I never figured out What’s Eating Gilbert Grape but I think I have an idea what is bothering this dude. Those who watch the internet phenomenon known as Night Attack have witnessed a week by week metamorphosis of Brian Brushwood and watched this tortured soul run the gamut of human emotions in recent weeks.
Brian lives on the other side of the computer monitor from us. He, and many of the other people we watch on our screens, have seen the clown without the makeup and looked behind the magic curtain. At TWiT that meant they all saw the real Laporte.
At times we all saw the real man too. Who can forget the blow up at Mike Arrington or the inhumane treatment of RichardYea. Now, it must be said that Laporte is just a man and subject to emotion and making mistakes. For that reason many of us liked him more when we saw him lose his shit on Arrington, who by all accounts is a grade-A prick anyway. But the people who worked with and around Laporte saw him up close. They knew more of his imperfections and saw more of his blemishes and there were many. In the end, their jury found him worthy and accepted his shortcomings. It is that simple of a scale, they judged him favorably. In their opinion, he cut the mustard and so allowances were made.
So when Leo poached Chad from Brian, Brian accepted it. “It’s business” his idol and mentor could have said. Many other unsaid happenings like the poaching occurred, but he remained a good guy in their collective opinion. But now the scale has tipped the other way, now he is an asshole to them. All the sins of the many years which were brushed under the rug have piled high.
Brian sees Laporte with new eyes and he wants everyone else to see him that way too. His friend was fired for no reason other than pettiness. (Leo gives Jason howell a promotion to Chads job, huh?) Now Brian wants to tear down the curtain and show you the pile of sins. It is odd, because out of everyone in the podcasting community, it is Brian who is most like Leo, and in his future he will be susceptible to many of the same career temptations. Brian is a shrewd dude and with a shrewd mind comes a power he will need to keep a watchful eye on.
The principals Leo taught these young men and women, from Amber MacArthur in Canada to Patrick Beja in France and everywhere in between, were good and simply because the #soupguzzler didn’t live by them does not mean they were wrong. The philosophy Leo built was a foundation to many of these people and it is hard watching it crumble. Community, anti-establishment, respecting the audience doing it on your own, fish bowl lives, honesty….. was it all a lie? It was a philosophy he believed in, deeply. A religion Justin said, a father Brian said. These youngins will need a new leader now. At the dawn of the third day look to the East, look to Tom now, he is your new leader.
Marcus Aurelius made Commudus the protector of Rome precisely because he didn’t want the job.
God chose Moses because he was too humble to think himself a leader.
I totally get where Brian is coming from. I’m not saying that Brian treated Leo as an idol, but I definitely think he looked up to him. To see someone you respect and admire lose control and show his true colors when the cracks start to form, that has to be incredibly hard on Brian to watch.
Brian wanted to see good in Leo and always gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I think Chad was absolutely the straw that broke his back. Brian is now teetering on a fence and is about one step from saying “F this” and unleashing verbal hell at Leo and Lisa. Brian WANTS so hard to stay professional on this, but now it’s personal.
If you look at everyone who has been let go of TWIT in the last year or so, every single one of them have shown more dignity and handled themselves more professionally than anything Leo and Lisa have done. To me that is really telling of a persons character, and this is why I REALLY hope Jason and Sarah get the hell out of there. They fit that same mold as everyone else that has been let go.
Esch» Quote comment
Unfortunately Jason just bought a house.
Mark Harry» Quote comment
It is admirable that Brian held his cool when he was shat upon but when they shat on his friend Chad he lost control. Speaks well on his character.
Richard Yes» Quote comment
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
There is a point were calling people out on their BS outweighs the attempt of looking professional.
David» Quote comment
So, This was in Night Attack #35. The description of that episode’s youtube on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEihlWLDYSc says:
“What the fuck, dude… Jesus Christ. So… where do we start? Hey, Brian’s getting a vasectomy! Comedy gold! Anthony Carboni’s here! Hooray! Marvel unveiled their movie plans for the next 5 years! Awesome, I can’t wait to see those movies! Also OMG Chad got fired from TWiT, Brian really wants to talk shit about TWiT but doesn’t, then he drops a bomb in the aftershow and immediately cuts the stream.”
I doubt that aftershow will be released. Usually it gets released to their Patreons first, and then later in the week on youtube. Does anyone have a recording of this, or at least know what was said?
BoozeCruise» Quote comment
He said “They asked me to fire Tom Merritt” and immediately cut the stream.
Like they mentioned in this post https://totaldrama.net/2014/10/we-didnt-start-the-fire/
Rook» Quote comment
Apparently Brian said something like “They asked me to fire Tom!” then he killed the stream.
As for the recording, the show notes mention that the producer fucked up the recording and didn’t get that last part.
Meepmeep» Quote comment
I think the firing Tom reference is hopefully only TWIT wanting Brian to continue Framerate without Tom
Rook» Quote comment
Yeah, that is the only sense I can make of that quote, but Brian being offered to continue FrameRate when Tom left was already known, and Brian was constantly referring to wanting to tell the whole story / something they didn’t say yet.
But “They asked me to fire Tom Merritt” where they is Leo/Lisa and me is Shwood just doesn’t make sense. Tom had much more affiliation to TWiT at the time than Brian had. That would be like asking an intern to fire a fulltime staffer who also happens to be your internship coach or whatever.
Was kinda hoping the mysterious aftershow cleared things up, only more confused now.
BoozeCruise» Quote comment
It makes sense if you look at the people involved. It seems as though Chad was the only employee brought into an office and fired. Everyone else was scheduled out of existence. It was easy to fire Chad, he’s a young guy and wouldn’t put up a fight. Tom would and did. Soup and Slobber don’t like dealing with consequences so they tried to turn Brian into a hatchet man. When that didn’t work we saw how messy it got at TWiT when the news of Tom leaving was announced.
fudger» Quote comment
The NA after show makes no mention of firing Tom just something about being given “two hatchets” ostensibly a metaphor for “firing people”.
Also, “promoting Jason” to Chad’s position is an insult to Jason since Jason had way more TD experience than Chad.
Leoflubs» Quote comment
Here’s the NA after show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3AQ7pWbjc
Leoflub» Quote comment
Shit got real there. Guess it will come out some day. Chad still hosts GizWiz atm, people need income while they figure stuff out. http://www.patreon.com/OMGchad anyone? Hope people like Sarah and Jason abandon ship soon enough too.
Bluprpt» Quote comment
“Leo makes Jason howell, a man afflicted with human decency, say thankyou to the imaginary promotion to Chads job, huh?”
Leo made Jason thank him? Seriously?
NthMike» Quote comment
That didn’t actually happen. At least not in IRC chat.
Leoflub» Quote comment
I meant he congratulated Jason (twice) on his “promotion.” So Jason had to give a courteous ‘thank you.’ But, if you think about it, Jason who has been doing this stuff for years was promoted to Chad’s job makes no sense.
Ghostdog» Quote comment
Chad becoming the producer of MBW and other shows as well as hosting his own shows was the equivalent of an NBC intern being promoted to EP of the Nightly News and host of a NBC show.
Diego» Quote comment
“Promoted” to the intern’s job. Petty, demeaning and demoralizing.
Dickensian villains shouldn’t actually exist, but there they are. Leo and Lisa are likely incapable of remorse or empathy at all, so I hope their ridiculous ‘treehouse politics’ method of doing business is punished the only way they’ll ever care about: right in their assets and finances.
Gutted, poor, dirty… swallowing styrofoam to keep full and eating cockroaches for protein. That is the only way any of this gets balance.
lossypants» Quote comment
But that won’ t happen. You’re exactly right. If there truly was karma, Leo and Lisa would lose everything. Have to live in a Petaluma trailer park.
Diego» Quote comment
I bet all the equipment at Twit is collateralized against any loans pending, as for Leo’s home, we’ll that is also likely under a security agreement as his personal guarantee. He probably just has 30% equity their. This guy can loose it all very fast. Once the advertisers / sponsors pull out the demand note will come and it will be liquidation time. No one will buy twit.
Maybe Leo has life insurance on him and Kuntzsmells, if so he may knock her off during a holiday or she will do him I first
John Romanelli» Quote comment
I’m not sure I understand who Brian is mad at- Twit or Chad- who is he sick of protecting? Everyone is so overly concerned with making their posts witty and eloquent that they lose their meaning.
Jakeryan1974» Quote comment
He is mad at twit.
These boys always knew Leo was an asshole and that he was different from his public persona. But now that they were shitted upon it has become even clearer. They (podcasters) have the same code as in high school locker rooms and Hollywood and police precincts, you don’t air dirty laundry. But now that Leo has broken every code there is, Brian is sick of protecting him by not telling everything.
GhostDog» Quote comment
It’s very obvious to me that the TWIT Sunday show has run out of co-host’s that want ant part of it!
George» Quote comment
So what did Brian say? No one knows or no one wants to say? What was said? I know the “recording” stop before we could hear what Brian say, but not the live stream I mean someone heard it. Any ideas?
Robbie» Quote comment
The live stream was killed too. Only Anthony Carboni and Justin heard it.
David» Quote comment
too bad then, guess we will never know who the other person was.
still though, twit is a pos-led company, get rid of lisa or give her another company to run
Robbie» Quote comment