The Veteran Check-In
Whiskey, Motorcycles, and Military Shenanigans
Have you ever wondered what it takes to transition from the high-octane life of military service to the artful craft of whiskey making? Join us as we navigate the exhilarating yet perilous world of motorcycle riding, punctuated by personal tales of bravery and close calls from our military days. You'll meet Brian, a veteran with 24 years of Army service, and gain insights into the careers of Navy rescue swimmers, survival instructors, and more. Along the way, we’ll unravel the secrets behind transforming raw ingredients into the nuanced flavors of distilled spirits, blending science, cooking, and an insatiable curiosity.
Get ready for a hearty laugh as we unpack the creative shenanigans military personnel employ to dodge work, from legendary pranks like the "liquid bulkhead remover" to the absurdity of collecting "exhaust samples." Our journey from military life to civilian careers is illuminated by the Skillbridge program, which smoothens this transition wonderfully. The camaraderie and humor that define military life come alive through stories of field training, complete with classic hazing pranks and survival training escapades.
We’ll also groove to the beats of our youth, exploring the evolution of hip-hop and its powerful cultural impact. Hear the tales of tank operations during the Gulf War, the frustrations with VA benefits, and the essence of compassionate leadership that can make or break a unit's morale. From personal recovery operations to the challenges faced in the desert, every segment of our conversation is infused with heartfelt reflections and a pinch of humor. And don't miss our dive into music and hip-hop culture, where we discuss the journeys of icons like Kendrick Lamar and the generational divide in musical tastes among veterans. This episode promises a rollercoaster of emotions, insights, and laughter.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to transition from the high-octane life of military service to the artful craft of whiskey making? Join us as we navigate the exhilarating yet perilous world of motorcycle riding, punctuated by personal tales of bravery and close calls from our military days. You'll meet Brian, a veteran with 24 years of Army service, and gain insights into the careers of Navy rescue swimmers, survival instructors, and more. Along the way, we’ll unravel the secrets behind transforming raw ingredients into the nuanced flavors of distilled spirits, blending science, cooking, and an insatiable curiosity.
Get ready for a hearty laugh as we unpack the creative shenanigans military personnel employ to dodge work, from legendary pranks like the "liquid bulkhead remover" to the absurdity of collecting "exhaust samples." Our journey from military life to civilian careers is illuminated by the Skillbridge program, which smoothens this transition wonderfully. The camaraderie and humor that define military life come alive through stories of field training, complete with classic hazing pranks and survival training escapades.
We’ll also groove to the beats of our youth, exploring the evolution of hip-hop and its powerful cultural impact. Hear the tales of tank operations during the Gulf War, the frustrations with VA benefits, and the essence of compassionate leadership that can make or break a unit's morale. From personal recovery operations to the challenges faced in the desert, every segment of our conversation is infused with heartfelt reflections and a pinch of humor. And don't miss our dive into music and hip-hop culture, where we discuss the journeys of icons like Kendrick Lamar and the generational divide in musical tastes among veterans. This episode promises a rollercoaster of emotions, insights, and laughter.
damn dude. Motorcycles are so fun, but they're just like dangerous, dangerous so dangerous. But I mean, like I used to have a dual sport, uh, and I would just I'd tear through back roads on that thing, just going stupid fast uh, and it's I'd do it again but uh, my wife would kill me before I could get on it now. So, like anytime I bring up motorcycles she's like anytime I bring up motorcycles she's like shut the fuck up about motorcycles.
Speaker 3:There are no motorcycles happening in this house and you know, like the Navy has like the motorcycle safety courses and all that stuff, and people are like oh, I'm a, I'm an experienced rider, and it's like it's not you, it's everybody.
Speaker 4:Other people out there that you got to watch out for yeah, I mean, it is you too, but uh, yeah, I, when I was a platoon sergeant, I hated it. When I get a new soldier in and he's a motorcycle, rather, it's all this safety stuff we had to go through. Yeah, it almost made it to where you didn't want to ride the motorcycle, but yeah, yeah, just one more thing to worry about another soldier out drinking and getting hit by somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean drinking and driving a fucking motorcycle. That's bad enough. Yeah, not that I have any experience doing that whatsoever or being on the back of a motorcycle. No, no, no, I've never done that. Not that I was drunk as hell on the back of somebody else's I don't even know like just stupid fast motorcycle and they were doing wheelies at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3:Oh, overseas, I've been on the back of some mopeds at night in some sketchy situations.
Speaker 1:This was in Texas, dude, we were grilling and then my buddy was like let's get on the motorcycle. I'm like that sounds fucking rad when we both hop on. He's just like doing wheelies, and I'm on the back, just like wow, For me it was like Hanoi and like Thailand.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, thailand, the little moped taxis, take them fucking anywhere.
Speaker 3:Oh no, I just had a girl that I was drinking with. She was just friends and she's like you want me to give you a ride back to your hotel room and I was like, okay, yeah uh, okay, so we'll do, uh, the regular intro stuff.
Speaker 1:So welcome to the veteran check-in, episode 17. Uh, I'm matt striker. I spent seven and a half years in the Army, four as a Cav Scout, three and a half as a Blackhawk crew chief in the 160th. We're going to go over to Brian, the new face this week Next.
Speaker 4:Welcome. Hey, thanks, appreciate it, glad to be here. Yeah, served 24 years in the Army, 12 active, 12 in the Nasty Girls and Reserves A little combo, pretty active with those. Uh private contractor for a little bit for the army and uh, now I'm a security sales consultant for a major security company.
Speaker 1:Okay, what was your? What was your MOS?
Speaker 4:uh in the army 19 kilo uh armor. Yes, I was a tank. There we go, at least in the uh, the, at least in the first 12 years after I became a senior NCO kind of moved on to training, operations and bills.
Speaker 1:Okay, yep.
Speaker 3:Big Mike, big Mike Rogers, big Mike underscore Tempe for my TikTok, but 20 years Navy aviation maintenance and then H-60 crew chief and rescue swimmer, and then seven years of the Navy survival school as a contractor.
Speaker 2:Top gun. I lived it chico. I did uh almost 24 years navy. Uh, I was a fire controlman, shot missiles, operated radar, shit like that.
Speaker 1:Um, I did six years as a seer instructor, three of those I taught with, uh mike rogers, and now I make whiskey for a living you always say that and then I forget to ask about it, because I actually want to know, like what, what's the process of making whiskey, like start to finish? How do you do it?
Speaker 2:Bro, honestly, it's a little bit of science, a little bit of cooking know-how and just a lot of fucking curiosity. Like is it possible to make alcohol out of whatever random substance? You guys sell this commercially? I no, no. Well, I do tours on this, like when I go, when I work with the distillery. Yeah, I'm one of the distillers, but I also we give tours that are like an hour long that talk about the whole process. I'm gonna try to cut it down really fucking short to not bore everybody.
Speaker 2:Um, it starts off with mashing. You take a bunch of ingredients, usually like for whiskeys, using like corn barley, stuff like that, and you're cooking them in a pot with a lot of hot water and what you're trying to do is most of these grains, when you get them, they're dry, so they're unfermentable, so you're trying to make them so they're fermentable. So with the corn, you got to cook it really long, really hot, to get the starches in it to break down into sugar. Once you've got all of your ingredients pretty much broken down to where they can be fermented, you put them in a fermentation tank. After they're cooled down, you add in a shit ton of yeast. Yeast is going to eat the sugar that you've created from breaking down all your corn. That's what's going to create ethanol alcohol and then fart out a bunch of carbon dioxide. So this is where all the this is where all the cooking and chemistry comes in Fermentation depending on what you're making, it's going to take anywhere from three days to three weeks. What you're doing is you're tracking your sugar gravity, like how much sugar is being converted into alcohol. Eventually you're going to get to a point where you've got no sugar left, which means you've reached what's called a full attenuation.
Speaker 2:From there you take all that corn beer you've created and the corn with it, you put it back in your still and then you distill with it. It usually takes two runs. Your first run is called your wash run. What you're trying to do is you're getting all the volatiles that you use to make alcohol from that corn beer. One of those volatiles is ethanol alcohol. That's the good shit. That's what you know we drink. That's what gives you confidence on karaoke floors and dance floors and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But you're also creating like acetone and acetate, so that's nail polish remover, and then you're creating methyl alcohol. That's the shit that makes moonshiners go blind. Okay, so you've got all this as a whole on your first run. You've got to distill it again to extract only your ethanol and all the other shit your acetone acetate and ethanol. You're going to discard that shit and just hold onto your ethanol. That's eventually what's going to get proofed down. So proofing is adding water to bring down the alcohol to taste Um and eventually go into a barrel. It'll age for a few years. You proof it down again, put it in a bottle and then sell it to customers and then drink it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you started that's a, that's a 10 000 or actually like the 35 000 foot view. It's a lot more intricate than that, but I'm not going to bore everybody with an hour-long spiel on what the fuck I do.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, we've got, we've got time, brother.
Speaker 4:That's the only thing that we got.
Speaker 3:No, I mean.
Speaker 1:I looked into it a little bit, like when I used to drink. I made, uh, I made cider that I called white girl, cause I tried to make it as uh, as strong as I could and I would get you white girl wasted. But it tasted fucking awful Like it was just. Yeah, it was like prison hooch dude. But so what you were saying is you, you start off with a bunch of you, you distill that, you keep that, and then you distill that again.
Speaker 4:Yes, Okay, okay, need to get you out here, dude, I used to love cider man Cider's good, Not my cider.
Speaker 3:My cider was fucking awful.
Speaker 2:The best part of it is how I got the job in the first place and they didn't have it, Matt, when you got out and Mike, they didn't.
Speaker 3:You're talking about Skillbridge, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, skillbridge is how I got it. So when I transitioned out, uh, instead of just retiring and then doing nothing, um, I had a six-month internship at the distillery uh, while still in active duty. It's a total fucking scam.
Speaker 2:It was awesome wow, yeah, that sounds like a scam yes, active duty, instead of going to a ship or a big gray thing and working for a bunch of assholes I can't stand. I learned how to make alcohol and then, once I officially retired and finished my internship, they hired me on to just be a distiller, and I have one civilian that works in the production space with me and that's my head distiller olivia. Everybody else that works there are all active duty interns, wow, yeah yeah, I created my own skill bridge, basically like I was.
Speaker 1:I was a scout and I was going to get out and I was like I have literally zero transferable skills.
Speaker 1:And then when I was in Iraq they were like, hey, we need, you know, 15 series because and then they were selling it Like if you spend 30 months in a subset of MOS is the FAA waives the technical school portion of getting your civilian license to work on aircraft. So I did that. You end up going to you have to take two written tests for the FAA to get your airframe and your power plant and then you have to go through a practical exercise where it's like some old grizzled dude makes you do a bunch of mechanic shit. You have to weld and buck rivets and stuff. But basically like you go to a school where you read the whole book of all of the questions that they could ask you on these tests and you just read it again and again and again for like two weeks and then you go and you take these tests instead of going to the technical school, which no the license cards yeah, I mean, it's like it's a license to learn, basically like that's what they say when you have your ap.
Speaker 1:And I really I only did that for like eight months, uh, but I was going to school during it, so I just transitioned to being an engineer instead of being a mechanic, which is better your old transition that that course was eight weeks or eight months.
Speaker 4:Say again Was that eight months that you went through that transition to in training for the aircraft repair?
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no. So I did so. My three and a half years in the army counted as the 30 months that I needed to bypass the technical school requirement. And then, when I was getting out, I took the two tests, the two written tests, and I took the, the practical, while I was still in. So I had the uh, the amp license when I got out and I worked at one like real shitty, it's called trans states airlines. It was out of dulles in virginia, um, but then I got laid off from there and I was already going to school.
Speaker 3:So, like, fuck that, I'm just going to be an engineer now I'll make the fucking planes yeah okay yeah, the Navy maintenance guys have like a same program too, where they can like build up all their maintenance hours towards doing the A&P thing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so we were talking there was there was we alluded to. It's a scam and that's one of my favorite things about. One of my favorite things about being in the military was, like the ways that people would just scheme to get out of work, like we called it being a shadow ninja, we call it being a shadow ninja, we call it skating.
Speaker 3:Sham ninja, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had we would have competitions.
Speaker 4:Being a shadow ninja, we call it being a shadow, we call it skating sham ninja. We got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we had. We would have competitions like when I was, when I was still lower enlisted before I got uh, my stripes, we would. We would have competitions about who could leave the longest and not get caught. Like we had a guy go see a fucking movie on a monday, because monday's motor pool day, like normally you're in the motor pool doing a bunch of nonsense. Uh, we had a guy just like dip out go see a movie and he brought back the ticket. We're like, damn, did you fucking?
Speaker 4:but there's so many it's like sorry, uh, they, uh, you know, just like you. I think you probably went through this, matt. We went through this, matt. I was in the in the cavalry, the calf, uh and uh, being the new guy, they, you know the old, go find a box grid square. Yeah, thing that they got for the rook, the newbies well, I was on to that. So I, uh, I took my time at finding that grid, those box grid squares. I actually left for the day, came back morning I got my ass chewed and smoked poorly, but I told them I couldn't find them. I even went off post to look for them.
Speaker 4:Looked at my house.
Speaker 1:I looked at my bed. I looked on PlayStation Network. Couldn't find them anywhere.
Speaker 4:I got drunk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we used to try and get guys to find soft spots in the armor.
Speaker 4:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:In the Bradleys. You give them like a ball-peen hammer and a piece of chalk and you're like come here, listen to this, this is good. And you come down here and be like see this right there, that's bad, got to draw an X on it. And we would do that to every new guy that came around and some of them. There'd be no chalk. Other ones they're like this is all fucked up.
Speaker 4:Just chalk all over the whole damn thing. You'd circle it too if it was a deadline. Remember, this one here told you if it sounds like this, you circle it. Try again.
Speaker 1:We used to do that shit with the the 30 mil on the on the bradley where we would. We would crank it down because it's got a manual crank and we'd say that we were doing something like calibrating. Used to do that shit with the the 30 mil on the on the bradley where we would. We would crank it down because it's got a manual crank and we'd say that we were doing something like calibrating it. Uh, until people like hold it up and they can't possibly hold it up. So it's like there's people just out there on on the front of the fucking tank and you're like hold that gun, like I can't we, uh, so you have you heard of the boom test.
Speaker 4:No, boom test is something we did on cruits and usually they do it to them in ait, but they didn't. We'd make sure we did it first. Duty station and you elevate in the m1 a1 a2. They have that 120 millimeter cannon so we lower it like we're going to punch the gun tube and they and one private stands at the receiving end and another private inside on the breach, open up the breach, they can see each other literally through the cannon and you have to yell boom. We had so much fun just telling them how to do it, boom into the barrel. And then another NCO would be in there coaching that private. So how did that sound? We, you know, tell them we're calibrating the acoustics and what. Just make up some bullshit. But we would have them. We'd have 10, 20 of them in line and and of course you know, the senior guy would come out, all you know, pissed off because we're not actually punching gun tubes or having too much fun fucking with privates. Good times.
Speaker 1:That was so much of my time when I was a scout was just useless stuff. You'd sit around and clean weapons all day and then be like okay, 06, pt. It would happen just If we weren't in the field, we were doing nothing useful or we were doing details, or we were like teeth like people would teach classes. So you'd get like teach a class on CQB and it'd be just it's the blind leading the blind, a bunch of dumb asses like running through a building, like clear your corners.
Speaker 4:You have to have your smart book. Yeah, dude, clear your corners.
Speaker 1:You didn't have to have your smart boat with you. Yeah, dude, we had. The first time that I was in Iraq, we had these. What is it? Non-governmental agencies, nga or?
Speaker 4:they weren't SF, they were NGOs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had some NGO dudes that were they had like the best gear, like I remember their gear because it was amazing. But they spent like one or two days teaching us CQB and the first time that we ran through they're like all right, let's get all your leadership to clear the room so we can see the standard. And my platoon sergeant comes in and he does like the side shuffle across the room just like and everybody busts up laughing and he was serious.
Speaker 1:But he realized how bad he did and he was like yeah, you know, you gotta keep the, gotta keep the energy good the funniest thing, because everybody else was like doing it real and he just comes in like like that's don't, don't, ever do that ever yeah, this shit was fucking ridiculous, yeah you're right, though.
Speaker 4:We spent a lot of time doing useless shit. If you were in a line unit, that's all you did. If you weren't training, you're doing something stupid non-related to training. Yeah, I think that's the same with all services yeah yeah, I mean we had.
Speaker 3:We had stuff in the Navy, like you know. They'd send a new guy. Hey, go get the keys to the airplane.
Speaker 3:And they'd send them to the ready room, or like on the boat, or the boat they would like send them to, like the engineering guys, like go get a BT punch. That one didn't work out too well. What's a BT punch? Well, bt is a rate rate, so it was at the rate of time. It was a boiler tech. So you go find a beat punch, you can figure out the rest. So yeah, yeah, or like a pat eye remover, or you know stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So, or the one we had yeah good one pretty sevenicky, 7 is good.
Speaker 2:My favorite one for the boat was there's always a guy called the MPA, the main propulsion assistant. So this guy's former enlisted then took a commissioning and his only job, or his or her only job, is to understand the engineering plan of a ship inside and out. And I used to tell new guys like hey, you got to go tighten the nuts on the mpa. And I'd give like the smallest fucking wrench and then they would go to where the mpa is and he'd be like what the fuck do you want? New guy be like um, I'm here to tighten the nuts on the mpa. Uh, my work center suit gave me the tiniest wrench because he said the nuts are really small.
Speaker 2:And then back in the day when he had like an all-male ship, your MPA would simply pull his fucking dick and balls out. He was like all right, start to tighten. And he'd be like what the fuck? He'd be like I'm the MPA, tighten my nuts. And then the new guy would come back. He'd be like this is such an angry engineer, pulled his dick out, told me to tighten his nuts. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Shit got real stupid on ships, man it's funny how everybody got involved.
Speaker 3:Did you guys do the mail buoy thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, we did the fucking mail buoy all the time.
Speaker 3:You can't really do that on a carrier, but on the smaller ships you do something called mail buoy, where you put a guy out there, out on the fo'c'sle or the bow or whatever, and he'd be looking for a buoy to get to pick up, to get our mail.
Speaker 2:So liquid bulkhead remover. Go to hazmat and find liquid bulkhead remover. So you guys call walls on.
Speaker 2:Ships are called bulkheads okay and uh, new guys forget you know navy speak after they leave boot camp because most of your kids are going to school for a while. Yeah, so you tell them to go find liquid bulkhead remover. They're going to survive on a hazmat, like my boss told me to find liquid bulkhead remover. And then it'd be some angry like filipino chief who'd kick him the fuck out. Your guy would come back. I'll piss off. Piss his chief off. I couldn't find the liquid bulkhead remover yeah or was it the?
Speaker 1:id10t form just gonna say that we would do that id10t go to go to supply. Yeah, that was a good one I got got with the I used to. I got got with the? Uh, the exhaust sample when I was in my first duty station with south korea and I was actually I was in armored cav uh with tankers. But they got me with, like go get an exhaust sample. They gave me a fucking bag and I go and I put it over the exhaust like tie it up real quick.
Speaker 1:I walk into the maintenance office and it just so happened that, like somebody had told a joke right before I walked in, so they were laughing as soon as I got in and I thought that they were laughing at me. And I was like in, so they were laughing as soon as I got in and I thought that they were laughing at me and I was like oh you motherfuckers.
Speaker 1:Uh, so, like, luckily it didn't go any further because, like the, the way that they would do it is you go to the maintenance office and they'd send you across the fucking post and you have to go somewhere else just carrying around this bag with exhaust in it um, but yeah, that one.
Speaker 4:That's a good one too I think one of our guys uh, we had him do the exhaust test and uh, on the man, sergeant major's vehicle and told him that sergeant major was very particular about the exhaust. He was really concerned. So take this sample in sergeant major's office and have him test it.
Speaker 1:That didn't fare well uh, dude, you gotta imagine, like being a sergeant major, the the amount of just dumb asses that come into your office, which?
Speaker 3:is the most random things from everywhere, right oh yeah, you got a story, you know for us it's it's command master chiefs, right? So so this kid goes into this command master chief's office and he wants to get out of the Navy. And he tells the master chief master chief, I'm gay, I want out of the Navy. Now, this is before they change everything around. He's like really so. The master chief just dead eye looks him in the face and he goes what does cum taste like? Yeah, can't quite answer the question.
Speaker 4:He laughed oh man, there's so many jokes and then I'm gonna leave it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah mike, do you remember the? I don't want to say his name. I doubt he'll ever listen to the fucking podcast. I just don't want to say his name. I doubt he'll ever listen to the fucking podcast. I just don't want to put his name out there. Do you remember the instructor who told a female student that the rabbit eyeball tastes like cum?
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, I do. Yeah, that didn't fare too well I think that made it on some critiques, didn't it?
Speaker 2:It did. One of the things we did at SEER is we would do a, a game demo, and we would use usually use like rabbits. Um, it's because it's it's a larger small game. It's easier to skin and, yeah, the body parts are bigger so it's easier to use and, uh, and so, if you're doing it properly, you're breaking down the animal after you've killed it and you're trying to use as much of the animal as possible so you don't waste it. You're trying to figure out if you can use some of the jaw bones as weapons or fish hooks. You're breaking up all the other bones to make a stew and all this shit.
Speaker 2:This instructor he's looking at his team. He's like yeah, I've been told that the rabbit eyeball tastes like jizz. And then looks at the one female student in his team. He's like is that true? And I heard the story and I was like you've got to be fucking kidding me. I don't understand why this conversation would ever happen in the field. Well, I could get it if it's a bunch of dudes, because dudes are fucking stupid. But actually, going across enemy lines and going to a female student, you're her instructor and you're like does this taste like jizz?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did rabbits and chickens when I went through, so every group got a rabbit and a chicken and they showed us how to dispatch both of them. They didn't tell me that the chicken you have to like, you have to be careful of its neck. So it's like you step on the head and you pull the body and I did that and its neck was just like going fucking everywhere, shooting blood everywhere. I was like, oh my God.
Speaker 3:I was so hungry.
Speaker 1:I didn't care, though, yeah we just, we just stun them and break the neck so yeah, the karate chop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no well I did on the back of the head. I, yeah, I fucking chop that bastard all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, the only problem with that matt is because I've had you know, I was, I worked instructor in training so they'd be like, hey, mr rogers, can I do a judo top? I'd be like, okay, well, they would go ahead, give her, give it a shot. And they wouldn't. They wouldn't take the rabbit out of the problem and then try to go and skin it, which actually when I went through as a student happened. They like stunned the rabbit, thought they snapped its neck and it was holding it up and the one guy sitting next to me is like that rabbit's still breathing. I was like no, that's just a breeze. They go to skin it and they start to pull skin back and the rabbit just starts screaming and freaking out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, that's where I kind of like yeah, I just kind of like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just kind of like, hey, man, just stun it, put you know it, put it on the ground, put the stick over its neck and just pull the hind legs, yeah, till that head can do like a 360 and you're good to go, because you don't want to hear. I see a bunch of students. They're squeamish already hearing this blood-curling scream from the rabbits.
Speaker 1:We had that going just crazy, they told us. You put the back legs in between your fingers, you swing it because that calms it down, and then they're like, and then you go down Karate, chop it. I don't know anybody got it the first time. They're just out there as a bunch of screaming rabbits, and then me with a fucking bloody chicken neck.
Speaker 3:My technique was to hold the back legs and rest it on my leg and just pet it and make it calm, and then you kind of give it the quick pop, drop it to the ground and do it right. Well, I had a Marine student. He had it, he went to stun it. He didn't stun it correctly and then started petting it again and I'm like what are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:it's like I just if I just pumped you, I just popped you in the back of the head, do you think rubbing the back's gonna make you feel? Feel any better?
Speaker 1:oh, yeah, yeah, yeah I figured I'd go back to step one yeah, poor rabbit's a battered housewife yeah, yeah, where's dinner now?
Speaker 3:we're gonna get the spca after us with all our cruel stuff with rabbits. But hey, man, it was a teaching point.
Speaker 4:So yeah, it's amazing listening to you guys. Uh, being a tanker never having to go through sear, uh, I just preferred to, you know, get my chicken at kfc. But so, at the sear training, did y'all, did they not have? Did you not have a knife to to dispatch?
Speaker 2:them with no, no, so the the thing is is like instructors have knives, but we're the. The purpose is to demonstrate to the students that you can do a lot with very little, little right, yeah, okay makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean in real life I'm I'm not just going to grab a rabbit by the behind legs and swing it to get it to calm down. No, I'm gonna fucking shoot it. Yeah, trap it somehow right, especially if it's wild, because wild rabbits, like a wild rabbit, will kick and fight and all that shit. Like I'm no, I'm not fucking with that. You gotta trap it first too.
Speaker 3:Like, yeah, the thing is like it's like you, and when you kill any kind of game, you gotta let it just sit for 30 minutes for all, like the ticks and lice and stuff to kind of fall off the body too. So really you know and you want to take it out from a further distance. But again, if you're evading you're not hunting with a weapon, because now you're giving off your position where you're at. So yeah, yeah yeah, that's cool that's cool.
Speaker 3:That's man, but like animal eyeballs, got a lot of electrolytes. They're just like gatorade, so really exactly like gatorade.
Speaker 3:It's the same same flavor yeah, they come in blue, purple and orange oh you won't believe how many like new instructors didn't, didn't want to eat the eyeball and I would just do it in front of them. You know, because if I'm, you know that way, you know I'm not hazing, you know I'm not making them do it. So I'm doing it, you're gonna do it, and I think we even had a female instructor who was a vegan and she did it. Because you eat the eyeball and you can also take the the lungs and you pull out the trachea as long as you don't mangle it. Because you eat the eyeball and you can also take the lungs and you pull out the trachea as long as you don't mangle it.
Speaker 2:When you're like skinning it and you can blow up the lungs with to the trachea and that's like a fishing bob or so that used to be like bragging rights, if you could like, properly kill a rabbit and maintain the trachea in the lungs and actually inflate the lungs with the trachea, tie it up and make a little balloon out of it used to be like, yeah, I fucking did this so good that I kept the lungs and his throat intact so I could turn it into a toy that's really fucked up this whole conversation, like last time we talked about shit for 45 minutes this one is just like murder and body parts if my wife walked in right now and overheard this, she'd probably be very concerned that I was going to make a skin lamp, yeah.
Speaker 3:I guess I got to take the hit for that one, matt, that's all right, I mean, we've got three people on right now.
Speaker 1:That's fine. It's fine who cares. Four people are going to download this. That's fine. It's fine. Who cares? Four people are going to download this. Five people will watch the one that I threw up on YouTube for us talking about killing rabbits. I mean it would be on TikTok and then I'd get Shadowbend there. I think Twitch is actually more stringent, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's like there's six different places that we can, we can stream, we could just cycle through them, baby yeah, I only use tiktok and youtube and that's where I've seen your material.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I got on twitch just because it's like twitch is where you stream stuff, so I figured might as well also do that, uh, and then as soon as, as soon as the other account, the veteran check-in TikTok one, gets to 1,000, I'm going to stream from there, just because it's like I split all the content out, because I do the stories, I do the weird-ass music and then I do this, and when I try and mix all those together it brings all the channels down. So it's like the audience the Venn diagram of the audience that likes those things is very small. The intersection is very small. I don't know what the fucking point of that shit was.
Speaker 4:I didn't know you did music until yesterday I saw one of them. I liked it a lot too. It's pretty cool, it's a new thing?
Speaker 1:It's not a new thing. I grew up so my parents were Christian ministers but they played music. It's a whole fucking other thing. But at the house there was a bunch of musical instruments. My dad played guitar for I don't know 50 years, so I grew up playing guitar. But then I kind of just fell out of love with guitar. I still have like six of them, but lately it's been like the electronic music and the keyboard and stuff and actually learning like scales and notes and chords, plus digital audio workshops, like where you can make all that stuff. Like it's so crazy, like I like really complicated technology and just getting familiar with like the things you can do. It's a great time. Plus I get to make really unhinged shit and that's a fun time for me. It's therapeutic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like the AI music today is like crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those things are. I catch some of those every once in a while.
Speaker 3:I heard Sinatra singing Flowers by Miley Cyrus and I was like mm-hmm, it actually wasn't bad cover, believe it or not, it was okay.
Speaker 1:yeah, well I don't know if this is the audience for this, but have you heard? Bbl drizzy like the? Uh. So there was, there was a rap beef between kendrick lamar and drake. And, uh, there's a producer god damn, I forget his name. There's a producer who makes beats and in one of the disses, drake was like metro that's his name, metro booming. He's like metro, sit your dumb ass down and go make some beats. And in one of the disses, drake was like metro that's his name, metro booming. He's like metro, sit your dumb ass down and go make some beats. And metro goes off and he finds this song that somebody else made called bbl drizzy with ai. So it's just like it's kind of like a soul r&b where they're talking about how drake has like the best bbl in history, but it's like it's the whole production where it's like the singer and then there's background. So Metro finds that he makes a beat out of it and it goes fucking viral. So Drake just gets owned on all angles on that one.
Speaker 4:Oh, I got to see that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is Matt. Just like Nate says you got to go to the studio to make some beats.
Speaker 1:Got to go to the studio to make some beats yeah, that shit was fun. I got to say you and Nate both got some good one-liners man.
Speaker 3:Nate's got some good ones. Yeah yeah, mine just come.
Speaker 1:I think of them earlier and I write them all down and I just wait for the right moment to zip them in there, gotcha.
Speaker 4:Got the notepad right here. I can do that, but I'd forget where I put the damn pad, damn it. I had a good one Hang on, hang on and a whole bunch of good ones.
Speaker 1:Time out, Be right back. So, Brian, as a, as a tanker, I'm sure you went to. You went overseas right To Iraq.
Speaker 4:I went to Iraq. I was in WWW Desert Storm, the first one I can call it. Yeah, go Back Aways. So I was with Quarter Cav, 1st Infantry Division, basically division reconnaissance. On the ground we worked with air, we had air assets, kiowas, cobras, so we were kind of doing missions into Iraq before the ground war. So, uh, it's pretty cool, it was something I didn't know I'd ever trained for. So, with an M one, a one and two Bradley's going into Iraq, you know, having to come back into Saudi Arabia to actually invade, you know that was that was interesting. Uh. But uh, invade, that was interesting. But yeah, the three separate missions into Iraq, before we invaded One of them to rescue some crew members from a helicopter went down.
Speaker 4:I actually got a picture of my tank with maybe you can tell me this, matt, but I'm glad you brought it up we had to rescue the crew members, put them in the Bradley and we had to put a prop of the helicopter on the back of our tank and bring it back. I don't know if they destroyed everything else in place, but I had no idea why. We just did it and I've got pictures of that. I think we're on a prop strapped down to the back of our tank as we're coming back. So yeah, I have no idea. We still don't know why to this day.
Speaker 1:We had to do that. I don't know why you would get a single prop like you like. The guidance that we had was you drop a thermite and roll like if you have to roll out. You drop a thermite and you roll out, but bringing a single prop, that would just be kind of a pain in the ass to take off. Anyway, those props are a bitch dude. They're fucking heavy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know that, and maybe due to the size, I don't know. I can't remember if they put the other prop on the other vehicles, but those two Bradleys, so I don't know how they would really do this. As long as they are, I was a gunner so I was providing overwatch while everybody else was doing the work. There you go. That's interesting. Still haven't got an answer. Maybe the Hilo crew?
Speaker 3:won the trophy for surviving the crash, I guess.
Speaker 1:It's not a bad trophy, I'm a.
Speaker 3:I'm a. I'm a personal recovery guy too, and yeah, it's about getting the survivors. We don't give a shit about the aircraft. That's what we're as long as all the cryptos are zeroed out and you know you destroy what you gotta destroy. Then move along smartly we were.
Speaker 4:We. We came up with our own theory that maybe the composite of the props because the composite on an M1A1 tank, the armor, the Chobham armor on there was classified At least it was at that time If you were ever to break the surface of it you had to do a mile of paperwork, ndas and stuff like that. But we just kind of figured, maybe there was that, maybe there was something in the composite. We didn't want them to recover. I have no idea really, yeah, I was just I was, uh, in the spec for mafia at the time.
Speaker 1:So you know, yeah, I don't care much about anything other than my main job exactly I mean that would just be I don't know how the fuck that they would even like figure it out Really, like when you, when you make composites, dude, you like you vacuum, seal all that shit together so you could, you could maybe peel back some of it and see, like, the orientation of the layers or how many layers it is, but they probably just you can do that through, just like basic structural analysis, Like you would figure out.
Speaker 3:this is how you should do it and then, like the structural analysis, you would figure out. This is how you should do it. I don't know about the Little Birds or the Cobras, but the 60 got those nitrogen spars inside the blades too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they couldn't have been saving it to save the piece, because if you strap it to something and you're going, around like no, you're not going to keep it. You're ruining the integrity of it.
Speaker 4:Right, I haven't, I really don't. I'll send you a picture of it. I got a couple of different angles of it, it just looks interesting. It looks like I have wings on my tank, you know, coming out each side Got to go 85 miles an hour. Yeah, that's right To get any lift. Only way I got lift is going off, a waddy.
Speaker 3:One of my squadrons, one of the flights they was doing, this was off the ship. They had a tip cap explode on them. What's that? A tip cap is at the end of the blade. Oh okay, it kind of helps with sound reduction and aerodynamics and all that. It just like kind of blew up and like one of the pilots was freaking out, he was getting ready to auto and the other pilot kind of took over and says now we're good, and they kept it and they flew it back to the boat.
Speaker 4:So okay, dude we had every day.
Speaker 1:We had a drive shaft get center punched with a bullet on one of our birds when we were flying in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3:So I guess they're not ballistic tolerant.
Speaker 1:No, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:At least whatever we got hit we got hit so many times when we were in Afghanistan we were running day missions Like the problem. There's kind of two problems. So the first one is when you get a, a newer pilot who hasn't been deployed for a while, like they're not doing nap of the earth, they're doing like they're doing medium height, they're doing slow flying, especially when they're used to flying at night where they don't have to worry about like being seen very clearly and being just a great target in the air. The other problem is the operators, because the operators like initially they won't let you kill anything, but then as soon as they get their ass handed to them or they have to like run around in the mountains or like kill fucking everything. But when we were in Afghanistan running day missions, it's we got shot three times in a month.
Speaker 1:Like there was one time where the pilots wanted me to like open the door and get a better look at something, and as soon as I opened that door it was just like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.
Speaker 1:I'm like fuck that, nope, that door stays closed. Y'all need to get low and fast, but we had like a staging area that we would go to in Afghanistan and we landed there and landed there and, just like the pilots were doing, just look around the bird and they're like, oh fuck, look at that. There was like a hole through one of the fairings. They open it up and it's just center punch straight through the driveshaft. Uh, we're like, well, do we fly it back? Like what the fuck do we do? Like we're here, we need to be there, we're literally on top of a mountain, like you can't get here unless you fly here. I don't remember what happened. I think somebody flew in just a part and it got changed out there, but it was like I'm real glad that we we made it here and that thing didn't fucking fail, no shit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's crazy. You mentioned that after when we were going home, just back in the desert storm. But after it was all over with finally get to go home, we had to tank our tanks all the way south. We were already up in Nazarea, close to Euphrates, so we had to road march pretty much from there all the way down to KKMC, which is a large military base in the middle of nowhere in Saudi Arabia, to stage our tanks to go back On the way back. We had to do it without radios too. There's four tanks. My tank had been shot up. All kinds of small arms Doesn't do much to it. I was surprised.
Speaker 4:The thing that took our tank out was just the heat of the sand. Going as fast as we were over these sand dunes and everything, the cooling tubes just melted on one on my left track and it snapped, and a big chunk. It snapped in two places. A big chunk flew off the tank. You know, uh, out out of nowhere and tank, or my tracks back in the. You know I'm still rolling, rolling hard, right, yeah, you know, because one track's going and uh, yeah, no radios, they kept going. They disappeared over the dune. So much for keeping your eyes on your combo. Sweet, yeah, another tank back out there to lift up the tank and because the truck, the uh, that's the first one I did two times and broke track there in the heat. But yeah, I finally got some help out there. But it took a while. We were out there for a good six hours with an 88, big maintenance vehicle Lifting it up, putting track on. Didn't have to have the 88, but they were there.
Speaker 1:Armored vehicles are the fucking worst. In Iraq we lost every single one of our Bradleys. Changing track on a Bradley is awful. I don't want to know what it's like on a tank, but on a Bradley it's just you throw track all the time. You go over a bump you're going to throw track. You got to tension the damn thing all the time and that's too tight and that's too loose. Track is the fucking worst. I hate worst. I hate it first thing you check.
Speaker 4:When you stop man, it's the track driver gets out, checks the track.
Speaker 1:You know it's not a quick fix. It is never, ever, ever a quick fix to change track or to like you got to put a piece of track in or you take a piece of track out and it's just, some people are wizards at it and they can do it in like an hour. Yeah, other times it's you know, all day, all fucking day, you're out there and once we put the uh, did you ever have the reactive armor on your tank?
Speaker 4:no, no, I never did. They uh started putting that on tanks when I was an instructor yeah, we spent.
Speaker 1:We spent all day one day out in the heat putting reactive armor on my Brad and I would swap between being the gunner on a Bradley and being the gunner on a truck. And then the next day we go out to do some patrol on some fucking bullshit canal road and my Bradley hits an IED and the whole thing burns and the whole like all the reactive armor just cooks off. Jesus Christ, you got to be fucking. Why are we even bringing these things? Why do we have these things here? Which is why I wanted to ask you if you had been overseas, because I'm like man having a Bradley anywhere out there fucking was ridiculous. Having a tank must have been just the absolute worst.
Speaker 4:I lived on that from January, I think, right when we started the air campaign. So right around the 17th we finally got our tanks and I lived on that tank until I don't remember when we came back Was it April, I don't know. We were on a long time. I lived on a tank and, oh, the troop that they put together it was normally just all Bradleys, traditionally. It had always, always meant, but they tried to. And I just come from 11th acr, which is a integrated cav, armored cav regiment in germany. Which great training.
Speaker 4:But they wanted to kind of integrate that into quarter cav, which was traditionally just infantry or bradleys and scouts. Uh. So they attached like two or three tanks to each troop. So, uh, they didn't really know what they were doing. Uh, I was familiar with integrated. You don't say, yeah, they had. Uh, in normal acr you have two, two platoons of bradley's, two platoons of tanks and a headquarters element that has remorbers. So you're all self-contained, you have everything. Every I said there, you need right there. Well, they didn't have that there, so they didn't know what they were doing. But anyway, they fielded these.
Speaker 4:They were getting brand new M1A1s from Germany out of stock there and shipped them straight to Iraq, got them off the boat and all the gunners and tank commanders were experienced. They went through all the units to find tankers, 19 kilos, who were M181 qualified. At the time we were still transitioning from the original M1s. I happened to be a qualified gunner even though I was a specialist. So all gunners and tank commanders were NCOcos taken from other units. All drivers and loaders came straight from ait. So you can imagine going into what you think is going to be the war of all wars. You know the lead up to it, with this million man army and all this armor and stuff, with a crew that you've never met before, and two of them are straight out of AIT. We nicknamed our I was an alpha troop. We nicknamed, we called them suicide troops for tankers because you're like, the success of a tank in an armored battle is not just based on the tank, it's on the crew and the cohesiveness, how they can work it and live it.
Speaker 4:We hated each other, had two privates, no shit. And then I had a. It's like I can say this I became friends with him later, but my tank commander was a E5 previously he was an E7. He was busted oh shit, for striking a non-commissioned officer and he was also doing drugs. I found out once we got out there.
Speaker 4:I don't know what he was doing, but I know in the mornings I guess that's when he was off his drugs he was just a straight-up asshole. Then, when he finally got his fix, later in the day he would be a completely different person, to very far extremes. You know, yeah, buddy, buddy, and then in a flash he's your work, he's cussing your mother out. You know. So you can imagine that, day after day after day after day, how I felt. I wanted to kill him, threatened to, yeah, but uh, yeah, and maybe we can go into some of those stories later. But yeah, it was not fun for sure. Until we came back, he left, he got sent home, his father passed away, so he left like two months early and they didn't have any NCOs to fill a spot. Again, still being a specialist, I became the tank commander of that track, that tank. For two months I had two privates working for me. Hey, you know what? It was a lot smoother. Yeah, you know we had.
Speaker 4:We went up and, uh, I guess we at talil air base in iraq I've been there yeah, yeah, we were occupying that after we transitioned I think 82nd or somebody had it before us but then we took it over just for security operations for that area. We stayed there the longest.
Speaker 3:That's where I saw the worst shit that I ever seen in my life, but uh, yeah, it was definitely uh that's crazy because I went there for the second you know the sequel and that that that base had stuff left over from the first time you guys were there. I mean the hangar I was staying in had a had remnants of a mi8 helicopter. That was all blown up.
Speaker 3:I probably walked out and even there were like two hangars, so the little hallway to get between the two hangars. They just had a bunch of Russian .50 cal ammunition that the EOD guys came and got out and got rid of.
Speaker 4:It is crazy because when we got there it was already thoroughly destroyed. I mean MiG, the floggers, whatever, a couple of jets. I've got these pictures, old pictures of jets on their back. You know where they just got blown off the runway, right? Yeah, it's crazy, but there were bunkers everywhere and you know, this is long before we integrated.
Speaker 4:you know, when we started teaching tankers how to do infantry stuff, you know that was the next go around. We're clearing bunkers. You know, long before I was trained to officially do that. We're clearing bunkers and all we have we got big M16A2s. Hard to park a corner in a freaking tiny bunker with a long-ass rifle. But you know it was crazy. One of my buddies got shot in the leg by some soldier that was hiding. You know that was not stuff we were officially trained to do. You know my T-shirt says death before dismount. That's our old motto, exactly. But we were doing a lot of dismount for some stupid reason.
Speaker 1:When I was in Iraq in 05-06, it got to the point where we didn't want to be in the vehicles because the vehicles were on roads and the roads was where the bombs were at. So you wanted to be off that vehicle, walking off to the side trying to find the bombs were at. So you wanted to be off that vehicle walking off to the side trying to find the bombs before, uh, everything else hit it like it's just I would dismount all damn day. But it especially like, um, like july, august time frame, where it's like 125 outside and you're wearing all that gear, like you can only be outside for a certain period of time, uh, before you have to go back in the truck. And the truck had like some like bullshit ac, but it was. It's a lot cooler than movement. Yeah, it's a lot cooler than 125.
Speaker 4:Man, we used to take our mbc systems. I don't know if you did it at bradley, but we'd stick the hose, oh yeah, yeah, into your nomax and they had them stupid piece of crap cooling vests that they gave us like a plastic circle that had fluid in it or something in it. You hook it up to your NBC system. It's supposed to keep your torso moderately cool, cooler than the rest of the place, and you know, inside those vehicles it's like a damn oven anyway. But we just we didn't use those vests at all. We just stick them down in your freaking pants, sometimes just to cool the engine. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Cool that shit off, Cool off that grundle. Oh hell yeah. Yeah, do we do that all the time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you have to clean that hose off though.
Speaker 1:This thing suck too.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I think we all wish that hell. My loader was starting to look good after a while. He was a six, four mormon harry mormon guy. That's what I called him. Yeah, so you like them big bitches yeah, yeah, I didn't care. At that point the breach was looking good.
Speaker 3:I heard like loader on that on that tank is a little. You know, keeping your fingers, uh, intact, it's kind of a tough thing there yeah, I've broken most of my fingers on and on.
Speaker 4:Almost every one of them been on tanks, uh, so you're definitely going to hurt yourself. But loaders, yeah, if they're not careful with loading, they don't have the right techniques. It's easy to, I mean while I was loaded it's a digit yeah, uh, when I was a loader I lost my.
Speaker 4:My first major digit injury was not in the inside thing, it's outside on the 240 mount. You know it's on a slide rail and we hit okay, it came down hard off of the body or a ditch and hit hard and that thing came up. It was supposed to be locked in place but that lock was jacked up and it's facing the rear but it slung, gained momentum all the way around and I'm holding on to the slide ring and it just I don't know if you've seen those wheels on those slide rings, but there's not much room in there my finger got stuck in that as the weight of the two, 40 hitting that one, and it just shredded this finger, ripped fingernail off, uh, didn't break anything, but it shredded it. Oh, and it was stuck because I have a leather glove on too, so it's kind of wedged in there. Oh, yeah, is that kind of pain that makes your balls hurt? You know, can you see white and you want to?
Speaker 4:throw up that's the kind of pain I was in. I'm just like hanging there, like. And then the next one. I'll, you know, be brief, but the back doors of the. In order to pull the pack or the engine out of things, you got to open up the grill doors. Each one of those doors are several hundred pounds and when you push them together it's usually a two-man operation. If you, you're good, you can do it, but you've got to put a lot of force and push them and you've got to almost lift them as they're coming together, because they come together and interchange like this, you know, just like that.
Speaker 4:Well, I had my finger in there I was still butt private and I had my middle finger on that one and it got stuck in there and we couldn't get it off. My finger stuck in there and same thing, but same kind of pain, and I can't get my finger out and it's up six, five, six foot five inches off the ground or whatever. I had to stay there until some other guys finally showed up to take it out, open it up. That one I broke, I smashed this whole finger. This whole digit was crushed. Yeah, yeah, that was good, but anyway, good times I don't think I broke anything on a bradley.
Speaker 1:I don't think I did, and the va probably gave you nothing for it.
Speaker 4:You know what I never did. Claim that.
Speaker 3:I claimed a bunch of other things, dude, I've had tendons released, one on my left middle finger and then three fingers on my right hand, and for my left hand they gave me the big zero percent. I tried to claim my right hand. They didn't even entertain, they turned it down. So I'm like I mean zero is better than nothing. Yeah, it's not as good as until you know you're trying to build it up and get more.
Speaker 4:Pushing to the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I still got to do that, man. I got to get re-evaluated. I just don't want them to take away anything. That's the scary part. But I think there's third parties that you can go through. That will be like okay, we do this all the time.
Speaker 2:Don't do it, man. I, uh, I was. I consulted a third party, um, uh, and I I got out with an 80 disability. What I'm happy with, um, I didn't get to talk to a vso, uh, before I actually retired, mainly because here on hawaii, like everybody's getting out and trying to get to a VSO before your VA claim is filed is like almost fucking impossible.
Speaker 2:Um, so I was going to go to a third party to see like, hey, what can you find on my record? Or is anything I missed? Is there anything I need to say in a specific way to increase my percentage and all that. And uh, and I found this company and they're like, hey, we're all vets, we all used to work at the VA, so we know what to say, how to say it and all that shit. And I was like, all right, cool. And they're like, yeah, it's a $500 retainer. I'm like, well, I've saved up money, I've got fucking 500 bucks, like that's not bad. When they agreed to take me on as a client, that's when I got the fine print saying that I've got to spend it's like 10 grand for them to do this, and then whatever percentage increase I get, they get a portion of that up to like 15 000.
Speaker 3:You guys are higher than fucking giraffe if you think I'm gonna pay you thousands of dollars, yeah, go get fucked yeah, my dad was telling me about like he had a customer that that hired the lawyer. And I asked my dad, he's like, yeah, what that cost him. And he goes, oh, he had to give him their back, the back pay. And I was like, oh, hell, no. I said like you know, like my wife when she got hers, that was like over 50 grand. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah, so I I gotta, you know, kind of look around and find a good vso.
Speaker 3:I was doing it through the dav. But the last guy I talked to at the dav, yeah, I was, uh, I'll tell you, chico. I wanted to put him in a problem. That's how good that conversation was and I haven't lost my temper like that in a long time and I was cool and collected. But I was just like this guy's supposed to be helping people and the way he was talking to me and I was like he's like, oh, I can give you stuff, but it's not going to get approved.
Speaker 4:I'm like really Wow, you know, when I get approved, I'm like really wow, you know, when I did it, I did it at knox and at fort knox and there's a guy that worked there on post I can't remember what organization he was with but another soldier told me about him and, uh, he was seemed like kind of a jerk when I first met him. But he and people told me that he's kind of a jerk but he knows what he's doing, right. And I, and sure enough, man, that guy and this was free. I mean, uh, he, he, he did everything for me, for the VA, and got me my settlement, got 70% and right. And uh, and ever since then I've kind of left it alone. Uh, I could go back for more, you know, but you, I don't.
Speaker 3:I'm afraid if I go in there they might take something. Well, I also heard the rumor is like if you're getting disability and retirement, they might be trying to do away with that. I don't know that's not rumor.
Speaker 4:What?
Speaker 3:well, they're looking to cut. They're looking to cut. Cut money, you know, mean trying to get to 100, if you don't get 100 right out the gate, trying to get to 100. Post-military, it's kind of a little tough man and it depends how long you've been out with your disabilities. They can't take them away, like the VA doesn't do sleep apnea anymore, right, but I've been out for 14 years and I was diagnosed with that while I was in the Navy. Same here, same here. But some of that stuff, yeah, they can take it away, but it's all dependent on too. Are you going to the VA and being seen for this stuff too? If you're just getting your rating and saying adios to the VA, then you might run the risk of losing that kind of stuff. You know, I feel like you're just getting your rating and saying adios to the VA, yeah, then you might run the risk of losing that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I can. That makes sense. I do use the VA for everything. They're not the best, but I use it. I use them for everything. They're not bad here in Louisville. I know they're horrible in some places, but they've gotten a lot better. Not bad here in Louisville. I know they're horrible in some places, but they've gotten a lot better. Service has been great, except for when I got my vasectomy, and that's a whole other story. Other than that it's been pretty good.
Speaker 4:I was going to tell you we were talking about Iraq, the second go-around. I came back to Fort Knox, I'd gotten out, went back to the reserves and after 9-11, I came back to Fort Knox Because I'd gotten out, went back to the reserves and after 9-11, I went back from reserve. So I ended up staying there for a long time. I went through a bunch of schools and promotions and whatever, but I was on the instructor side, on the 19-kilo training side. So I became platoon sergeant and all the guys that I have are all active duty guys that were coming back from Iraq telling me exactly what you were talking about, matt, about the vehicle being hit. I came back and heard all kinds of stories from these guys about all that shit, dude.
Speaker 1:we lost all of our trucks, all of our Bradleys. We got a whole new set of trucks and we lost half of them. Some bitches, just in eight months. I mean, you go out and you lose a truck. There was one place where we went, where we were running patrol. We tried to run fucking patrols out of this place. That was an abandoned building. We took it over. When we got there, we got mortared for an hour and a half was an abandoned building. We took it over. When we got there, we got mortared for an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:After that we tried to do a patrol to the south section of where we're at, just to the south, and we got 15 meters down the road and hit just a massive IED that blew the whole road out Like we couldn't even drive down that motherfucker anymore. So that's one truck on. Later, on every direction we went, we'd hit an ID, lose a truck, blow out the road. Um, we had guys come in to like reinforce us. Basically, they'd hit an ID. We'd send somebody out to to go get them. They had an ID. It just do. You get wrecked man, just absolutely wrecked out in Arab Jabbur.
Speaker 3:Did you hear anything about like medevac kind of ambushes where they would like somebody to get like wounded and the dust off? Guys come in for a medevac and they try to take out the helo.
Speaker 1:I mean, that happened to me when I was in a helo.
Speaker 4:Oh, did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that shit would happen all the time If we had, I mean it wouldn't always be medevac, but like if we landed to get guys, especially in afghanistan, uh, you know, we'd be getting shot at. We'd see dudes coming in, like if our guys were waiting and the dudes that were coming in were far enough out or we didn't see them before we landed. As soon as we hit the ground, it's just ping, ping, ping, ping ping yeah I didn't see it.
Speaker 1:Uh, it didn't happen too much to me in iraq, but I mean I can. If they're there, they're going to shoot at you, and especially if you're in somewhere like the Tigris River Valley where it's like fucking Vietnam, man, like there's so much like Foley is just everywhere, vegetation everywhere, just tons of places to hide that people can like shoot mortars at you, hit somebody, wait for the medevac to come in and start shooting the bird. Like it's not far-fetched at all.
Speaker 4:I mean that's part of their TTPs is, you know, create a problem in which more come and then they can attack more.
Speaker 3:Brian said TTPs man, I haven't heard that word in a minute.
Speaker 1:A guy in the chat named Battle Gnome Tactical. Excellent name, by the way. He says they would shoot RPGs at any MedHelo. Yeah, they got the RPGs man. They're going to throw them out there.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I had a couple zip by me Like that shit is scary oh yeah, I had one zip by one time, thankfully missed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, the places we were flying, there was nowhere, for it was just out in the open. So I never, never, had any of that. That's good, that's what everybody keeps saying. So, yeah, I guess, yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:I don't know the thing for me about like going into special ops after regular army and I've said this a ton of times before is that regular army? And I've said this a ton of times before is that regular army? We got our asses handed to us and we weren't able to engage anything because the ROE was so fucking ridiculous that it was like 20 conditions in order to shoot somebody. Special ops just wreck shop, just absolutely wreck shop. And that was therapy to go in and just ruin some shit. Regardless of whether or not we got shot at or you know, stuff hit the bird, it was still. We won every single time, and not by a small amount, like it was just going in there and just stomping necks yeah, well, bro, you're a dat bird.
Speaker 1:I mean, come on I mean I can, I can hell rockets, miniguns.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 30 Mike's Mike.
Speaker 1:Love it. Yeah, it was the coolest thing ever. But I can really understand a lot of people who got out, especially from regular Army, and had a lot of issues Because you go over there, you train to do so much stuff and you see your friends getting shot and burned and like just maimed and scarred for life, like people. I know a lot of people who took their lives afterwards just because, like the state that they were in after they got out, because they weren't actually able to do the thing that they trained forever to do, like we just our hands were totally tied.
Speaker 4:You know that's an excellent point, matt, because you know the other storm was so short, the ROE was real easy and you, for the most part, got to do what we were trained to do. After we were there a little while, it got different. But in 2003, when our assets got there, they, they, they were able to do a lot more than they were a year later. And you know, each year, progressively after that, that ROE got worse and worse and worse. So that that's why we had a lot of guys me too, a lot of guys come back and you know, be in that state of mind Cause of that very thing they couldn't shoot back, they couldn't respond the way they are trained to respond. So, yeah, that's what made it so bad. The longer we were there, the worse it got yeah, it's stupid stuff too.
Speaker 1:It's like so a guy, a guy, shoots an rpg at you but then he like goes around the corner of a building so you lose visual contact. He puts the, the rpg down and now he's just standing there, you can't engage. He could have shot somebody directly in the face with a fucking missile, but if he goes somewhere else he's like time out guys. Dude how. That's so ridiculous.
Speaker 3:I was going to text you about this too, matt. You're talking about questions for the panel with all the vets. What was the decision you kind of, what was it that kind of made you decide like, okay, it's time to tap out, I'm done with this. I'm done playing soldier or playing sailor or whatever there.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I it was a thing that I thought that I would love that became. It's the entirety of your life. When you're in special operations, like you're training or you're deployed, those are the two things that you do all the damn time. So it's like you get to do really cool stuff, but that's all you do. And like I didn't want to do that forever and I was engaged at the time when I was getting out, uh, and then, like just kind of towards the end, uh, I got, I got jumped at a bar and like my face got all fucked up Like I. Somebody slashed my nose all the way back, uh, and I had like a concussion, all sorts of shit. Uh, and there's kind of like the way that I was treated on the way out made me be like, okay, fuck you. Like I it was.
Speaker 1:It was an alcohol related incident, right, like I didn't. I didn't start the thing. My fiancee and like her friend and a couple other people like we were going to this bar in nashville and like some people came out, they got kicked out for fighting, uh, and then one dude sucker punched me and then we all just fought, uh, and then one guy just like slashed my fucking face open with a bottle, and then I get treated like the bad guy, uh. When I get back to the unit, uh, because I can't deploy. I was supposed to deploy one more time and I couldn't do that and I just like I get treated like a piece of shit. So I was like I might have stayed, but also fuck you right now. So it's kind of a confluence of events. Yep, it adds up it adds up.
Speaker 4:I mean I did my first four years and I got out, you know, at 92. But I mean I went in the National Guard just to maintain a little bit because I still love that camaraderie part, you know, and that brotherhood, and I stayed in combat arms but I did. I got out of active duty because of that very reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I was a bad soldier. To be honest, I was not, not a great, a great soldier. I don't like to be told what to do. I think the things that make me a good engineer are the very things that made me a terrible soldier. Why the fuck we're doing this? This is dumb. Let's do it this way or like somebody, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I just I get an attitude. To also add to that. It's probably why, again, why I'm such a messed up physical state. Like you know, you get benched from not flying like you're standing duty. Now we call it the healing chair man. So you're standing duty because you can't fly, you can't do your job. So it's like okay, so you're on the mend, right. So yeah, you're gonna, you know, stand watch for eight or twelve hours a day every day, yeah, until you get healthy again. That good.
Speaker 4:Couldn't put you in a place where they can't use you Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just. It's a young man's game man, like you it's. I was in for long enough and you know the experience was useful. I did a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of like it gave me a lot of confidence, like the army, definitely made me the man that I am today, as far as like just perspective on things, you know, just the ability to deal with different situations, but at the end of the day, like fucking sucked just across the board. The people that I met and hung out with were great the experiences.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's what makes it, you said at the people, because I, by 95, I was done with it all. And when and I, like you, I was I was not striving to succeed as a, I wasn't pushing for rank, you know, I wasn't high speed, I was an average soldier, you know, and I was just done with it. Uh, but then I, I was an average soldier, you know, and I was just done with it. But then, I guess, after 9-11, even though I joined the, rejoined the reserves, at that time I was that big kick in the groin.
Speaker 4:Patriotism re-motivated me and I just thought myself either shit or get off the pot, and you know. And then I just volunteered for every school I could go to and I went from I was Sergeant E-5 at the time when I was in O-2. And then by the time I was, it was O-5, I was a platoon sergeant, I mean, just you know, pushing E-7. And then I don't know that got a second. You know, I was sick of it, I was tired of it, I hated it. But then I came back.
Speaker 1:And again, I think 9-11 was a big push for that. I mean, people who were around during that time were like, who were like of military age when 9-11 happened, like we were so fucking mad, like it. Just everybody was like we're gonna go get those motherfuckers, like we didn't care, we didn't care who it was, that somebody said that they were the people that did it. Like they fucking did it. We're getting them. Yeah go to their house and just kick in all of their teeth.
Speaker 4:Come to my house, my civilian job to blow up my towers yeah, I left my civilian job yeah, that morning that happened and drove, because I live in louisville, kentucky, which is right the road from fort knox, and I drove straight out to my reserve unit and stayed there till the end of the day until they told me to go home. I was sounds kind of crazy, but that's, that's how. That's how pissed off I was. I was like I'll deploy with any unit, send me to any school, any unit, I'll go. Right now I was. I had my bags in the truck in the truck, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a guy in the chat who joined regiment. Uh, like right around the same that I did, right around the same time that I did what up Darren? I don't know if he's still here. Yeah, he's still on. I don't want to put him on blast too much cause he's he's still in, but uh, yeah, it's there's.
Speaker 1:It's weird, like, uh, I tell stories about time that I was in there and I try to be careful about like people's places and tactics, cause it's, it's an important thing, especially when it comes to special operations. But, um, there's people that I assumed were like long gone, like there was, there was an instructor there, um, that like we went to Vegas and his fucking brother died, uh, and it was just like it's a, it's a whole crazy story. It's like 10 minutes long, it's on my channel, but, um, I think that's when I, when I told this story, darren reached out and he was like, oh, yeah, that dude's still here, jesus Christ. Um, but yeah, it's, it's an interesting thing for me to get out and to see the people who stayed in and where they're at.
Speaker 1:Like a dude that I was like that was my roommate when I got back from Iraq. Like he's a fucking first sergeant now. And like this guy would get drunk and piss on the floor Like it's. It's insane to me, like what he's doing now. Like he is leading men into combat and like we didn't even call him his real name. We call them chuckles.
Speaker 3:Like well, like you know, chico can speak to our group man. We got one guy that's a lieutenant now in the navy and both the other two are like. Well, actually all three of them are chiefs now and they were like e6s or e5s when I first met them at working at seer. So I know, and there's even people active duty wise that I that I serve with, and I've been retired for 14 years that are still doing it too.
Speaker 4:So yeah, it is crazy. I've been retired 10 years. I mean I got out as a PA Master Sergeant and there's still guys in it. There's guys in there. I didn't think would have lasted another two years Doing well. They're first sergeant now, you know it's. I mean, I can say the same about myself Back when I was a dirtbag E4, you know no way I would have ended up being a platoon sergeant or senior chief of a major training unit or whatever. But yeah, it's crazy, yeah, yeah. I guess you get that point where you realize, hey, I've been doing this long enough, let's make this investment work, make it successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that 10-year mark that 10-year mark when you hit that you're like I'm going to be halfway done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of guys I knew you said it was a young man's game. One of the huge deciding factor for me was as I got higher in rank I realized that the organizations you're in not just the Navy itself but the individual commands stopped really caring about the individual sailor's needs. And it's easy to get caught up in the machine when you're a fucking chief, senior chief, master chief where you're like, hey, this is the job, you're just going to go fucking do it. You got to suck caught up in the machine when you're a fucking chief, senior chief, mass chief where you're like, hey, this is the job, you're just gonna go fucking do it, you gotta suck it up. But then you start to remember what it was like to be the junior guy with all your problems and when you like.
Speaker 2:For me is like when I realized that the navy no longer cared about me as a person, like as chico. They only cared about me as a senior chief and as a maintenance manager and all the quals I had in my job. Once I realized that I was just a number and I was an asset and not like an actual person. That's when I stopped giving a fuck because the navy and I'm pretty sure the military in general is good, like this, where they focus on the mission of like killing bad guys, deploying all all the good guy shit the fucking red, white, blue and all that when they forget that the real mission is the people that have to do those shitty fucking jobs and they forget those people and that's why the people no longer care, because they feel that their organizations don't really give a shit about them. So that was a huge factor for me to say this I want out as fast as possible the thing that I say is that the army gives with one hand, but it takes with two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it, it makes you think that you're? Getting something. But then you're like I'm getting here, I'm just getting every day.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's true, and I believe that a good NCO leader will mitigate that as best he or she can for their troops and that will directly impact the morale of your unit, your subordinates, because if they know that they have somebody that'll go to bat for you, like if somebody went I don't know, matt, the whole story, but if somebody went to bat for you for the situation that happened in Nashville, I wonder, and maybe somebody did, I'm just using it as an example, but if I've had to do that with my guys, I've had to go against the grain several times and that's what made them appreciate being a part of our platoon or our company, when they would see their senior leaders stand up, take an ass-chewing and fight for them, which that, to me, was key.
Speaker 4:And I had to learn that the hard way, you know, growing up through leadership. But that ultimately my last few years I wasn't a first sergeant, I was a master sergeant in our unit, but I still had a company size element of people that I was responsible for as a senior NCO and we were very successful. But I can only attribute that success to how my junior NCOs that were supporting me because they felt like I was taking care of.
Speaker 1:I was helping them I mean, that's, that's what it is to be a leader is you. You serve the people underneath you like their success is your success. Your success is not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, whatever fuck you're doing, it's what they're doing yeah, yeah, that's, and they appreciate that and that goes a long way. So you know you were. You know people who gave up.
Speaker 3:They don't give a shit anymore and that's why because people give a shit well, being careful, take care of them I had a chief, my chief tell me when I was e3 man, he goes, good or bad, always take care of your people. So yeah, and you know, even working at the schoolhouse, when I'd see people make chief, like, hey, congratulations man, but remember, take care of your peeps, man, because they're the ones I remember you told me that shit yeah, yeah, yeah, man, because that's that's what's most important, man.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you don't, then they're just not gonna like. Why should I do anything for this dude man? He don't give a shit about me, or she don't give a shit about me. Why should I, like you know, do what I do and make the sacrifices I make? You know those kind of things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they'll just do the minimum standard.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Apparently, my mic is muted on the uh twitch stream. I'll figure out what the fuck's going on there. That's weird, yeah, but it's. It's not muted on uh tiktok, whatever. I killed the stream on on twitch. Somebody actually we had, we had a viewer guys. A viewer commented I'll figure that out later. There's other the thing that I was talking about before we started recording the Riverside FM thing. I can set it all up from there. I think I'm going to start trying to do that. This is a little bit bootleg.
Speaker 1:I'm fucking recording a Google Meet. There are much more advanced ways of doing this. I've just been lazy because I got five million hobbies that I'm trying to entertain at the same time.
Speaker 4:Yes, you do.
Speaker 3:Well, don't even have time to do drugs I don't know man, you got to reassess your kind of time management. Yeah, you got to get your priorities in. Know man, you got to reassess your kind of time management.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you got to get your priorities in order. Man, you're fucked.
Speaker 1:Your shit's fucked. No, I uh, so I send, I have a group chat with. I have two sisters, uh, and like my mom is also in this group chat and I send them like the the music that I make because it's my mom's going to clutch her pearls and it makes me laugh every single time. But my sister said that she showed it to her boyfriend and he was like when can I go do drugs with him?
Speaker 4:I'm like man.
Speaker 3:I'm talking about this all the time.
Speaker 1:I don't have time to do them.
Speaker 3:It's a whole fucking day gone. You should share that Diablo Swing Orchestra song I sent you with him.
Speaker 1:I don't remember Is that in Discord.
Speaker 3:I think I sent you with them. I don't remember. Is that in Discord? I think I sent you in Discord. I'll check that out again. That's a pretty trippy song.
Speaker 4:Where can we access this music? I don't know how I got. I found that one yesterday, matt, where do you have your music that you make?
Speaker 1:I have. The latest stuff is going to be on my YouTube. The artist name is striker actual. Uh, so I'm on. I'm on spotify too. So if you go on spotify and look up striker actual, I think there's there's six songs on there right now. I mean, they're, they all fucking suck. I don't know what I'm doing, but like I just I do a thing, I think that it's, it's where it's at, and then I just kind of let it go. Um, but yeah, it's up there, some of the stuff's good. I got another one coming out on Monday. The song's name is Keith.
Speaker 1:Which it makes me laugh because I was sitting there, I was making this thing and I was like man, what do I call this song, what is this song's name? And I was like man. People always ask what you call a song. They never ask what the song's name is. This song's name is Keith. It's not what it's called. Its name is Keith. That made me laugh. That's what it is.
Speaker 3:I'm a big SoundCloud guy.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I wanted to have something on Spotify just because it makes me feel more official and super cool. I give people some money to distribute the thing. Plus, you get like um, it's like registered, like when you, when you publish a book, right like there's some number and some tracking system. It's the same thing with spotify, or at least like the distribution thing that I use, so it's like I license that how come you don't put the podcast on spot. It is. It is on Spotify.
Speaker 3:Is it Okay yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's part of Buzzsprout, which is the service that I use. It pushes it to Spotify, to Apple Music, to iHeartRadio, there's a couple of other ones. But it makes it really easy because you just like you go to a page it says like sign up for all these distributors, and you go and you do the stuff and then it's on there I was listening to a mix on soundcloud before I got on the show and the song was named man funk right one of the lyrics is I got breath, I got simulac breath and I'm like what the fuck?
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, it's a funny song, man. I'll find it and send it to you All right, I just wrote down the title.
Speaker 4:I'm going to look for that man.
Speaker 3:I don't know if that's the title. I don't know if that's the title. I got to check.
Speaker 4:It's funny. You know, I'm 54 and, uh, all of my friend, my civilian friends, uh, around that are my age, they're all I think they they've just given up and I mean all their kids have left. I still have a 12 year old. I don't know, I'm still in a different place, they are, but music wise, I'm still keeping current with music and they just kind of stopped like 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Yeah, you know, I like new stuff, uh, and crazy stuff that most of them would never even get within 10 feet up.
Speaker 3:So I definitely I'm a I'm a old school guy man, so I didn't like the test of that because I would play music in the office sometimes, so yeah, yep, oh, I love the old school too.
Speaker 4:I mean, grew up on I was a redneck that loved hip-hop when I was a kid, you know all right, there we go.
Speaker 3:Same here, same thing. I mean, they used to call it rap that's how old I am.
Speaker 1:I'm 56, so I am so yeah I think there's a difference between rap and hip-hop. Hip-hop, it's the culture, but it's also like. It's more like the way that I would describe rap versus hip-hop is rap is focused on lyricism, hip-hop is more focused on the beat.
Speaker 4:Musically. I think that's pretty good.
Speaker 3:But the term hip-hop came from a rap song, right.
Speaker 4:And soccer came from.
Speaker 1:England.
Speaker 3:Negative. We're talking Sugarhill Gang brother, yeah.
Speaker 4:The way I've always explained it and there's a good friend of mine I might ask him to. Uh, I'll definitely share this, uh, your podcast with him. But, uh, we serve together. He's from Queens, new York, okay, and he grew up there in the nineties hip hop, push or rap scene. So he knows or knew of a lot of the popular names, uh, that knows or knew of a lot of the popular names, uh, that everybody's heard of. Yeah, uh, and we still. When I hear something new, I'll send it to him, or something we go back and forth and, and.
Speaker 4:But he grew up in that culture, um, so that's that's. You know, he's my authority on that, the the source, because he's just so much into it. Yeah, and he was surprised this uh at the time. This uh white dude with blonde hair from kentucky knew as much about rap and rap groups from the beginning old school I'm talking the early 80s yeah, like you said, sugar hill gang and I followed that you know, to run dmc hello cool jade and first blow, uh, yeah, beastie boys, so beast I mean, I just watched crush groove, bmc, ll Cool J, then Beastie Boys Purse Blow, yeah, beastie.
Speaker 4:Boys, so Beastie Boys I mean.
Speaker 3:I just watched Crush Groove the other day man.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah man, I hadn't seen that in years, but yeah, and then, of course, you know, for redneck rap guys like myself at the time, especially when the Beastie Boys came out, that was like heaven because they fused the heavy metal stuff that I always loved, grew up on rock and roll stuff with rap and we did it.
Speaker 3:They started off as a punk band. In fact, they're like one of the few hip hop artists or rap artists you want to call it. They're actual musicians.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like you should check out their song. Was it sabrosa? Yeah, instrumental. Man, that's a funky song.
Speaker 4:Man, that's a cool song cookie puss was another song with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah that's what made them, that's that's what got that. That's what got them into the game. Man, yeah, then she Then she's on it.
Speaker 4:Cookie Puss, yep, yep. And then they went to License to Ill. I thought you might find this humorous. So there used to be a TV show called Putting on the Hits, back in the 80s. Yep, yep. Forgot who hosted it, but it was a lip sync contest, wasn't it? And so, basically, they'd go up there and people would lip sync. So they had a competition, a competition putting on the hits, competition in Europe, usur. So each unit could have their own.
Speaker 4:And we so me and a couple of my buddies we decided we loved the Beastie Boys, we loved all that stuff. So we said, let's do it. We're drunk Whenever we're not buddies. We decided we love the BC boys, we loved all that stuff. So we decided, let's do it, we're drunk whenever we're not working, we're drunk anyway. So, and how hard is it to imitate three white dudes who drink a lot of Budweiser like enacting stupid. That's every night for us. And we already knew the songs, the music. So, yeah, so long story short, we ended up taking first place on that. There you go and went to the finals in Boulder right as I was PCSing.
Speaker 4:But we did Paul Revere. Okay, I thought you were going to do Brass Monkey.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'd love that I've done it, talking about drinking songs, so doing Brass Monkey.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I hit Sergeant Major Talking about drinking songs. Oh yeah, Brass Monkey. Yeah, I hit Sergeant Major's daughter with a beer can by accident Because we're doing what they do at the time in their concerts. They'd take beers, shake them up, crack them and then throw them out to the audience. We did the same thing and everybody loved it and thankfully the Sergeant major's daughter was okay and my platoon sergeant was actually good buddies with the sergeant major. They were in Vietnam together.
Speaker 3:They tell you how far back it was.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they were buds so thankfully no trouble came of that. But yeah, we had to kind of curtail the beer can throwing, at least when they're full.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had to kind of curtail the beer can throwing, at least when they're full. Yeah, that's funny If you ever see the documentary about the BC boys. Because you know they had that, you know, fight for their right to party and all that. That. They started bringing in the bros as their main fan base and they're like we're not about that, man, we want to do other stuff too, man. And then they roll, they roll into, like Paul's boutique and some other different, like music and it was cool music.
Speaker 4:It was, but it was different. It was like, wow, man, what'd they do? That's not the same thing, but I love it, you know, yeah. So yeah, I love current old music, whatever, as long as it gets me out of my seat and puts me in good place.
Speaker 3:I couldn't tell you what a Drake or Kendrick Lamar song is. I don't know.
Speaker 4:Kendrick is excellent. I appreciate both of them.
Speaker 1:I don't listen to Drake, but Kendrick is top tier all time dude. He's excellent Top tier all time, all time. He. He's excellent, excellent Top tier all time, all time.
Speaker 4:He is a lyricist. He is definitely in the top ten of all time. I guarantee that Everything is subjective.
Speaker 1:Listen to Pimp a Butterfly, mad City. Mad City is probably one of my favorite albums. The one that he got famous off of was Damn. It's got the song Be Humble. Hold up, little bitch, sit down, be humble. That's Kendrick Lamar. That one kind of threw him over the edge. But To Pimp a Butterfly is an excellent. It's like funk dude. The first couple songs of To Pimp a Butterfly Are just really really funky. But Mad City, as far as rap goes, excellent. Like it's like funk dude. Like, uh, the first couple songs at tip impa butterfly are just really really funky. Uh, but mad city as far as rap goes.
Speaker 3:Have you seen, uh, joe coy's new stand up on netflix? Yeah, he does the biggie he has a bit about that talking about. Like the rappers today, they don't say anything.
Speaker 2:You know it's like no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no say something.
Speaker 4:Some of them don't. Yeah, he plays a mumble rap song or some short one. Yeah, a few people know it.
Speaker 1:There's a set of mumble rappers, but Kendrick's not a mumble rapper, no, jid. Jid is another. He's a younger one, but JID is fucking crazy. There's a lot of dudes who are lyricists they're rappers.
Speaker 4:They're are lyricists like they're. They're rappers.
Speaker 1:They're not hip-hop, they're rappers. Uh, so I don't know, I think it's, I think it's an important distinction, because there are some who are still just like really, really tribe club class.
Speaker 3:Love those guys, eminem. I mean all those guys. Man, you know, trick daddy tricked I'd say he's still around.
Speaker 4:What's his name? Out of Kansas City? Tech N9ne, tech N9ne, tech N9ne. He's still making music.
Speaker 1:He's made music with anybody who's anybody in the? Rap game. He just made something with Ronnie Radke from Falling in Reverse. Yes he did. Blew me away. Dude. Ronnie Radke's video budget has to be $5 billion. The videos that that dude puts out are just insanity.
Speaker 4:It's like a movie.
Speaker 1:It's better than a movie.
Speaker 3:I don't know movies that have graphics like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're stagnant. Big Mike, you gotta get caught up, I'm stagnant.
Speaker 3:I just like of older music man I will.
Speaker 1:I'll check it out. I'll listen to any song once. Yeah, to pimple butterfly. Just listen to that whole album. Like it is, so many people have 10 of 10 that it's not my favorite kendrick. My favorite is mad city, but I like it for, uh, like the rap in it, the. The musicality of to pimp a butterfly is fucking through the roof.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you one place that hip hop music don't go over Well, at least for me here in Arizona, is the VFW man.
Speaker 3:No, you don't say which is which is it's funny because we have like a hall, so we rent out the hall for like parties and I would work like you know, I'd bar back or work like security, right. So we have this motorcycle club that rents out our hall for they're like patching guys, they're new probies, or become members of the motorcycle club, right yeah, guys, their new probies are becoming members of the motorcycle club, right yeah. And they brought a DJ in and he played nothing but like rap music and I got to hear like OT or OG Janius' Coco song no, no, no, oh, coco Baking powder. I'll send it to you. It's basically talking about the Coco. I'm like sitting there trying to, like you know, have my like serious face on standing security with my arms crossed, and they're playing this song, man, and I'm just rolling, I'm just laughing yeah, yeah, you're right I I don't go bfw's very much, but when I do I never hear.
Speaker 4:I'm thinking I've never heard any kind of rap in there.
Speaker 3:I just kind of over with it because it's just, it's like the same kind of Mickey Mouse BS they had in the military. Everybody's like gossiping. Yeah, all they do is drink and it's like man. I've just kind of Moved on from it. Not bringing any younger members in, trying to bring, you know, younger veterans in. I don't know how much longer some of those organizations are going to last man, because the younger vets just don't want no part of it I have never been to a vfw.
Speaker 1:I've driven by plenty, but I've never walked into one of them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, and that I think a lot of it. I've done some. Never walked into one of them, yeah, I mean, and that I think a lot of it. I've done some security consulting on two of them and I mean super cool guys. You know they're old school, most of Vietnam vets, you know, but nothing past that, Nobody. No young people and it's the culture, right, the climate that's in there is isn't what young people are, especially young guys getting out of the military. It's not what they really wanted to do yeah, I think it's a generational thing I did yeah, how they look at it.
Speaker 2:So the guys that are in like elected positions in vfws now you know, these are the guys and no offense, anybody does this. But these are the guys and no offense, anybody does this. But these are the guys that have, like, their unit stickers on their trucks and and all the, all their accolades and shit and they and they wear it proudly. Um, nothing wrong with that. The guys that are getting out now, like me, like I've got one sticker on my truck and has nothing to do with military service. I don't advertise it. I don't wear Navy t-shirtsshirts. Uh, I don't do any of that shit. Well, not now. I just want to be a normal dude. So I don't really my my identity in life isn't that I served or I'm a veteran. It's I'm a dude who does stuff now that has nothing to do with my past service. Yeah, that take me to who I am now. Yeah, I don't. I don't rest on, I don't just walk around like, oh, I'm a retired senior chief. No one gives a fuck, yeah you're right, I don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the only thing that I have is my Purple Heart plate, because that gets me out of tickets. Yeah, right, right, that's nice.
Speaker 4:I just have a military plate and that's gotten me on tickets a couple times, but uh, that's it. And uh, you know, maybe I'm thinking about putting I just got a new truck. I'm thinking about putting like, uh, a cool patriotic sticker on or something, but I don't put you to none of my units or anything going on I have. I have like hats and shirts and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:It's not everything, but I have few I will say chico, I do wear the BroVet stuff. In fact, I can wear Sears shirts here and not have to worry about a student confronting me, not like when I lived on the island but I do have my BroVet stuff that I wear.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've got five or six. What's that t-shirt? Grunt style shirts oh, grunt style T-shirts are awesome.
Speaker 3:I love their shirts. They're great. They're like so soft and like comfortable. I've got a few of those. Yeah, I don't have any of those. I got the grumpy veteran one. I got the embrace, the suck one. I got the frag out one.
Speaker 4:My tactical trunk, monkey, I'll wear that one. There you go. I like to make fun of it a lot too, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I have unit t-shirts and I have some old uniforms, but I don't wear any of that stuff. This is really the only thing that I do with respect to this, plus all the stories that I tell about being a veteran. It's come full circle for me.
Speaker 1:For me, like when I got out I wanted nothing to do with it, but then, like when you're, when you're away from your, your buds that you spent like every waking moment with for a certain period of time, you kind of miss that. So I kind of started coming back into it and then doing this is just. It's an interesting way to meet other people who've gone. Like I've said it before, it's like we all went to the same shitty summer camp and we can just talk about it.
Speaker 3:What's it makes for interesting talk when you go to the VA the hats, the t-shirts, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:They go nuts with it at the VA. I don't know who's manufacturing all those hats, but they're raking it in.
Speaker 4:My dad was in the Air Force during Vietnam. The whole time I grew up. I've never seen him as patriotic as he is now or proud about his service in the Air Force. As he is now, he's in the 70s and he's got several hats Hell, he's got a couple of Army hats. He was in the Air Force as he is now. He's in the 70s and he's got several hats Hell, he's got a couple of Army hats. He was in the Reserve for a little while too.
Speaker 1:Somebody's out here misrepresenting.
Speaker 4:I know right, I'm like Dad. You were in the Army Reserve. I'm not going to downplay that, like most people do, but you were a supply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I supplied this hat to me.
Speaker 4:And you were in for two years. Yeah, so anyway, in the 80s.
Speaker 1:I mean, I bet it's just like a community thing. Yeah it is.
Speaker 4:It really is. You see somebody out in Poe. There's a lot of them around here. It's a semi-big city, it's not huge, but you still get a in Poe. There's a lot of them around here. This is still. It's a semi big city, it's not huge, but you know you still get a lot of guys. You know they might have a hat or something and of course we can all tell Most of the time we could tell another veteran by the way they act and carry themselves. You know there's a nod and there's a couple of restaurants here locally that are uh pretty military oriented too, which is cool Barbecue restaurants, I mean, and it's. You can bring your unit patchy and they'll put it on the wall. They got this covered in unit patches and patriotic pictures, all military stuff. And every day at noon they play the national anthem. Everybody stands up. You don't see that many places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody stands up. You don't see that many places. Yeah it's. It's been co-opted by politics. Yeah it's. I think it's kind of like the sad state of the american flag is that it's co-opted by politics and yeah it's. It says the thing if you, if you fly it, that you know, not a lot of us necessarily want to say, uh, it's, it's kind of fucked up. It's a really odd thing that you can't be patriotic without being associated with some fuckwits.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, automatically. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:It's not everywhere, I guess, at least not here. At least I don't fucking know who knows, you guys can be associated with whoever the fuck you want, that's right Work, just the way you can.
Speaker 1:Exactly, damn dude. I need to extend this meeting to like two hours because it's like every single time we're at an hour 45. My wife was just in here giving me the evil eye, so I think I'm going to hop off. So I think there's probably something I was supposed to do today, but she'll tell me about it when I get off. Yeah.
Speaker 4:All right, so I'm going to, I'll do the sign off.
Speaker 1:Thanks Anybody watching on live. Thanks Anybody watching on YouTube later. Thanks.