Episode 343 – Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen, Podcasting During Quarantine, Comic Cons

Tonight we're joined by our friends from New Jersey - Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen from ASharedUniverse podcast studios, as well as AMC's Comic Book Men, comic cons around the nation, and all sorts of other places.  It's always a great time when we get to hang and chat with them, so listen in as we talk about the shared pain of shutting down our podcast studios during this pandemic, movies, tv shows, our opinions about the future of comic cons, when things might start getting back to "normal", and much, much more...     Hey, this is episode 343 of the one and all the IT in the D show. We actually have guests this week. The one and only both dogs. There's two of you can't be the one and only Ming Chen and Mike Zapcic, you might know them from AMCs comic book men. You might know them now from the proprietors of a share universe podcast studio. Is that who you are? We'll figure that one out or the Ming and Mike podcast. But yeah, this is going to no topics. Is it just catching up with their boys and uh, just talking about, uh, being quarantine. Dave, you may fire one live from our houses with more budget than Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon combined show. We're broadcasting right here from our houses. Episode 343 Bob, the sales guy gave the gig. Randy, I do the Twitters is doing the Twitters and he's with us. Find a saddle, line it in the [inaudible] dot com and give us a do a favor and give us a like on the socials and subscribe to us everywhere. Fine podcasts are sold. Yeah. And this is where a, I usually dive in and start talking about our upcoming events and all that stuff we got going on. And uh, yeah, there ain't none. There's not a damn one. We are a, we are insanely lucky once again to be joined by two very good friends of ours. Uh, Ming Chen, Mike Zapcic, uh, AMCs comic book men. Did you send them the 40 bucks or was I supposed to cause I a I forgot. We need to get that check right. I got their Venmo. Randy quit eating. Okay. Thank you. That came up on my recommended I, I'm a YouTube junkie and I did go through my recommended videos and actually that your little commercial came up was one of my recommended. I was like, Oh crap, Dave's got to send them a check. Fortunately, gentlemen, we are considered a nonessential business. Ah, and we gotta keep the lights on somehow. And here's the thing. I mean, I get it, dude. That's the, that's the agony that we went through. I mean, it was a vetted a month ago, uh, today actually. Uh, we, you know, I think I was online chatting with Bob and Jamie and Matt, the guys that do our Northville studios, cause technically speaking, there is an exemption in our stay at home order for media companies and media production companies. And it was so, and it was like one of those things where, okay, just because we can doesn't really necessarily mean we should. Cause I mean, God forbid something happens and somebody catches it yet. No, we're done. Yeah, that's what we said. Uh, I went there, Ming, what was it? Uh, actually a month ago this, this coming Friday and Ming's taken copper wiring out of the wall. This kind of a bitch bear. Well that's, that's the Detroit, that's the Detroit boy in him. He's a, he's finding an abandoned structure. And I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, we're podcasting from home. He's like, I'm going to figure out how we're going to do this. We're going to freaking do, ah, bring your laptop. I'm like, I'm not leaving it here. Oh yeah. So, uh, yeah, we just now we've been doing this for a month and you know it's not the same. No, no. We talked about this last week. Have you guys been watching late night? They're like the Conans and Stalins and Kimmel's like it's this, this zero like we have microphones so like our budget's higher. Like they're literally just going with an iPhone. Right. And doing like, like a produced TV show at midnight. Like channels that it's like the little Rascals but on network TV pretty much we'll do it. Like I said, I mean the other day watching, you know, seeing a news program on TV, basically playing the live stream off of somebody's Facebook page as part of the news content is, it just blew my mind the first time I saw it. I'm like, well yeah, I guess you wouldn't want to have camera crews and reporters and all that kind of stuff. They're there. Okay, this is what it is. Now they could have shipped them out at like a like a nice camera and some shit and told them where to plug one in. You know, and we're going to stream here and see where to plug it in. Randy's Randy's been quarantined a couple of little bit longer than he, I don't know if you saw even the little cheap logic webcams, they're gone back ordered cause everyone's snapped him up to do zoom in shifts. So, yeah. Yeah, I was laughing. I see a lot of celebrities are trying to live stream now and it's frustrating as we're watching them. We're like, dude, just call us. Just call us, we'll help you out. So we saw Chris Jericho, the wrestler, he did a licensee with Kevin and he was literally holding a laptop with Kevin's face on it, like streaming dude. Wow. Chris, you have my number. Just call him. We'll tell you how to connect you in livestream. Like, and you know, you guys have good Mike's already. But you know, we were, we were just sitting back laughing a little bit, but I mean, I, I love that everyone's trying, you know, they're there, they're there, they're moving. Uh, they're, they're, they're, they keep going. I love that little awkward though because like did you see Adam Sandler on Fallon? He's singing the quarantine song. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, but it's Jimmy Fallon, so he'll pretty much do anything. Right, right. Well, no, I mean it is, it's hard. I mean, you know, we've got, you know, we've, we've kept a bunch of our shows, uh, up and running, uh, that we've even got a couple of new ones starting this week, which is really weird. Um, but I mean the best way that I've come to describe it for people is like, so zoom is about as close as you're going to get to being in studio right now. Like you can at least see each other, you can make eye contact, you can get body language and all that kind of stuff. And at a minimum we record audio just like we do as if you were sitting in the studios, just like in the studios. Yep. We got cameras there and we can turn them on and we can record. We can do video too. And Hey, if you want, we can stream it out. And all that stuff too. But I mean, so to me zoom is, like I said, I've been about as close as you're going to get to being in studio at this point. Yeah. You just can't smell each other. That's the only sense. Hey, you can't switch. I mean, I'm okay with, I mean if you've ever been in a room with Bob for an extended period of time, especially on draft beer and Coney night. So what do you, what do you guys been keeping busy? What do you guys watch? I gotta I got to tell a funny story real quick and we'll uh, we'll dive into the other stuff. We uh, we've been doing eighties movie nights for the kids. Nice. Vernors um, we've been, I've been trying to get my kids raised on eighties properly cause they haven't seen a lot of the John Hughes movies. So, uh, Saturday night was airplane. I'm like, okay, you're sitting down and you're watching airplane. And uh, as soon as they go to the, my gumbo bar, see my 15 year old just looks at me and goes, really dad, this is from your podcast. This is where you've got it from. Like, yes, this is, it's worse than Detroit. This is where I got it from. Hey, pay homage to the greatest movie ever, ever stolen. Um, for $600. Yeah. Right, right, right. I always say the fairly brothers, the sucker brothers to say, watch, I like had to watch the, um, the zero or thing afterwards. Just show him that it was stolen. Cause for somehow they didn't believe me. I'm like, this is like line for line to see movies, his 50s movies. I mean they're, they added the one liners and they're teenagers and your other dad, of course they didn't believe you. That's how that works when you try to see, I think that's a thing of comedy too, is when you keep telling people that it's funny. It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. Trust me. Like they just, they're going to purposely, yeah, yeah, yeah. Law of diminishing returns. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where all our wa, that's where all our good material comes from is old movies that our kids haven't seen yet. So they think we are, thank God God for Amazon women on the moon. Oh nice. I watched weird science with my wife and like I swear to God six times during the movie, she's like, is that where you got that stupid line? Like rolling her eyes? Like you walk into a bar and you really have to go bar bar. Yeah. That's why that is. Yeah. So yeah, I mean I guess, I guess that's, that's the question. But like I said, I mean, you know, from a podcast Detroit perspective, you know, we've kept, you know, a good percentage of our shows up and running and enrolling this way. Some people still wanted to take a break and cool. That's fine. Um, but like I said, you know, we've got other new shows starting, like, how's, how's everything going with you guys? Uh, so far so good. And, uh, I've been hustling man because, uh, so you know, our audience, our, our podcast is, uh, know divided into thirds. There was one third, where was I going? I can't come in. How do we do this online? Like they, they really want to keep going. The other third you kind of had to talk them into, that's the nice thing about being at home. You can light up because I have like, I actually had literally have like three will you remember that? Like sharper image, the smoke eaters that they used to sell the big tall coat. Yeah, I've got three of those right here. Just to be safe. I love it. The other third, you know, we had to convince them, uh, we had to show her what I would tell her. Is it going to be the same? Uh, you know,...