Jeffery R. Thomas, Gen X Creator, Speaker, Videographer

00:00
It was sheer lust and then the absolute boredom of working in retail.

00:12
Welcome to another episode of Chewing the Fat. I am your host, Big Robb. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to the folks who have bought me a coffee this holiday season at ChewingtheFatBR.com. Thank you to Leonard, Dale. I really do appreciate you believing in the podcast enough to put some dollars into it to help this thing stay up and running. I really, really do appreciate it. And also the folks that have reached out through Instagram following the podcast, the folks that have...

00:38
written reviews and given five star ratings and just shared an episode. It doesn't take much to make a podcaster happy and sharing an episode, writing a review, doing a five star rating, it's free. And we appreciate the heck out of it. I know I do. Also, I do appreciate my guests. I love having great conversations with people I find super interesting. And one of them is sitting across me right now. Please welcome Jeffery R.

01:08
Thomas. Hey, Robb. So glad to be here, buddy. Hey, I am too, man. I know we've been kind of back and forth. You a busy, busy man. And you know, I'm really horrible about reaching out to schedule and promote myself. I'm terrible at that kind of stuff. I keep asking. I've got lots of people that are asking me to do radio interviews and podcasts and even want to be on TV. And it literally came down to you just

01:35
texted me last night saying, Hey, what are you doing? What are you doing tomorrow? I'm like, okay, I'll be on your podcast tomorrow. That's what I'm doing tomorrow. And it's literally how it's going to roll down with just about everybody is like, Hey, I've got you scheduled next Wednesday. And I'll be like, okay. I will be there. But for me to just like reach out and say, I'm, Hey, what do you think about the 15th? I'm available. No, it's not never been me because it's awkward promoting myself. This is still brand new to me. So Jeff has found a bit of notoriety as a

02:03
a prophet of Gen X. And we'll get into that journey coming up here in just a few moments. But I think I was first introduced to you, Jeff, probably through the Black Cat Pictures Show. You're probably doing some videography, some drone work or something like that and helping to promote Black Cat Pictures Show down at Le Chat. And that's probably where we first ran into each other. Yeah, Chris and Duane down at Le Chat were kind enough to offer libations gratis.

02:33
for video work. And I loved the entire idea of the film festival, staying there all weekend, the movies and films and projects that they brought in there, funny, hilarious, inventive, frightening, sometimes disturbing. And you get all the mix. And that's how we ended up meeting down there. Yeah, yeah. What a, you know, I say it all the time about Krys Bailey and Le Chat Noir. It is such a great sandbox.

03:03
I mean, you meet all the coolest cats. It is such a great varied group of people that come there with different artistic passions and different talents. And they're all welcome there with just open arms. And it's just such a great place. And I actually did a, um, we did a CD launch there a few years ago, a cousin of mine finished a CD. I had made a music video for him. We premiered the music video the night and he did a concert style. And it was something that

03:32
I don't think we've ever duplicated or done again. It was a concert where instead of having that boring pause where you're tuning your instruments and clearing your throat and everything, you can roll down the screen and show a video. It was ingenious. And we had Carnival Barkers and there were two full shows and it worked out really great. I mean, they sold out both shows, paid for the venue and the venue made tons of money. And I got the premiere. I literally was sitting up at the top of L'Chattin, if anybody's been there, then you know how intimate it is. And...

04:01
hear this thunderous applause for a music video that I put together and created with the little tear rolling down my face trying not to show, you know. You got to be tough guy. You got to be the tough guy. Yes, I'm the director. I really wanted to show up like with riding pants and a crop and the director's beret and everything, but it just didn't work out. I really love the venue, the amount of things that they do there. Oh yeah. It's such a jewel in the crown of Augusta that...

04:27
not many people even realize is there. No. You know, it is world-class. What they do through there, what they support, it really is. Even the friends that I've made from the Black Cat Picture Show, not just local, but there are international, I still have international friends that I keep up with on social media and they keep up with me, that came to our little town to show their film. Yeah, yeah.

04:56
It's such a cool place. But we're not here to talk about Luchat, although we could go on and on and on about that. We had to find out about, what about you, Mr. Thomas? Jeff, are you local? Are you native to Augusta? I was born in Augusta, Georgia, low back in the days of the seventies. And somewhere around 78, 79, my dad got a, a business job. So we ended up growing up like a military family, military families.

05:24
move every couple years. Every time my dad got promoted, we moved. So I had to remake new friends every three years, all growing up, until we finally got down to Florida and became of age where we decided we're not moving again. Dad got promoted, moved out, we stayed. And I stayed forever and ever. Tried to attempt college, but being 18 years old, living on your own in Florida.

05:54
Going to school every day. Yeah, not something that really happens. Yeah successfully. Yeah. Yeah That's a that's a special kind of discipline in that would yeah, I mean, I mean come on I mean, we're like I have an identical twin brother. We're in an apartment on our own We're not of age yet and everyone we know Knew that and so guess where their alcohol was stored. Oh, yeah our fridge our house I never had to buy alcohol for like five straight years. Wow until you know, I became of age and then I drank

06:22
way less after I turned 21 than I ever did before. Right? Isn't that weird how that works out though? But then it came, I had the opportunity to get back into school and my father said, because of your successful attempt the first time, you need to be at home so I can make sure you're going to classes and doing this. I was actually very serious about finishing school the second time around. Moved back in with the folks. We ended up back here in Augusta in 96.

06:47
And it's like I usually tell new folks when they move into town at one of my old jobs. If we don't have it here in Augusta, it's within three hours. There's genuinely no reason to leave. I've known so many military folks that come here to Ford Eisenhower now, and they end up ending their tour. They don't reenlist and they're just like, why leave? We like it here. Everything you need is here in Augusta. And now that the film industry is moving into Georgia.

07:14
Augusta has these prime locations, so there's all kind of opportunity for television and film and all the things that I love. As a Gen Xer growing up, loving everything radio, television, and film. That's awesome. Were you going to school for television or radio or video or anything like that? This is literally how it happened, Rob. I was sitting down with this giant book of majors at the time, Augusta College.

07:44
and I was going in with my counselor who was Jim Garvey. He was the newspaper journalism head down at Augusta College. And I flipped open the book, trying to decide what I wanted my major to be. And it literally plopped open to radio, television and film. Without flipping a page, that was the first major that came up. And the light went off. It was like, no, that's it. I'm not looking at anything else. I'm not going into chemistry. I'm not going into pre-med. I'm not going into law.

08:11
I'm going to get a degree in the thing that I know, because I already knew everything about it. We were raised by television. Krista Rogers, Austria Grouch, Snufflefocus absolutely raised us each and every day. And being cursed with a memory like I have, things go in, they never come out. It seemed like a no-brainer to go into that type of, to find out more about it from behind the scenes, because I knew about it from in front of the scene. Right, right. You knew about it from the...

08:36
from the living room side of the set. But what does it look on the back side? What does it look like to make how it looks from the living room side? Was there, I know you mentioned a lot of shows there, but was there one show in particular that you were just like fascinated by, and like I have to figure out the nuts and bolts of that process? Not really, of course Star Wars. I wanted to figure out the nuts and bolts of that process, but I didn't really.

09:05
deny myself any television, film, radio, song, music. I figured out what I liked, I figured out what I didn't like. I would say out of all the shows that I grew up watching, MASH was probably the one that influenced me the most because the first four seasons were so snappy and well-written. The comedy pushed the edge of what was acceptable on television, because this was public, this was over-the-air antenna television you were watching this on.

09:34
You couldn't say the things that you could in movies, and they were always trying to push that envelope with the writing, but it was very quick, very fast. And I'm still a fan of that show to this day because of the writing. And even the shooting style of it, it was almost like documentary style. It wasn't set up like a normal sitcom type of a show. They originally wanted it to be like the Robert Altman film, which Robert Altman was one of the very...

10:01
first directors to kind of shoot guerrilla style, have people talking over dialogue, have dialogue running into the next scene that has nothing to do with the dialogue. They really tried for the first season to be like that until it found its voice late in the second season. Larry Gelbart finally just found the voice and said, "'Okay, we're no longer chasing that movie. We're our own entity and our hit.'" And that's how they took off from there. I wasn't ever a fan of the drum mash, what we call the dramatic mash in the later seasons, until of course the final episode.

10:31
but the first four seasons to this day, that's how I fall asleep. I go to Hulu, put on MASH, and click on an episode and fall asleep to it. And it doesn't matter. I know every episode word for word, front to back. If you want, I can start at season one and I can finish at season four word for word, all 23 episodes, all four seasons. Wow. That's a great talent you have there, a talent and a curse. I wish I could memorize scripts that well.

10:59
Maybe you just need to watch somebody else perform the script and then that way you can And take it that way. I guess so if I see it happen in front of right right instead of reading it Then I can just literally copy what I just saw. Yeah, it's almost like a mimicry type thing as opposed to a to a memorization I just found my new career rob. Thank you. Yeah boom boom. Yeah um so So you got Did you get so the second time did it stick? Did you get the degree? Believe it or not, you know, I went full time

11:28
even during the summer and finished and got my degree in three years. Awesome. Because pretty much none of my transcripts from Florida came. And if anybody knows Augusta College, which is now Augusta University, it was Augusta State when I graduated, they didn't accept many transcripts to begin with. Yeah. At all. They hated every other university around. And so I literally started from scratch with a less than 1.7 GPA and graduated summa cum laude in 1998. That's awesome.

11:56
Congratulations. That's an accomplishment. It was. And I walked up to my boss at the time. I was stocking shelves at a grocery store and said, I've got my degree.

12:08
you can't afford me anymore. Wow. So it's either, it's either, you know, you can promote me or I'm moving on. My price just went up and they promoted me and I ended up never using that degree because I got stuck in retail management. Oh wow. For I think the next 12 years. Wow. Which is a pit of despair from whence there is no escape. Yeah. It's a having worked in retail. It is.

12:37
If you've never done it, you don't understand it. You can't. You just can't understand it. And if I were to run my own business, I would want retail on an application or a resume, because I know what they've been through. I know they've been in the trenches. The customer service is immediate. It's not, I'll get back to you within 48 hours with a solution. It's an immediate solution.

12:59
And if you can't provide the solution, you still have to make the customer happy who is standing in front of you yelling at you. It teaches you a great deal about society and yourself. But it is a pit from, you just can't get out of it. Because when you hand somebody a resume and says you've been a retail manager for 20 years, they act like you just handed them a big, fat pile of dog poop, and they just throw it on the ground and run away from you. Because they don't think you can translate into an office environment, a regular nine to five environment. Oh, you don't have. No. It's like, no.

13:29
probably some of the highest performing people you'll ever meet. I've done your job times 10 on a daily basis. So there are no three martini lunches. There are hardly lunches at retail most times, especially this time of year. Oh yeah. During the holidays. For sure. So you're working in retail, you're not using your degree, but you somehow still manage to learn or to use your skill with

13:57
Photography videography and things like that as well though, right? Well, I have a An extremely hot wife who worked at a camera store Hmm when I was in college and I became quite a good photographer to have a an excuse To go to this camera store and have my film developed see kids. That's what they used to do there was these little strips of like

14:21
It was almost like plastic. You would probably think it was plastic. And it had pictures embedded in it. You had to put a chemical on it to make the picture show up. It wasn't a card or anything. It was an entire process. And sometimes you had to wait upwards. Well, in the 70s, it was weeks. You would either mail your film out or you would go to the photo hut. And still, it wasn't back same day. They had to mail it to a processing lab who then mailed your pictures back. And then you found out you had 24 pictures of absolute garbage and your thumb.

14:50
in the flash. Right. And of course, the flash wasn't repeat like it is on your phone. You had to buy flash, and you had four shots, and that was it. Mm-hmm. There was that, no. And I still have all those cameras. I still have my Kodak Instamatic. Oh, wow. I have the Minolta that I used to win my wife over with my gorgeous landscape pictures. That's awesome. So that's, so it was sheer lust.

15:15
Yes. That made you continue to pursue photography. It was sheer lust and then the absolute boredom of working in retail that got me back into wanting to go into videography. Something more creative. There's only so much you can do with retail before you're done. And you have to sit down and tell yourself, I'm going to be doing this for the next 25, 30 years before I retire. I need a hobby. And the hobby that I chose, I said, well, I've never really used.

15:44
my college degree. I want to make a documentary film. I want to do something exciting. I want to put together a film. What do I want to put together? OK, well, what excited me as a kid? What has no one done a documentary film on? And I told myself, Bigfoot. No one's made a documentary film of Bigfoot, and I'm going to be the one. So I decided to myself, I'm going to take a full year. I'm going to do all the study, all the research that I need to do. I'm going to put together a team.

16:12
During that time, I'm gonna put together Capital so that I can afford the trip. We were gonna go to the Pacific Northwest, the only place on the planet where Bigfoot exists, and we were gonna spend a week shooting. I was gonna come back and put this documentary film together because at that time, we were just starting to get into the iMac where you could actually make movies at home by yourself of a good quality, more so than when I was in school where...

16:38
You still had to sell your film to the processing lab. You still had to splice it together by hand. You had to have a master, and you had to have your audio, and all that stuff. And it took about a week of doing research. The Pacific Northwest is not the only place where Bigfoot exists. There are tons of documentaries about Bigfoot. I'm not adding anything to the research. I'm not actually complementing it in any way. And started looking at lots of reports and going to sites. And you had to be very careful, because there's

17:08
There's a lot of people out there who, for some reason, have fun making stuff up. But when you go to legitimate sites where there are people who you learn to know and trust, and I got to know them through social media, at the very infancy of social media, trusted their word and started to read reports that they were putting into a certain database and seeing similarities of reports that aren't common knowledge.

17:36
It's like, oh, that's interesting because this thing happened 400 miles away or 1,000 miles away in a completely different state. This activity that most people don't think of when they think of Bigfoot or they're hoaxing a Bigfoot video, which a lot of people do. And most of the time when you're reading it and there's no holy crap factor. When somebody's lying to you about a Bigfoot story, there's a holy crap factor at the end. It crescendos and suddenly there's this big...

18:04
reveal at the end because they feel like there needs to be. No, most of the Bigfoot reports are just sightings. They get freaked out, but they're very boring. And then that's all there is to it. But the details within it, what did it look like? How did it move? What was the shape? What was the hair like? What was the color? What was the smell? And you start to see these similarities and it wasn't too long. You know, I grew up with a fascination for Bigfoot.

18:31
But it wasn't too long after that that I started to realize there was something more to this. And then the first time you go out with the intent of going into the deep woods somewhere. I packed my dog up in the car, I went up to North Georgia, found a hiking trail that was a permit trail. I knew I was going to be the only one out there. It was the middle of the week. I work retail, so you know, our day's off for the middle of the week. We don't have weekends off. And I was going to go out there and look for the signs and things that people had said, you know, you sometimes see. And you start to look at the woods.

19:01
very differently from that point on. Very differently. Once you realize there's something to this, the woods look different to you from that point on. And it became a fascination after that. I ended up making lots of friends, some of whom went on television and became quite famous. And since I was friends with them, I became quite famous in the Bigfoot community. Now let me explain. Being famous in the Bigfoot community.

19:29
is the same as being the most popular kid in the cafeteria of a mental ward. It has the exact same flair to it. I can still walk down the street and nobody knows who I am, but I can go to a cryptozoology conference, a cryptid conference of some sort, and people knew who I was. And I would have all access to whoever the guests were, all access to... And I literally took some friends up to a conference one time, and they're like,

19:59
The people they came to see and get autographs and selfies with, you know, blushing while they're getting their selfies are my friends and I'm talking to them on the phone about random stuff. Like, what are we drinking tonight? And they just completely blown away by that. That's awesome. So the thing is, it didn't add anything. You didn't do the documentary, but you still found a deeper fascination for what you were researching. Yeah. Right?

20:26
I ended up hooking up with a guy locally here. We're no longer friends, but we ended up going into the woods because at that time I was extricated from retail with extreme prejudice. I was just saying that. So there was a big gap in between employment. And so I had a lot of free time on my hands, close to a year. And so I would go out just about every evening by myself here locally, based on this friend at the Times reports that he was getting locally to go look and see, you know,

20:56
Am I hearing any wood knocks? Am I finding any footprints or trees pushed over or anything? And then every weekend, he would go out to just different locations, sometimes three, four-hour drives. And since he was going, I just packed up in the car and went with him. And we got dubbed, a friend of ours said, y'all two are the hardest-working Bigfooters in the entire community. Because we were going out constantly. North Georgia camping trips, we would go to these areas where...

21:22
Not camping areas. We're going to areas where nobody goes. Right. And you have to trek to get to. And you just go out, you make a few calls in the woods, you sit around the campfire and roast your hot dogs and hamburgers and everything and see what approaches you in the woods. And quite often, something does. Now, can we always say it was Bigfoot? No. But we can always guard out some things. Because I grew up in the woods. Yeah. I know what sounds are in the woods. And...

21:50
A lot of people don't understand it, but Georgia is crawling with black bear. So 99% of the time, when you're hearing something at night, it's a black bear coming to steal your cooler food. If you hear rustling in the woods, it's a black bear or a raccoon or an armadillo, which sounds like a Sherman tank when it walks through the woods. It's tiny little armadillo, skunks as well. They have no reason to hide. They just sound like a four-wheel drive truck running through the woods. Wow.

22:18
But we had lots of things happening, and then just circumstantially. And that's a long story. It's probably a whole other podcast. In 2012, February 18, we were testing two newbies in the woods. I had finally got to the point where I couldn't go in the woods with this friend of mine anymore. He just couldn't do it anymore. I needed more people around to buffer. And so he had someone in mind. My cousin wanted to see what we were doing. So we went out in the middle of the day to some private land, South Georgia.

22:47
kind of in between Augusta and Savannah. And we weren't technically Bigfooting. We were just testing two newbies in the woods. Because you know if they complained during the day, they're definitely going to complain at 3 AM. So if they can't hack it in the woods in the middle of the day, broad daylight, then you don't want them around at 3 AM. They're the kinds that's going to scream and run. Because the woods, skeptics can poop with the idea of Bigfoot all day long. But when the sun goes down, they're the first ones to poop their pants. Right.

23:17
Because it's dark. It's dark. It's a different kind of dark that people don't understand. It is. You ain't seen nothing. Even with a little bit of light pollution from a town that might be nearby, you can't see your hand in front of your face at all without any external light. And so we were taking them out in the woods and lo and behold, we ended up accidentally triangulating a seven and a half foot tall, black hair covered figure whose smell I will never forget.

23:45
I had about a three second sighting within 30 yards. It walked away from us like a cartoon. I tried to go chase after it, caught in the weeds, feet are moving, I'm not going anywhere. It's literally like a cartoon trying to run and I'm not going anywhere and this thing is just casually walking away from me. And nothing has ever happened since then for me in the world of Bigfooting. Wow.

24:11
Not a knock, not a howl, not a sound, not a stomp, not a tree pushed over. I would go kayaking sometimes here locally at night around German Island, which is just a local, it's where the river splits and it just kind of made an island. I would have trees pushed over, rocks thrown at my kayak, stomping in the woods. Because when you go out so often and I would wear the same color clothes, same hat, everything, and they recognize you and they know that you kind of are

24:41
It's simpatico to them as well. They want you to go away. So they do intimidation tactics to get you to go away. So they'll throw rocks at your kayak. Never hits you, but always very precision, accurate throwing rocks. I've hit wood knocks and had trees pushed over. I've had wood knocks in return. I've heard owl mimics. All here locally, all here in Augusta. And since then, nothing. Wow. It's kind of like they took your picture and put it by the exit.

25:10
At the convenience store. They're like, we're not giving him anything anymore. At the convenience store, he gets no more. He's no longer allowed to shop here. We give him nothing forever. Wow. And so I ended up going to a lot more conferences to meet folks and everything and ended up getting asked to speak at some conferences. I've emceed a few conferences and festivals and it's a lot of fun because you get a free trip and people watch your autograph and it's very weird. Yeah. But. You talked about the smell.

25:40
Can you describe the smell? I can describe the smell. Let me take a drink. Okay.

25:48
Men will understand this when I describe the smell. And this is a part of my speech when I talk about my encounter. Have you ever gotten up in the middle of the night to go take a pee and you didn't want to disturb anybody so you didn't flush? You didn't want to wake anybody else up so you didn't flush? It was yellow, let it mellow. So you just let it go, you went back to bed. Then you went to Myrtle Beach for two weeks. And when you came home, because you were on the road so long.

26:14
you really had to go really bad and you went to that same toilet where that urine has been stewing for two weeks. And it doesn't matter if you flush or go on top of it, that smell that comes out of there, dash a little bit of skunk, a little bit of wet dog in there, a little bit of BO, but mostly that smell is exactly what it smelled like and it filled the area. It wasn't like where like a homeless guy walks past and you can smell his stinks. Right, right.

26:41
the area was filled with the smell. We actually found a location that had an indentation in the ground up against a tree. And we figured that had to have been where it was resting because it was daytime and they're known to be nocturnal animals because the smell was the most intense right at that spot. But then the smell actually filled up the rest of the area. I could talk about this a lot. This could take hours. I could talk about this because it was a wild day. That is wild. And the weirdest part about it was it didn't really occur. My cousin who was with me,

27:11
So the friend that I had locally, he was off. He was the one that helped us triangulate it accidentally. And the other person that we brought along, he's a big dude, but he was trying to crawl through these bushes. So he had no sighting at all, but my cousin standing right beside me, he saw everything that I saw. And it didn't occur to us until we were about 45 minutes on the way home. And I looked at him in the Jeep, turned to him and said, did we just see Bigfoot today? Wow.

27:38
And that's when the light went on and he said, yeah, I think we did. Yeah, it's weird. I don't believe in the paranormal aspect of the Sasquatch phenomenon. I believe in mud and blood and dirt and bones. And several paranormal things happened to us that day that I cannot explain scientifically at all. That's why. So and I ask this because I've been up

28:09
the Sasquatch Research Museum outside of Blue Ridge. Yes, in Cherry Log, Expedition Bigfoot. Yeah, Expedition Bigfoot, a fascinating place. Yes. If you ever have a chance to go to Cherry Log, just right outside of Blue Ridge, Georgia, check out Expedition Bigfoot. And don't be afraid to name drop to the owner, Dave Bacara. He may just let you in for free. Well, there you go, there you go.

28:37
Just the fascinating part was the different names for Bigfoot in different places. So what you saw in Savannah, would that be considered a Bigfoot or would that be a swamp Lucy or whatever? I think the terminology that was most used in Georgia with the colonists and the settlers was Woodboogers. Woodboogers. There were other names with the Cherokee Indians in the area, Sul'Kalu, which meant great lord of the game. And there's another name that escapes me.

29:07
But that far south, it probably would have fallen into the realm of skunk ape. They're all Sasquatch type entities, but I think there are over 300 different names for wild men of the woods used by Native Americans across the United States and Canada, and even some in Mexico. Yeah. And they had like an expedition record. They have a lot of those names listed and where they're at and the different parts of the world. I mean, you know, a Yeti is considered...

29:36
in that kind of vein of... My personal opinion about that, the Yeti, because there was a DNA study done by a scientist named Brian Sykes, there was some meat found, I think, a few years back. And it came back as a thought-long extinct 23,000-year-old polar bear. And they're like, OK, well, that's it. It's not a Bigfoot. It's not a Yeti. It's just the DNA of a 23,000-year-old.

30:06
polar bear and nobody stopped to say, okay, so a polar bear that they thought went extinct 23,000 years ago still exists because this wasn't old DNA, it was fresh DNA. Right. And that would explain a lot of it because it wouldn't look like a normal polar bear. It would be long haired, it would be white sometimes, sometimes brown, but it would also be aggressive and man-eating, which would explain a lot of the Yeti stories that you get out of the Himalayas, Himalayas, how are we pronouncing it today? I can't remember. However, in...

30:37
In Russia and in China, Russia has the almoss. And in China, they have the yarin. And the yarin in China is almost identical in physiology and footprint morphology to the Bigfoot Sasquatch in the United States. Almost 100% identical. The stories, without them listening to people in the United States are researching it. Because a good friend of mine, Cliff Berrickman, had actually gone to China.

31:04
with the Finding Bigfoot show and was speaking with PhDs there who had evidence and were talking about the evidence in the same way that PhDs here like Dr. Jeff Meldrum talk about the footprint cast and the morphology of the footprint cast. And they were almost identical stories being translated to him from Chinese, but he had never heard of, he didn't even know that the same footprints and same stories of wild men existed in the United States. And they were almost identical. That's wild. That is wild.

31:34
It is a fascinating subject. Cryptids and the Bigfoot is a fascinating subject. It's, anyway, I mean, we could definitely talk about it. We could talk about it a lot. But for me, the answer, I mean, the question is answered for me. That was my entire intent on going into the woods. I wanted to know 100%. Based on what I read, I felt 90 to 99% sure there was something to this. So I wanted a full on.

32:02
visual confirmation for myself. I was not out to prove it to the world. I was not out to bring home the evidence or the film evidence that showed the whole world and say, ha ha, we were right all along. I just wanted to know for myself that it was. And when I found out, I had nothing else happen for the next 11 years except conferences and making network friends. And making appearances and things like that. I mean, that was, like you said.

32:29
box checked. There we go. And we're on to the next thing. Move on to the next thing. And your next thing, well, I don't know if it's the immediate next thing, but the next thing that you're onto right now that a lot of folks may know you for is your penchant for your childhood and life as a Gen-Xer. Over a hundred thousand followers on Facebook doing videos about what Gen-Xers

32:59
But we usually don't say because we just want you to leave us alone. Yeah We're gonna be left alone. It's where we left alone. Let's go away. Yeah, we're good Don't need you Exactly. How did that? How did that happen? Well, I had a couple of well start kind of from the beginning social media was getting extremely negative and It started to occur to me that whatever button you press is what feed pellet you get

33:28
So when you press that negative button, the algorithms are designed to keep you engaged. It doesn't care what you engage in. So even when you're trying to do right on social media by engaging with negativity, you're gonna get more negativity. And it's really draining to your soul, really emotionally draining. So I decided I'm not doing the negative anymore. I'm not engaging with trolls. I'm not arguing. I'm just gonna do my thing, post funny stuff.

33:57
have it be bipartisan, non-political, non-religious, all that kind of stuff, just stuff that's funny. And it turned out to where people started following me from that. And once you reach about a thousand followers, and I was never someone that went out to get the 5,000 friends on Facebook. If I didn't know you, you weren't my friend. But people started following me on Facebook because of funny things that I would comment or post. And Facebook said, hey, would you like to turn professional? And I was like, sure.

34:27
You know, I made the joke. I'm a professional Facebooker now. And just at around that same time, I had a couple of video projects come up, a couple of private gigs that came up. And it had been a while since I had put together any type of videos. I had done YouTube for years. I tried to do a vlog and then I tried to do reaction videos. And YouTube just never took off for me. My number one comment on YouTube was, dude, why don't you have more subs? And it just never took off. Right. I also, I didn't chase the algorithms that work on YouTube.

34:56
13 year old kids showing boobs, you know, click bait titles. Yeah, that's where she's going. I just never was going to do that. I was just going to put out good videos for me basically. And so in order to get my editing chops back together, Facebook had been doing reels. Facebook was trying to kill TikTok. TikTok was kind of taken over and Facebook said, well, we're going to do reels and YouTube did shorts and there are reels on Instagram.

35:26
talking to me. That's fine. And so I said, well, a reel is simple, one minute. I can put together a quick reel of something and because editing is not like riding a bike. You really have to get back into it. It's more like juggling. Yeah. Yeah, you can still juggle, but you're going to drop the ball every now and then. So in order to get perfect at it, you have to practice. Yeah. And I thought reels were a perfect way to practice. So I decided to make a few reels about.

35:51
an old guy giving like dating advice or relationship advice. I'm married 23 years, first and only wife. I've had tons of relationships prior to her with all the failures so I can give the old guy advice but do it in a humorous fashion. And that's how I kind of started out. And those did okay. And then I started noticing the Gen X reels and I was like, okay, I can do that. Because once it goes in this bean of mine, it don't come out. And instead of...

36:20
Instead of doing the top 40 list, I was going to do the deep dives. I was going to tap into those memories that you long forgot about. Not necessarily the bionic woman, but how about almighty Isis? Tapping into those shows that you remember watching, but you forgot you remembered watching. Tapping into those memories that we had about music, events, life events. And the first video I think I did, it was kind of the...

36:50
we didn't start to fire Billy Joel style video. Where I started listing off all the things that we went through and survived and witnessed on television and entertainment and all this stuff. And the resultant of all that was, if you had told me I would care this much about my bird feeder and how much I care about the birds that visit my bird feeder, I would have told you we're crazy. And that was the first reel that I had that went over a million views. And it skyrocketed from there. That's awesome.

37:20
That's awesome. You, you, and I mean, it's a, it's almost a never ending well to draw from, especially for you and your, and your, I have this never ending memory and you know, every now and then you can get a little bit of writer's block, but you have modern day things that we can tap into. So right now we're in the holidays. So I'm tapping into Christmas movies, Christmas music, the Christmas shows, the rank and bass shows that we grew up with Halloween. Let's talk about the horror movies that we grew up with and how there were so much.

37:50
equally as awful and wonderful at the same time, more so than the movies that come out today. They have all this technology, and yet those movies were so awful, and we know the scares are coming, and we know the blood is coming, and we know the gore is coming, and we cheer at it and make fun of it and yell at it and love those movies and have that nostalgia for those movies. There's always a season to roll over. There's always something to talk about without getting into the mire of the argumentative state.

38:20
Just stating facts. This is plain fact. It's kind of like the post where people post a picture of a rotary phone. If you know what this is and how to use it, it's time to schedule your colonoscopy. You know, that kind of stuff. I did an entire reel about how I miss slamming a phone down. Yeah. And people tapped into that. They were like, yes. Yes, you can't do that with cell phones. And nobody has a home phone anymore. And there's no satisfaction of slamming the phone down anymore. A button just doesn't do it. Touchscreen just doesn't do it. Yeah.

38:49
Yeah, even though the person on the other end never heard the slam, they never experienced that. It was you. It was that visceral like... It was that release. All that anger came through the hand down into the cradle and it made that great ring when it hit the phone. I did an entire reel about that and everybody really identified with that. And that's one of those memories that you forgot you remembered. And every now and then, and most of my ideas, I got to tell you, they come at 3 AM.

39:19
I'll wake up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden here comes an idea. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I got to get up and go to my phone and go to notes and write it down. Cause you know how you have those dreams and you say, I'm going to remember that. And you do not think of a funny joke and I'm going to remember that. Now you wake up the next morning, it's gone. Yeah. So you got to write it down. And then the next morning you go back and you're like, yes, yes, I can expand on that and I can make, I can make 60 seconds out of that and make it funny. That's awesome.

39:43
That's all. Yeah, they say, what is it? The three B's are where the best ideas come from, bedrooms, bathrooms and bar rooms. Yep. You know, so that's awesome. So what's a, what is it? So you hit, you start, you get over a million, you start doing this more consistently. You started like making it more of like part of, there was a lot of positive reinforcement at first and

40:11
I really expected a lot more negativity to come in based on my experience in the YouTube comment section. I really expected a lot more trolls to show up. But the trolls are in the late millennial to Gen Z era. They're not on Facebook. They're not watching my videos. And if I ever want to increase my viewership, and I found this, just make fun of millennials.

40:37
They come from just to say how old you are and how wrong you are. And how, yeah. They want to call you a boomer and they want to tell you how wrong you are. What was a good quote that I had? A millennial will answer a question that you never asked. And they do it often. All you got to do is mention their name and they show up. They're going to find out you could tag millennial in this podcast and they're going to show up in your comment section to tell you how wrong your podcast is. Yeah. And it's nothing but engagement.

41:04
It does nothing but imprint my video into other people's feeds. Cause then more people see it. More people see it just to say, just to call me a boomer. Yeah. Which I'm not. No, no. Just to do it. Cause they think it kills us. But as a GenXer, I mean, we've heard it all. Yeah. We grew up with Hicks and Leary and Kennison and Dice. There are no insults that we haven't told to one another, siblings, cousins, friends. I mean, we went down to the core.

41:32
of the human soul with our insults. Oh yeah. And you laughed at them. There's nothing you can say to me that I haven't said to myself in the mirror six inches away. You can't bring me down. Yeah. Go ahead and try. That's right. So it does nothing but positive engagement. And once you hit that million mark, you start getting the follower count. And I was seeing Instagram took off first, and then Instagram just kind of stalled. I was really surprised because I was getting video views in the tens of thousands. I was like, wow, this is incredible.

42:02
And then Facebook, I had a video go over a million, and then I had another one go over a million, and I had another one go to almost 10 million. And the follower count came in, and then Facebook says, hey, would you like to monetize this stuff? And so not only did they have the positive reinforcement from the comments section of GenXers saying, thankfully, finally somebody's speaking for us. Finally somebody's saying the things that we want to hear, but also...

42:28
there's a little tiny little box and as long as they watch six seconds of my video, I get ad revenue from that. I'm getting percentages of pennies on the dollar compared to what the parent program is getting. And it's still a decent income coming in from this. That's great. And people have always said, you know, you should go to Patreon, you should go to TikTok. And I mean, we live in a military town and we have cyber command on site and we have the cyber center.

42:57
So we both know a lot of people who are either military or ex-military that have pretty high level clearance. Yeah Every last one of them is set. I wouldn't have tick tock on my phone if you paid me to have tick tock on my phone So I could go to tick tock and my videos are actually on tick tock But I'm not on tick tock people have ripped my videos and put them up and they're getting Thousands and thousands and thousands of views on tick tock somebody's getting paid for my videos over there And I have no way to bring those down. I have no way to say hey, this is copyright infringement Because I'm not on that platform

43:27
But I could be and get even more revenue, but just something tells me I'm too old to talk. So what's the, so what is the next phase then? What are you, what's, what's down the road for Jeffrey R. Thomas? The eventuality of any type of internet fame is the next step is branded content. Maybe being a brand spokesperson of some sort, and then maybe having it launch into.

43:56
some form of entertainment. Okay. Whether it be radio, television or film. Probably not radio, not a whole lot of money in that anymore. Yeah, no good. Television or film, if somebody wants to come and do a show Yeah. with Gen Xers or Gen Xers perspective on things, kind of an Anthony Bourdain travel the country and do things and I would be down for it. That would be awesome. Because I mean, there is a finality, not a finality, but there, I think...

44:26
that the Gen X.

44:29
phenomenon is finite. Yes. Sooner or later, we're all going to run out of ideas, or people will just get bored with it. Yeah. And so we'll have to move on. But that's the good thing about the way that I make the videos, is that I'm not stuck in one platform. There are several out there that have kind of pigeonholed themselves into, this is what I'm famous for, so this is all I can do now. Because any time they try and stray,

44:52
their view numbers go way down. Right, because people are like, what is that? What are you doing? Get back to the thing that I like until I'm bored with it, and then I don't like you anymore. Right, stay in your lane. Yeah. But when I do things like that, and I go outside of the box, I get equal number of view numbers. So you continue to grow with that. As long as it keeps making money, it's not a huge portion of my day. It really isn't. I've got a lot of free time. It's some really good income right now. It's paying the bills. There you go. And if something comes along,

45:22
that also pays the bill but doesn't suck away from my life. Because I know a lot of friends that I know that went on television, it's grueling now the way they shoot television. It's not the old days. The reality format that they try to do, or the competition format that they try to do, you are 24-hour, seven-day a week until they're done shooting, and then you get a couple of months off and you go right back. And it's really exhausting and hard to stay on all the time. It's hard to be funny.

45:51
All that time is hard to keep it going. And most of the folks that I know that even if they were on television for Bigfooting, they're not going to do it again because they got so exhausted from it. And they don't want to do it again. But if I found a format where it could be something that I found fun to do, that's lucrative enough to take me away from my home base, because I like my home base, then I would do it as long as it's not something that's so time consuming.

46:21
Yeah. Well, Jeff, what's bringing you joy now? Not having a job. Wow. Yeah, that's that's an amazing thing. It's really a dangerous thing to say, because not everyone can do it. Yeah. But luckily, my wife, we've always been kind of equal pay in the household. So we've always been very balanced. She would always make about the same amount that I did.

46:50
And the work that I had, it was a public utility. And for years and years and years, it crept up in the work-life balance portion to lots of work. And then they came in one day and said, we've got about 85% of your life right now with work. We're gonna go and take another 15%. And we're gonna change your schedule. And from now on, you'll get to see your wife maybe one day a week, if we don't schedule you for overtime. And...

47:19
everything else that you need to get accomplished in your life, you've got to do on this other day where your wife's at work and you're going to be working till eight o'clock in the evening every day. So in the winter time I'll be working more than half my shift in the dark. And the, the, the, the whole idea of coming home from work exhausted, because it was physical work sometimes sitting down. And of course, then I'm going to eat at nine o'clock at night, go to bed, rinse and repeat. It was unhealthy. And it was going to.

47:47
We could sit there and look at it. The first time I told my wife, I said, here's what they want, and it's going to happen in about three weeks time. She said, no, you're not working that schedule. And so we sat down and did the math and said, well, can we afford for me to not work for a while? And we looked at it and was like, well, it's going to be tight, but we can afford it. Because luckily, I had gotten myself into a zero debt position, which I highly recommend. Don't spend more money than you have. And if you have any debts, get them paid off and just

48:16
Oh, what is owed, what you make, set a little money aside. And that's what we did. And so far we've been floating. And then suddenly this internet fame came and it's income coming in. And that's what's bringing me joy is I'm able to make my wife happy. I get to help take care of the home. I get to clean up and do all the, what my wife calls house spouse duties. And I actually enjoy them because I've been doing them the whole life anyway.

48:46
We've all been doing them our whole lives anyway, but now it's for me. And I don't have the stress of, I don't have time to do that. I have a schedule every day of what I'm going to do, where I'm going to go, what I'm going to get done. And then gigs come in. I'll either get a concert gig or just the past weekend, I did a security gig for a comedian in town. And these things just keep coming in. And then every day, I make a video, which takes about an hour, hour and a half out of my day.

49:15
I have the rest of that time to myself. I don't sleep in all day, which if I was 18, I would sleep till noon. But no, I'm still awake at the crack of dawn because I'm an old man. At 9 o'clock, I'm tired as hell. I don't want to go to bed like an old man. And it's just like I had a job. But I'm not producing something that is not coming back towards me. And when I sit back and look at that, it brings me complete and utter happiness, making my wife happy.

49:44
spending all day with my dogs, having my cup of coffee out, especially this time of year, out by my fish pond with the cool air hitting my face but the warm sun also warming my chest is an incredible feeling to have. I can have that whenever I want. And just having that freedom, the freedom of myself is what brings me joy because I turned 50, well, last year, I'm 51 now.

50:14
That's the point in your life where you really sit down and say, there are way fewer years ahead of me than are behind me. And do I want to die on the job? Yeah. Was that report that important? Was that matrix they had set up for me, the what I want written on my headstone? No. I want to have an impact on people and on myself and on my family.

50:44
And I'm finally doing that. Now, if a job comes up, offers me a lot of money, says, here, we got a job for you. And it's not going to take away from the freedom that I have found, then I'll gladly jump on board with it. But the giving of 110% was a great quote from a guy who was fired from the last job that I was at for not meeting the minimums. He said, today's maximum is tomorrow's minimum.

51:14
So when they say, we're short staffed, you're just going to have to make it work. Next week, they say, well, you made it work last week, so you don't need that extra staff. You don't need that extra person, because you already did it once. You showed you can do it. And it's a cancer that keeps building on itself until you go to the dollar general one day, and there's a sign on the door that says, no one showed up to work today. Sorry, we're closed. Because you've so minimalized.

51:43
the staffing and the people that do show up are so exhausted from doing it. And it's every job. It's not just any job. It's just about every job, except of course for yours. You work for a company that still tries to take care of its employees, but there are still those things at your job that I'm sure you sit there and say, yeah, this is unnecessary stress on my life that could be eliminated if we just didn't worry about this thing. That's really not that important. What's really important is, is

52:11
getting off work and going home and being with your kids and your dog and your neighbors and being able to watch the sunset. That's what's important.

52:24
All right, Jeff, this is the second segment of the show. We're going to talk more about mental health. Something I believe in as someone who's suffered with depression and anxiety, down days, those days you just want to get in the shower and let the water hit you and hit you and hit you because you just don't want to do anything else. I think everybody goes through those things. And the more we talk about it, the

52:48
more we take the power away from it because, you know, depression wants to tell you that you're alone. You're the only one that feels this way. Something's wrong with you because you feel that way. So for you, how do you keep the darkness at bay? It's, a lot of people see my videos or see my posts or see my life and think, oh, this guy's never had a dark day in his life, but trust me, they're there. The one thing that I find the most encouraging

53:18
is hearing a depressing song, watching a depressing movie, seeing a show that's sad, hearing the blues, and knowing that I'm not alone. It's not just me.

53:32
So when I get low and it happens, I know, okay, I'm not alone. There are people that I can reach out to just to take my mind off of that depression. One of the hardest parts is being at home, being alone and feeling this oppressive weight on you. Just physically getting up and going out of the house and talking to a random stranger.

54:00
or having a difficult time in traffic. Suddenly that thing that I was worried about is gone. I have a new focus. I have a new anger. That's fine, it's traffic. But it's gone. And come into the self-realization that, no matter how low I've gotten, no matter how bad things have gotten, they always got better in the past. Having that rear view mirror behind me is amazing.

54:29
because things go in my head and they never come out, I can remember bad times. I choose not to dwell on them. If I want to recall those bad times, I can literally sit there and say, but it got better. Yeah. I have a neighbor who's going through a rough time right now. And he looked at me and he said, this is probably as low as I'm ever going to get. And it struck me. And I told him this. And it hasn't struck with him yet.

54:58
But I said, there's only one way to go from there, up. You can only get, things can only get better. If you're at rock bottom, you can only go up. And I try and keep that mantra with myself every day, is that even when things look bad, even when things look grim, they're always gonna get better. You just have to ride through it. It can't rain all the time, Eric Draven. Yeah. Sooner or later, the sun's gonna come out. You just have to be patient and have to wait for it.

55:26
It's helped me in my life. It's helped me sometimes at work when I would be going through these days. We've all had those days where you drive to work, you sit in your car, in your parking space, and you look at your place of work and decide you're literally debating with yourself whether or not it's worth it to walk in. We've all had those times and I walked in and I got off and now I'm here. And now I'm here where I'm at. I have to realize that.

55:55
that each and every day is only in the, you're only in the present, but there is a future that is better and potentially better. And then I also, eating well, I try to make sure I eat well. This is a horrible time of year to eat well because the availability of garbage food is so, it's just there and I want it all. But this is what we play for kids.

56:23
You know, this is what we play for, for the holidays. So enjoy it. Enjoy those cheats, enjoy that candy. Have the Christmas-themed M&Ms in a jar in the kitchen and grab you a couple when you go walking by. Because even if you put on a little weight from it, it's gonna get better. So I maintain health, I maintain good food. I'm amazed at how much eating well has a positive aspect to your personality, to your wellbeing. Yeah.

56:52
Because garbage in is garbage out. And once you start eating well, and I'm not talking about, oh, you just needed a cow salad. You just need a cow and a cow's flaw. I need a tofu, consomme. No. Once you just start eating clean food, nothing processed. Cook your own. Grow your own. When you do your cheats, you grab that bag of chips. Chili cheese fritos.

57:21
delicious. I might even get a cheese dip to dip them in. I feel like crap afterwards when I'm done eating. I mean, it's gratifying while you're eating. Very good. But once you've cleaned yourself out and you started eating good food, when you eat garbage, you can actually feel how it has a physical effect on your mentality. And that reminds me to not do that as often. Yeah.

57:51
exercising and being a healthy person, like I constantly strive to be, was as addictive as depression is. Because depression is overwhelmingly addictive. Once that blanket covers you up, you're not getting out of bed. But once you actually, you know, because here we are coming up on the new year and everybody makes the New Year's resolution to get healthy and go to the gym. And I've been a gym rat since I'm 17 years old.

58:21
And I've seen it every January and by March, those same people who paid for a year are not in the gym anymore. They've given up. They're not seeing the results or they're not feeling it because they didn't break through that wall. There is a wall that you hit and it's depression. It's telling you to go sit down. We don't like this because if you continue, then I can't control you. Those depressive voices, those depressive feelings, they put a wall in front of you.

58:51
Once you break through it, and you can, you realize, but you have to have a good memory for it because it's not a feeling that is addictive. It really isn't. But you will notice one day that you wake up and you just feel well. You just feel good. I've told people that because I fast every Friday. I do a 24-hour fast. I have dinner on Thursday, and then sometimes I'll have dinner on Friday, 24 hours.

59:19
If I'm not that hungry, I'll go till Saturday morning and have breakfast. But I've done extended fasts and the longest I've done is three day water only fast. Just have a regular meal one night and then for three days don't eat anything. The first one awful, terrible, overwhelmingly awful. It's the longest three day. You want to slow down time. They should call it a fast. It should definitely call it slow because time crawls when you're not eating. You're just waiting for it to finally be over.

59:49
Once you get through a few, and you can, believe it or not, a lot of people think, oh no, I'll never be able to go all day without eating food. Yeah, you can. You can go 11 days without eating food. As long as you're drinking water, you're fine, trust me. There's something that happens, your body reawakens. Of course, there's a physical aspect to it that a lot of people aren't prepared for, but it's one and done. You're in the bathroom. Once you eat, you're in the bathroom pretty quickly. Because everything's waking back up. The very next day, when you wake up in the...

01:00:19
morning, you feel great. You have a positive outlook on life. And that is something that I continually strive for. That's a feeling that I remembered. Because I literally, I was at work one day and I had done a weekend fast. I think it was Martin Luther King weekend. I usually do it because it's an easy weekend to do it. Not much going on. Nobody's doing barbecues. Nobody's having parades. It's a really easy three-day weekend.

01:00:48
to do a three day fast. I remember it was like Wednesday morning, it was the day after I had broke the fast. I'm looking at a coworker saying, I feel amazing, but I could feel it. And I said, that's something that I want to chase. Wow. Because I know it's out there. Yeah. So when I get back down, when I get back into those low states, I have that memory that that feeling is out there. You just have to achieve it. You have to work harder for it. Depression's easy.

01:01:17
It's really easy. All you gotta do is just sit there and it'll take over. Because it wants to beat you down. It wants to keep you down. But if you apply yourself, everybody talks about, oh, if you want to be a success, you've got to work hard and apply yourself. No, if you want to be happy, you have to work hard at it and apply yourself. Because it's out there.

01:01:41
All right, Jeff, this is the third segment of the show. It's time now for the Fast Five. The Fast Five. It's time now for the Fast Five. Fast Five. Fast Five is powered by Pod. Don't laugh so hard at me, man. I'm still working on a theme song. I'm gonna get somebody to help me out with that one day. Fast Five is powered by Poddex. It's an app created by my friend Travis Brown. You can find it in your app store, Google Play.

01:02:05
or if you go to chewingfatbr.com slash pod decks, there'll be a link to take you directly to there. This is created for podcasters, lots of different categories in there, but it's also great for like icebreakers and stuff like that. If you ever, you know, maybe you need something to ask your next, you know, CryptoCon group and you get on stage, you can ask them a question from pod decks, but just check it out. But this is just gonna be five questions.

01:02:33
rapid fire, first thing comes off top of your head, no wrong answers, okay, you ready? Great, because I'm horrible at these types of questions. Awesome, well this will be fun then. Question number one.

01:02:48
What do you love to do for others? Make them videos for free. Really? Yeah. Yeah? I get paid less than I do get paid for making videos for people. Because the expression on their face, when I put something together for them, whether it's a music video or a small project that they were wanting to do, knowing myself, they could probably do it themselves or they just applied themselves, but the expression on their face when they see it is...

01:03:17
It feeds my own energy. That's awesome. I love that. Question number two.

01:03:26
It's a classic toilet paper over or under. Over. Look at the patent. It's there in black and white. Wow. Over. Wow. You are the first person to bring up the toilet paper patent argument. It has pictures. It has figures. And it rolls over. How else are you supposed to tear it under? No, you go to tear it under and then three more yards come rolling out. It's a cat's favorite way for the toilet paper roll to be put on the roll. Hello.

01:03:55
Question number three.

01:04:00
Do you like to plan things out in detail or be spontaneous? I love spontaneity when I've planned it out in advance. It's planned spontaneity. Yes. It may seem like I'm being spontaneous. No, I've done it 100 times in my head. Planned spontaneity. I like that. Question number four.

01:04:24
Who was your biggest mentor or teacher this year? This year? Not in your life, but somebody you learned something from this year. Because I can't think of anybody. No one that's given you a nugget of wisdom or that's taught you a new way to do math in your checkbook or anything like that? No, because I really don't have those associations anymore.

01:04:50
without a job or without a huge social life and with the pandemic being the way it was, everybody just kind of learned to stay at home a lot. So all of my influences would be through social media or television. There is one creator named Benjamin Brown. He goes by Benjam on Instagram and he was a successful daily vlogger. And he finally hit the burnout stage like a lot of YouTubers did and just grabbed his life and took control over it. And so within the past year,

01:05:19
He's gotten into a lot of transcendental things, a lot of self-healing, a lot of self-reflection. And he's much younger than me. And yet, so far, a huge inspiration on me. Because not only was he an incredible videographer originally, he's made some incredible pieces. He would do it every day sometimes and still come up with these beautiful things. And he's got this great personality. But then suddenly...

01:05:45
He just changed his life completely around and took control of it and is looking for his inner happiness. And he's kind of the one that I've modeled myself after the most this past year to try and chase that inner peace. Oh, that's awesome. So I mean, yeah, so you don't have to, it doesn't have to be someone you have a direct relationship with or anything like that. I mean, we can all, if you're not learning a little something every day, I think you're doing your day wrong. You know what I mean? So that's great. And his name is...

01:06:13
Benjamin Brown. Benjam. Benjam on Instagram. Sounds like an old radio DJ or something. It's awesome. I love it. All right, and question number five.

01:06:28
What did your 15 year old self imagine you'd be doing right now? Oh, wow.

01:06:36
15, what an awkward age that was. Because it was split in between, we had moved from Atlanta to Florida. So I don't know if I had any future expectations because my life was getting upheaved again from a friend base that I already had in Atlanta, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta and Gwinnett County. And then moving to the odd planet that is the state of Florida in the 80s.

01:07:08
and then having to reestablish myself into a friend group back then.

01:07:15
I had no recollection of what I wanted to do when I grew up because literally I had no clue what I wanted to do until I held that book at Augusta College and popped it open to radio broadcasting and film as the major. Wow. I went through a good year and a half of college getting my core out of the way, having no clue what I wanted to finish up at. Wow. And I imagine with you talking about all the moving that you did, that it was hard to kind of...

01:07:44
cast future visions on yourself as to what do I want to be? What do I want to do? Future was never stable in my life. It was always, I'm just going to end up having to move again. Right. That was what- Potentially. So I couldn't look forward past three to four years. 15 year old you was like, I guess I'm moving. I'll be moving again. Who knows what town I'll be in then. Because it was literally a choice at that time between Tampa, Florida or San Antonio, Texas.

01:08:12
And if my dad chose San Antonio, Texas, which I was kind of excited about because the movie Cloak and Dagger was shot there, with Anthony Coleman, Henry Thomas. Wonderful film, which there's a fan theory that that's actually the prequel to Fight Club. Look it up, it's wonderful. Because he has the imagination, Jack Flack's an imaginary friend, and then he goes on and creates this imaginary friend. Later in life, he ends up being himself. I like it. Yeah. I was really excited about moving to San Antonio, but we would not be sitting here right now

01:08:41
had we had moved to San Antonio, Texas, Lord knows where I would be at that point. We moved to Tampa, Florida, which led me back here of all places. Well, I'm glad you're here. I am so glad you're here, Jeff. I'm so glad we met. That's our Fast Five and that is the show. Thank you so much for being here, man. You are certainly welcome. Anytime. Man, I appreciate you and your friendship and everything that you're doing is just such a positive force in this world. So thank you so much for what you're doing.

01:09:11
unintentionally having the things that you have. Oh no, it's specifically intentional. No, no, no, I'm saying, but you didn't ask for these. I didn't ask for any of them. You didn't ask for your superpowers, but I appreciate you choosing them for good. No, my superpowers. I think we have made the quote, there is but one gen X in Jeffery is his prophet. Exactly, exactly. If folks want to keep up with you, Jeff, what's the best way for them to do that? Literally, you can look up Jeffery R. Thomas on Facebook, on social media. I don't have a webpage of my own. I just never.

01:09:41
build anything like that. I don't have a link tree or anything like that. The place where I am most famous right now.

01:09:47
If you just Google Jeffery R. Thomas and this J-E-F-F-E-R-Y, my mother had to be different because no one spells my name right. Yeah. If you just Google Jeffery R. Thomas Reels, Jeffery R. Thomas videos, you're going to see my face pop up. Well, I've become that famous where Google knows who I am. That's odd and disturbing a little bit, but... Do you have a Wikipedia page? Not yet. You know, anybody can write those. You could just write your own. I'm thinking about writing my own, and it's going to be glorious.

01:10:17
It'll be absolutely amazing. I do have an IMDB page because Duane Brown and I have done and I've done some work in the past That is now worthy of being on IMDB But just don't if you see it pick and it takes you to tick-tock that ain't me that ain't you well I will make sure they put up the official links in the show notes for the podcast Again, thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate you. I love you and Again, keep doing what you are doing. I feed off of people's reactions

01:10:46
I give out positive and they laugh, smile, whatever it is, it actually feeds me. So it's a continuing cycle of positivity that I hope to continue. Well, I appreciate it. I hope that you continue to be fed. Thank you sir.

01:11:04
And if you would like to feed me, well, you could feed me a coffee and buy me a coffee at chewingthefatbr.com. I sure you would appreciate it if you want to support this podcast. But until next time, I look forward to the chance we have to sit a spell and chew the fat.