Happy Hour #2 - What a Week! (Patreon)

Happy Friday, Nation! Last night was Valentine's Day and while I wish I could choo-choo choose you all as my valentine, I instead had a quiet night at home with my wonderful wife. We shamelessly put the kids to bed at 6pm, ignoring their cries and pleas for mercy, made margaritas by 6:45pm, Cuban takout by 7:15pm and in bed by 9pm. It was amazing. Not because I was in bed at 9pm (I hate that I want to go to bed that early), it was amazing because if I was still at my old job none of it would be possible. I would have arrived home at around 8pm after a 1.5 hour commute from lower Manhattan. Erin would be totally strung out from dealing with kids by herself all day and by the time I made margaritas and got the Cuban food we'd be sitting down, both of us burnt and irritated, and we would have enjoyed maybe a half hour together before we were falling asleep into our margarita salt dishes. So, we have you guys to thank for our awesome Valentine's Day.

In fact - and I promise this will be the last manipulative, heart-tugging thing I mention in this post before getting to business - we've already noticed, in just 3 weeks, a change in the attitude of the kids towards me. Since I'm able to be home more, and almost always home at dinner time (which I never used to be), there is less, "I want Mommy, I want Mommy!" Instead, when Gwen got home from pre-school yesterday she walked around our apartment looking for me. "Daddy, where are you? Daddy!" I happened to be out briefly, but according to my wife, that was the first time she'd ever come home and expected me to be there. It made me feel like I'd made a good decision. So thank you again.

Onto business! It's a strange thing we do here, I'm realizing. Since this is the entertainment business, the biggest and most absorbing news to us on a week to week basis also happens to be the news that we couldn't - legally in most cases - talk about with you guys. Any big ideas in this business have a long road ahead of them in development. Work-shopping, partnering with the right people, and the financial-backing are three examples of the many stages of development that need to happen flawlessly in order for an ambitious project to see the light of day. Many of you are familiar with or at least have heard of Hamilton, the huge hit that took Broadway by storm a few years ago. The start of work on Hamilton began more than seven years before it opened on Broadway. The opening song was mostly finished in 2009 and was performed at a live concert at the White House six years before an evolved version of the number would be seen Off-Broadway. And then, it still needed to get to Broadway. So, when we are quiet about projects we are working on it's just because it is a long and treacherous journey between an idea and a published product, and sometimes keeping it secret is the best way to keep it safe. And we're not just working on one project. Already, in three weeks of Troy and I being full time, we are developing ideas for years down the line. What happens after Giantslayer ends? When and how can we bring back Cannon Fodder? These are questions that we are already diving into, but forgive me if I don't give you specifics. We've got to play these hands close to our vest.

So what else have we been doing that we CAN talk about? Since my last post you have all seen an expansion to the merch store and it has been a huge success. Troy and I processed, packaged and shipped out over a hundred orders this week alone! I'm sure nearly all of those orders come from our subscribers, so thank you all. I hope those of you that purchased something and got it in the mail a week later can already see the difference that having us here full time provides. We are selling out of things left and right! In just a week, we are already talking about what we can re-order and when.

We've had several meetings this week, including a lunch today in NYC with our good friend and member of the Nation ERIC MONA! The meetings varied widely and, as mentioned before, are pretty much all subject to NDAs, but they are all things we are excited about and hopefully can talk about one day soon.

Troy is working furiously on the Chicago live show video. We added another camera to the shoot this time, so the editing just becomes supremely detailed work that takes a mind-boggling amount of time to do right. While audio editing is something I sort of backed into and can handle at a amateur level, video editing is beyond me. It's like going from the minors to the majors and the difference in skill and experience needed is very intimidating. I wonder if I'll learn to do it one of these days, but who can find the time?

Especially when you are hand-packing hundreds and hundreds and (not exaggerating) hundreds of Bottlecap Boosters. This work all used to take place at night while my wife and I watched Mrs. Maisel or The Americans or whatever else in closed captioning because of the cacophony of thousands of bottlecaps being dumped onto the table and shucked off into little piles of five. Now, though, I can do it during the work day! And in the evening, I can watch Season 2 of Maisel in peace and quiet, with a glass of white wine, like a man is supposed to do. 

Another bit of news from this week: we are working with a new artist! That's right. A member of the Nation and subscriber to this Patreon illustrated something for us as a gift and we were so blown away by it that we've commissioned several pieces. You're all about to start seeing them soon, so get excited! I just sent the first design off to the printer yesterday afternoon. It's so bad ass I can't even do it justice with the written word. I'm not 100% sure when the first of these will be seen, but I think it will be next Saturday in Dallas, so if you were holding out for some bizarre reason, get your tickets now!

That's it for this update, guys! I've actually got two or three more things that I wanted to discuss, but I've run out of time and they'll need to wait for a later post. I hope you got some good insights here into the inner workings of the business and I hope you enjoy your weekend! Now if you will excuse me...I've got to go prep Emerald Spire, you lunatics!

Joe