Sgt. Vegan: Alpha

The Tofu Trio is reporting for duty! In the first installment of this two-part episode, the team welcomes Sgt. Vegan. Known officially as Bill Muir, Sgt. Vegan is a combat veteran and martial artist who defies many stereotypes held by non-vegans. He's also a chef, author, musician, and registered nurse. Clearly, his accomplishments are extensive. After The Tofu Trio addresses a few technical glitches (again), Sgt. Vegan shares his vegan origin story that dates back to August 1992. He describes the struggle of being vegan at a time when many had never even heard the word, a challenge made more difficult during his time in the Army, particularly with the lack of plant-based options in basic training. The conversation shifts as Jon discusses his upcoming trip to Japan with Vanessa, prompting Sgt. Vegan to reminisce about his time living in that country. He discusses his deep love for Japan and his journey toward learning the language. Joey then brings up anime, leading Sgt. Vegan to discuss his affinity for some of the 90s classics. The dialogue then takes a bizarre turn into the world of hentai, though thankfully, that segment is brief. The group eventually veers into a "Star Wars" discussion before lamenting some of the issues within Florida. Finally, Vanessa steers the conversation back to Japan, where Sgt. Vegan provides essential travel tips and hacks for the journey. A massive amount of ground is covered in this episode, but that's literally only half of the story! Tune in next week for part two of this conversation with Sgt. Vegan.

Learn more about Sgt. Vegan by visiting https://sgtvegan.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter @sgtvegan, Instagram @sgt_vegan, and YouTube @veganroadtrip.

Buy some Vegans Talking Shit merchandise! Visit https://vegans-talking-shit.myshopify.com to buy Vegans Talking Shit t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs and more.

Vegans Talking Shit is hosted by Joey Di Girolamo, Jon Missirlian, and Vanessa Silva. Main podcast image artwork by Diego Orellana. Theme song "Flying" by TrackTribe. Visit @veganstalkingshit on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and @vegans.talking.sh on TikTok. Send questions, comments, and topic ideas to veganstalkingshit@gmail.com, and you may get your email read during the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hey everybody, welcome to Vegans Talking Shit. I'm Joey. I'm John.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

I'm Vanessa.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

And we're having some technical difficulties. Oh, and there's Bob. We have a nice little cameo from Bob. We're having some technical difficulties, so John and Vanessa will be sharing the mic and the video space. Uh, but we're making it work. That's what we do here at Vegans Talking Shit. We make shit work. And today's uh a special episode. We have uh a guest, and we're having on Sergeant Vegan. Uh he is pretty well known in uh vegan's uh social media. He's written a couple of books, but I don't really want to get too much into what he's done because I want him to be able to talk about it himself. So without further ado, let's bring Sergeant Vegan to the stage. There he is. Hey Sarge, how are you? Hey Serge.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

How's going everyone? Um, just a technical question. On my screen, I'm showing up as a black square. That's PK, right? We see you perfectly. Okay, as long as you guys are the ones recording and not my computer, which uh it's kind of like if you're uh you guys are a fan of Rob Reiner movie's uh Spinal Tap, it's his early movies, yes. Yeah, it's kind of I can't my screen. What I can see looks like what they ended up coming up with uh for Smell the Glove. Uh because yeah. So anyway, I'm hoping that I look presentable. I'm wearing an Earth Crisis shirt just in case you can't see me.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Well, you look very presentable. You are tuned up to an 11, sir. So I can't. Thank you. Oh, and thank you for the reference. Uh so Sergeant Vegan, uh, your real name is Bill Muir, and uh I'm fascinated by your story. I I looked up your history and I have a lot of questions. But before I get into all that, if you don't mind, if you just tell the world who you are and how you became vegan, especially considering how long ago you went vegan, I can't wrap my head around how difficult it must have been back then compared to now.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Sure. Uh so I do have a well-curated bio, but I'm not gonna read that mostly out of laziness because I could pull that up and it could be really hit all the points really easily. But instead of doing that, I'm just gonna say uh, so my name's Bill Muir, aka Sgt. Vegan. Uh long and short of it, vegan 34 going on, sorry, 33 going on 34 years, currently 52, went vegan in 1992. And it would be very boring if I said that's about it. But uh, so I guess the main interesting thing is that I was also vegan in the military and I did a combat deployment to Afghanistan as a vegan, which is a fairly unusual career trajectory for a vegan straight edge punk rock kid, but that's what I did.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Um, okay, that's a lot to unpack. Yeah, first of all, thank you for your service. Uh I have the utmost respect for members of the military, uh, total badasses. I'm a complete coward compared to you guys. Let's not put it like that, yeah. But I I just how back then, what I mean, there there was no there was nothing. Was there even soy milk back then?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

So when I went, so I guess without going all the way back, first I could say one of the advantages of being vegan for that long is that uh when people complain about, you know, like vegans have been going through a rough patch since uh the 2024 election because our government's been kind of basically trying to cancel out any green initiative stuff like that. And in my opinion, that's why companies have been like, oh, okay, we're uh coal is cool again, and that kind of stuff. Uh, so I can look back to in the early 2000s when silk came out and people were like, Oh my god, this stuff is amazing. It tastes like chocolate milk, and yet it is not milk, you know, like and that truly was amazing because in like '92 walking to the local like health food store. Uh like, I don't remember, I don't remember soy milk. I know there was no silk, and I know there would have been no chocolate version of that. So if there was a soy milk, it would have been liquefied tofu. And when I was in Japan in the mid-90s, most of the soy milk was like that too. They started coming out with like different flavors of it. Uh, but it was basically like you take a block of tofu, you add a cup of water, now you have soy milk. Uh technically, they're right. It would have been soy milk, but it yeah, it would have been a little yucky.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Yeah, back then. I mean, I don't honestly, I don't think I knew what a vegan was back then. I knew a vegetarian was. I don't think I had been introduced to the word vegan yet. So you are truly a pioneer, sir, especially doing it in the military when they're throwing MREs at you. I don't think they're called MREs anymore.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Oh, well, no, they're still called MREs. Or I I like to call them Mr. E's because A, you often don't know what you get until you look at the package, and B, M R E, Mr. E.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Can you request vegan MREs?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So, um, this probably most of the people listening to this will already know because this was I think Veg News put something out. One of the very weird positive things that are it's happen gonna be happening during this administration is allegedly, and I say allegedly because until I see it and I'm eating it, I don't believe it. Uh, allegedly they're gonna replace the vegetarian MREs that they have with plant-based vegan alternatives, which I was working with Mr. uh Mercy for Animals to do that for I think with the they've been working on it for years. I know I was uh helping with some of their social media pushes to do that as a as a service member that was impacted by this. Uh, I think this is something that should have happened long ago, given the poor recruiting numbers, given the fact that some of the best and brightest are also vegan. So you're gonna want uh young people who are vegan, who are idealists, uh probably who are not gonna be uh no shade, but uh probably not be joining the infantry, but would be medics like me, or they would, you know, go in the air force or you know, do some kind of like uh thinking job, but are also vegan, they want to save the world, that's why they join the military. You know, don't exclude those people, uh invite them in.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

So yeah, Sergeant Vegan. I'm I'm really curious what it was like to be a vegan in the military. I don't think we do know one person that was in the military, but I don't even know if he was vegan. He's a vegan. Well, actually, now he's not a vegan, but and I don't think he was a vegan when he was in the military. Anyways, in the early 90s, it sounded sounds like you were in the military.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

No, I so I guess my the I guess the quick way to say to talk about my story would be uh so there I was, 19 years old, I went vegan. I went vegan my freshman year of college, which now sounds like a very oh like what you would expect a freshman in college to do kind of thing. But then that wasn't something that really wasn't even uh not to sound nerdy, but a word in our vernacular. So it's hard to do something when it's not in common usage, even in the, you know, being kicked around, even a word that you would you would have to look it up in the dictionary back then, which I think I did look up vegan in the dictionary because there was no social media and no intranets to peruse. I had I had to actually look it up. So I went vegan at 19. I went I not to give my full uh college experience away, but I was in school, then I studied it a semester. Well, I studied for a year in Japan, came back to the States. I was like, what am I gonna do with the degree in sociology and Japanese? I didn't know, so I moved back to Japan and then I was in Japan for like a total of seven years. 9-11 happened. I was like, like most Americans who were like adult age or even like older than junior high school, I was deeply affected by it. But the way it affected my crazy brain was I need like to do something about it. And most of my super lefty friends were just like content to sit back and like yell at the TV. And I was like, well, this is obviously all stupid and all awful. I thought, but if I joined as a medic, I could actually hands-on help some people, maybe the people who America is doing bad things to, maybe the soldiers who are caught, maybe the combatants, maybe the civilians, that just that I could kind of even the score to kind of unfuck the whole situation, which is very naive, I know, but I mean, I don't know. What do you expect from someone who's gonna call themselves Sergeant Vegan? Uh so I I left Japan, I joined the military, and that was at in 2003. So I was in the military 2003 to 6. I got out in 2006 with the idea that I was gonna start a vegan restaurant. I went to a vegan culinary school, well, culinary program in Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

Can I interrupt real quick? I wanted to ask you, like when you're in the military in, you know, from it sounded like till 2006, but those three or four years that you were there, what was it like being in the military and being vegan? There couldn't have been many, even in the early 2000s.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

And um how did you get your food from so um let me finish off that spiel by saying then after that the restaurant didn't open because uh 2008 economic collapse, I went back in the military in 2010. I was in there 2010 to 13 in the reserves. So the reason why I mentioned that last part is it really depends on who you're with, by what branch, and also by what unit, and if you're training or you're at your duty station, or obviously you're deployed in a in an active war zone. So you'd probably be surprised to hear that the hardest time it was for me to be vegan was basic training, boot camp. And the reason being there was no extra access to food. I could only go to a dining facility, de facto, we would call it, or chow hall or cafeteria with very limited options that were vegan. And I have some fun horror stories about all that. But then after basic training, then it got challenging in my. I went from basic training in Fort Benny, Georgia, home of the infantry, to Fort Sam Houston, which was medic training since I was training with other medics and at a very different base with a very different agenda. There were more vegan options, and I was able to go off post or off uh base to get food. And then I went to jump school and at back at Fort Sam Houston, and then I went through uh the first I would say 80% of the Ranger indoc program until I got kicked out for them for being vegan and they saw the vegan tattoo on my neck. Uh then after that, then after that, I was in like a holdover situation, and that's and then from that, then I got stationed in with the 173rd Airborne in Vicenza, Italy, and that was completely different. Then being in when I was with the 173rd in Afghanistan, that was completely different. And then finally, my reserve time was very different. So the easy answer would be the easy but lazy answer would be oh, it sucked, it was hard, blah, blah, blah. Which it did suck, and yes, it was often hard, but it really depended on what I was doing. Basic training. I let do we uh have time for a quick basic training story?

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Go for it, man.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

All right, so the basic just to give you a difference of how it actually was. Basic training, and I think it's changed a little bit, but probably not significantly. It's not that like you would expect uh at the horror stories where some drill sergeant, this dude's wearing a big fucking Smokey the Bear hat screaming at you, like, hey maggot, you gotta eat meat, or else you're not a real hair quotes man or some shit like that. Nope, none of that. You just got you have a very limited time to go into said cafeteria to get your food, to sit down, to eat, and to leave. However, imagine uh uh the hot chow line there is not a goddamn thing that's vegan. So don't even after the first day, maybe two of wishful thinking. Oh, maybe the pancakes are vegan. You ask some kid who's flopping stuff on there, they don't know. And then you look into it. Of course, they're not vegan. So none of that is vegan. They do have a cereal line, so I'm like, oh, okay. So what can I eat this cereal? Well, I know because I've been vegan so long, I think I've been vegan 10 years at that point, maybe maybe 11, that cornflakes are vegan. So I'm like, ooh, I could eat the cornflakes. I literally, it's all you can eat cornflakes. But how many times have you eaten cornflakes dry? They're basically like shards of corn glass, and it hurts your mouth. You're like, this shit sucks. So I'd be, I was like, okay, uh now probably nowadays, but in any other like normal setting, they would have soy milk or what was popular in the 90s, rice milk, or I don't know, hemp milk, or coconut milk, or some other version of that, right? None of that, it's whole milk or two percent. So of course I'm not using putting that in the milk, so I'm eating that dry. Again, all you can eat, but I don't know how much you would want to eat of that. That sucks. So I started to get clever. I was like, okay, I need to basically turn this into mush so I could eat it like Robocop eating that smoothie slurpy stuff that looked like baby food. So I would put fruit cocktail on it to moisten it enough to be able to eat and just try to shove enough of it down my throat to where I wasn't hungry because I was like, all right, I know I'm gonna lose weight and this is gonna be bad. Uh, and that's how basically I did breakfast. Lunch was wonder bread and peanut butter, but I couldn't always get that. Maybe some iceberg lettuce on it. Dinner might be white rice and also on the bread. And that was what was difficult about basic training. The training was hard, but I was in really good shape. So it was really just how much of this can I starvation stuff can I endure before like I lose too much weight that it's like really not a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Uh I I can't imagine the discrimination, for lack of a better word, that you got. I mean, you're you're joining or an organization, the military, that is maybe the most manly in the world. And I I like some of them had to be like it just it had to be hard, the psychological part of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

I got a lot of shit. But to be fair, joining the military is kind of like joining a gang. Uh, and you're not you you should not expect like even to be fair to the military, the military is there to go fuck people up. Uh it's definitely not a tree hugging organization, to be fair. To be fair, I mean that's like when I was with uh Ranger, Ranger Battalion, uh briefly Ranger training battalion to be uh training to become a ranger. The first day of in process, the sergeant major comes in, or it might have been a first, I'm pretty sure it was Sergeant Major, but it could have been a first sergeant, comes in, he gives us a speech, he goes, Men, Rangers are not soldiers, rangers are fucking killers. That was the wow. That was that was and to be fair, you know, that's what it was. And and I think if they had been I think if the military conducts itself in a different way, I think they're not doing the they're not doing service to the to the fact that that's what the job is going to be. Now I was very grumpy, as you can guess, to get kicked out of uh Ranger training battalion. Uh I watched Black Hawk Down, and probably not the response you were supposed to have was that's the shit I want to do. Uh and that's the shit that I did not get to do. Uh, I mean, as a medic, I got to do lots of stuff, but I wasn't a ranger and that that I will be forever butthurt about that. Uh, not getting to go to ranger school and all that stuff. If you watch that stuff, if you pull up ranger school and all that on YouTube, as uh as a I would say youngster, but at that point I would have been 30. Uh that's probably not the stuff like your brain should be wired to want to do. But I was that kind of person, even as a vegan. So like that's the kind of stuff that I wanted to do. Now I don't think my body would uh would hack Ranger School. I mean, I I'm I'm I run like three times a week, but they were we were running five miles at under a 35 minute, you know. That's uh I mean it was pretty pretty fast clip, really hard PT, but as you would expect for you know special operations. If you when you think about special operations, if you're thinking anything less than like that, I don't know. I mean, it should be called something else.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Well, I I earlier I said uh thank you for your service, but it also applies to you being an early an early adopter of veganism. Oh well, thank you. Because that's my hat's off to you because I went vegan in 2012. The degree of difficulty was basically zero. You did it at a time and in an environment that is incredible. Uh, so you have some real resilience and dedication. You did mention that you're straight edge, which I can appreciate. I imagine uh you're a big Henry Rollins fan.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Oh, yeah, I'm a huge Rollins fan. Uh I think I take a lot of my kind of like spiritual lifestyle, all that guidance from like early 80s punk bands, and then mid to late 80s bands like Youth of Today, and then Rollins and Ian Mackay with Minor Threat and Fugazi, and then later 90s Earth Crisis. These are all I I don't think any of that except for minor threat very randomly pushed me to go vegan, but it definitely helped me to endorse some like rough ass times. Uh, I think minor threat in talking about not drinking alcohol or doing drugs and adopting that lifestyle as a like a as a teenager made and then people's reaction to me as like a you know you know, an antsy 18-year-old of like, oh, of course, you know, you dressing like a punk rock kid, you're doing drugs, and like, nah, don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs, and people blowing people's minds. It kind of in a way made it easier to be vegan because people already thought that it was nuts that I was not gonna be getting drunk or you know, that kind of stuff. It it already kind of put me in a weird box, so it was like, nah, no, no big deal.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

I can relate to that a little bit. That's the one thing that you've talked about so far that I can relate to because I stopped drinking about 10 years ago. Oh, good for you, man. That's see, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Not drinking or not smoking, okay. If we're gonna put obviously, as a healthcare provider in an RN, uh, put put the vegan, all of the propaganda and how I feel about animals aside. One of the greatest things you could do for your health, bar none, not to smoke and pretty much anything. And then if we're gonna go number two, again, putting the vegan stuff and all my propaganda aside, and I feel very strong about all that. Like, uh, you could say propaganda, you could just say truth, but then number number two, and then number three, uh, not not drinking alcohol. It's just you're just basically gurgling poison. And then if we're doing that like the 50s, like a you know, like a two or three martini dinner kind of shit, you're you're just wrecking yourself. So my my hat's off to you. I'm sure that's a pain in the neck sometimes when you're trying to explain, you know, like no thanks, and people act act like you're you know going through AA or some shit. You're like, no, I just don't drink. Uh you know, uh, my hats off to you. That's one of the best things you could do for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

You touched on uh actually, John brought it up about the military and manly, and that that's one of the things that fascinated me about you and and learning more about you. You are the antithesis of what many perceive vegans to be like. I mean, you're a combat veteran, you are a martial which which martial arts did you?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

So I I've I did Aikido for a while, which to be fair, when I think of Aikido now, I think of Steven Segal, which uh I think some Aikido techniques, the closer they are to jujitsu, lot like joint locks, lots of good, lots of good in there. But when I think of not to get in too much of a tangent, but any most Steven Segali stuff or anything that's not more jujitsu related, it seems like some some fake ass shit. Uh like let's be fair. I also did Muay Thai. I I uh did Muay Thai for for a while when I again while I was a youth. Uh I went to to Thailand to kickbox uh for um a month uh two separate times, which uh if you want to get if you if you're looking for some old-fashioned punishment, that's a great way to spend a month just going to get just going to get beat up twice a day. Because uh I remember I remember while I was at this gym in Bangkok in the this would have been the mid-90s, this British guy was like, uh he was looking suspiciously unbeat up, and I inquired about it, and he was like, Oh yeah, yeah, mate, I just told them not to punch me, and and so far they've not been punching me. I was like, I was like, I didn't know you could do that because usually when you're doing the mitts, you're like punch punch, you know, hit the mitts and they clot, they hit you, and and and that was just part of I guess that they just saw that as part of the experience. Like, of course they want to get punched, like, but man, being punched in the face, uh I usually didn't get bothered too much in Bangkok because I had two black eyes and a fucked up nose. Uh so people would just expect that I was already I probably looked like I was on drugs or I had already been robbed.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

So uh well, you know, Vanessa and I are going to Japan in uh in a week. And I'm curious what your uh affinity to Asia is because it sounds like you spent a ton of time there.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

So I yeah, I spent I spent at this point like uh like a ninth or an eighth of my life in in Japan. Uh I love it. Uh I could obviously it'd be boring for our listeners, most of them, to hear my my long hot takes on stuff in Japan, but I I do have recommendations after the podcast. I could I could give you some ideas or answer any questions. Uh what do I love about Japan? I mean, pretty much everything. Uh I mean I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

What made you what made you first start to go out to Japan? And you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

The fun thing about what originally got me so interested in Japan was this simple like accidental thing that I had to take a language while I was in college. And I I think I tried to get out of it, weasel out of it by having uh like having taken Spanish, and I can't I can I can murder some some Spanish, but I I can't really have a com like a real conversation, uh, other than the Pulp Fiction Don de Estala Zapeteria. Uh that's like uh embarrassingly, all that's stuck stuck, but they were like, okay, we need you to take a language, and in my freshman year, I was like, Well, what do you got? And we're since they had Japanese, I was like, well, well, as a kid, I liked ninja movies, so I'll take Japanese. And that led me into this rabbit hole that now, like, Jesus, uh, like 34 years later, I'm I'm still practicing the Japanese, and you know, I'm covered in Japanese tattoos and and was in a Japanese hardcore band for years, and you know, a big part of my my thing is is that uh are you an anime guy? Yes, but only I'm like stuck in the 90s. So if it was around in the in the 90s or like when uh when I was really into it, like Samurai Ciampolo or Cowboy Bebop, I'm like all about it. Uh but if it's something that came out last year, I probably probably didn't come uh across my my desk.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Okay. I I I mean I'm into comic books clearly. I never was really into uh anime or manga, though I tried. It's one of those things where I wanted to like it, and I can definitely appreciate the quality of the uh the animation with anime, but I just couldn't get it get into the stories. I did watch something called Hentai. You know what hentai is? Yeah. So I watched this one called Legend of the Overfiend. Oh my god, what is the thing with tentacles?

SPEAKER_01 27:21

I I I almost said the tentacle fucking and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Here's I wasn't gonna say tentacle fucking, but thank you for saying it for me.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Um that's a Japan is just really, really interesting and excit and and exciting, not the tentacle fucking, but just just them them them not having uh Christianity and repression as their baseline, like but having Buddhism and Shintoism. So there a lot of the things they're gonna start. I think human beings are like at core all the same, you know. I think every human being has the same capacity for greatness or shittiness and whatever. And then when you add religion, and then when you add political or social identity and you stuff like that, then you kind of you know change it or warp it or create it into whatever it is, and then it becomes a thing. And just that somebody in that, you know, through all that socialization would be like, you know what? Uh how about tentacles are weird? How about them do some fucking? That's just uh I don't know, that's just some weird shit to me. I I'm I'm not interested in any of that. Uh I don't know if that's superior to the shitty things in our culture or shittier than it. Um, I mean, I don't know. It's not it's not my thing. Uh I I like I said, uh like Samurai Ciampo, I would definitely recommend if you haven't watched Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop is like is Cowboy Bebop the one with the little character named Ayn? The uh the Corgi? Yes, Ayn. So the original, I think there was a season of it. Those episodes are so amazingly done. I think originally when it was made, not to give too much. Did did everybody is everybody sort of aware of Cowboy Bebop?

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Well, they brought it back on Netflix. I I watched a few episodes and I I actually couldn't get into it.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Um, but this is the Netflix. Are you referring to the live action?

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Uh I think it was an animation.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

So they there is a live action that they because it did it was yeah, it's been on the show. Yeah, it's been so amazing, and people throughout I don't know, the whole world were into it. So they were like, you know what? Let's capitalize on that by having a live action, which I watched like an episode and I thought this sucks. But uh, but I mean it's like anything. Uh I'm also like every like most people of my generation, a Star Wars fan. I thought the original I can I can barely make it out. Are the stormtroopers?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

It's uh Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers walking on Abbey Road.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah. Uh I almost I use my vegan as fuck mu mug, but I almost use my Star Wars mug. Oh uh I think so. Most of us are big Star Wars fans. However, when they went after decades that they had to re to to do the first three, so not the first three that they made, but the chronological one, two, and three. Right. Uh oh my goodness, I thought that that was fucking poop and pee, like the worst garbage ever. And yeah, is it as bad as other things? I don't know, but my my feeling was that it just sucked. And I kind of feel the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

I think I think there episode three, episode three, revenge of the Sith. There are some moments that are good. The movie as a whole isn't good, but like that climactic lightsaber duel between uh Obi-Wan and Anakin. Now the whole thing of I I have the high ground, you can't win. That's lame. But I think there are moments that make it better than Attack of the Clones and the Phantom Menace.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

I mean, that's a really good bar. I'm not gonna disagree that that's the least shitty of those three shitty movies. Yes, but here's the the problem with it is you had unlimited time, unlimited res, like literally unlimited resources, and it had the feeling of like, and I've said this a couple times, that they waited, they had what was it, 25 years or longer to make something, and then they were like, Okay, uh, we have this budget and we have to start filming tomorrow. You intern, I need a script on my desk by tomorrow at noon, or you're fired, and they're just like ran writing random shit. Okay, uh, Darth Vader is a little blond boy, and he's also a brat, and he has like the force, but he's like really annoying, and you hate him, but he's like Darth Vader, and then like okay, we'll improve on that by him being like a an and like an uh like a teenager who has some angst. It's just all like this is the best you could do, dude, with unlimited money. So sorry to bore our non-uh straight edge or sorry, uh Star Wars, the other S-word, Star Wars uh fans, but uh point being uh cowboy bebop. Uh watch the original anime, it's amazing. But the the live action redo, I did not did not care for it. But I you know, I could see if that's the first thing you watched, it probably wasn't awful. What do what do I know? You know.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Getting back to the vegan topic. So you're in uh you're in the bay area, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:10

No, I'm in uh Los Angeles, California.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Oh, you're in Los Angeles? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Well, where are you guys located? I didn't I didn't uh I'm in South Florida.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

We're uh well, all of us are in South Florida, actually.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

I have heard good things about Orlando, true or false?

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Well, I guess it's in what way? Be it vegan, it's all false. The intuition is not a good place. I mean you're I mean you're in the epicenter, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah, Miami has some bright spots, but I would say that Florida as a whole has a long way to go. It's it's definitely not Portland, Oregon. Um, Orlando, I will say, I just came back from a comic book convention there called Megacon. Um, so that's really awesome. Uh, but if you unless you are really into theme parks or conventions, Orlando, I mean I lived in Orlando for two years. I went to film school there, and it was I actually really enjoyed it. Um, but I don't know, or it's Florida. I I'm really anti-Florida right now, even though I live.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

So not to give too much away, uh or date or particular put a timestamp on this, but I think I mean as a uh a center left, I think uh Florida sucks all the balls, and uh yeah, I don't know what the fuck is going on with with that. I mean, talk about a whole state of people not voting in their own interest, but putting that aside, I I lived in Gainesville for a year, and uh I thought Gainesville was was fairly vegan friendly. I mean, unsuspect, I would not have suspected that it would have been as good as it would have been.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

And I think the college is there, because University of Florida, you got you know, um a little off topic. Did you ever go to and see Michael Singer up there? He he's the guy that wrote the Untethered Soul. He had the uh right outside of Gainesville, he has the um he has like a um meditation type center. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

No, the uh main things I did there, um there was a Krishna uh center, and somebody that I was friends with from the punk rock scene was really getting into Krishna. Um and I I'm not not into religion and really not into spirituality either, but uh I there are a couple of bands that I I really dig, uh Shelter and 108, for anybody's into all the punk rocks, are Krishna bands. So there's and because Krishna also pushes vegetarians, sometimes vegan-ish, but not always, not always. Uh, if there's something going on that's Krishna related, I might wind up at it. So I won't wound up at a couple of their their events. I probably did a couple of their uh all you can eats for usually a reasonable uh amount. I I went to a bunch of punk rock shows there. Uh I volunteered at the Fest, which uh shout out to the Fest. They're like one of the best. If you enjoy punk rock, one of the best fests in the country, and that's in Gainesville, Florida. Uh I really like Gainesville. It's not a place though for I was 40 at the time, not a place for a 40-year-old, though. I mean, everybody, if you're trying to date, everybody's a literal kid because of, like you said, the college, or they're in their 60s and trying to retire. Not for somebody who's like uh a 40-year-old. So I'm not at all sad to be living in Southern California, but uh some of Florida wasn't too bad. I and I just wish it kind of would turn around politically, but that's uh that's on y'all, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah, well, there's hope. I don't know. The the polls are looking up. Maybe, maybe not on the state level, but in the national level. There you go. Yeah, I'll take that. Um, Vanessa, I feel bad because John and I have kind of been monopolizing Bill's time beyond it. Go ahead, Vanessa.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

No, I'm okay. I'm fine here. I'm I I'm okay, I'm fine. I don't have much questions today. I'm just listening to conversation, holding Bob because Bob is kind of like a fool.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

We have a cat in our in her lap.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Uh yeah. Well, the only thing when he talked about Japan, I was like, ah, Japan.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Do you um so let's add in. Give me give me a couple quick questions about Japan. I don't want to take up too much time of the podcast to do it, uh, and you could always cut it out. Uh, but like uh I'm sure you guys already have Happy Cal, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Do you guys have you guys already looked up some places that you want to go?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah, because I already look, but more in Tokyo. So because the way we travel is more like I don't have everything set up, you know. Like I just go with the flow. I just know the cities I have to be in some specific place I want to visit. The rest, I just uh you know, depending where we are. We open the happy call and see if it has some.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

How long are you gonna be in Japan?

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Uh it's 12 days. I think it's 12 days.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

I think 11 or 12 days. We're going to Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagano, Matsumoto, Matsumoto.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Uh Hakon.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Hakone?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

It looks, I mean, on Happy Cow, which Joey said that's I swear by it. There's there's restaurants everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

So how long are you gonna be in Osaka and Kyoto?

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Uh Kyoto, I think, is four days. In Osaka, two days.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yeah, half our trip is gonna be there. Are you doing a rail pass or no?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Okay. Um, make sure that you do one day in Nara.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yeah, we will do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

I thought it the entire day. It's just like uh, we have to leave Nara from like by three, two or three.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Todaiji is very worth spending some time at and walking around there. Kyoto, I did you already get your hotel?

SPEAKER_03 39:24

We did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Um, did you get it in Kyoto?

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Two two nights.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Our last two nights were no no no it's four nights, three days, uh, three full days and four nights.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

We got all the hotels, but I can cancel, I think, still if you the um kind of a if you already have the rail pass kind of a hack, you can stay in Nara and just zip over to Kyoto. And it's uh I was staying in a very nice hotel in NARA for I think it was like 40 bucks a night, something like that. Whereas if I was doing it in Kyoto, it would have been like gigabuck, well, not gigabucks, 200 bucks a night or or more. And you know, since I already had the rail pass, I just got out of my hotel, walked 50 feet to the to the train station and got on the train and went over to Kyoto. Because I I I think I spent my year as a student in Osaka, so I spent most of my weekends at Kyoto or Nara or mixing it up in some club or whatever in Osaka, but that whole area is super amazing. The other thing that I would definitely say, uh, if it's not already on your radar, there's an all-you-can-eat uh vegetarian curry place called Natarad. G. I I if you look on my uh Instagram account, I know I I've probably put something recently up about it as well. It's like ridiculously cheap. It's like about ten dollars all you can eat uh for this this lunch buffet. They have vegan naan. Uh the curry is amazing. That's really, really good. Also, I think Moss Burger has a vegetarian, sorry, a vegan burger. I think you might have to ask for not put one sauce on. And kokichibania has a vegan curry, which in the states they don't have a vegan curry, which is very annoying. But their uh curry in Japan is the vegetarian one, is actually vegan.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

When was the last time you were in Japan? Uh September. Okay, so recently. Do you find uh Japan to be more vegan than the states? Or oh, for sure not.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

For sure not. But is it more vegan friendly than when I was there? For sure, yes. Uh like when I was in the state, sorry, when I was in Japan the first time around, I think I froze soy milk with Hershey's syrup in it to make ice cream. Like it was like that. That kind of shit. Now you can get now you that the so the annoying thing about Japan is not it, it's not necessarily the perceived on veganess of it. It's the fact that they'll have something they'll you'll see while you're in Kyoto when you're going up to uh Kiyomi Zadero, which obviously you're gonna go to, there's this big hill, and along the way, there's all these shops and other bullshit, and then they have soft serve ice cream, and one of them says tofu milk ice cream. So the tofu milk ice cream, it does have tofu in it, but of course, it also has drum roll in your brain, milk in it. So it does, you know. So there's an infinite amount of what the fuck with Japan. But spoiler alert, it's the same as the states and same anywhere else, but just the fact that most people don't know enough Japanese to be able to be like, hey, I have an allergy, is this vegan? And they're like, Oh no, it's not, it's just you know it says tofu milk, and they're like, Well, it is tofu milk, and it's also milk, yeah. Or like they'll there'll be places that have in Kyoto the tofu donuts, they're they do have tofu in it, but they also have milk in it and they also have eggs in it, you know, like that's the kind of stuff that will probably really annoy some people. You just you know it's it sucks, and you just roll with it.

SPEAKER_03 43:32

This is why we rely on Happy Cow. Exactly that. Yeah, the place right there.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah, Happy Cow is a great resource. I definitely recommend using them uh to the full extent, fullest extent of the law.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

We we've had multiple episodes just about Happy Cow. That's how much we love it.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

They uh Happy Cow is an amazing resource. Uh Eric the Fander is an amazing. Amazing person who he also lives in Southern California. Uh he travels around the world and occasionally I saw bumped into him at a restaurant in Osaka a couple years ago. He just, if you were at an event and at pretty much anywhere in the world, you might run into Eric. It's just pretty fun and pretty cool that that that's a thing.

unknown 44:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Hey everyone, we're gonna end this here. This is the end of part one. We're gonna split this into two episodes. Part two will be next week, and we will continue our conversation with Sergeant Vegan Bill Muir. Uh so for vegans talking shit. I'm Joey. I'm John.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

I'm Vanessa.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

And we'll be back next week with Sergeant Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

Remember, like our stuff.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Like our ring the bell, put the like for us, comment, give a review to us. We need reviews on the podcast. Please send a review. We are so happy.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

We're on every social media platform because Vanessa puts stuff out every single day. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

I'm doing my best.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Facebook. Yes. So yes. Yeah, that's it. We can say bye now, right?

SPEAKER_04 45:18

Yes.

unknown 45:18

Bye.