amount of people use it. I know our developers use it all the time. Because then whenever they do screen shares with me, it’s in dark mode. So that went out, finally. So that’s exciting. I definitely use it at night and other times and in kind of different modes. I’m always in testing now. So depending on what screen you’re watching, it’s always a different thing to try and break something in the system. So that’s exciting.

Tom Bellen:

What we’ve also done a lot with, not as in technical items, but over the last few releases and coming up now, is a lot more in terms of people management, I’ll say, we say resource management, but at the end of the day, these are people, capital, human capital. Maybe that’s worse. I don’t know if it’s better to call person, human capital or resource. But in terms of the way that you track time on the items so that you can see how long it takes time and someone do a ticket or task, knowing who’s available for those items, whether that’s because we’ve updated our resource allocation reports to be easier to read.

Tom Bellen:

One thing that we’re also updating and continue to do that I’m excited about for this upcoming release, is being able to, when you actually want to add someone to a task and a project, you don’t have to add them to the project first. You can actually assign them right from the task and not only that, but you can see what time they have available or not. So it’s a bit of the resource allocation adding, so UX and information in the same spot. I think it’s really cool. We’re taking PTO more into account. So if you take advantage of our PTO system, so just people putting those requests, you can know when they’re available or not. Excited about that. So we continue to expand some of the project stuff and being able to do that. People management…

Tom Bellen:

Well, we’ve also done a good amount with again, just upping our digital media items. We know it’s been a transition for people moving from the old way to the new way. They see the benefits, but there’s also a bit of hesitancy in whether they want to move. So we are really trying to beef up that area, knowing that it is kind of how we see the future of the product and lean people towards that. Whether it’s by creating additional tags in our templates to better communicate to customers like the ad specs or some of the material due dates in those, or again, it’s been updates to the slot menu report for different views.

Tom Bellen:

We’re also going to be creating a more consolidated production report in the near future. So you can go one spot to find everything for your digital media. So that’s again been a big thing for us as well. As well as some improvements to how our game integration works. We’re hoping to get to this release, giving you more control about what goes over to Google Ad Manager, maybe you know it as DFP, maybe you know it’s a double-click. But Google, apparently, is a big company. I didn’t realize that, the power. I found out about them recently. So you know how that moves over there for that. So a lot of different things in that field we’ve updated.

Tom Bellen:

Other areas of the site that again, we actually have a committee on this and we’re looking to create a new committee in the future, subscriptions. Since we started out, we’ve made some, I think pretty nice changes to make the subscription areas system better. We’ve had more control over some of the email templates, turning on and our off templates that you don’t want to go to the customer. Recently introduced a page that actually, a lot of subscribers print or they don’t have an email on file and you just have some random email in the system just so they can be in our system. Because we do require email. We know, sometimes people don’t like that, but for data we do require it. But now if someone is to renew an email versus our one-click renewal or the renewal code, we present them with a simple page that says, “This is what we know about you, and this is your information update it or don’t,” and they can do that. And if they want or require to, they can provide an email right there, change it.

Tom Bellen:

So not only allows it to your customer to give you new information to help communicate with them, but also if the information’s wrong, they can correct it. And they don’t have to log in, but they can simply go right in there. So that’s something that came from the committee. We have some other things that we want to do in the subscription area, make it more like the other parts of the system. Again, so when you go to a page, you know what to expect. Trying to make sure things behave the same way, one spot another. So that’s been fun. And we continue to do that with our UX team and doing something there.

Tom Bellen:

And we’ve also made some different things with the automation module, we’ve updated the ticket automation. So one cool thing just if you haven’t seen already, but if you’re trying to push more people to the client center, you can set up automations where if the customer uploads or makes a adjustment to a ticket in client center, you can either notify the ticket rep, who owns the ticket, the order rep, or just send it to a generic email. You can send emails out to people from the ticket automation. So that’s always a trick with our customers, is I feel like sales reps for either production people, just salespeople, or billing people. So we’re trying to make the automation flexible depending on how you like to run your business, because we know that it’s not one size fits all.

Tom Bellen:

We’re also adding something here that I know Zach has been a big proponent of, this upcoming release, which is when you actually look at automation instead of just viewing random IDs and where things go, you can actually see who did it. So if you are using automation, it’ll provide you more clarity on who’s gone through the workflow and what they did. So better reporting on that. So automation was always very technical as a process, set up the workflow and it does what does, but now you can actually get more insight into it. And with that we’ve included project templating. So if you want to say, “Hey, we always run the same types of projects and we’re tired of cloning it and recreating the same thing.” You can now template projects with our Gantt chart functionality and dependency functionality. So that’s cool.

Tom Bellen:

And yeah, I think probably in this upcoming release, what I’m most excited about has been, a lot of these items we’ve been working very close with customers, figuring out what they want and building things kind of specifically for them, that takes into account some of their… They come to us, they want something right now. So it’s a mix of us building it with them paying a little bit along the way, to move it up the chain. But we are doing something that I think will be really helpful for anyone running advertisement soon, but is being able to send our work reminders directly from a ticket, individualizing it with an email note and actually linking for the first time, the first time, to our artwork area without having to login.

Tom Bellen:

We know that it’s always been a trouble for customers to have to log in to a portal. Nobody remembers their login. Nobody remembers that the password is just their cat’s name. It’s always your cat’s name. But now they can actually click on a link, see a previous ad that they’ve run and just go right into that gallery area for taking advantage of it and say, “I want to run this ad again,” without having to login. So you can just send an email specifically, “Hey, we want to rerun this ad,” type that the note, either attach it or say you want to rerun one of your previous ads, send the email, they’ll go to a page and they can just pick it up right from there, no login, no anything, no Mr. Jingles 2019, or whatever it is. So yeah, so a lot of cool things have been going on.

Tom Bellen:

And some of the things that we’re excited too, that we’re hoping to get to, near future, is more consolidation reporting. So you just know, I go here, I do my thing, that’s it. Instead of going to the 75 different derivatives of a report. So we’re excited about all that. And I know like Zach, I don’t know if you’ve been following closely, but in all of my ramblings, is there anything in particular in there that you were like, “Oh baby, that is, that is lovely,”?

Zach Gilbert:

I have been stalking you guys product development cycle. I will say I am excited for the subscription changes. I know a lot of those things have been requested and it is a really cool functionality. Obviously I’m excited for dark mode, because the story is complete, and it was a long time coming. And prompts for the George Lucas burn, that’s real relevant in today’s date. And also big fan of automation insights and analytics. Being able to actually dive deep is a very helpful functionality, to see it happen that way. Yeah. So I would say those are probably my top three highlights, right there.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. I’m a big fan of the automation stuff. I think sometimes it can be harder to understand or grasp because it does present possibilities and that’s how my mind works. But like with the ticket workflow automation, I do think that as your company grows or you have very specific teams who respond to this thing or that, being able to trigger different actions based on who did something to a particular ticket and sent it to a particular… So for example, like if you have multiple publications, multiple brands, or you have a print team, a digital team, which I find you can create workflows for the digital team on this brand and a workflow for print teams on this brand to keep people in the loop.

Tom Bellen:

And I know one big thing too, that we’re looking on, that we’re excited about with the visuals and that, is people play with our project side and the Gantt chart view. We are kind of leveraging another tool to help us with those. And I know Kanban is a big thing and a lot of people love that. Whether you think Kanban, you think about Trello, basically, you think about the little board of stuff on there. That’s another visual thing that we think can help a lot with production teams, of grouping things by status or a sales team group and things by percentage. Some of the things that we’re hoping to do in the next few releases is really not as much recreate or build new things like an automation module, but take the ones that we had and refine it and improve the look and feel of it. So excited over the next few months, especially with the form also coming. So, yeah, that’s cool. Cool. Thanks. But I don’t know. So I saw something the other day.

Zach Gilbert:

Oh boy.

Tom Bellen:

I’m done with the release stuff. Let’s get into movies and cats. That’s why people come, and people probably fast forward. We should have a thing on this, on the podcast, where you can say skip MagHub stuff, because that’s probably what people want to do and jump right to this. I think I saw that with some other types of Netflix specials, if you want to skip certain parts of it and you just skip right over. So we should add that feature. So slip that in, as well.

Zach Gilbert:

Got it.

Tom Bellen:

All right. So I saw something the other day about F9. Do you know what F9 is, Zach?

Zach Gilbert:

Fast and Furious 9?

Tom Bellen:

Yeah.

Zach Gilbert:

Yes.

Tom Bellen:

It did really well in the box office. Did you go see it?

Zach Gilbert:

No.

Tom Bellen:

Now you say that in a sense of no, because you hate the Fast and the Furious series.

Zach Gilbert:

No, I do not hate the fast… Okay. There are two problems I’m having with the Fast and Furious franchise. One, they brought Han back and I’m sorry, Tokyo Drift was a phenomenal movie and…

Tom Bellen:

So wait, wait. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Zach Gilbert:

Nope. Yeah. So Han, spoiler alert, if you’ve not seen Tokyo Drift yet. It’s been about a decade now, so I feel like I can probably spoil some stuff now.

Tom Bellen:

You can spoil whatever you want. I give people a two week warning and then spoilers don’t count.

Zach Gilbert:

Well, Han dies in Tokyo Drift. This is after all those events and yet he’s here now. So once again, they’re bringing people back from the dead and I think Han died in a very victorious way, in a very cool, Han way. And then the last thing before we switch out, I know you’re going to have some comments on this. There’s a lot of rumors that they’re going to combine the Fast and Furious trilogy with Jurassic Park because they’re owned by the same properties and they’re going to try to do a crossover event. And if that happens, I’m going to go crazy in a bad way.

Tom Bellen:

So, all right. Look, I don’t care about Jurassic Park, that’s weird. Because of the fast and fury movies, I’m not a huge fan. I have seen Tokyo Drift probably actually more times than like… So I’ve seen that movie more than I’ve seen any other Fast and Furious combined. And it’s weird, because it’s with, I think Chris Black is his name, and the Han character, because I always thought like Han was supposed to have been in that and then it was in the past of the thing. So they brought him back into the space one.

Zach Gilbert:

Exactly.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s the exact thing. So it’s Lucas Black, not Chris Black, but anyways-

Tom Bellen:

I knew it was something black, sorry. But yes.

Zach Gilbert:

So Han, so they started doing like the teasers after Tokyo drift where they’re like, “Oh, here’s Han,” they’re like, “Oh my gosh, they brought them back,” and it’s like, “Ah, nope, it’s prequel. We got you. We got you.” And it’s like, “Oh, okay, okay, that’s fine.” And then this one is set afterwards and he’s in the teasers again. And they’re all saying like, “Oh, he’s back actually, alive.” And it’s like, “Okay.” And then there’s like rumors that he’s like a cyborg. So I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s like Fast and Furious, you need to calm down. You guys are stealing VCRs in the first movie. Like you’re going too crazy now.

Tom Bellen:

Well, I think as Fonzie, where it’s originally came from, jumped the shark many, many, many movies ago. Yeah. But I always thought Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift was interesting, because I actually liked that movie. Lucas Black, he was… And I thought it was probably actually, probably maybe one of the better one of the movies. But the fact that like I always liked Lucas Black because he was in the movie War with Kevin Costner, a young actor. Very good, if you haven’t seen that. More emotional. But like it had nothing to do with the other ones. And now they kind of wrote it off and now they’re trying to bring it back at the ninth. It makes no sense.

Tom Bellen:

Anyway, I didn’t really want to talk about Fast and the Furious. That’s another fun part. I was thinking more about movies and going back to the movies, but one of the things to… I’m not ready to go back to the movies quite yet. I’m waiting on that perfect film to go to. I don’t know if you have your eye on one. I know we talked about Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is one for me. But do you have a movie to go back to?

Zach Gilbert:

I haven’t really been following too many. Because Disney+ has been allowing you to purchase them, it has been fantastic. Like purchasing Cruella was a great choice. It was one of my favorite movies this summer. It was a remarkable movie. It was way better than I ever thought it was going to be, and I’m a big Emma fan. And there are other movies like, Black Widow I’m looking forward to. I’m really look forward to going back to theaters, it’s what I really want to do. But the convenience factor of that is just like, ah. And then not only that, it purchases it.

Zach Gilbert:

So just a little side note, if you have a Disney+ account and you have multiple users across the state or something. Like my daughter has one and she lives in [UP 00:24:07] and my in-laws have them and stuff like that. And that’s totally allowed. Disney allows it. So I don’t do any of that type of IP stocking. It’s really nice of them to do that. But also the really nice thing, is if you purchase Cruella or something along those lines, it unlocks it for all of those accounts. So like my daughter can watch it, my in-laws can watch it. So everybody gets it. So everyone’s like, “Oh, $29, it’s super expensive. It’s not a rental. So it unlocks it early, permanently. It will be eventually added on there, in time. But you get to access it until then. So there’s no viewing window and then it unlocks it for all accounts that’s on your account. It’s a pretty sweet deal. It does not replace the theater, but no.

Tom Bellen:

So on that Cruella thing, a couple of things, one is my sons again, because I’m not a great parent, is we have watched Luca a few times, which is also really good. I very much like Luca. And not to get too crazy, but it is totally what the fans think it is. We can break that down later. I don’t care what the directors say. But Cruella, I haven’t gotten it. I don’t have that level, but I don’t really know if it is a kid’s movie. It looks like it’s not trying to be, but it is also Disney. So on a scale, what age do you think someone should watch Cruella and not be scarred?

Zach Gilbert:

Ooh, that’s a good one. They do a pretty good job balancing stuff out. I’m trying to think of anything that jumps out as like, “Whoa. That’s…”

Tom Bellen:

Because it is essentially about a woman who wants to skin a bunch of dogs. Let’s just get real here. Wants to kill puppies.

Zach Gilbert:

So I will say, there is no puppy killing in the movie, at all. Not one bit. There there’s not. And there’s a love towards dogs through the entire movie. And it is a very unique… I’m not a big fan of Disney live action movies. They’re not really my favorite, because it’s just retelling of another story. And then I will also say, the worst part I have with Disney live-action movies, is they don’t use real animals for anything. They’re all CGI. And even like the puppies in Cruella are total CGI. And they’re doing like normal dog stuff, it’s something that could be trained, but it’s all pure CGI. I was like, “You guys aren’t even trying to bring a real animal into this. It’s just like, “Nah, 3D effects.” And it’s like, “Ah.” So I don’t know, I’m bad at this judgment of things, but I would say seven or eight or older, I think will be fine.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, that’s fun. It’s one of those things like 101 Dalmatians, you think of it as like a Disney film for kids, but then when you really break it down, it’s like, it is about a woman who wants to kill and skin puppies. Not the best. But here’s one factoid for again, to somebody else in movies. So you know my wife Margaret, I think. What do you think of her as far as like a person, before I make this next comment? Not to get too crazy.

Zach Gilbert:

That is a terrible question to ask somebody like, “What do you think of my significant other?”

Tom Bellen:

Because usually people might say, “She’s a nicest, very sweet woman,” and all that stuff.

Zach Gilbert:

Okay. Okay. I will play along with this actually though. I will give you my input on what I think of Maggie. I’m not going to call her Margaret.

Tom Bellen:

Well, that’s fine.

Zach Gilbert:

A million times out of your league in every way, shape, or form.

Tom Bellen:

Hey, that only makes me look better, by the way.

Zach Gilbert:

It does make you look better, but it makes me worried about her sometimes.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. Well she has some judgment issues. The point being is like, she likes everybody, all this stuff. She does not like Emma Stone. So hopefully she’s not a fan of the podcast. She hates Emma Stone. It’s very bizarre. She has like a thing on some actors where she just does not like them. So I will have to watch Cruella either with you or by myself. One of the movies I watched by myself, because we never go to theaters, but my friends and I have started COVID things. We tried to do book club and we were on a trivia thing for a while, but that stopped, is we’ve created a movie club.

Tom Bellen:

And so what it is, is my friend wanted to start this because he has a goal to watch like all like the best picture nominees since like 1942 best actors, like every one of the movie, he has a list going. So he wanted to create a movie club where we watch a movie and then we talk about that movie and people get to rotate what we pick. And trying to do it, something that people can watch relatively easy. So we started with a classic, one of the best films of all time. I think we can all agree. National treasure, fantastic film.

Zach Gilbert:

I love that movie and my wife still has not seen it and I will make her see it. I love that movie.

Tom Bellen:

It is an amazing movie. There’s nothing wrong with it. You cannot leave watching that movie without pure just being like, “This is great.” Then we had a friend. So then we do a random vote generator and who gets to pick the next movie. The next person picked actually, shockingly and it’s kind of messed up, but the Star Wars… What was it? The first one, the first Star Wars of the newest trilogy. Blanking on it right now.

Zach Gilbert:

Force Awakens.

Tom Bellen:

And I was like, “What?” Shocked the world. Right? And I had already seen it. But the problem is you can’t really talk about that without talking about the other parts, so I spoiled everything. So I am up this week, I’m up this week and I picked a film that I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen, but I’ve heard really about, and I’m a Nicolas Cage, man. I love Nicolas Cage. He is a poor man’s Keanu Reeves in that case. So I picked the movie. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, and it’s actually been ranked by many people when it came out, as one of the top 10 movies of the year and it looks terrible. And I have watched half of it and my God, this movie is a gem in many ways, is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Have you ever seen that movie?

Zach Gilbert:

I have not. I have seen like a documentary. I saw him like breaking down his roles and him talking briefly about that train wreck of a movie.

Tom Bellen:

Well, you can call it a train wreck of a movie, and in it he becomes a train wreck. But that movie again, like Roger Ebert, top 10 film. Like a lot of people think this is one of the best films of the year, that came out in 2009. And I started watching it and it’s an experience. I recommend it. So with my movie attributed question for this, is not to say about this movie, and what you will be amazed if you watch this, is there some actors in there you’ll be like, “You’re in this movie?” For example, I don’t know if this is Michael Shannon’s first role, but he makes a very small appearance in this film. And I’m like, “What?” So that’s crazy.

Tom Bellen:

But there was controversy with this movie because a lot of people thought it was a sequel. There was a movie Bad Lieutenant in 1992. And my trivia question is, who was the original, Bad Lieutenant? What actor played the original Bad Lieutenant that was later viewed, this film as being a travesty because it was a sequel of course? And I’ll give one hint to it. This person also was very famous for playing a role where he was titled as Mr. White. It’s Mr. White.

Tom Bellen:

But yeah, so that’s the trivia question. Who was the original Bad Lieutenant, who also played a role where he was titled Mr. White, in a far more famous film than these two? I will say that as well. But yeah, I don’t have too much else to say. And I’ll say this, my cat trivia thing, because this is happening right outside my door, but meowing, I’ve locked myself away. And I might’ve said this before, but it is a very interesting cat fact, is when your cat meows at you, just know that they are messing with you. Because the cat’s meow was not developed for cats. It was developed to trigger humans. It was developed based on the cry of a baby. Cats do not communicate with meow’s in any other world besides the domesticated human world. They know what they’re doing, they’re evil, and they’re here to destroy your life. So the cat’s Meow. When you hear meow like, “Oh, that’s cute.” They don’t do that in the wild. They don’t. They do it to destroy us. It is a fact, a cat fact.

Zach Gilbert:

Interesting.

Tom Bellen:

And on that. Yeah, no, it’s true. It mimics the baby’s cry. They have infiltrated us, but cats do not meow in the wild. So besides that, anything else you want to say, Zach, about this, upcoming of things, things want to plug something?

Zach Gilbert:

Absolutely.

Zach Gilbert:

So I’ll plug two things. First of all, MagHub is having their feature focused webinar, MagHub, a HubSpot publishers panel. It is on Tuesday, July 13th at 3:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern time. So it’s a publisher panel. You get to hear from HubSpot directly, because we are a partner program. You get to hear from MagHub, and you also get to hear some clients that are actually utilizing HubSpot as well as the integration itself. So I definitely recommend attending that. If you follow any of our social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, there are going to be posts on there. So you can sign up. It is going to be hosted through GoTo webinar. If you cannot attend Tuesday, July 13th, you can still sign up for it and you will get a recording 24 hours after it ends. So I’d highly recommend. There is a great Q&A session. So if you’ve ever been interested in wanting to use HubSpot for your publishing company, there’ll be some great panelists there. A lot of our clients are making that switch. So I’d highly recommend attending that webinar.

Zach Gilbert:

And the very last thing of course, and Tom mentioned this earlier, the MagHub fall forum is September 20th through the 22nd. It is going to be held in Chicago. It’ll be a great way to kind of get back out there and meet each other safely, obviously. It will be held at a Lowe’s right near O’Hare airport. So it does have free transportation from the airport to there. So you don’t have to worry about rental cars or parking or anything like that. And it’s actually in a really nice area. There’s a mall right across the road. There’s a Caddyshack themed restaurant right next door. It’s it’s owned by… Oh my gosh.

Tom Bellen:

Bill Murray?

Zach Gilbert:

His brother.

Tom Bellen:

Bob Murray?

Zach Gilbert:

Yes. Yeah. Yep. So he owns it-

Tom Bellen:

Was that actually a name? I just threw a name out there.

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t think it’s Bob Murray. No, it’s not Bob Murray. But yes, it’s on there. Nick Pitaro and I have eaten there. It’s a really cool place. But anyway, enough about the food. It is $150 per ticket. You can buy them online using our event management module at maghub.com. You can just go into the resources tab and type on MagHub fall forum, it’s there, the agenda’s available. And yeah, it’s going to be a really great time. You will get to go to Wrigley, to a private suite. So that’d be a once in a lifetime opportunity. And yeah, I think those are my two plugs for MagHub.

Tom Bellen:

One thing too, about this forum is it’s been a little time. Tom’s Feature Freak Out, which some people have raved as the greatest event of their lives. That’s me, by the way, I raved about that.

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah.

Tom Bellen:

I got some special things planned for this one. I’m going to go all out. I got some new games, some crazy things. So if anyone’s experienced that and didn’t mind it, it’ll get better.

Zach Gilbert:

Okay.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. Probably people hate the Feature Freak Out, but I like it. And I got some new, exciting things to do for that one. So get ready.

Zach Gilbert:

Stuff comes from the Feature Freak Out though. So I think people, they might not always like the format, I get that, but-

Tom Bellen:

What?

Zach Gilbert:

Stuff happens from this. A lot of features that end up in MagHub, following the fall forum, are from the fall forum. So if you want something in the system.

Tom Bellen:

And I don’t forget the ones. And we find there’s actually one in there that I can’t plug as being in this upcoming release, which was the number one requested one, that I’ve been planing for a while and may get in this release, but if not it’ll be in the release after, came directly from the fall forum. And we did a vote, we basically did a vote system. You got a certain number of dollars and you vote on it, which is a typical product manager feature. But I got some fun ideas. So try and keep it light, try and keep it fun, meet with other people, talk about it. And again, we learn a lot from it. And Zach said like, we listen to all customer communication. I read all feature requests. So, if you ever have something, say it. If you’re silent, we don’t know. So just yell at me, say, “Tom, you’re an idiot. You should add this.” I won’t be offended. Let me know.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s great.

Tom Bellen:

Maybe we should make it Tom’s feature rant. And people can go to the microphone and just rant at me for like 10 minutes. I’m fine with that.

Zach Gilbert:

And it’s your event Tom. You do whatever you want for the Feature.

Tom Bellen:

Rants

Zach Gilbert:

For your thing, yeah.

Tom Bellen:

That’s fine. We can do that. We can do a rant booth. Maybe we should do that. But this booth, go in there and just rant and record it and we’ll listen to it. I will listen to it with joy in my heart, but all right. With all of that, I think that is the wrap-up of Tom’s Tips Podcast, Birthday Edition. So thank you all for listening. If you’ve made it this far, if not, well, your loss.