Hello everyone, and uh we're mixing it up a little bit this week by doing an LP instead of the usual uh stuff you're expecting from this channel. If you're not into this, if you're not feeling it, that's totally fine. See ya next week, but um for now I was uh looking at what other Halloween-y type games I could get into on Tuesday as you could see if you watch Tuesday's video that was Adventures of Dr. Franken and a solidly mediocre game. Not something I wanted to recommend to anybody necessarily. But I figured, hey, you know what, rather than go through the depths and Super Nintendo stuff like, you know, I think last year I went through Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Those two are also not great games. There's not really any new rom hacks for Super Nintendo that are Halloween-y, so to speak. I've done that in the past, too, but I figured, hey, what the hey, let's do just a classic like Super Castlevania IV, it's one of my favorite games. I'm not necessarily good at this game.  You are not in luck, you're in bad luck, actually. That's not what this is for. This is just to hang out. I've got some 12-year Glenn LeVet over here. However, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but just to hang out, have a drink and play some Super Castlevania IV, I'm not that good at this game, but I figure it's a good time. And also, I want to mention that this is part of a collaboration with somebody that I met through our podcast, and yes, for those that do not know, I do have a podcast called Drunk Friend. It is the combination of SNES Drunk and Nes Friend, my friend, Trav, as part of the Polykill Network. And so we had on a guest who lives in New Zealand, actually. That was a bit tricky to schedule, and she's an artist. She's actually a teacher. Her name is Leila Ataya. I think I'm saying her last name right. I know her first name is Leila, but if you go to the description or if you go to the pinned comment, it will lead to a video where she is doing a giveaway for some artwork she made inspired by this game. It's really good. She's really a fantastic artist. You can go to LeilaAtayaArtist.com and see some of her work. She does a lot of surrealist stuff. It's all really trippy-looking, really insanely skilled. She's very, very talented. We had her on as a guest, and she asked about doing some sort of collaboration. And I said, sure. So this is part of that. So there's also a link to the artwork itself, if you want to check it out. It's very cool, definitely spooky, fits the time of year. And all you have to do to enter the giveaway is just leave a comment and just hashtag giveaway. That way it makes it easy for me to search in the comments and find everybody that has entered, everybody that's interested in entering. And then, I don't know, I'll give like a day or two for people to enter. And I will randomly pick a winner. I'll get in touch with you, I'll respond to the comment. We'll do some verification and that sort of thing. And I'll be able to send you the artwork for free. So that's, it's just all about collaboration and, you know, promoting the arts really. That's really all, what's important to me is promoting other artists and that sort of thing because my mom was an artist when I was growing up. Is there anything back here I never go this way, so I'm just going to keep going this way. Now my, I have a bunch of paintings that my mom made back in, you know, way before I was born in the 60s and 70s that she made back then. So that was, so anytime I have a chance to help another artist or promote another artist like Layla, I'm happy to do so because she's also, one thing I like about her channel is that she's a teacher. The best thing about this giveaway, I think, which is actually really cool is that if you don't win, she actually teaches you how to paint this anyway or how to draw this anyway.  So yeah, all the links are in the description. I also have a pinned comment if you're interested. It's very cool work and, oh, I actually forgot I was invincible there for a second. I should probably talk about the game here eventually. God, I've played this first level so many times I could get through like sleepwalking basically. But yeah, I'm excited to promote another artist. That's the whole point of this. Next month, November, there will be a lot more collaborations going on with some people you might recognize on the YouTube community. I don't want to give anything away yet, but yeah, that's something that I'm looking forward to doing. I try and do something quote-unquote special every Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving in the US, for those that don't know, is usually the last Thursday of November. So what I'm going to try and do is do some sort of collaboration with a couple other YouTube folk. In the past, I've done genre videos like I think I did the giant, here I don't want holy water. I used to think that was ink when I was growing up, like a little jar of ink. But yeah, in the past I've done genre videos on that Thursday and Friday. I've done, what else have I done? I did PS1 RPGs like Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy 7. I did, you know, way back in the day when I first started, I did Mario World and I think Link to the Past were the two that I did. So I try and bust out the good stuff, something different. So this year's theme is going to be collaborations. So stay tuned for that. Hopefully you folks will like it. Hey, I'm cruising along pretty well here. I should have kept the cross. That wasn't very smart. Cross is the best weapon in the game. When I was growing up I used to think it was the clock, which I somehow thought it was like a flower when I was a kid. I couldn't see the clock part of it so I thought it was like some sort of orchid plant thing. Now obviously it's a pocket watch. Not just any pocket watch. It's got to be a Castlevania-ish, ye old pocket watch. But yeah. Yeah, that's the plan though. We want to give away some artwork and we're going to be doing some other collaborations. It's going to be super fun and I hope you like it. What's odd about this timer power-up thing is that it does not work on bosses, which is pretty ridiculous. It reminds me of Lagoon where it's like, oh yeah, you can use magic but you can't on bosses. It's like, well, you're just making up the rules as you go. Oh, it was coming down just a little bit there. Everybody knows that when you play Castlevania, you're supposed to jump to grab the orb. It's just one of those things that goes without saying. It's like when you play an RPG, you know you're supposed to talk to everyone. You know you're supposed to do certain stuff. When you play Castlevania, you're supposed to jump into the orb. Or when you play Contra 3, you're supposed to do the pose with both guns on the top of that concrete tower towards the end of the level, the end of the first level. It just goes without saying. It's what you're supposed to do. Anyway, cruising right along up, somebody grabbed me. Could you let go, please, sir? Or ma'am? I always love the music in this level. That baseline is sick. Oh, we don't want that. Actually we do want that. Screw it. That's right. I forgot I had the timer for the clock. I'm sorry. The pocket watch. The pedantic types will come after me for not saying it, not saying what it actually is. Actually, it's a pocket watch. That's my nerd voice. Anyway, yeah, I still get comments from people saying, like, I didn't know you had a podcast. And it's like, yeah, that's probably because I didn't actually come out and make a video promoting it or anything like that. I've been using the channel comments section for the channel itself to kind of tell people about it.  One guy's comment was literally like, why am I even subscribed to this channel? It's like, I don't know. Why are you? If you're going to complain about something so easily ignored, but whatever.  That was terrible. I wasn't concentrating. That's my excuse. Jesus. That was bad. All right, let's get back on track here. But yeah, no, we've had on the podcast has been really fun so far. I joked about starting a podcast when this pandemic started and I knew I'd be working from home for a while. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I've got a lot of free time now. I think I might just start a freaking podcast. And Travis reached out to me on Twitter saying, like, are you serious? I was like, sure, I guess. And we started the drunk friend podcast back in March. Was it back in March? I don't even remember what time exactly it was, but yeah, it's been fun. We've had a lot of really, really good guests. We've had Dan from Console Wars on a couple of times and Dan's such a fun guy. I can't help it. It's pretty embarrassing. I always end up getting smashed when Dan's on just because he's such an easy hang and he's such an easy guest because, you know, he knows his stuff. He's a good guy. He's a knowledgeable guy. He's very well-spoken, obviously. He's a very creative guy, too. But yeah, when when he's on, I get drunk to like an embarrassing degree. And when I say drunk friend is the name of the podcast, I don't mean it to be like, yeah, we just get, you know, shit-faced and stuff.  There we go. You know, that's it's just it really is just a name. But we do enjoy an adult beverage here and there while recording. It's not a requirement to drink, though. We've had plenty of people on the podcast that do not drink. Is this is this a power up here? No, it's not. I know that you can get the cross somewhere here, right? I think. But yeah, our biggest guest so far was Summoning Salt, who is kind of a big deal, I guess, especially in the speedrun community. Dude is obviously really talented, a really good storyteller. His the videos he makes and the way he structures them is awesome. So it was really good to talk to him. And I guess the point of the podcast, I should talk a little bit about that. Is kind of to see people's creative side a little bit, just to see what their process is like, what from the YouTube side of things and from the creative side of things.  There we go. Don't go in there with that fellow. So yeah, when we have somebody, oh, there's the cross. When we have somebody on like a Summoning Salt type fellow, we want to ask them like, you know, what's this what's this experience been like for you? Did you set out to, you know, be the speedrun documenter? And yeah, it turns out this dude is a speedrunner himself. He actually has the fastest time to beat Tyson and the original punch out, which is pretty crazy. That is not easy. That is a tough accomplishment. I don't remember his time exactly. I don't even know if he got him in the first round, but he got him really, really quick. And yeah, the way he structures his videos in case you haven't seen his Summoning Salt stuff is he makes it kind of like a story of like the beginning and end of like the history of this particular, oops, this particular game's speedrun history. And he's got everything from everything from, you know, punch out, of course, to Mario, the original Mario. Shit, I didn't want that power up, but whatever, special weapon, secondary weapon, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, he's what other games he's even done like we golf or we sports golf rather. And yeah, what else has he done? He's done the history of like Mario 64 and every video gets better and better. His video on the Contra Speedruns is really cool and he's a good guy to talk to. Good thing is you can hit these projectiles. Really the first two levels, I got my guy back at least, my lost life that I recklessly threw away earlier. The first two levels in this game are pretty easy, I would say, despite my reckless death earlier. But after that, the game gets a bit tricky. You get those fish dudes that jump out of the water and squirt you and you take damage and you fly backwards, as is Castlevania tradition. You can't have a Castlevania game without that, without flying backwards when you get hit. And this is one of my favorite soundtracks. Maybe my favorite soundtrack period, it's like this in Secret of Mana. Even the little music pieces between stages are so, so good. That's why I do get people saying like, why don't you do LPs more? Why don't you do stream on Twitch? That sort of thing.  This is a fun thing to do by myself, it's not something, I'm not a natural entertainer when it comes to something like this. I see some people do their thing on Twitch that are really talented, that are able to talk and be interesting and play games at the same time. This is pretty easy for me so far, because I've played this game and I've played this part of the game so many times. But other folks, holy cow, like they, I don't know how they're able to do what they do, I think I'm just going to drop down here, hey, that's not fair, I like that sound. Not doing it justice, obviously. How does it go again? It goes wakko? See, I'm not that interesting, I'm not that entertaining, all I can do is promote other people. Well, yeah, who are the other guests we've had on the podcast so far? We've had Dan, obviously, from console wars, we've had, most recently, we're going to have Jenovi on, if those of you that know who he is, we've had Jason Heiney, we've had John Riggs on, he's a pretty popular dude, and it's easy to see why he's popular because he's such an easygoing guy and such a likeable fellow. Hey, I got the third one already, that's neat. This waterfall part coming up though is really, really tough, I don't like it. Yeah, this is, it's after this part in the game where I start to run into trouble, like real trouble, as opposed to the fake trouble I was in earlier.  My other dog Ulysses, we say he's got certain spots staked out in our backyard, and he, my girlfriend and I, we joke that he's quote unquote at work, because he really does spend all day outside, and he just waits for the mailman to come, he waits for like the UPS guy to come, he waits for anybody to walk by, so he can bark at them and let everybody know, and when he barks at something, he goes freaking crazy, like he is just, he's very happy to use that energy, it's always really funny, see, that's what I'm talking about, there we go, that's what's in there, excellent, I just don't want to end up getting that stupid knife secondary weapon, that's one of my least favorite weapons in this game, so I'm cautious to, I don't remember which set of candles it is, so where's my other, there we go, waiting for my other upgrade, yeah this is, I hate this part, this is where the slightest bit of knockback will kill you if you're not careful, and even if you are careful, it's like I try, I was careful, I tried, I tried, I really did, and it didn't work out, I tried so hard, um, oh you know what, that's probably a, yeah, let's grab this, so how are you folks doing, um, yeah no, I did want to do some sort of LP thing, that's more of a hangout, you know, we're all stuck at home, or at least we in the United States are, I am, um, hang on, I gotta concentrate here, there we go, it's hard to talk and do shit like that, I don't know how people do it, but um, yeah no, we're all stuck at home, we're not like likely to do anything, uh, on Halloween, if you are please be safe, don't be an idiot, don't, like wear a mask and just use common sense if you have it, if you don't, then God help you, but uh, just try and be safe if you go out, uh, I would, you know, I think the safe play would be to just stay home, there's plenty of stuff to do, plenty of great classic Halloween movies to watch, what is my favorite scary movie, I'll tell you, my favorite movie that kind of freaks me out and makes me uncomfortable is probably, um, uh, what do you call it, Night of the Hunter that stars Robert Mitchum, and he plays this preacher that shows up in this, he's basically a con man, he shows up on in these, uh, these towns and, um, nice, and uh, basically as a preacher and puts the fear of God into him and wins over the, the whole, the whole, uh, town and all that, and it's, it's only, he's only doing it for just to quote Marge Gunderson, doing it for just a little bit of money, all for a little bit of money, but yeah, he is really, really creepy in that movie, in both a good and kind of a bad way, he freaks me out so much, he's such a, he's really good at being in that movie, he's, oh shit, okay, I was gonna get shot and blasted there, this music in this part of the game always really confused me, it sounds like Ron Burgundy playing Yaz Flute, like what is this music?  I'm guessing, there we go, no he didn't respawn, Nido Mosquito, all right, what's cool is I could get this guy down here, nice, all right, we're doing pretty good so far, I don't want to jinx it, but so far so good I think, this is where it would help to have like the axe or something like that, I don't think he can hit me from down here, but you never know, it's Castlevania, it's a Konami game, ooh fun, there we go, all right, I'm sure there's some lousy secondary weapon, that's oh shit, look how he sounds kind of frustrated when he gets hit, like he's angry of himself or something, he's disappointed, he's not mad, he's just disappointed, okay, we're coming up on the boss here, I think, yes, boss time, I do believe, and it's the double headed dragon, is it two dragons or three, I think it's just two, slow down, come on, Super Nintendo CPU, show me what you're worth, show me what you got, I'm just gonna hang back here like an absolute coward, and use my special weapon since I have lots of them, even though this music is kind of, you know, it's inspiring and it's very intense and it's, you know, kind of trying to intimidate me, but really this is all you gotta do, is just hang back here with the cross, yay, ah, didn't even wait for it to drop down, went up and got it, you gotta do in this world, gotta go up and grab it by the orbs, all right, so far so good, but I just took another swig of whiskey and that's never a good sign, because that's not really gonna bode well for this part of the game, I'm guessing, ah, this music's awesome, love this part, I forget, oh nice, yeah there is something back here, but it's just that, let's get this guy out of the way, yeah speaking of Robert Mitchum, there's a, there's a really cool, not, maybe I don't know, it's a story that I like, about him when he hosted Saturday Night Live, it's told by G.E. Smith, who for those unfamiliar, he used to be the leader of the Saturday Night Live band, he would come up with most of the arrangements and he was the band leader, he was usually the guy they would bring out, G.E. Smith told this story, so he was usually the guy they would have come meet guests when they first arrived, for whatever reason, I guess he was just a, you know, happy, fun guy, and he is, but Robert Mitchum was hosting and this would have been like 1984, which is kind of unusual because Mitchum would have been a much older guy at that point, okay, I need to concentrate here, nailed it, but so SNL gets, you know, Lorne Michaels or whoever is, Lorne Michaels would have been in charge at that point, I think, but he gets in touch with Mitchum's people, nope, we don't want that, so I just want to go this way, right, yeah, all right, need to concentrate here as well, there we go, all righty, so far so good, all right, this is another part I need to concentrate, very good, okay, didn't even flip it, cool, I'm doing pretty good, I have to say, I'm surprising myself here, I'm not taking that much damage, I am playing like an absolute coward, but when it comes to boss fights, but I'm not getting my ass kicked here, like, oh, that spoke too soon, but anyway, Robert Mitchum, oh, we got a boss fight here, he, his people said to Lorne or whoever was in charge with guest booking and all that sort of stuff, listen, he'll be happy to host, but he requires two things, he needs to be greeted at the door when he arrives with a bottle, a brand new sealed bottle of tequila, and I forget, it's like this really expensive, fancy ass tequila, I forget what kind it was, but it was something absurdly, you know, fancy, and $5,000 in cash, so sure enough, when Robert Mitchum gets there for the table read, I think this would have been on a Tuesday, he gets there and G.E. Smith and a few other people are there to greet him, hey, thanks for coming by, et cetera, et cetera, here's your bottle of tequila that you wanted, and he's like, oh, great, I'll have a drink later, and then he's just kind of standing around like... and everybody's like, what's going on, what's, he's not gonna go in the door, like he's... why is he just sitting there, and G.E. is like, give him the fucking money, give him the money, and oh, and here's your $5,000 cash, and they hand him a brief case, and he takes a quick glance, and he's like, oh, alright, thanks, yeah, alright, let's go, what do you guys want to do, what should we start with, when's rehearsal, what are we doing, blah, blah, blah, and he's like, I'll do anything, and I just thought that was really funny, oh my god, you gotta be kidding me, well, at least I start here. See, now the liquor's kicking in, that's my excuse, but yeah, I always thought that was really funny, where it was just like, I'm not doing shit until you give me what I asked for, yes, for cash and liquor, so yeah, now I love stories like that, like Mitcham's old school, he's an old school guy, I managed to get this perfectly last time, the sound of the leather whip is really satisfying in this game, and yeah, insert a fetish joke here, SNM, whatever, not into that stuff personally, but if you are, good job, good for you, alright, I guess apparently this needs to be a part where I need to shut up and concentrate, because I managed to kill myself last time, so let's see here, let's wait for this, alright, and oopsie daisy, there we go, alright, let's get those whip upgrades, let's keep rolling, ooh, this music's awesome too, that's one thing I keep forgetting to check, shit, I don't have a secondary weapon, that's not good, give me that cross, so I'm going to have to, I keep forgetting to check to see if the, what this looks like with the, with the, what do you call it, the BSNES HD component, if it really does go widescreen, it'd be kind of cool if it did, but it would also be kind of disorienting because it's, you know, it's freaking spinning background and it slows the whole game down, a lot of slowdown in this game, it doesn't get talked about a lot, the problem with slowdown and I, you know, it's, oh, it helps you, it's actually a benefit because it helps you, it's like, no, that, it doesn't work like that, because you don't know when it's gonna start and you don't know when it's gonna stop, that's the whole issue, that's why slowdown sucks, because it's unpredictable, you don't know when it's coming and when it's going, you can't just be like, I don't know, I could go on a rant like that on that stuff all day, all right, so we don't want to go that way, oh, these bats are gonna keep pestering me, all right, let's go this way, another sick baseline, this game is just full of sick ass baselines, yep, I'm just gonna do, that's my let's play, it's just me going, I'm not gonna take that risk, I think I'm eventually supposed to make my way over here, can't get up there, can I, am I up there yet, nope, I am not, so you gotta eventually make your way to the right, but it's above this part, cool, I think I should make it, man, don't need that, not worth the risk there, uh-oh, now I'm trapped, that's not good, aha, I hate the spikes in this game, they kill you so suddenly, there we go, very nice, all right, so I forget, I honestly forget which boss is coming up here, but there's a lot of this game that I forget, let's see, all right, so isn't this exciting, great way to hang out on Halloween, cheers everybody that's having a drink right now, with me, I appreciate you coming up, coming by to watch, once upon a time, you know, I used to joke that I would get like, you know, two dozen views on these things, I didn't expect any, is it Frankenstein, I think so, yeah, all right, full health bar, that's pretty cool, or no, it's the stone, stone dude, stone hinge where good demons dwell, come on you son of a bitch, yes, excellent, just barely, ah, off guard, caught me off guard, I went for a sip, that was the bad, anyway, yeah, if you, if you, if you don't want to enter the giveaway with hashtag giveaway, let me know what you're drinking in the comments instead, oh, shit's getting real now, that's what this means, all right, oh, the dogs are barking, well, not really barking, not yet, they will though, they're fired up about something, maybe they want to be on, on mic, all right, do I want to go this way, does it matter which way you go, one odd ball thing about this part of this level is that the time limit starts to become a factor, if you'll notice in the upper left here, or I'm sorry, the upper right, it's, there's like a very abbreviated time period, which is really strange, and yeah, I've actually come close to running out of time at this part, which is unusual, but looks like I'm actually going to make it to Dracula's Castle, which I was at honestly, kind of, oh, shit, how many lives do I have left, two, three, two, that was a very lazy jump, as soon as I said I'm going to make it to Dracula's Castle, I died, so let's not jinx ourselves anymore, huh, hey, Clyde, what do you think about what's going on, huh, haven't you got anything to say, Clyde? Clyde's not much of a barker, he can be, but he doesn't really, he's a dog of few words, he's very efficient with his, with how he decides to, how he chooses to communicate, if he chooses to communicate at all, and if he does, it's usually about naps or food, usually naps, as Ulysses S. Dog is always very enthusiastic and very happy to express his thoughts in the form of woofing and barking, such as when the mailman's here or the UPS guy, or when somebody walks, somebody dares walk their dog past our house, it's, how dare you, oh I knew that was going to happen eventually, oh well, get this crappy knife, oh that wouldn't have hit me anyway, oh well, yeah as you can see as it's becoming pretty evident now I'm not really in a much of an LP guy, I run out of stuff to talk about and I just end up talking about my dogs, yeah see it's, give me a better weapon than that stupid knife, I need to keep going here, I'm gonna run out of time, we are at Dracula's Castle's doorstep, then the game really gets fun and by fun I mean hard, as soon as I get the health too, as far as, you can, you can always do the, the whip spaz, yeah I'm sure that would work in real life, 45 seconds, check out these statues, that's so cool looking, this one's all busted up, wonder who these people are supposed to be, are they all of himself, yeah see the timer starts to make a weird noise once he gets to 30 seconds, I remember the first time doing that and it was like what the hell is that, I'm just gonna play until I get a game over, I've rambled on long enough, sorry concentrating, intense concentration here and I don't want to whip these dokes, these are good dokes, they're just doing their job, maybe I'm giving the knife a little bit of a bad rap here, seems like it's okay, again if you're expecting a really uh well played let's play here, not gonna happen, this game sure is generous when it comes to ammo though, now I can throw two knives at once, whoop dee do, it does seem to be pretty strong though, so it's got that going for it, ooh fun, I remember seeing this for the first time as a kid and being like oh my god, like so intimidating, all right let's get this, it's not no lazy deaths here and to be fair this is still really impressive looking to this day, got it, all right cool, be cool if there is like crap falling on you from the ceiling or like maybe this thing itself would fall somehow, if you stood on it for too long, I don't know, I'm just, let's make this game even harder, that sounds good and the background effect is really cool too, just the candlelight kind of flickering a little bit intermittently all right there we go, another one, whoof okay um let's go now, let's wait, ah just barely made it, my toes were able to grip the edge of that platform, all right now if I remember correctly there is a yeah it's this damaged, I don't know if it's this one or the next one, yeah it has to be the next one, damn it, maybe not, I could have swore there was a hidden area, maybe it's here, nope, there's something you can do to to unlock this after it falls, I just don't remember what it is and there's all sorts of goodies down there, creepy just the sound they make, shit I'm gonna die, oh that was lazy, what does that guy look like, looks like almost like a Matthew Maudine, oh I could really use some health, come on, see if I can get down there, without anybody killing me, that's not health, but it'll do, oh shit, there we go, promising, oh shit, yeah I don't know who that guy would be, it's like, is that supposed to be a butler, I don't even know who that is, come on, oh I did get some health, Nito Mosquito, okay, yeah who is this dude, is it freaking Michael Buffer, the silver hair makes me think it's Michael Buffer, so I'm gonna stick with that, I don't know what Michael Buffer has to do with Dracula, but maybe it's his brother Bruce Buffer, maybe he took the gig, Michael Buffer turned him down, didn't like the terms of the contract that Dracula laid out, there we go, I could really use more health, any health please, barely dodge my axe, come on, if you get hit with an, if a skeleton gets hit with an axe like that in midair, it's going down, oh I start way back here, sheesh, so at least this gives me another chance to see if I can unlock this, which I don't think there is, hey I got another life, you guys get to suffer with me for another however long, I forgot what it is you do, but something like, it unlocks a hidden area with all sorts of fun stuff, uh oh, I don't want two of these, shit, that did not, should have planned this a little better, there we go, that worked out, ah Michael Buffer, okay, let's see, yeah one thing, when I first did the video on this game, I think it was back in 2014, six years ago, over six years ago at this point, this is one I was worried wasn't going to hold up very well when I played through it, and it more than holds up well, I think this is a top 10 Super Nintendo game ever, a lot of people think, no I shouldn't say a lot of people, but some people think that Simon is a little overpowered, that the eight whip direction is a bit much, that maybe he should, excuse me there, maybe he should just stick to whipping in two directions, since that's the way it was for the NES Castlevania games, and that is a big part of what led to its infamous difficulty, that's this, oh shit, I have to screw you Michael Buffer, moonwalking across those spiky platforms, but yeah, I think it's fine, I think this game is still plenty hard with the way, even with the whipping in eight directions, it's still really tough, I mean the platforming here with the Simon's oddball jump is always going to be you know a bit of a challenge, come on you damn skeleton, yeah if I throw an axe at a skeleton it's not just gonna like, oh he did some damage, it's gonna freaking break it apart in a million pieces, first blow, axes are heavy, you know despite the fact that Simon is able to carry 21 of them in this case at the same time somehow, can this guy go downstairs, he can, okay neat, yep, time to go Rambo, whip first, ask questions later, nothing over here, I'm getting a little punchy, I'm not gonna lie, oh now we are in a dungeon of some sort, oh red skeletons, red skeletons get it, about that shit, red skeleton, the old uh is he, would he call red skeleton a comedian or was he more of a tv star, nobody even knows who I'm talking about so whatever, god damn it, it's a very musical sound when these guys crumble, it's like a bone xylophone, helping hands to help me out there, ah excellent, okay cool, to think there's some guy on the other side of the wall that's doing this, so dumb, and then there's another guy down here, it's just a line of guys lined up outside the house, I should be coming close to the boss here which is that dancing couple, I mean where the heck are these people, the dinner party of the damned, oh yeah we've got our carousel of coffins, very classy, must be tough to make all these coffins, I wonder if he goes to like uh Ikea or something and builds and you know obviously Dracula's not gonna make coffins himself, he's gonna make his minions do it, you know that's what the Tor Johnson's of the world are for, you gotta have henchmen if you're evil, oh yes evil dancing couples, how dare you do romantic ballroom dancing in my presence, I'm going to whip you, I'm not just gonna banish you, I'm going to whip you with a vampire killer whip until you stop dancing and explode into flames, I mean jeez man, dude's got issues, all right more health, more lives more health, just what you, the audience doesn't want to hear, all right I think this is Frankenstein, no that's duh, I already said it's the, I'm trapped, do I go all the way back, no I go right here, okay that's good, not a bad thing, this music is fun, so note to self don't get trapped like an idiot in the corner, let them, let those people bust a move all over the screen, don't sit there and watch them like an idiot, all right I just need a secondary weapon please, hopefully that's what this is, no of course not, that would actually be helpful, now who are these people, it looks like not quite my Michael Buffer, maybe it's, here we're gonna see him again here, well the guy's gray but the woman isn't, the woman looks relatively young but the guy is either blonde or gray, so maybe it's Richard Gere and uh Richard Gere and Christina Ricci, I don't know, that'd be a weird combo, okay I get my guy back every time, yeah Richard Gere and Christina Ricci, let's go with that, I don't have a secondary weapon this is bullshit, there we go just outlast him, caught me off guard, now we are on to the seventh level which I forget if it's the treasury room or the library, I know it's not the torture chamber, that's level eight and that's when the game gets really hard, oh this is the library, this is some of my favorite music in the game, so I'll just shut up and you guys can listen, gotta get out of the habit saying you guys, you folks, you folks, gotta bust out the Minnesota accent you know, every once in a while, you know I was cooking up my stove, gotta go out to my car, yeah I love this music, it's so good, that shit, hey I hit you four thousand times, you're not dying, out of the way, what are these things, they look like rodent ghosts, like their their faces are weirdly skeletal but they're kind of rodent-ish too, like look at that, is that like Rocky the Flying Squirrel trying to haunt me, ah ha finally a secondary weapon and one that's worth a crap, those things come back too once you kill them, they don't just stay dead, it's kind of annoying, boy what an unorganized library, it's got these freaking MC Escher stares everywhere and dorks flying around with jars, no I don't want your stupid axe, yeah I should probably keep these going 24-7, so it's nice about this library stage is that you can you really can just fall and the stage will scroll with you if you don't die first which I am about to do and I started at the beginning lovely, yeah the leather whip is really shitty, here let's study this thing some more, all right we have a it almost looks like a Serpentor style helmet around something, you know like the way Serpentor from GI Joe has that like snake head around his face that's kind of what it looks like, by the way for those that don't know that grew up with GI Joe, Hasbro actually has a YouTube stream 24 hours a day GI Joe episodes and I think it's just the Marvel Sunbow episodes, it's not the crappy Deke episodes that came later which were just awful and you know made on like a shoestring budget and the stories were just you know roadblock you know needs a ride or something like roadblock decides to trust a stranger and gets a ride somewhere or something like I forget something stupid, there we go but yeah it's you can tune in at any time there's it's got it's pretty much just the Marvel Sunbow era which means it spans from 83 to when did those end like 90 or like 89 somewhere around there oh that was dumb but god those guys do a shit ton of damage yeah maybe that's the move man screw you wow thanks a nice boost all the way down here god I hate those things ah all right last life let's make it count I'm feeling really punchy and I just missed my whip upgrade there that was real slick but yeah GI Joe aged a little bit better than I would have thought and by the way uh hot here's my GI Joe hot take I think oh shit excuse me I think uh um Zartan is much cooler and a much better villain a much more interesting than villain than Cobra Commander Cobra Commander just kind of sucks he's kind of incompetent he's got the cool voice but he's kind of a moron Zartan can turn invisible and he can kind of shape shift but only at night or something like that he's he's got a he's I like Zartan and he see he actually seems like he's got his shit together like he's he's coming up with the cool plans half the time it's usually Cobra Commander that screws him up it's what I like at the beginning of the GI Joe movie when uh everybody's like uh like first is Destro that calls him a world-class buffoon and uh yeah good times and then like Dr. Mindbenders right there like he's also a coward and it's the trial of Cobra Commander like he's Jesus Christ or something like that it's so over the top and ridiculous but um yeah the GI Joe movie I'm not all that crazy about uh the opening scene is incredible but just because of the animation and all that and all that stuff is awesome but um the rest of the movie uh like the Cobra Law stuff no not not working for me all right let's see if I can just like why don't I just like teleport down here well that backfired um yeah I'm gonna call this a uh an LP I got to level seven I got to the library that was that's decent and I ran out of stuff to talk about again if you want to join the drawing random drawing I'll give you a couple days um just hashtag giveaway I'll randomly pick somebody and um we'll get in touch after that I'll get in touch with the winner and uh we'll verify everything and uh I'll be sending out some artwork for you and be sure to check out Layla's channel too and uh you can also go to LaylaAttayaArtist.com for her website all right that's all for now I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day and have a happy Halloween!


Oh no Dawkins, did I kick that? Did I kick that? Get to it. Oh yeah, make him over throw that passie, eh? Pick champ! Oh my god! Why did I trust Riley right there, bro? Why did I trust him?  Why you watch MCS?


In today's video, we're opening blister packs to find the rarest starlight rares in existence. What's up guys, we're back with another epic opening video and as I told you guys in the intro, we have multiple awesome blisters that we're going to be opening up today, searching for some of the best starlight rares ever printed. But before that, let's get to the giveaway. I'll be giving away these two Egyptian Godcard decks, both obelisk and slifer. Simply like the video, be subscribed, turn on notifications and let me know down below your favorite starlight rare ever printed and let's get into it. So before we get started, let's go through all the packs we have. First of all, we have a blazing vortex. You're like, wait, this is how we're starting?  It does suck, but it has one of the best starlight rares. It has a pot of prosperity starlight rare. That's the only good card in the set. So that's what we're hopefully going to pull out of this one pack. Then we have a lightning overdrive, which is also not a great set, but does contain potentially the starlight black rose dragon. So we're hopefully going to pull that. Then we have four packs of Donna Majesty, another set that's not that great, but it does have the potential starlight stardust, basically the only good card in the set in terms of value because the branded stuff is not bad. Then we have eight packs of rise of the duelist. Basically all the starlights in here are good. There's like DD crow. There's the charmers. There's then even the guy I like. So I think that there's great potential if we pull starlight at all out of that set. Then we have 12 packs of battles of chaos. These are not blisters. These came from a booster box. We have 12 packs of that starlights in here are a little iffy, like for value, but they're very collectible and they're very new. So I think they'll age well, like the blue eyes jet dragon and stuff like that. Then we have two eternity code. This has some crazy starlights like the effect baler and the water charmer big time money right there. And then finally, two rising rampage is the first ever starlight set. If we get the apolosa, it'd be insane. All right, let's get started. Let me know in the comments. Do you think we will pull a starlight today? We have 30 total packs. So the ratios are not on our side, but every once in a while, you'll get some magic. So hopefully that is today. We could also pull the dark magician out of these battles of chaos. So that's exciting as well. Not really the point of the video, but it'd be great. We have the tour ride, the dynamorphous shell monster rebirth, fire noble head, we got the ghost trick siren, ghost trick treat. We got the epsilon, the magnet warrior, and we have an ultra rare divisor king deus, Machinax, very cool ultra rare, awesome looking artwork as well. I really like that. Honestly, I just wanted to do this video because I am a huge fan of starlight rares. I'm not going to lie. Maybe my favorite rarity ghost rares. If it's the older ghost or I like it better than a starlight, the newer ghost rares, I probably like the starlights better. So this is one of my favorite rarities, very hard to pull, very collectible. And I haven't pulled a lot of these starlight rares that we're looking for today. I've pulled maybe a couple of them, like theoretically, but I haven't pulled most of them. Okay, we have blazing vortex. This set is basically only the pot of prosperity. So there's a secret rare and a starlight rare as well. Not ultimate. We have the kajaki. We've got the specimen, the dragon blitz, the guy clops reinforced with the armies troops, armor dragon ritual, ancient warrior saga, chivalrous path, and a metaphol as a vanisher. So we're starting it off with a super on that one. Just blazing vortex, not a lot to see here. Because I have the most battles of chaos, we're going to do like more of those than everything else because we do have 12. So let's see if we can pull the dark magician or of course, the starlight dark magicians, the blue eyes jet dragon. I mean, they're all pretty good. Dynamorphia alert, the flower dino, octoic servant strike, that skilled brown magician, doll monster, bear bear, rock scales, ghost trick shot, Alice lady of lament, that is a super rare. Okay, back to our blister packs. We have lighting overdrive. I've still never pulled the black rose dragon. So pulling this would be pretty amazing. I haven't pulled black rose dragon in ghost or starlight. So we're looking to do that at some point. That would be pretty awesome. Lightning overdrive first edition. I opened, I think three or four cases of this set and never got it. So I did open a decent amount, but as you guys know, it's one in 10 for it to get actual starlight starmind to get the one you want at least clock arc, Sun Avalon Daphne, Dan Maury, we got the S force dog tag, the starry night CL and a supreme sovereign serpent of gold gun. Okay, let's try a dawn of majesty here. Let's see if we can get that starlight star dust. You guys know we've opened a lot of this set. We even had like redemption arc where we opened even more of this set to try and get it again and didn't get it. So I've gotten it once in, you know, 13 cases, whatever, plus a little bit one, two, it might have been 12 cases, three, four. I can't remember. It was a lot. We have majestic absorption, cool, beecharber fly sting, doom bearer, psycho pompous, pretend the heavenly general, spring, it's interluder, slower swallow, dd, different dimension derby, tailwind of gusto, and the stall turn. Pretty cool. We've got some, uh, what was the Tom Cruise movie? The one where they fly the planes around recently, you know, whatever it was called. Back to battles of chaos. So far, we've got an ultra rare out here. It's our only pull really. So far, we've just had supers other than that. One, two, three, four. If we do the pack trick, it's going to be interesting to see where the dark magician ends up.  Super rare. Nothing too crazy. Dawn of majesty first dead. Uh oh. Oh, is this, is this good? Okay, it's only kind of open. If that's the only place that we're probably fine, let's try this side. Yeah, it seems like it's probably fine. You always got to be careful with these blisters. They can sometimes be messed with. Hopefully not though. Hopefully this was, uh, someone started opening it and they missed out on a stardust dragon. Hopefully that's the case. One, two, three, four. Let's go. We have beast king unleashed, gusto vidir, amaze attraction, viking vortex, baby mud dragon, aerial picks three, the despia tragedy, magic key unlocking, glacier aquamador, the retrain, and, uh, oh, magic key, mech mortar, gear's glaster. That is a super rare. Nothing too crazy there. Let's go back to dawn of majesty again. Got a few of these, so let's try and, uh, try and pull a stardust.  It's only about, what is it, one in, uh, 2,880, something like that to pull one? Not even that crazy, guys. It's not even that rare, right? Got master diploma man, margin trading, the gunkage souship, the sambell, chronomaly. We've got the assortment, the stealth buster, red carp, and a magic key, Moftia. This was a good card when it first came out, but everything in dawn of majesty has gone down because of all the reprints, but still a pretty solid card. Okay, no big deal. Battles of chaos. We have two ultra rares. So we're looking for our first secret rare and our first starlight rare. I'm not going to say anything too crazy here. Let's see if we can do it here. We got maple maiden, some more bird of perfection, the servant strike, a ruxen special, right past a link monster, ghosted festival, vernal dragon, the soul sweeper, tribal drive, the epsilon magnet warrior, and a Nordic smith, Evaldi. He's evolving. Not sure what that meant, but let's keep going. The dawn of majesty final pack. This is our last chance at the starlight stardust here, or at least last chance for the day. I'm sure we'll open more packs of this at some point. Will I ever pull it again? Who knows? Probably not, honestly. But odds are against us. You just got to believe in the heart of the cards. The odds were always against Yu-Gi, and then he found a way to draw the right card, aka cheat. Okay, same, but we've got the magic duo. These are roll, the synthesis, slower swallow, pasouzou, death's being tragedy, and a beetrooper scale bomber. Another super rare. We have two ultra so far in a lot of packs. Now it's time to revisit the rise of the duel. Let's see. These were the ones where I had an issue with at one point. I don't know if you guys have even seen that video yet. I don't know. I'm not sure when it came out, but I checked all these. They seem to be legit, but hopefully they are. Rise of the duelist. These are $20 packs now, so they're pretty expensive. A lot of great starlight rare potential in here, and then of course, secret rares are awesome as well. Even with the reprints, they're pretty good. Fright for Jar, Dark Lord. We got the Diameter, Dogmatic Encounter, Capricious Dark Lord, Melphie Playhouse, Linker Bell, and a Gaia the Magical Knight of Dragons. Check that out. Cool artwork. Let's just pull the starlight version. I'm down. Back to our favorite set, Battles of Chaos. I know a lot of you guys really like this set. I'm a fan. One, two, three, four. I'm going to be an even bigger fan when we pull a Dark Magician right here. Top share, The Agent of Destruction, Monster Rebirth. I shade Erosion, Silver Vine, Cynry, Sorts of Strife, Dynamorphia Sonic, Euridora Fate, and Dark the Dark Charmer, Gloomy. There it is. I don't know if you guys saw on my social media, which you don't follow me, follow me at ruxa34 on Instagram, on Twitter, all that stuff, but I lost a Dark the Dark Charmer starlight rare. And yeah, I somehow lost it. Yeah. And then I found it the other day. So I was like, yay, I found my Dark the Dark Charmer. Okay, it rides until it's first dead. So that's what that reminds me of, that I lost one of those. One, two, three, four. Here we go. You got to believe, guys. We've got Ancient Warriors Saga, Spiral Discharge, The Mathemic Diameter, Spiral Fusion, Spiral Reborn, Melphie Finney, The Fright for Repair, Unauthorized Bootup Device, and Ancient Warriors Oath Double Dragon Lords. Back to the battles of the chaos. It's chaos time, guys. Here we go. Speaking of chaos, I like how they've reprinted, or they're not reprinted, but they've made a bunch of new chaos monsters for the new set. I'm actually pretty excited about that from Photon Hypernova. And by the way, if you haven't bought any yet and you want a pre-order from Sassia to use my code, HypernovaRuxan, I believe, down below. You have 5% off on your pre-order and also sports the channel. Here we go. Let's see what we can get. Oh, wait. Oh, next one. Oh, Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon. Nice. We got an Ultra, our third Ultra of the opening. Very cool card, Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon. I'm down. Back to Rise of the Duelist. Tons of packs from Rise. Will we get a Starlight that we are searching for? Lots of packs are being opened here. We're hoping that we can get one of the elusive, the rare Starlight rares. Drill Driver, the card gardener, re-savager. We've got a Junk Sleeper, Galloping Gaia, Capricious Dark Lord, Abyss Actor. We have a Melphie Playhouse and the Red Time Reviver emitter. Can we get a starlight? Not even a Starlight. A secret rare. That'd be nice. I'm going to open another Battle of the Chaos. Can we just get a secret rare? One, two, three, four. Here we go. We're Dark Magician. I'm down for that. The Groza Tyrant of Thunder. Smile Potion. We've got Mites and Mite Mutant. We've got the Lambswell. Palace. We've got the Shot. Eredora Fate. The Drarton. And the Libromancer Invention. Okay, this isn't going as planned. So far, three Ultra rares. No Starlights. So, look at a little iffy. But there's still plenty of time. There's a lot of packs left. If we say, if we pull no secrets at all and pull a Apollosa Starlight, definitely worth it. So, let's do that. For the Savagery, we've got a Junk Sleeper, Nurgle, Fury of Caution, Boot-Up Device, the Abyss Actor. I got excited for 0.2 seconds. This is the worst secret rare in a set with all good secrets. This is the only bad secret rare in the entire set. No, we are not friends. That's a disappointment. I'm pretty sure every secret rare in Rise of the Duelists is at least somewhat of a banger, except that card. And that's the one we pull. One, two, three, four. That's pretty rough. That's pretty rough. We've got the Shining Filla, Top Share, Servant Strike, Ice Shade Erosion, we've got the Darden, we've Jade Palace, we've got the Sonic, Servine scenery, and a super rare Dark Contract with Patent License. With the Patent License. Interesting.  And then I realized I remembered it all came flooding back from when I opened this. That card wasn't even like a dollar when it came out. That's how bad it was. Wow. That is pretty rough. One, two, three, four. Here we go. Super Every Samurai, Melphie Rabbit, Ostolfo, Red Potent. That is very, very creepy. It looks like a Hot Tamale. Kind of weird. We got the Linker Belt. And for Double Knight and Magist, we've got the Finney with the Fluffle Dolphin, and a Shadal Schism. Okay. Shadal Schism came out and Rise of the Duelist. I didn't realize that. It's a pretty good ultra rare. Okay, we'll take that. I didn't know when the Shenanigans started with that, or at least that type of Wind of Shenanigans started that, you know, late. I thought that was a longer thing. One, two, three, four. I guess it was a couple of years ago at this point. Ghostric Festival. Come on. Might and Mutant. Smile potion. We got a smile. We got the Cast of Castor. Treat. Magna Warrior. Mechanical Monstrosity. The Place. Oh, and a secret rare. Illusion of Chaos. There it is. That's what we're looking for. Okay. This would be a beautiful Starlight. I have this in PSA 10 in Starlight, by the way. Not to mow an horn or anything, but yeah, this is a really sweet secret rare. I love the artwork on this card. Really awesome. That's a great pull. I think it's around like 20-something bucks, so definitely a solid card. All right. We're still going with Rise of the Duelist. We have multiple of these packs, which I mean, it feels like we have a lot of these, so it's like they're not special, but these are some of the most special packs we're opening today, which is funny. I'm excited to potentially pull a good secret rare, not an out of emancipator friends. Anybody? Anybody interested? Dogmatic Appunishment. Crazy. That was a common here. Spiral Fusion. Melphipony. Spiral Discharge. Melphimommy. Curse of Dragon. The Curse of Dragon. Dogmatic Encounter. Fry for Cruel Whale. And a Diddy Dog. The Diddy Dog. Still three more packs in our Battles of Chaos. And then we got two more Rise of the Duelist, two more Turn to Code, and two of the, you know, whatever the opposite is, that's called the Rising Rampage. Ghostric Festival. Might and Mutant. Smile Potion. Great Double Casted Caster. Skilled Brown Magician. The Rock Scales. Doll of Happiness. The Sylvine Cinnery. And the Ultimate Fusion for the Blue Eyes, White Dragon. Hey, that's not bad. It's a Blue Eyes card. All right, second to last, Rise of the Duelist. So far, okay, we've done a little better. Who's pulled a couple of secrets, one being really garbage. Decent Ultras though, actually, we've had some pretty good Ultras. Rise of the Duelist. Can we pull Big Starlight Rare? Let's go. One, two, three, four. In the Starlight episode that we're doing here, we have Melphie, Hide and Seek. Horn of Oliphant. Drill Driver. We've got a Ruxen special there. Card Gardener. Capricious Dark Lord. Linker Bell. Infernoble Knight Magus. Melphie Fenny. And a Revenge Rally. That's a super rare. Okay. Two Battles of Chaos left. So far, we got an Illusion of Chaos Secret. Can we get an Illusion of Chaos Starlight? That would be pretty cool. Even though we already have a PSA 10, I would be very happy with another one. Tour Ride. We've got the Fila. Oh, Ruxen's special, DDD Headhunt. Dogmatic Acabre. We've got the Sonic. Cynry. Dalmaster Bear Bear. We've got the Sword Soul Strife. And we have S-Force Retroactive. I would retroactively like to pull a Starlight from all the packs that we've already opened. Okay. Final Rise Pack. Here we go. Rise of the Duelist. First dead. Starlight Rare inside. Guaranteed. That's what I heard. I don't know. I just heard a voice saying it. Yeah, yeah. Starlight Rare is inside. Don't you worry, Ruxen. There's also another Starlight Rare too. Okay. Heavenly Circle. Here we go. Horn of Olifont. Melphie Pony. Let's go. Capricious Dark Lord. Can we pull something big? Melphie Playhouse. Linker Bell. Unauthorized Boot Up Device. And a Speedroyd Blackenroll. That is not a Starlight Rare. Let me tell you. All right. Let's do the final Battles of Chaos Pack that we'll go into our Eternity Code and our Rising Rampage, which are pretty big packs. One, two, three, four. Can we get the Dark Magician here? We have Submarine Tour Ride. We have Shining, Pure Siphala. We have the Head Hunt, Dogmatic Acabre, The Strife, Dornomorphia Sonic, Euridora of Fate, Clear New World, and Ultrarare's Soul and Luna. It's not a great card, but it's an Ultrarare, so we pulled a lot of Ultras today. We can't complain about that. On to our final four packs. It's just like College Basketball. We're in the final four. Can we pull an Effect Valor? Starlight Rare. The Charmer, I think, is more. I think it's the Water Charmer, whatever it's called. It is like a thousand bucks. So, yeah, it is pretty big if we could pull that. There's also, of course, the Access Code Original Print. We have Red Familiar. Here we go. Ancient Warriors. Torpedo Takedown. The Cataclysmic. Circumpolar. Chimbalion. Okay, we've got the Pyrat, the Ghost Pirate. Necrip Prism. The Code Breaker. Zero Day. Evil Eye Reemergence. And AI Contact. AI. Very relevant these days. Okay, cool. Our second Eternity Code and final pack. Here we go. Well, our second and final Eternity Code pack is the way I should have said that. Let's just keep going. One, two, three, four. Here we go. Parallel, like, see, that was a crazy card when it came out. The Virus Sword's been Rainbow Zoo. Okay, we have Super Ever Samurai Swordmaster, Masashi, Saramara. That's not how you say that. Hierarchy, the Artecia, the AIQ, and Hard Generator Boss of Storms. That is a Super Rare, not a Starlight Rare, but that's okay. Remember what I said? Pull Starlight Rare out of these. No big deal. Apollosa, at least $1,500 bucks. That's something ridiculous. Okay, first edition, the first ever Starlight set, by the way. This is the first time they ever included Starlights in Yu-Gi-Oh. Or at least TCG Yu-Gi-Oh. They probably had them before that in TCG. Okay, here we go. Big facts here, potentially. I mean, I don't even need Apollosa. Any Starlight out of the set would be cool, because I've never pulled any of them. We have all the included rares back then. Oh yeah, okay, so here's the rare. No big deal. Oh, we got the rare. We got the Elbor is the Sacred Land of the Samurai, Fury of Fire, Samurai Grappulsion, the number 29, the Barricade Blocker, Grid Rod, got the Rescue Interlacer, and we have a Super Rare Ikelos, the Dream Mirror Mara. And we are on to our final Starlight Rare pack. This video is talking about Starlight Rares, and this is a perfect example of how they work. You don't usually pull them. Hopefully we break that right now. And we pull Starlight Apollosa. It's a pretty hard set to find at this point. Let's see if we can pull the first ever Starlight Rare. One, two, three, four. So this is the rare, actually. Last time we're just going to do that. Okay, we have some Org Bird of Calamity, the Magistic Magician-nition. We have the Dino Wrestler, Rembraccio, Defender of the Labyrinth. I remember this creepy shield. Marinsa Sea Star. This is a seahorse. That is a Starlight Rare in this set, which is pretty interesting. Some Org Sky Battle. We've got some Org Bird of Protection, Flawless Perfection of the Tinye, and we have a Mayusinju Hitats. So unfortunately, no Starlight Rare in any of our packs today, but it was fun opening for some of the rarest Starlight Rares ever. And make sure to subscribe if you want to see more videos like this. Shout out to Tonefo Show, Daxer, JT Show, Puffins of Doom, Ernesto Deanna, Dizzy, FlexiBoy, Hoppus, Choice333, Missycle, James Jantz, TCG Trustacards, AmericaDeutscher, Supreme, Sage21, Frankie Martinez, Inetite Show, Ian Moosa, Jr. Barting, Mimic Gecko, Shadowfall, and Thomas McLean. Thank you guys for supporting the channel, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


This is our second meeting since the budget presentation last week where I presented the proposed budget to the City Council and this evening we'd like to get your input and also share some information with you about the proposed budget, what's included and what's recommended, what differences there are in the budget from last year. And as we begin I want to introduce one of our Council members who is here with us this evening, Council Member Ron Nirenberg from District 8. He's here to say a few words and then we'll get right into the program about the budget this evening. Councilman? Thank you Cheryl. And first to clarify I'm not lost. It's good to be here in District 2, the heart of the east side. We're really looking forward to the process tonight. As we're having these meetings, these post-proposed budget meetings throughout the City of San Antonio, we had one last night on the south side. We're going to have one in my neck of the woods on Thursday. We have them every night. But these are the meetings that will help us get a sense of where our constituents are with the real meat and potatoes of the fiscal year 15 budget. All the things that you're going to be discussing tonight were discussed in the pre-proposed meetings. So those meetings where before we had a binder to look at, before we had the X's and those and the numbers of the budget that we're looking at right now. We had these meetings pre-proposed budget meetings to get a sense of your priorities. So everything that you're going to see today and talk about is going to be from your neighbors either in this district or the other nine districts in the community. I want to thank you on behalf of Mayor Ivy Taylor and our City Council for engaging this process. It's you folks that take time to be with us tonight and throughout the rest of the budget season that really make a difference in our budget. We have a very high performing budget. I'm sure Cheryl will talk to you about our financial management. We have a AAA bond rating and that's extremely important because part of what you're going to be looking at tonight is the capital budget. Those things that help improve our capacity, improve our infrastructure and also maintain the infrastructure within the general fund budget as well. We do have some challenges. The budget that you're going to be looking at tonight is a balanced budget. We've had to make some cuts in areas and we've also improved some areas. Again, responding to the comments that have been made throughout the rest of the pre-proposed budget cycle. Again, thank you for participating. We look forward to having your input. By the time we pass the budget on September 18th, I think it's going to be one that we can all be proud of. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Here is our agenda for this evening. First, I want to introduce the City staff members that are here to support the meeting. We have people designated at each table so that they can help facilitate the conversation. We have a number of staff here, so let me just ask the City staff to stand up and identify themselves. I hope we don't have you outnumbered, but perhaps we do. We have a number of department heads as well as executive staff and a lot of budget staff.  Our budget director, Maria Villagomez, is here too. We'll be available as resources to talk. Staff, thank you all so much for being here this evening. What we'd like to do is show you about a five-minute video that summarizes the proposed budget. Our City budget as proposed is $2.4 billion. The general fund portion of that is $1 billion within the $2.4 billion budget. And it describes all of the services that we provide to the residents of the community. And you'll be happy to know that we have increased our funding for street maintenance and drainage. We've increased funding for our parks department and also libraries, animal care services. So those things that you have asked us to prioritize and include in the budget have been included. So we'll show you this short video. I'll show you a couple of slides on some other aspects of the budget. And then we'll get to work. Maria will describe what we're asking you to do at the tables this evening. So let's run the video. It's very short, but it does provide a summary of what the proposed budget includes. The City of San Antonio's fiscal year 2015 proposed budget provides recommendations for making it easier to get around, becoming healthier, more educated, and providing affordable public safety. The City's $2.4 billion proposed budget is a reflection of what is most important to the community. The proposed budget is balanced as required by law, includes no increase to the City's property tax rate for the 22nd year in a row, increases the street maintenance budget significantly, strikes a balance among the community's many priorities, and does not include layoffs for uniform or civilian employees, priorities that you shared with us during the five community budget meetings held in May. More than 400 people attended and worked in small groups to identify the cuts they would make, as well as to add funding to an existing service. Following these community meetings, the City Council held a day-long goal-setting session and together agreed on the following budget priorities. Increase funding for streets and drainage. Develop a multi-year plan to improve and acquire more parks. Enhance the City's investment in education, including more library services and adult literacy programs. Maintain and strengthen public safety without crowding out other services like streets, libraries, parks, and human services. Enhance animal care, neighborhood code enforcement, and other programs to improve neighborhoods. Keep the economic development toolbox equipped to attract new companies and jobs to San Antonio. Fund and complete a comprehensive plan for the City, including policies related to transportation, water, air quality, and public spaces. Public safety is by far the largest expense in the City's budget. Two out of every three general fund tax dollars are spent on fire and police protection. The fastest growing driver of public safety costs is the health care benefits the City provides for uniformed employees. Health care for uniformed employees costs the City nearly double what it costs for civilian employees. In the City's recent community survey conducted by an outside pollster, 70% of respondents said they want to see uniformed health care benefits brought more in alignment with civilian health care benefits. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget makes changes to health care benefits for firefighters and police officers, saving the City millions of dollars, while still continuing to cover 100% of on-the-job injuries and offering better health care benefits than those provided to City's civilian employees and better than those offered in other Texas cities. This follows the Council's direction to ensure that public safety does not exceed more than 66% of the City's general fund budget. By maintaining affordable public safety costs, the City can invest in other priorities. The proposed budget adds an additional $21.8 million for neighborhood street maintenance and drainage projects to the current $52 million in the Infrastructure Management Program that is used for the continuous maintenance of San Antonio infrastructure. It will grow the Infrastructure Maintenance Program by nearly 30%, which will significantly increase the number of roads fixed this year. It adds funding for the maintenance and operation of a new library, two new senior centers and new parks projects approved by voters in the 2012 Bond Program. It funds the hiring of two city veterinarians to conduct spay-neuter surgeries to reduce stray animals and keep the city's live release rate of stray animals at 80%. It provides resources for a new program to regulate vacant buildings throughout our city. And finally, it funds a code enforcement case management system to close cases faster and more transparently. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget does not include an increase to the stormwater fee. Instead, the city will review a new stormwater rate method and make recommendations to the city council and the community in a 2015 calendar year. The budget also does not include any funding for VIA's streetcar project.  So there you have it. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget, balanced, no tax rate increase, addresses the community's top priorities by keeping public safety costs affordable and does not include any layoffs for uniform or civilian employees. The city budget is the most important policy document the city council will consider in any given year and before the council considers adopting it on September 18, we want to hear from you. There will be five community budget meetings held across the city and two public hearings at the city council chambers. You can learn more at the city's website, www.San Antonio.gov. Okay, we have a couple more slides for you. You've heard us talk quite a bit about overall priorities of the general fund and in May the city council hosted a goal setting session. They do this each year to talk about what's most important to see in the proposed budget and we take that direction and then prepare a financial plan that addresses the community's input as well as the city council's overall priorities. And what they told us in May after a lot of discussion and conversation about the city's priorities was that we needed to strike a balance. Today our public safety costs represent about two-thirds of the general fund budget, 66% and the council said please don't exceed that. As you prepare the proposed budget, let's make sure that we keep that percentage in check so that we have enough funds to be able to continue to fund our parks, our libraries, and our street maintenance because the number one issue we hear from the residents is we need more street maintenance. The city of San Antonio maintains 4,000 miles of streets so there's plenty of opportunity to make improvements. And even though we've had the two largest bond programs in the city's history in 2007 and in 2012, we still have more needs for ongoing street maintenance and so annually we have a street maintenance budget that is in the 50 to 55 million range. This budget includes an additional 15 million for street maintenance so we're increasing street maintenance. Let me just talk for a moment about public safety and what the council said to keep public safety at 66%. About a year ago the city council appointed a task force to take a look at pension and health care, what we refer to as legacy costs. Where are those going, what are the trend lines and the task force included representatives from labor as well as from the business community, people who are experts in health care and pension expenses. And they developed recommendations that were presented to the city council. Here is our general fund budget. What I said earlier that it represents about $1 billion and those are the services that are included in the general fund. You can see in the purple the police and fire departments representing 66%. And then the other departments that are covered in the other colors. So street maintenance is the next largest portion of the budget at 66 million in total. Parks and Recreation at 45 million. And then you see all these departments on the right that fits into that other one third. And when we talk about crowding out what that means is that as public safety expenses grow at a faster rate than our general fund revenue growth, it crowds out this other portion of the budget. We have to make cuts in that area. And over the past eight years we've recommended and the city council has approved adding 473 additional new positions for police and fire. We've added 473 police officers and firefighters in the past eight years. We've also reduced and cut from the budget 1200 civilian positions during that same timeframe. We've done that without layoffs. We've done it through attrition by looking at different ways to provide service by reprioritizing within the general fund. But now we're at a point where as those costs continue to grow it is crowding out and we have to address then do we cut libraries? Do we cut our health department? Do we reduce animal care services? What areas do we cut to control public safety costs? So the council said keep it at two thirds at the 66% so that we can address the other needs and strike a balance in the community. Here we've talked a lot about health care and this is one of the issues that the task force addressed. So among our employees we all, is there anyone in the room that doesn't contribute toward the cost of health care? We all participate and we know that the costs are going up. So on a national average employees participate in cover of the total health care bill about 43%. Our civilian employees contribute about 30%. Among our public safety personnel they contribute 9% of the total bill. So what we're trying to do is strike a balance. How do we make this more equitable? And one of the recommendations from the task force was that we more closely align public safety health care with civilian health care. Here's what the city of San Antonio spends for active health care on an annual basis per employee. And you can see San Antonio is compared to the other major cities in Texas at nearly 13,000 per uniform in the year 2013. And for our civilian employees we spend about 7,000 per employee on health care costs. And the other cities are more closely aligned. In Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston the civilian and uniform health care benefits are identical. Here's total compensation. So you might say, well how do we stack up? And you can see here in this case that we're number two to Austin. But we're still at the top of the list when you look at total compensation. Salaries, special pays, health care benefits, all of that which consumes and represents total compensation. Oops, I skipped too fast. This represents the major cities. And again here, two different here were tied for first place with Austin. So what we're trying to do is more closely align our health care expenses with the civilian employees. And it's tough and we are in negotiations with our police association. And we're hopeful that we can reach agreement with them and we're encouraging our fire union to come to the table. They have not done that yet, but we certainly encourage them to do that. People ask me, well, can't we settle this? And I said, absolutely we can. But we need for the parties to come together so that we can do that. So the budget strikes a balance. It keeps our public safety at two thirds at the 66% so that we can fund some of the other services that you're looking for. More street maintenance, more sidewalks, better drainage in the community so that we can control the flooding. Make sure that we don't cut our library hours. We're adding more branch libraries, opening a new one again this year. Continue with our efforts on animal care services as well as our health department and social services because there are so many needs, whether it's workforce development or the support of social services in the community. We have a great community with a lot of need and we need to strike a balance. So tonight we're asking for your input to identify those things that you think are most important to fund as well as things that you think we could do less with. We ask Maria Villagomas to give very specific instructions and a little timetable as to what we're asking you to do this evening. And then at the end, after we have our conversations, then we'll ask you to report back out to us.  Maria? Thank you, Cheryl, and good evening. As Cheryl mentioned, now that you know a little bit more about the proposed budget for 2015, we want to hear from you. The budget is scheduled to be approved by the City Council on September 18. So we have more than 30 days to go out to the community and ask for your feedback before that budget is approved. So what we're asking you to do tonight, we're asking you two questions. All the information that was provided to you today, what are perhaps up to three programs that you support in the budget and you don't want to see any changes made to. So for example, if you support the additional street maintenance that is recommended with the proposed budget, that could be an example of a program that you may say we're in support of the proposed budget and we don't want any changes made to that particular allocation. At the same token, we also want to ask you if there are programs or services that perhaps you would like to see added to the budget and they're not currently included either in the budget or at the level that you would like to see them. If you can tell us what those are. Now, as the manager mentioned, the budget is balanced. So if you propose to add more dollars, let's say, to the library, then we're going to ask you also to tell us where to reduce funding from. Perhaps another program so we can maintain a balanced budget as we go through this process. So we're asking you to come up with up to three of those areas where you would like funding added and also recommend those areas where you would like to reduce the budget again to maintain a balanced budget. So there is a facilitator at your table and that person will be taking notes and helping you through the conversation. We're going to give you 30 minutes to go through that exercise and then we're going to ask you to select a spokesperson for each of your tables to report back to the group. If there's any questions on the budget, my staff and myself are here to help you and I'll be walking around and addressing any questions you may have in the budget. So with that, let's get started. And again, you have 30 minutes for this exercise. Thank you. Okay, thank you for being here to talk to us tonight. No problem. Can you start by telling us what your job title is in the District 2 offices? Yes, my name is Rochelle Bell and I am a counselor and I also do constituent services as well as community outreach. Cool. Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about what's going on tonight and what the process is? Yes. But tonight is about civic engagement where there are constituents as well as city employees who are working together to find a way to agree on the proposed budget. Perfect. And what's the next step after this? Well, the next step is that it goes to city council on September 18th in which they will make a decision whether to accept or go back to the drawing board in essence. How can people learn more about what's happening tonight? They can go on www.sanantonio.gov in which they can find out more information there as well. No, please. Can people still put their input in even if they weren't here tonight? Yes, and that's what I was going to say next. There's going to be more meetings in other districts following this meeting tonight so they can attend those meetings even if it's not in their district. It's not closed to different districts. It just is based on convenience. We want everybody's input so you can go to any other district that's having more meetings this week. Okay, and on another note, how can people learn more about the topics that are being discussed? I would also say the internet. If you go on www.sanantonio.gov, they actually are showing a video. It's a five-minute video in which whispers in here tonight and it gives all the topics and all the proposed things for the budget. So I would just wait somebody to do that. Okay. And in your opinion, what are the most important topics? For me, I think the most important topics since I do work for District 2 are any concerns for the constituents in District 2. If it's important to them, it's important to us and no problems too big or too small and we're just here to help. Okay, thank you so much for talking with us tonight. It's so nice to meet you. It's so nice to meet you too. As we're wrapping up, does everyone, we've got six tables. Does everyone have someone identified as their spokesperson for the table? Is there a volunteer who wants to go first? Sally Scott. Oh, okay. And then you'll be second. Okay. We'll let Sally go first. Table number two. Kathy's going to help her. Could everyone? Okay. We're table. All right. Here's our table number two. Table two, we had three, really four areas that we want to keep the same. But essentially, we had some disagreement. We disagreed to disagree. And this is what we came up with. Leave the same as libraries, parks and rec, maintain no layoffs, and maintain the domestic violence unit. And the things to increase, streets and lighting, animal care, particularly spay and neuter. That's the only way we're going to get to no kill. Code enforcement will bring in revenue. We reduce delicate agencies, surplus, get rid of surplus property, reducing operating, and improve fines and fees collection. Thank you so much. Yes, a little applause for table number two. Okay. Right here. Is this, what are we? Table number three. Okay. Michelle. I've been away. Can you hear me? Okay. So we started off first with, instead of doing cuts and additions, we started off with ways to drive more revenue. So we did revenue driving ideas. We started out with contracts for public safety for the county communities. Example of working with like Alamo Heights or Kirby to police their area, but also get money for that. So that's a, it would be a partnership, city, county, corporations. And we really want to go after the collecting delinquent taxes, ie fees, no more tax abatements, as well as the transportation for, oh, the transportation for EMS instead of, you know, going after the money for the money that's already charged for the EMS, going after that more said facility, use it towards our budget, as well as streamline the vendor process as far as purchasing, ie, if you needed a pair of goggles and you work for the city, you couldn't just go buying for $5, give reimburse or anything like that. You had to go through a third party, which makes it take longer and it's more expensive. You can go on eBay and get it for a dollar instead of charging five. So we wanted to streamline that so we cut out some of the costs. And then we had an area called Other Great Ideas, which is ACS partnered with the veterinarian schools in order to help maybe not do surgeries because we know you have to be a licensed veterinarian. Thank you, Ms. Scott. But for the other small tasks, so we can get more manpower while they earn college credits. You know, anyway, we can help. The fire stations, the size and the landscaping, yes, we want the fire stations to look beautiful, but they don't have to be gorgeous. They can just be, they can put out fires, okay? As well as truancy issues currently ran by volunteers. So we just want to create more revenue rather than cut. And then for our reduction slash cut, the code enforcement case management system, instead of being three million, we would like to do 1.5 million. If we improve the case management system we already have now, and maybe work with some police, then, you know, we can cut that budget that way. As well as we're in support of the domestic violence programs, no cuts, as well as parks, street maintenance and sidewalks. That's us at table three. Thank you. Okay. Who's next? Wanda's table. Okay. Here. I'll pass this to you. Justina has it right there. Good evening. Our group at table three was very spirited about changing, or no changes to the improvements of the streets and infrastructure. No changes to domestic violence initiatives here in San Antonio. And we're happy with all the other proposals as well. We saw some things that we would like to change. We're not taking the age in Westside Development Corporation, getting increased funds from the Intercity Economic Development Insinives, pulling money out of there, and using that to further fund SAGE and the Westside Development Corporation. And we do feel that the police and the uniform personnel should pay some kind of healthcare premium, and workforce development projects need to be improved, as well in particular project quest. you. All right, Nikki, who's speaking at your table? Ferris? Hi, it's table three. Turn around this way. We've decided there were two areas we'd like to maintain as proposed in the budget. Senior citizens and the library improvements. Then we'd like to change some other things. We don't believe the EMS increase in fees will hit the people that probably need to be paying. We think that better collection is the answer to that. More code enforcements for our delinquent houses. We believe maybe more money needs to go there. We believe the uniform benefits for firearm police should stay the same and probably offset by their future pay raises because we believe they're willing to take less pay to keep the benefits. Also property, commercial property taxes. We need to go to legislation and get those increased. We do a lot of subsidies for the businesses that come into San Antonio. They're not paying their fair share. Let me change page two. Along with that, we'd like to decrease the downtown subsidies that the city gives for businesses to come downtown. Downtown is beautiful already. They should be wanting to come down there. Decrease the Hemisphere Park money a lot for that. That's a beautiful place for a very enterprising commercial entity to come in and they can pay for that and they'll make some money off of it, I guarantee you. Decrease the city attorney's funds. That's a lot of money. I forget how many millions it is, but the city has been doing too well in court. I don't think we probably need to be spending too much money there. Decrease the executive salaries. Need just to be looked at and adjusted. We believe it's a little bit high. Reduce future uniform pay increases and that'll probably offset the benefits that they're provided in any increase in the benefit cost. Maybe we need to really look at a property tax increase that would restore some of the other cuts that we have if we had the 2%. I remember all the other meetings that we had and that was a common theme on that everybody's willing to increase a little bit. Well that's table two. Table four. Okay. Next table. Who are? Okay. Art. Thank you. We're table five. So for support, we definitely wanted to start with the libraries and Mr. Nicholas is definitely helpful in filling us in on some things, but also with the adult literacy that comes with the library and giving those folks kind of a way to advance their educational status and their life with that. And also the other, the computers and also plenty, a lot of the uses that go into the library that you may not think of how many people actually use libraries. So John was instrumental in that and also of course everybody for the street funding now is a two thumbs up at our table. Luckily we had art to fill us in on a lot of that. But we definitely want to make sure and keep moving in that positive direction with the street funding. So we wanted to keep the victims advocacy. Jane and Iris were really really adamant about making sure that our victims advocacy stays in the program regardless of what goes on at the at the table. And also we definitely want to support the vacant building ordinance. We think it's a great ordinance if we could expand it and make sure that a lot of these vacant buildings are putting into the property tax system and thus making our neighborhoods better places to live. And also supporting co-compliance and make sure that they can get the things that they want. So what they got in the budget, their upgrades was a good thing, right? So we can move on to additions. Additional street lighting in our neighborhoods that are really deficient in it and the benefits that come with street lighting, fighting the drugs, fighting the prostitution, fighting the crime, and allowing our public safety to do their job efficiently when the sun goes down. It was really a big thing. Expanding the vacant building ordinance, right? We touched on it a little earlier. The pavement marking budget, we wanted to definitely increase that so we could have the pavement marking that doesn't wear out after, you know, three years and everything like that. That was, yeah, so that was Jack, you know, our table was kind of, it was pretty standard and then we got Mr. Finger who came and livened us up a little bit, right? But in tax revenues for an increase, we wanted to hook, well, we did talk about the property tax, the commercial property tax, but also for anybody that is, that does receive an abatement for these businesses. We definitely know and respect attracting businesses to the San Antonio community in San Antonio area, but to have a timeframe or to have a hook attached to those abatements so they just can't get the abatement, enjoy that tax, that tax cut and then bolt later on. So that was, and that was from Mario. So this is where Mr. Finger came in with our things that we wanted to cut. Yeah, if we had more time, I'm sure you could have found a little bit more to do. But the financial aid workshop, SA 2020 project worth and the way the hotel, motel tax, where that fund goes, where a lot of the areas that Mr. Finger pointed out that you'd like to see cut out of the budget. So that's our table, table five. All right, Paula, your table. Mr. Brown, we call where table number 11. Miss Kelly, don't throw me under the bus. Not at all. We saved the best for last. Things that we want that we looked at at our table where now, you know, we were happy with additional parks, improvements, street lighting and stuff of that nature. But we also wanted additional fun for street maintenance and lights when I am looking at street lightning, we for to add to that, we want to add an additional three million to District five and to District two, another two million, which comes out to be about $5 million. When you look at lighting, we're not just talking about, you know, the red lights in the park lights when I but we're talking about residential lights, lights in areas where it's dark at when I you wouldn't want your children walking down on dark streets and whatnot, what if you get mugged, anything of that nature. So there are areas in the city that needs to be taken care of that needs these lights or not need these residential lights. So these is one of the things that we looked at also, you know, adding to no layoff. We was happy with that with civilian and uniform and we need more uniform and we need more civilian personnel. Addition to the ACS addition added to them. Also, as soon as the budget or whatnot, you know, there's areas where you need more people were not to get the stray dogs or whatnot. So you need to add to that and also to code. You know, we are there's area, you know, the town or whatnot, you know, you call for someone to come pick up a dog when I was we talked at our table and I and it may take two or three weeks or the dog don't get picked up at all. So you need they need additional personnel in order to take care of that. You know, we don't want there to be a difference between size of town when getting animals taken care of. Moving on. And that would be more code enforcement. Things as far as reduction, we looked at reduction payment from the city attorney were not $3 million from them. Because of the fact, you know, I believe it came from one of our council person that made a statement that the city is spending X amount of dollars on attorneys were not and they haven't got anywhere. And if you spending $1,000 an hour on an attorney or not, that's 1000 employees that making $100 an hour, which majority of the employees of the city make one. So if you spending that kind of money or not, that's a big reduction that you can save to help balance the budget. Thank you. All right. Well, we appreciate all the input that we received tonight and what we obtained this evening. We share with all the council members so that they can hear from all across the city and will compile this before budget adoption so that they have your input. I'm going to turn it over to the councilman to make some closing remarks. And again, on behalf of the staff, we thank you for being here this evening. Councilman. Thank you, Cheryl. And so we have a $2.4 million billion dollar budget. We are a city of, do you have a question? We can't hear the microphone. The idea of police and firefighters paying into their screenshore. I like that. Well, we are a city of 1.4 million people by 2025 will be a city of 2.5 million people. I think what my takeaway is from tonight is that there are a lot of opinions in the room. Some of them don't always agree with each other. We know what the fever pitch battles in the budget are right now. Some of those other discussions and debates we've had already. But what I will say to you is that the things that you've said we should support and the things that you've said we should reduce are things that are in the budget. And that tells me that among our 10 districts with all those different opinions and different voices, you have a city council that's listening to you. Not all of these decisions are going to be easy. In fact, most of them aren't. But I'm proud of the work that we've accomplished at council. And I'm very grateful for the work that you've done tonight and that will continue to do throughout the week. And then come September 18. I think we'll have a budget that we can live with. It won't be the greatest, but we'll continue to make progress. And it'll be one that will keep our city one of the best cities in the country. So thank you to our public safety officials, public safety officers that are here, our city staff, Cheryl Scully, our city manager who keeps this city moving forward among a lot of our transitions. And of course on behalf of Mayor Ivy Taylor and our city council, we want to thank you, the citizens and residents of San Antonio actually make this all happen. So thank you. Have a good night. Sorry. And this is a sign off from District 8, Ron Nurenberg.