PBC Podcast | A Moment With Jesse - Mr. Worldwide, First Wedding Experience, and Scary TV!

Join us as we sit down for a chat with one of the newest members of our team, Jesse Mar-Ramirez!

Alex

I heard about the leak and I was like, “there's no way they’re getting Garfield,” but it's legit.

Jesse

Side smash is going to be him pulling out a box of lasagna.

Alex

All right, what's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alex. I'm joined by Norbert, longtime member of PBC, and we're also joined by our newest member of PBC, Jessie. I actually brought him on to the team.

Jesse

I feel like I’ve been here for a while now. We’ve had newer members.

Alex

What, was like six months ago. Maybe?

Jesse

I think so. I've been working with the guys for a while now. I'm mostly video editor, but also shooter. I do mostly video for you guys. I’ve been getting into photography; really like photography. I recently bought a Sony (sponsor us Sony)…

Norbert

Which one?

Jesse

A7III. I'm not trying to ball out so so much.

Alex

Oh you’re so quirky you have an A7III!

Jesse

I saw the A7IV come out and I saw that it was like a 2500 dollar type deal and honestly, with the deal that I actually got on the A7iii, I got $1200 dollars off, basically.

Norbert

Oh, snap, so you got the A7iii for 1.6k then?

Speaker 4

No, I got it for 1300.

Norbert

13?! Oh my God, that is a good deal. What lenses did you get with it?

Jesse

No lens is just the body, I got two SD cards, you can film whatever you want on them, like SLOG3 100 MBPS, and just one battery, and A1 strap which is cool! So I went ahead and I put a little sticker above the A7iii logo on the camera, so people just think I own an A1!

Norbert

People are going to think you’re a baller, but then you actually go and shoot and the high speed shutter is slow.

Jesse

I’ll go and edit the photos and people are also going to be like “where are the other 20 megapixels?”

Alex

Yeah, I actually try to buy the A7iv, but I forgot I have 1800 dollar spending limit on my credit card. So it declined and I thought I don't need this right now.

Jesse

I think we talked about this, what bank are you with?

Alex

Bank of America.

Jesse

Why do you only have an 1800 dollar credit limit?

Alex

I tried to expand it, but like I don't have like a on paper salary, you know, because I don’t have a W2.

Jesse

You don’t need that!

Alex

They asked for that.

Jesse

That's so…move banks!

Norbert

Did you call them? And they said they couldn’t do it?

Alex

I did.

Jesse

That's so bad.

Alex

Anyways, this is so out of topic.

Norbert

By the way, Alice's bank number is… and social security number is...

Alex

OK, so let’s bring this back to Jesse, what do you do outside of work?

Norbert

Yeah, what do you do for fun man?

Jesse

Not so much now, but I’ve been meaning to get back into it, I bike a lot. I would bike from my house to Huntington Beach, which is a really nice, like hour and a half two hour trip.

Jesse

I think it's similar to a Norbert’s trip here in Irvine, where you just go down to Newport right?

Norbert

Yes, I bike down to Newport, but my trip is only about one hour typically.

Jesse

But you also bike a lot faster than me, I mean you have gears in yours and I just have a single speed.

Norbert

Oh man. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Jesse

But I enjoy having a very simple single speed bike because I'm not trying to mess with like…like I need to replace my chain. I don’t want to mess around with gearings and mess that up. So, yeah, I bought my bike from Germany! I went to Germany last year…

Alex

Oh boy, he’s talking about Germany again! (sarcastically)

Norbert

Did you import the bikes from Germany or did you…

Jesse

I brought with me.

Norbert

Like on the plane?

Jesse

On the plane. So I went to Germany study abroad for six months. I bought a bike there, and I didn't want to leave the bike over there because it was one, pretty expensive and I'm not just going to waste this money from wanting to have a bike over here for a few months and just dip, so I bought a ticket for it. You can buy tickets for a bike. It's like €60, it’s pretty great.

Norbert

Oh, that's really cheap! To America?

Jesse

To America! Wherever you're going.

Norbert

For 60 bucks.

Jesse

For 60 bucks. I got a bike box from a local shop and it was so stupid just biking down Hamburg with a big box on my back, like one hand on the bike. I looked really dumb. But I got it to my dorm fitted it in there and it was my first time taking apart a bike. So I kind of felt like a mechanic, which is really cool.

Norbert

Nice.

Alex

And then after you came back from Germany, you were like a biking maniac.

Jesse

I was biking maniac, yeah!

Alex

You asked me to bike and I was like I’m tired!

Jesse

Dude, we bike only once and I had to stop for you, what, six times on the way?

Alex

Yeah, because that's my first time biking that much.

Jesse

So I live relatively close, Alex, by car. By bike it's like a 30 minute trip. I biked over to his place, took him on my route which is pretty different from wherever you go.

Alex

It goes up and down, it’s hella steep!

Jesse

My route goes up and down and it’s just a straight line, but Alex always like just goes downhill. So he has no condition to go uphill.

Alex

You calling me fat?

Jesse

I'm not… you do kickboxing. I haven’t done exercise in like a year, brother!

Alex

Yeah, you're fat.

Jesse

I am a little fat … I’m not really fat I’ve got a little bit of a dad bod right now, but I'm hoping that I can work on that.

Jesse

More biking. My girlfriend recently stayed, so I wasn't able to bike as much just because I was trying to maximize my time with her.

Norbert

That was great, which is great. Where did where did your girlfriend go?

Jesse

My girlfriend went back home to France because I actually met her on the study abroad trip.

Norbert

Oh, in Hamburg?

Jesse

In Hamburg. We were studying in the same not same university, but we were both staying in the same dorm.

Norbert

Was she also doing like a study abroad thing, or was that more domestic for her?

Jesse

A little more domestic. Because there is this deal that France has with Germany for her law program, you guys may not know it because I didn't know it, but France and Germany had a lot of beef going back from the wars and stuff.

Norbert

Might have something to do with because Germany maybe invaded France or something like that? (sarcastically)

Jesse

Maybe, I don't know. I never paid attention in high school.

Alex

Speaking of high school, Me and Jesse have known each other since sophomore year of high school. And you can talk about how we met.

Jesse

Yeah, briefly, briefly; a little tangent. I’ve known Alex since freshman year high school when we had a smash tournament.

00;06;31;23 - 00;06;33;25

Alex

It was freshman year and then sophomore year, we became actual friends.

Jesse

Yeah, freshman year I was introduced to you as just like the guy to try to beat in this Smash tournament and I lost too many times, so I was very ashamed; but the next year we just hung on the same friend group type deal and got closer because of video games. A lot of shit has changed since tenth grade, but yeah it's great.

Jesse

Going back to the whole France and Germany thing. She was there on a special stay where she's able to study between France and Germany consistently. Right now, she's back in France on an internship and while we were there, we just met after a little party, we walked in a park and I don't know, it's all like that. Those little high school butterflies, it would be like having a crush in high school.

Alex

Gross!

Jesse

Gross! I haven’t felt like that in a while, so I'm very glad that I felt that with her! Shoutout to Ori!

Norbert

How nice!

Well, I'm curious about is where did you get the tools to dismantle your bike? When you said you did it yourself in your dorm.

Jesse

It's crazy, biking is really huge in cities, especially like Hamburg, especially just all of Europe in general. So I went out of my dorm, and they have a little bike rack with tools attached to it, and you just throw your bike on and start dismantling everything. That's what I did. It was really nice that they just provided that for us. I didn't know how to change how to change out a tube for a long time until I actually came here so I would just go to the shop and they would just gyp me out of 20 euros to change a tube.

Norbert

$20 to change a tube?!

Jesse

That's like $25 here.

Norbert

Oh my god, yeah you got a little scammed there!

Jesse

I hated it so much!

Norbert

Dude, that's crazy. Speaking of inner tubes. There is this guy I once met when I was selling the bike back in college who told me that in his country - I don't know if this is true – but I feel like he was lying to me because I tried to look it up, couldn't find it. He told me that the inner tube in his country is called a camera.

Jesse

Yeah! That's what it's called in Spanish! “La Camera”

Norbert

That’s real?! Oh shit, that's real? I thought he was lying to me this whole time!

Jesse

That's what is the inner tube of a bike is called!

Norbert

Oh, okay, wow, we learned something interesting.

Jesse

So when I was younger, I had a little like a kid’s bike and stuff and the inner tube broke and my dad was like “(speaking Spanish, presumably something about fixing a ‘camera’”) What do you mean? I have to fix a camera? What? What camera? You're not recording me right now. I was just a dumb kid. I didn't understand that the camera was the inner tube. I also just didn't understand how bikes worked.

Norbert

Wow that's interesting. I did not know that that's interesting.

Alex

So anyways, Jesse was in the same boat as me, and we're both film students in our last year. And so being a film student, how does being into, you know, the wedding and photo industry, how does that change things for you?

Jesse

Honestly studying as a film student gets me very worried about just financial security especially withal the recent IATSE things that have been happening and…