The Straight Edge Continent

**Vinny Caravella** (0:10)
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another Nextlander Podcast. I know you hear that, and you're like, ah, it's a stressful week of my day. But then you hear that the podcast is here, and like, it's just routine. You just crave routine.
Listen to my sound of my voice. Relax. We're here. Whatever you're doing is that much better. Because Alex Navarro, you are here to assist that person as well.

**Alex Navarro** (0:40)
Yes, I am, Vinny.

**Vinny Caravella** (0:41)
How you doing? Hey, how's it going? Fantastic. Always good to hear those lovely radio-friendly tones from you.
And Brad Shoemaker, you are here.

**Brad Shoemaker** (0:54)
Just welcome to the voice of cool video games.

**Vinny Caravella** (0:57)
That's right. I love cool video games.

**Alex Navarro** (1:00)
That's fantastic.

**Vinny Caravella** (1:02)
Folks, he loves cool video games. You could hear it just in the excited tongue.

**Alex Navarro** (1:06)
I can't do that voice anymore, so I'm good.

**Vinny Caravella** (1:08)
We are back. We are here.
We're going to jump right in because we got a lot to talk about. But before we get into, I'm going to start here and I'm going to segue brilliantly because that's what we always do here at The Nextlander Podcast. I made the unfortunate, deadly, deadly maybe a bit of an overstatement, unfortunate mistake of leaving the house yesterday.

**Brad Shoemaker** (1:29)
Oh, don't do that.

**Vinny Caravella** (1:29)
Yeah, yeah. And I believe now I'm paying the consequences with a head cold. Just don't interact with people.

**Brad Shoemaker** (1:38)
Man, that's a quick turnaround.

**Vinny Caravella** (1:39)
Yeah, maybe it's the only time I have left the house. Wow, that's not true. We had a lot of weekends where we left the house. During the week, since my kids are not in school now, I don't go outside much during the week because I don't have to walk to go with the kids and do all this stuff outside. And it's mostly just been weekend affairs. But I was inside a school.
That is the summer.

**Brad Shoemaker** (2:03)
That's your first mistake.

**Vinny Caravella** (2:04)
Yes. But I was inside a school. I can only imagine what petri dish of contagions are still floating around. You'll never get that out of a middle school.

**Brad Shoemaker** (2:14)
What age do children stop being adorable little disease vectors? Like, I know when they're young, it's just like non-stop, right? But even like middle school, high school age, like are they still bringing junk, gunk, junk, gunk, gunk?

**Vinny Caravella** (2:27)
I think the junk gunk sticks around. Look, an office is full of junk gunk. Yeah, fair. Any public place. That's fair. PACS, Junk Gunk Central. And those are damn grown adults.

**Brad Shoemaker** (2:39)
That's true.

**Vinny Caravella** (2:40)
So, I bring this up to say A, I'm a little fuzzy, but B, Brad, you are in, speaking of going out there and pressing the flesh.

**Brad Shoemaker** (2:50)
That's right.

**Vinny Caravella** (2:51)
Pressing the flesh and pressing buttons. Pressing a lot of buttons and joysticks. And those are not euphemisms. Fleshed joysticks. Very literal in this case.
You were at California Extreme. We talked a little bit about it on the Ramble cast, but we save the more video game laser focus centric stuff for here. So, tell us what you played.

**Brad Shoemaker** (3:12)
Old video games are still video games.

**Vinny Caravella** (3:14)
Yes, California Extreme.

**Brad Shoemaker** (3:16)
Some might say they're the most video games.

**Vinny Caravella** (3:18)
They will always be video games. So, California Extreme is the annual, correct me if I'm wrong?

**Brad Shoemaker** (3:24)
I think this was the 30th year, actually. Wow, wow. Which I did not know. And in fact, when you think about it, arcades were still going. So, California Extreme is the classic arcade expo of record.

**Vinny Caravella** (3:36)
Yes.

**Brad Shoemaker** (3:36)
I mean, there's a bunch. There's other stuff around the country now too, but I think that's probably still the biggest pure arcade and pinball show.

**Vinny Caravella** (3:42)
Weirdly enough though, that is not what the acronym stands for. The classic arcade expo.

**Brad Shoemaker** (3:47)
No, it is California Extreme for whatever reason. But yeah, like 96-ish or they took a year off for the pandemic. So, I don't know exactly what year they started, like arcades were still going strong into past 2000 really before they started to really taper off.

**Vinny Caravella** (4:00)
I mean, I'm sure they still had old arcade games, or people were calling them old arcade games, but they were 15 years old.

**Brad Shoemaker** (4:06)
So yes, the oldest arcade games and in fact, the games that are still the backbone of this show, it turns out, because this was my first time going and appraising the lineup and stuff. Those games were kind of old slash retro when this thing would have started.