A Q&A with Andrew #2
Bonus · published 2022-01-15 · archive #91

[0:00:00] Andrew: There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at belairdirect.com. This is a Rooster Teeth production. Hello and welcome to episode two of the F**kface Q&A show. Thank you so much for joining me. I don't know, that was like a weird delivery on that. Anyway, hey, we're doing this again. There is like a three month gap between when I recorded the first one to the release of the second one. And I hope that that's not the case for this. I'm pretty sure that this is supposed to release in January. We'll see though. I guess first of all, I should just say thank you so much for everyone who listened and supported the first episode the way that you all did.
[0:01:00] Andrew: And you all, well, I mean, that's presumptuous, but the feedback on the first one was so overwhelmingly kind and supportive. I got so many messages from people as well as just general comments that were just humbling and unspeakably thoughtful. I tried my best to reply to anybody who messaged me. I inevitably would miss them. If I missed your message, I'm sorry if you left a comment or like a tweet and I didn't acknowledge it in some way. I read it. I just didn't interact with it because honestly, it was probably too nice. I have this weird like anxiety thing where somebody is super complimentary. I feel weird liking it because it just says like I like this tweet, like the statement of Andrew Panton likes this statement about how great Andrew Panton is feels super obnoxious to me. You know, I don't think anyone interprets it that way. It's just this weird ego anxiety thing. So if you if you wrote something super sweet and I didn't like it, it's because you were too kind. And I appreciate it so much. I read it. But anxiety brain anyway, episode two.
[0:02:03] Andrew: I'm going to change this format up a little bit for this because why wouldn't you change something that worked the first time? That's what everybody does. They find success and then they change the thing that worked well because that's smart. That's what smart people do. But we're going to do more questions because that's the heart of the show. The whole point of this. And I don't I apologize if I talked about it in the first episode. I don't really remember everything that was discussed. So if I'm covering old ground, sorry. But the kind of idea of the show came from I take calls from people in the community and I really enjoy engaging with you all in that way. But I would I wouldn't be able to answer everybody and I get voicemails and it felt really weird to me to call back. It just didn't seem like a thing I should do for whatever reason. You know, they call it is the whole thing in my head. I just didn't I didn't like the idea of calling somebody randomly. But I also wanted to, like, answer questions because some of them were either really thoughtful or just in general. Just I don't know if you take the time to call a number and leave a message, I would like to reply, especially if I hear it.
[0:03:03] Andrew: And I didn't know how to. So I thought maybe there could be a show or something where I could quickly go through those. And thus we're here on this one. I would like to do that as well as talk about the Raymond Sumer thing, which is a bit I did on the show. And I would say it's the only bit that I regret doing. And we can talk a little bit about that as we progress through this. I know some people are like, you don't regret the pencil. And that's a fair statement to make. But I learned a lot about the pencil and not everybody hated it. I know the majority of people did not enjoy the pencil trial, but that was even for those who didn't like it. My goal is obviously always with what I do to try to make you laugh. And I won't always be successful at that. But that's the intent. So even though the pencil trial is very divisive, I learned a lot in a few different ways. So I ultimately don't regret doing that at all. But the Raymond Sumer thing went off the rails in a few different ways.
[0:04:03] Andrew: And it was kind of a short sighted idea. It was a panic move, for lack of a better word. So maybe we should just transition into that immediately, explaining the history of Raymond Sumer, which is sort of like a two part thing. There is the why it happened and how the name came to be. So I think I'll start with how the name came to be, which is a very dumb story, which is shocking. I know. But Raymond, the name Raymond kind of became an inside joke between a friend of mine and myself, where I was talking about middle names to them. And I was thinking about how my middle name is the name of a relative in my family. And so when I went to tell them what my middle name was, I said my middle name is Raymond. And then I said, it's funny, though, because I really don't feel like a Raymond, sort of a weird, a weird identity thing where I don't associate with that at all. And then I realized the reason why it felt weird is because that isn't my my middle name, my middle name. My brain did this like weird crossing of wires where I thought, oh, yeah, my middle name is named after this relative.
[0:05:07] Andrew: And then what came out is that relative's middle name, not mine. That relative's middle name is Raymond, not my middle name. And that's why it didn't feel like my middle name, because it's not. That wasn't my name. I forgot my name essentially in this moment. So like Raymond calling me Raymond became this inside joke between me and this person. And the so mayor aspect of it came from two other really close friends. When I was making the Twitter account, I was trying to change the at mention to something. And I tried like five or six different names and none of them would fit like they were already taken on Twitter. And so I was just looking at my friend group and I thought, ah, so mayor, that's sort of a unique name. I wonder if it's available. And it was. So I got their permission. And thus we got Raymond so mayor as a name. Um, what's really funny about that is they would, that friend group, uh, those, those people would go to interact with something on face. So there'd be an Instagram or something like that, but they would have some mayor in their username. It's like they'd go to interact and the panic that by doing so would then reveal the origin of the name in some way.
[0:06:11] Andrew: So that's the history of how I created the name Raymond so mayor, the idea of it kind of came from a few different places. The original point of, I thought it would be interesting to do something with, um, essentially information you can't verify, but that we generally accept that thought came from a different story. I told on the podcast where I was traveling to Austin and there was a storm over the airport and we had to get redirected into San Antonio. And I went on this road trip, but the guy's sitting next to me on the flight and I didn't know anything about him. And when we were at the, the rental car, when he's picking it up, the guy said a different name, or at least it sounded like a different name than what I heard on the plane. And I had this anxiety moment of like, did you, did he lie to me? Do I not know? What do I, what do I actually know about this guy? Am I going to get killed? Is this, is this how I die? Is this my murder? And that kind of stuck with me. That thought of when I interact with somebody who I've never met before, all the stuff that I just assume is true in our interaction. And wow, what a weird way to say interaction and our interaction that I just don't question. Cause why would I like, it's just a weird
[0:07:14] Andrew: thing to assume. Nobody's like, Hey, I'm Bob. And then the response is like, go fuck yourself. You're not Bob. I know a Bob when I see a Bob and you sir are not a Bob that never happens. It's just cool. Like who cares? So that stuck with me. And I was thinking about that a little bit. And I didn't know if that was like a talking point somehow on the show that I could bring up, or if that would be a bit within itself. And then a little after that, I did this weird puzzle thing where I had this discord chat or group chat server, I guess is the word I'm looking for. And I don't remember why it started, but it turned into a thing where I first was just like posting photos of not photos, but numbers of random things on my desk. So like I had a Dr. Pepper bottle and I posted the customer support line. And then people speculated like, what could this mean? So then I posted another one and it just built. And then it turned into me buying a Swedish phone number and it like escalated into this four day ridiculous thing that was so much fun. And the people that were
[0:08:15] Andrew: involved in it seemed to like really enjoy it. So I thought, Oh, I'd love to do more stuff like that, which is also why I could be wrong. You could verify this, I guess, or maybe, I don't know, post it or retweet it. I'll look at it. I think when I revealed the Raymond Sumer thing, the only clue I gave that this was all a bit was if you take, I want to say the first letter of every sentence, it spells fake. And it's a strangely written tweet because of that. I was struggling to like, how do I balance this out or how do I make it sound natural? So it doesn't read naturally really at all. It kind of feels like a shitty puzzle when you read it. And that's because it was trying to hide the word fake or some indication that it wasn't real. Uh, so those two ideas were like center points. And then the third part, and this is where it gets a little bit darker. I apologize once again for taking it to kind of sad place at around the same time I had a family member get diagnosed with cancer.
[0:09:17] Andrew: That way, that was terminal. Um, and that was difficult and I was really struggling with that. And, uh, I decided to watch this movie called Paddleton, which happened to be a Mark Duplass movie and a Ray Romano movie. And the premise of that movie is about one character having an operable terminal cancer and them kind of going through that process together, which on the surface seems like the worst possible movie you could watch if you were in my position. But it was the strange thing of like, I was struggling and I just wanted to, I don't know, maybe seeing other people go through a similar thing would provide some answer. And I don't know, I was just looking for anything, I guess. And so I watched this movie and I did pull something from it, but it wasn't really what I expected where the Ray Romano character buys the Mark Duplass character, this shirt, or he makes it, sorry, he doesn't buy it. He makes this shirt and it's like a hangman puzzle, you know, where it's like, it indicates how many letters are in the word, but not, it doesn't
[0:10:17] Andrew: reveal the word and it's two words. And they would play this game together when, whenever they'd have free time, Mark Duplass would try to figure out what the puzzle was on his shirt. And so he'd make guesses and you'd always say like fatty pork cause that lined up with what was there and he would never be able to figure it out. But it was just like bonding thing they did. And you get to the end of the movie. I apologize for spoiling Paddleton, but as right before the Duplass character dies, he asks, what was the puzzle? And he learns that there was no answer to the puzzle, which initially is like, fuck you. Why would you do this? Why would you make this shitty puzzle that has no answer? And then Ray Romano explains that they would do these puzzles together and they'd go on these adventures and like they do these things. And when they were done, there was that moment of like, yeah, we did it. That's awesome. But there was also a sadness in that, that this experience was now over that they had shared and that there was now kind of nothing for a time and that he knew if he made him this shirt, that it would be his favorite shirt and that him and his friend would
[0:11:19] Andrew: have this puzzle for the rest of their lives that they could engage with. And I thought that that was really beautiful. And I liked that a lot. And it kind of echoed some of the things I'd felt recently doing that weird discord puzzle thing I did. So I became fascinated in this idea of like, I would love to somehow do a fatty pork like puzzle with the community in some way. So I was really fixated on that. And then the day after I watched the movie that that family member passed away was sort of unexpected. And so I really was struggling with that. And there's feels weird to say there's sort of a funny story on that day that I won't get into now. I guess if someone wants to know about it, they could ask about it. But I really went into like just trying to as a distraction, what can I do? Like what is I want to do a fatty pork? Then later that week, a few days after that, and this is largely why Raymond Samir happened. Austin, Texas got hit by a snowstorm. It was like a blizzard and, uh, of all things, a snowstorm. And it was like a serious thing. People didn't have power
[0:12:25] Andrew: for like a week. I want to say houses were being damaged. Water lines were, it was just chaos. It was a terrible time apparently for people in the city. And, uh, it was, I think the day before an episode was going to go out. I learned that we weren't going to be able to upload on Wednesday. And it'd be the first time since we started our show that we wouldn't have an upload for that day. And this is, I don't know, it's going to sound arrogant in some way or like self-important when it's not at all intended to be. I hear so often from people, uh, that our show, like it's, it has been a constant during this really difficult time. And I've, I've heard people say a lot that like, it means something to me to know that on Wednesday, I have a new face that there's going to be something that I can enjoy that will help or create laughter in my life at least. And how meaningful that is to them. Uh, so I, it's important to me that we always have something on that day. So when I heard that I kind of immediately went into this scramble mode of fuck, like I'd love if possible, cause I
[0:13:29] Andrew: still have power. Everything is normal to me. I have no issue. It's just like a regular day. Um, is there something I can do that would give some piece of content on Wednesday? It can't be long because it's going to be unedited. And also like, it can't be expansive or large because that's not face at that point. Face is what everybody brings to it. And so I thought, what is something I could do? That's brief. That would hopefully be something that the audience enjoyed. Um, and so I was like, well, fuck I could do. You can't really confirm a name. Like I couldn't think of a way in which someone could without a doubt confirm that my name is in Japan. I thought I could do that. And that can maybe be a fatty pork thing. And I kind of rushed through this thought process of, I could create things both ways of like what my name actually is. And so I kind of rushed into it at that point and I recorded what I recorded and released it. And I was terrified when I did it. It was like this strangely stressful thing that is completely mine for putting on, but it was,
[0:14:32] Andrew: I was worried about, I don't know. I meant the best. It was, it was done with the best intentions. And I, I didn't, I didn't fully consider it. It was very sudden. So then it released and I saw some of the negative sides of it. I felt really guilty for the people that like embraced me and championed me for, for like revealing that as a thing when it wasn't an honest reveal. I felt guilt about that. And I felt like I had betrayed these people in a way. And I felt really bad about that. And then there were also just some general discussions of like the phrasing around what it means to go by a name in which you weren't given at birth. And like some of the, the, the tone of those discussions were not at all what I intended or that I'd ever hope for. Like I never want anyone to feel uncomfortable. And, and some of the, like the declarations of claiming that is somehow a betrayal when it isn't, or like a lie in some way, a deception sucked. And I didn't, I didn't want that. I was just trying to create something brief. And that was sort of inspired by this fatty pork
[0:15:35] Andrew: idea. Um, and then the other layer that sucked as well is there are people that really dug in and they found the obituary for that relative of mine who passed away and they would send it to me as a, like a, Hey, I figured it out. Like I, this is proof that you're this name and not this name. And that at that time really sucked. Um, and made, made that aspect of it harder. And those aren't bad people who did that. It's just, it's so, it's so easy to get lost in something like that, like a bit of that type. Um, yeah. So I, I don't, I didn't hold anything against them. I understood why, but it's just, it sucked. Uh, and I didn't really want to very quickly after it came out, I didn't really want to pursue it in any way. And that's why there has never really been any advancement from it outside of the episode. We talk about it. And if you listen to that episode, I am very reluctant and don't really want to talk about it, but it was something we had to do because of what I had set up. Um, but that is, uh, the story of Raymond Sumer. I don't think I'm
[0:16:40] Andrew: missing anything. I guess if you have any specific questions about it, feel free to ask. I hope that was interesting. Uh, and with that being said, we should actually move into the Q and a part of this show, which is the purpose of it. Also, if you want to ask a question, I should just say, you can call me at, uh, 512-487-7977. That is 512-487-7977. That is the number for Austin, Texas. Uh, I also tweet when I'm taking calls. Uh, so if you want to try to have a conversation with me, that would be the time to do that. Otherwise, if you just want to leave a question, feel free to phone that number anytime you like. And with that, let's get to our questions. Um, first questions, first questions. I'm great at speaking. Uh, what kind of music are you into? This is sort of a difficult question for me to answer. I feel like it's super generic for people to be like, I like all music. And it's like, they don't actually, that's a sort of insane statement to make because of how wide ranging music is. But music is a thing that I avoided largely,
[0:17:46] Andrew: which also sounds weird. It's a void in a sense of my knowledge. As far as entertainment goes, I played so many video games and have seen so many movies. I really invested all of my entertainment time in that way. And only recently have I gotten more into music. Um, I really like rock and pop and rap and Andy rock and jazz and some country, but I'm very selective with my country. I'd say generally speaking, uh, maybe I'll just like make a playlist on Spotify or something of some songs I like. And if you want to listen to it, you're welcome to do so. Okay. Next question. I should have, should have written these down better. Annabelle asks, is this number real? This number is real. And it's one of my favorite things when people call it, not knowing that it's real. I had a call recently and I don't know, maybe we'll release this in some way, but this person called the number clearly just based on the fact that they got a shirt, a child kicker shirt and the joy that they had to learn that it actually was a real number. And it went somewhere was incredible. Like they at first were just shocked that they're on there. They're leaving
[0:18:50] Andrew: a message for this number. And they were like, this is the greatest. And then somehow decided that this number might not be associated with the podcast that we just throw some random number on a shirt, which is, I guess, a fair assumption for our show. Uh, but he then tried to explain what the podcast was and convince them that they should listen to it, which is incredible. Uh, so this is in fact a real number, but it is such a treat to hear people make that realization. Um, what's your favorite holiday treats? Oh, holiday treats. I feel like is eggnog a treat and not that I've ever had it, but I feel like when I hear holiday, for some reason, my brain kind of associates month of December. Uh, but, but really when I think of specific technically holiday treats, I think more Thanksgiving. So I'd say like pumpkin pie is a great holiday treat. Uh, even though you could have that year round, but to me, it's like very much a Thanksgiving staple and cranberry sauce, I think is highly underrated. I wish cranberry sauce is just year round. It's one of my favorite things. I love best part of Thanksgiving by far.
[0:19:55] Andrew: Uh, Olivia wants to know if I have any stories about orcas. I don't have any stories about orcas. Unfortunately, I wish I did. It sounded like you really have a passion or enthusiasm for orcas. So I'd love to know if you have a story. I did, however, do some research and I looked up some orca facts, which I found interesting. And one of them, this blew my fucking mind. Apparently orcas aren't whales. They're dolphins. Nobody told me this. They're apparently the largest type or species breed. One of those words is correct of dolphins. Uh, that was crazy. That's crazy to learn. They also are like the most widespread mammal outside of only humans, as far as like the amount of area they cover. There's so many different climates, or at least they're, they're more climates than any other animal outside of humans. Um, so those are some, some orca facts. I hope, I hope those were interesting to you. And I, as I said, I'd love to hear if you have a story or any, what your favorite orca fact is. Person from Virginia
[0:20:56] Andrew: asked, do I have any halo to lasso tips? I do. I have two tips. One, and this is probably not useful to you because I'm assuming you started it, but if you haven't make sure you start it solo because if you go in with co-op, it skips over the tutorial level. Uh, and that fucking sucks because then you're screwed. You have to do it all over again. Like literally from the beginning to the end, you will get fucked over. If you do that, if you go in with a co-op partner, at least when I did it, maybe they fixed that, but that was certainly the case when I played it. My second halo to lasso tip is there are some phenomenal guides on YouTube for lasso runs, but there are also some really well done legendary halo to speed running guides. And I found that there were times where I found the lasso guide more useful and then I would find the speed running technique for an area to be more useful and bypassing things. So I would look at both things. If you're going to do any research for this, analyze both speed running and lasso specific guides and try to find techniques that fit the best
[0:21:56] Andrew: for you. Cause for me, it was like, it was a constant kind of flipping of going back and forth. Um, a Boston Bruin fan wants to know if I'm a Vancouver Canucks fan. I am. Unfortunately, they're not easy to be a fan of things have been better recently since the firing of, uh, Jim Benning and Travis green. I don't think people probably really care about listening to me talk about the Vancouver Canucks, but there are aspects of their team that I think are so fucking crazy. The history of like the last 10 years, events with like the Luongo trade and just how the owners have operated in some ways is fucking wild. Uh, so maybe I'll talk about that at some point if somebody cares, but I'm going to move on from that question, going to Morgan in Athens, Ohio wants to thank us for making the show and for the friendship atmosphere we have during it. Thank you, Morgan in Athens, Ohio, um, for listening and supporting and allowing us to have that space
[0:22:56] Andrew: and doing so that space has meant so much to me. And it's almost like therapeutic now where for a comedy show, you'd think like you'd want to go in with like a really good mindset or like positive in some way. And there, there are times where I'll just speak for myself. I've recorded face being pretty down, you know, struggling with kind of some things in my personal life. And it has been so helpful to just have that space. Like when I'm, I'm going through a difficult thing, knowing that I'm going to get an hour to play with some of my closest friends and just have fun and laugh has been invaluable, uh, over these last almost, I guess, two years at this point. Um, so thank you for supporting us and allowing us to continue to make this really stupid show. Um, I guess what, how long have I been recording for? We want to try to make these, Oh, 25, 25 minutes. I should try to wrap this up. Um, what's one more, it's one more question that I have
[0:23:57] Andrew: so many. What's my favorite type of corn? Uh, that's a tough one. I don't like cream corn corn on the cob feels like such a generic answer. I feel like popcorn is the elite corn. It's probably the best corn. I don't care for the band corn. Uh, I think popcorn, but I think there's an argument you can make for possibly corn pops or corn flex, less so flex corn pops though. Pretty good. I feel bad. I have so many more questions. I guess I'll, I'll tackle these maybe next show. I'll just make it super specific on Q and a stuff so I could get through all of them. Uh, if I, you left the question, I didn't answer it. I will do my best to do so next episode. Once again, thank you so much for listening. Uh, it really means a lot to us that you all continue to support our show and allow us to make it and do the dumb shit that we do. Uh, so thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day.
