Haha yeah a compliment from him definitely feels nice! Sorry not trying to derail thread anymore, but agree exactly with Miikka's Muse timeline. Things turned weird after absolution ( although I do like Stockholm Syndrome a lot, the piano bit on Hoodoo, and part of the Exogenesis thing they did ). I still listen to the stuff I liked here and there, and it worked out for the best given I didnt really enjoy the music they began making after. I can separate my feelings for them from the music, and def dont harbor any resentment now. Matt tips well, I appreciate that =)

Mostly just wish I had handled the disappoint better and didnt abandon music for so long.

I love Radiohead, and yes Muse def borrows from lots of influences. The piano bits theyve taken from are kinda out of control. The degree of classical borrowing kind of falls under the radar since most people dont know the more obscure pieces. There are way more than the ones a lot of Muse fans commonly cite. Very talented guys tho! Sorry again for the derail

I watched all episodes, the last one was definitely my favourite. I think both Brandon and Steve came off great and I enjoyed the Muse story. Keep up the good work!

Very much enjoyed this episode. I loved the story between Brandon and Steve.

Also they're from my city which is awesome

Sorry you got shafted by Muse, Brandon. What an interesting yet emotional rollercoaster of a story.

Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment BERRI! I'm a big fan; hope to cross paths someday!

<3 Chaos, thanks! Hahaha just wish I were better prepared back then to handle the circumstances/outcome, but probably a likely result objectively. Enjoy Chicago for me please!

Antonius and Pärssinen episod is very good.Thanks.

Cheers guys!

I'm glad to hear one of the GOATs is enjoying our content I'm under the impression that you prefer to stay anonymous, but if you ever catch the itch of starring in a poker documentary, my DMs are always open!

***

We're aiming to release Shack & Steve: Part II late this week. After that we still have three more episodes in the pipeline:

One about a young gun who managed to rise from obscurity to high stakes within a little over a year, another with a collection of home game stories (one of the stories features the FBI, Phil Hellmuth and the Chicago mob -- it's pretty wild), plus an episode where we try to solve the misogyny issues in poker. I realize the last one might not sound like an appealing subject to some, but I think we have a pretty fresh angle, plus we wanted to actually try to change some things for the better instead of just... documenting. But more on that later!

When is the next episode?

Where do we watch it?

Editing it as we speak. The aim is to release it late this week / early next week.



You can find all the episodes on the same channel For the ones with Finnish players like Patrik and Eelis, just press c for subtitles. The latest episode (above) is entirely in English.

New episode below, this is a fun one.

Topics include shameless farting, gay hip-hop playlists, $250,000 mattresses, red balloons, and lots more.

Enjoy.

Enjoyed it thoroughly, good work! This series has been a treat so far. Kudos to Brandon & Steve for being stand-up guys in the sometimes a shady (poker) world.

Fantastic work guys.

Very glad to hear that you guys are enjoying the show. Been getting lots of super nice feedback about these last two episodes via other channels are well. While these haven't been discovered by the mass audience I was secretly hoping for, it seems like those who do end up watching have been really enjoying the story that we told here, even though it was the length of basically a movie. I guess in the age of silly thumbnails and instant gratification you can't have it both ways. *shrug*

Great episode. Good work. Was this the last one or are there more coming?

Three more coming.

When are future episodes expected?

When it comes to poker professionals, women are only a small minority. But why is that? What can we do to make poker more welcoming for everyone?

An all-female Last Call features three fantastic ladies from different generations: The First Lady of Poker and WSOP bracelet winner Linda Johnson, two-time US Women's chess champion and poker professional Jennifer Shahade, and former poker dealer, current semi-pro Linda Lahdenpää.

We purchased a bunch of vintage Las Vegas footage for this episode, so for all poker history buffs there's a lot of material from 1970s/1980s Las Vegas, the old Horseshoe, etc.

Enjoy!


Edit: For all the subtitle haters out there, the episode is about 85% English. We embedded subtitles for the parts that aren't, so you don't even have to press anything. The Finnish intro lasts like 1.5 minutes and after that it's nearly all English.

Nice Episode again

Greetings from Chicago, where 50% of the Last Call team has arrived after 24+ hours of traveling. We’re here to help out with the Letters to Santa: The 24 Hour Comedy and Music Marathon live stream and to film a documentary about it all.



Letters to Santa is an amazing charity, about which you can read more here. Its founder and executive director is Steve Albini’s wife Heather Whinna. We wanted to include their work in the Last Call eps we filmed with Steve, but it was just too off topic, so I’m really glad we get to do something for them now.



The event itself is a 24-hour music/comedy marathon with some pretty big names from Steve to Dave Grohl to Fred Armisen to Jeff Tweedy. It starts at 6pm on Dec 19th Chicago time. Schedule here.

You can stream the thing for free, but donations are encouraged. All donations go directly to Chicago families in need (just to clarify: everyone here is working pro bono, including us obviously). 

Come check out the stream (assuming we haven’t managed to crash it by unplugging the wrong cord or something), and if you’re feeling festive, this is an excellent cause to donate. There will also be rare music-related auctions with all proceeds going to the charity.



Excellent and touching post by Steve explaining the whole thing here.

Cheers and happy holidays to everyone. More Last Call eps incoming when we get back from here.

Since Dan touched on this on Jeff Gross' podcast a few days ago, it's probably fair that I address the situation here as well.

Last Call is -- at least for the unseeable future -- done. This is because of regulation-related reasons, our production team's home country is currently a very hostile place if you're in the poker industry and our hands are completely tied. I really wish I could explain this in more detail, but unfortunately I can't (NDA / legal bs).

We have seven more episodes filmed (two more S2 episodes, plus an entire S3). I don't have a 100% answer regarding their status, but I'm hopeful we'll at least get to publish them in some fashion. The remainder of S2 at least should be fine, after that it gets a bit tricky. S3E1 is the sickest ep we've ever filmed and I'll do my everything to somehow get it out there.

We've migrated all the past eps to a new YouTube channel. As a result of this, it might be harder to find the past eps using YT search, as apparently YT really dislikes the new channel and all my past YouTube SEO grind got swept into the abyss.

It all really sucks, but it is what it is. I'd say we did quite well for a tiny non-English language indie production (~300k views on 9 episodes), and I think we reached our goal of captivating audiences with a fresh approach as opposed to the endless vlogs and cash game streams. Not too shabby for a 4-man crew with very little experience, and on a personal note this was the most fun I've ever had working on a project. Hopefully we'll get to work on something similar at some point down the line.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this happen, and especially all the guests who agreed to star in our little episodes. I still can't believe we got so many endbosses to not only give us their valuable time, but to open up about their private lives in such candid fashion. Lastly I'd like to thank everyone who watched our show; the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and it made my day on multiple occasions to read some of the comments. GG

PS. We should have S2E6 finished pretty soon, and pending new setbacks I'll still post the link here when it's out.

That's incredibly disappointing to hear. I can imagine how you're feeling about it as well.

I'm definitely looking forward to the remaining episodes, and I hope you get to release season three.

That's too bad I just found it through this thread. Great content!

I can't imagine how gutted you must be Miikka, all I can say is there are thousands of us that share the feeling, From S1E1 I've had ya'll on my YT notifications and was eagerly anticipating each episode (and translation). It was exciting to watch you guys try new stuff with the storylines and the production level increased exponentially.

Really hope we get to see the rest of the episodes and S3.

^^ Thanks guys. It's been a rough few weeks, but it is what it is.

In related news, I just got emailed the shortlist for "Best video content" at this year's GPAs. This isn't even the list of nominees, just a semi-final round with the 8 best productions of the year left.





I honestly don't care all that much, but when you put months of your life into a production like this, I think it's a natural human reaction to care at least a little bit. And I have to admit that I am a little bit pissed off about the fact that we just lost (among others) to a 30-second WPT commercial

I don't mean to discredit anyone's work, but five of these are less than 4 minutes long and basically qualify as social media clips. No harm done in our case, but if the people behind poker's only annual gala want to encourage newcomers to create quality content, they need to come up with more sensible categories.

Video content: Short (under 5 mins)
Video content: Long (over 5 mins)

Would be a pretty good start, imo

I would make your series a clear winner up against those other pieces of work.

You made an in depth series of TV broadcast quality. For you to not even be nominated, there are either some politics in play (favouritism related to business associations / ad revenue / sponsorship), or it is possible that the GPA were unaware of your content.