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THE CENTENNIAL EPISODE WITH DAVID F.M. VAUGHN & GAVIN LODGE

January 18, 2026 - By 

Full Transcript

David:

David, it’s it it’s our hundredth episode, and we have to do something special. Didn’t you just say we should open the episode with singing happy birthday?

SPEAKER_00:

Happy birthday to me Happy birth I’m a hundred years old. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, dear Gatriarchs. Happy birthday to me.

David:

And this is Gatriarchs.

Gavin:

David, it’s our hundredth episode. Have you planned lots of special stuff for us? Did you torture your children to get better stories out of them?

David:

You and I have talked about this episode, and every time we talked about this episode, we go, we gotta do something great. We gotta do something great. We gotta plan. We’re gonna have all kinds of cool things. And what do we do, Gabe? We punted. We punted.

Gavin:

For listener, uh, you might think that we are living the high life of this is all we do, um, and we have the time to plan for it. And you can tell by our anemic social media that all we do is think about Gatrich all the time. The fact is, I started thinking about gatriarchs 11 minutes ago today. So and it’s our hundredth episode.

David:

Well, I am very proud of us. I think I am too a hundred episodes. Yeah, anything made is nearly impossible. Yeah, and for some reason, our listener has stuck with us, and that is that is crazy. Um speaking of listener, I have some two listener reach out um this past week.

Gavin:

Um so do you think listener just uses a pseudonym sometimes and um it’s another email account?

David:

That’s true. So one is um our listener, Sam, who is the host of the Baby Ready Podcast, who we love. Um and she is going to be my future wife because she um lives in Canada. Uh-huh. Right. She is she’s married to her wife. However, I don’t know if you’re aware, but things are going so great here in the States. So we’re thinking about divorcing our significant others and marrying each other because we love each other. But that being said, she wrote in to say uh when we were talking about me and my husband and my daughter going with my son to drop off, and you’re like, that’s a that’s a new parent thing, that’s a kindergarten thing. Oh, that that stuff will go away. Right. She has older kids, and she says her and her wife still show up to things together.

Gavin:

Well, yeah, I mean, show up to things together, yes, but not every single day. She does drop-offs together.

David:

Oh, great. Yeah. So anyway, thank you, listeners. Yeah, she is better than you. And also, um, our other listener, our or the same listener with a different email address and a different name and a different everything. Uh, Liam, hi Liam, he’s one of our favorite listeners. Um, he reached out to remind me because I was talking about how much I love Scotland and how I want to move there someday. And my favorite town in Scotland is Inverness. He reached out to remind me he is from Inverness. Oh, yes. And so, with Sam, like with Sam, I will be divorcing my husband and marrying Liam, so I can now have a green card marriage to go to Inverness, Scotland, and live out our fantasy. So I have a lot of divorce in my future and a lot of marriage and a lot of divorce.

Gavin:

Seems like another podcast to fraud, honestly.

David:

A lot of fraud for those of you listening out there. Anyway, thank you, listener, for reaching out to us. I always love to hear from you, especially when it’s taking my side of things. I always love that.

Gavin:

Relatable, totally relatable. And in this situation, I say go with God or go with Cher or you know, whatever. That you do what you need to do, and uh Brian is fantastic, and we’ll figure it out here without you somehow. Um, hi Brian. So, David, this morning, just before my alarm went off, um, I had a crazy ass dream. And my partner actually said to me, You were whimpering in your sleep. What was going on? Like a puppy. I just yes, I just have to share this crazy ass dream where my son, not anybody else, my son and I were on a flight. We had to change flights between uh change planes between flights, flights, but somehow we had to be on a wooden ship to get between the flights. Totally. The wooden ship, we were on top, we were on the deck, but nobody else was, and there was a storm, and suddenly we were in Antarctica and rocky, whatever. It was like a pirate ship in a storm, as if nobody was at the helm. Immediately we hit a rock, sinks. Me and my son are there in the freezing ass water. I can see rescue boats coming, because apparently we’re at, I don’t know, just off of JFK. So it’s just weird that we had to take a boat between terminals. Yeah. My kid disappears. And I tell the panic. I mean, in my dream, I can viscerally feel the panic. That was a reminder of not that I questioned my love for my son, but this was a oh, I would it it was it was real. It was real, right? He pops back up in the dream onto the surface of the water as I’m screaming to the emergency people, find my son, find my son, find my son. I mean, I it was, you know, the it was a it was a frenzy. He pops up completely naked in this freezing water, and I’m like, what were you doing? And he said, I learned from scouts that you’re supposed to take your clothes off so that you don’t get dropped, pulled down by the water. And I just I woke up thinking, was that a lesson? That is that a scout thing?

David:

But no, that’s I think that’s also for like if you fall into like a freezing lake and they pull you out, they take your clothes off because it’s when they pull you out.

Gavin:

Yeah, yes, when you to pull you out, you need to take cold, wet clothes off of you. But nevertheless, he gave me a heart attack in my dream because he disappeared to seemingly underwater, take his clothes off.

David:

Well, why did that’s why you shouldn’t have booked with Spirit? Because Spirit Airlines makes you take a wooden ship between terminals.

Gavin:

This episode brought to you by Delta Airlines. At least we’re not Spirit. Actually, no, that was Alaska Airlines. Uh anyway, thanks for indulging that. It was it was a crazy ass dream. I’m gonna ask you about crazy ass dreams with your kids later.

David:

Yeah, that is crazy. And it reminds me of something that happened. Um, I’ve been traveling a lot lately for work. Um and I just went to Columbia last weekend, which was so fun. I’ve never been to South America. Tell us. It was so funny. Oh god, I tell first of all, I I I want to tell you all the details, but they’re not really boring, and I don’t want to bore our listener on our hundredth a show, but I will tell our listener, and this is like porn for older people. I had the entire exit row to myself on a five and a half hour flight without my children. For those of you who just got an immediate reaction erection, you’re welcome. But I was thinking about something that I’ve seen a lot lately, and I uh wanted to bring it up to you. Is have you seen parents who have babies, maybe like a really fussy toddler on a plane, and they make these parent packs, these bags, these plastic bags of like, I don’t know, fucking treats and stuff. And it has like a little paper on the inside that says, you know, sorry, you know, it’s it’s our first flight, so we may get a little fussy. We appreciate your patience or whatever, and they like pass them out to the people around them. I’ve only ever seen it on social media. I’ve certainly never experienced it. I I want to get your take on this because my take is fuck off. Yeah, you’re on a bus in the sky if my baby is crying. Yeah, that’s that’s you should have bought a uh you should fly uh private. Yeah. Like, like I get like what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to alleviate some of like the stress from them, maybe like, oh go ahead or whatever. Sure, but that is not fucking necessary.

Gavin:

I mean, anybody who has had a child knows what it’s like to be on a plane with a kid. Don’t we all kind of just tune it out? I feel like I could sit next to a screaming baby on a plane and they’d be like, whatever, it’s not my kid.

David:

I do because we all have headphones or we’re all watching Master Chef or whatever on the TV.

Gavin:

I think what you’re describing is so one, it’s meant to just be social media, it’s it’s it’s so presentational and performative as to be frankly narcissistic and making everybody else’s flight about me so that I have good social media content. So I just find it really disingenuous. I mean, if your kid screams for three hours, we can all deal with it. If it’s an overnight flight to Europe, you might want to like buy everybody a drink, although it’s an international flight. So I don’t know.

David:

I don’t know if it’s disingenuous, but I do think it is done so you as the parent feel less guilty about your child doing whatever. But I feel like if you’re already doing that, you’re already probably doing all the right things to try like pat your baby, give them interesting things. But at some point, as we know, kids are just gonna be assholes. There can be assholes in the sky, they can be assholes on a ship just outside of JFK. I mean, it it is so anyway. I just I was thinking about that while I was on my flight, and I was like, you know, I want to make sure that us parents don’t feel like on top of all the other things we have to do when we’re flying with our kids that we’re not, yeah.

Gavin:

It is so stressful to get on a plane. You’re stressed, and then just the packing and the this and the that. Give yourself a break and don’t go to that effort because you just need to please the people around you. It’s uh it’s it’s too much. Too much. Um so this weekend we had um I I I posed this to the listener and the entire intrawebs universe out there. Why aren’t my kids’ phone limits working? Something happened, and I invite everybody to tell me what is going on. Yes, I’ve changed my password. Yes, I’ve changed the settings. Yes, I’ve done this, that, and the other. But you, David, because you’re such a neophyte so far and you don’t have um kids with phones. What’s a new one? You don’t realize a newbie that um there are settings that you can do in your family circle on iPhone to be able to monitor how much time your kid spends on um whatever app, right? And you’re supposed to be able to set um uh set the time limits for how much time they spend on iPhone.

David:

Yeah, because I feel like your daughter often asks for more time on her TikTok.

Gavin:

Well, guess what? It’s been four months since she asked for any more time. And I and it’s not like I just woke up yesterday and realized something’s wrong. I woke up four months ago and I’m like, what something is wrong? She’s not asking for more time. I’ve been down Reddit rabbit holes. I am trying to do the research, and frankly, the come away, come uh the takeaway from it is just Apple doesn’t care. They want you to be on the app. They’re they don’t care. You’re not a priority, right? So anyway, this weekend we tried something new, which was I’m like, okay, you realize you have to have limits. She’s like, Yep. Um, so when you’ve hit your limit and I think about it, I we’re just gonna take your phone away, okay? Oh my god. Well, let me Oh, I thought that went well. Let me tell you the ways that did not go well, especially when I did it. Oh no. We’ve made it 13 years until the moment that my daughter got a suitcase out and packed to leave. And it was on a Sunday night at 9:30 p.m., by the way. She was moving out. I’m like, okay. But that I admit, that was sort of the end where I was like, oh, really? You’re gonna leave now? And I started to laugh. And admittedly, she started to laugh too. And then she just she kind of gave up there. But just before that, she said, Can I have your phone? And I’m like, no, you can’t. Can I have your phone? You took mine. Well, what are you gonna do with my phone? I’m gonna call Child Protective Services and David, I handed that phone over so fast. Call them. Call them. Do you want me to call 911 for you and hand the phone over because you have not been allowed to listen to Spotify during your shower? Which I admit, I’m saying this out loud at how absurd that is, but the night had progressed to such levels of absurd.

David:

I just I wish I could hear a recording of like CPS. What like what can I report? And they’re like, oh my god, my dad’s like abusing me. Like, well, what is he doing? I can’t listen to Spotify in the shower. I can’t listen to Gate my my most recent episode of Gate Sharks, which is my favorite podcast. And I have emailed them and I have rated them, I’ve given them five stars. Yeah.

Gavin:

Oh, listen, I have no uh dad hacks of the week for you, and there is no good news in the in the world. None. There’s just all let’s just all bury our heads in the sand this week. So I’m gonna start a new um, a new trend here on uh it this is a new service we’re gonna provide, which is daddy zaddy crushes. Okay, we should have a Gatriarch’s new crush of the week once in a while, okay? Okay, and I want you to know, somewhat news related, our new daddy hack, or excuse me, our new daddy crush, we can definitely package this better. I’ll leave it to Brian, your husband, to figure out how to market this better. Our new daddy, hunky crush of Gatriarchs is Governor Andy Bashir. Yeah. Do you know who Andy Bashir is?

David:

I do. And and I and sometimes you and I uh aren’t the on the same page about this because some of your daddies are like great grandfat daddies. Um but I will say Andy is in that perfect sweet spot. He’s 47, he’s a he looks good in a suit, he’s got a very conservative haircut, but you know he has big balls.

SPEAKER_03:

Do you know what I mean?

David:

Like, yeah.

Gavin:

Well, speaking of, in a super, super red state with a super red majority, he has recently made a statement that we’re not going to hate on kids under the entire queer umbrella because here in Kentucky, we are good Americans who believe in the value of human rights and human expression, and we’re not gonna shit on kids who are just trying to find their way in the world. And that goes for kids on the entire spectrum of gender and sexual identity. And it ain’t just because of that that Andy Bashir is definitely our zaddy crush of the week, but that is um right, that informs it greatly. Crush of the week.

David:

I like that. I like like the daddy crush of the week. Um, and we love fried chicken, so go for it, Kentucky. And bourbon. Yeah, I mean, I love that. Um, really quick before we move on, I was just thinking about stupid how like daycare and schools and stuff and how they deal with lunches and stuff. We will pack, I pack my kids lunches every day, and then I also will give them snacks. And sometimes I’ll give them, you know, and and then usually daycare will return like the Tupperware, but then whatever they don’t eat, they throw out or whatever. Right. My daughter is in a new daycare class, and for whatever reason, the teacher wants to be able to return plastic bags, yeah, wrappers to things. I’m like, what what why are you returning a Ziploc bag with peanut butter on the inside of it? Throw it away. Or like the little one single-serve applesauce plastic cups that you peel the lid off of. Which are not recyclable. Why are they coming home? Why are they coming home? I don’t understand why snack wrappers, the wrapping of a clip bar, is coming back. Like, what do I need that for?

Gavin:

Um, I will say this is a good opportunity to make a little um press announcement that there are some companies that will recycle wrappers. We’re able to do it at Halloween. Some company Y’all do it. I pay you$1,500 a month to raise my children for me. Yes. You throw away. You throw it away. You might proactively um provide her with the uh the information of the recycling company that can do wrappers. Uh sometimes during the year they can.

David:

I’m they can pay$11 an hour. I don’t think they’re gonna do any of that.

Gavin:

For your$1,500, you think it’s only getting to$1100 an hour, huh? You feel good about this?

David:

I feel terrible about it.

Gavin:

You know what I feel terrible about is that you took everything out of order today.

David:

I thought this was gonna be our intro into the top three list. No, you know what else I feel terrible about? That would have been a good segue into that.

Gavin:

No, uh don’t worry. I I’m picking up what you’re laying down, but what I really feel terrible about is you going back on our schedule here in our hundredth episode as if we have no chemistry or rhythm here. But that isn’t quite as terrible as I feel about what? Our top three list. Gate three arcs, top three list, three, two, one.

David:

What was the use of going back and doing all of that? Oh my god. Okay, so our top three list is my top three list, which really is our top three list. And our top three list for our hundredth episode is what are our top three favorite moments of Gatriarchs? Which, when I told you that, you said, I don’t even know if I know one moment. Real quote, guys. I don’t know if that made it to the episode, but that was a real quote by uh the co-host. Anyway, so I was thinking about what are my top three moments. And initially I was thinking about like parts of episodes or guests or whatever. Yeah, and then when I started really thinking about the things I really, really loved, I realized they weren’t necessarily things that maybe our listener knows or it was privy to. So um, here are my my personal top three favorite moments of Gatrich. And number three, it’s so cheesy, but I really believe it. Getting to meet all these cool guests. Oh, totally. We have reached out to strangers that we like on the internet, and a lot of them have come and been our guests and been really funny and cool. And we text and we we and we’ve partnered with things. And so just meeting some of the guests, some of our guests kind of suck, but we won’t tell you which ones those are. But most of them have been really, really great.

Gavin:

And if you were a sucky guest and you’re listening, well, you should know now that you were a sucky guest. Sorry.

David:

Honestly, nothing will be as bad as our guests today. So let’s be honest. Um, and number two, uh, I don’t know if you all know this, but when Gavin and I were making our um amazing race audition video, we got thrown out of the Marriott Marquee because we were filming on a floor where some business was having a convention, and this kind of hot daddy came up to us and it was like, What are you doing here? And we were like, Oh, we’re just filming an amazing race video. And he’s like, get the fuck out of here. And I have we have that on camera somewhere. Um, and number one, my favorite part is unfortunately the part the listener never gets to hear, which is all the stuff we laugh and talk about right before we record and right after we record. Not only you and I, but all of our guests, when they feel like, hey, the the record button is not on, yeah, I can be honest with you. And um, you know, some of it is uh scandalous, but a lot of it is just is just kind of fun. So that is my top three favorite K Trucks moments. What about you?

Gavin:

Um, that is those are all excellent, and I am well aware of all of them. And it is kind of too bad that when the microphone recording button is no longer illuminated, how we kind of let our hair down in different ways. But also, I think for listener, this is pretty we we bring in another level of energy to it all, but um and frankly It’s mostly things like cutting, you know, out like the address of our guests.

David:

Like we don’t want to promote that stuff.

Gavin:

And my voice goes an octave higher as well. Um does. Hey Todd, do you want to come make an appearance on Gatriox real quick?

David:

Oh my god, Gavin’s husband is in.

Gavin:

Why not?

David:

I can’t all why not?

Gavin:

Just come say hi. He’s dying. He’s eating a sandwich outside making um uh hand gestures to me that I don’t understand. He’s saying something about driving. He won’t come on and say hi, so I don’t care what it is.

David:

It’s we are married to the same person. You and I are like, look at me, look at me, look at me. And our husbands are like, don’t fucking look at me.

Gavin:

Okay, top three things that pop to mind. I love a good top three questionnaire, but then I’m so indecisive and such a Libra, it’s very hard to narrow it down. So I think of it as the three moments that just stick out in my mind most. Um number three, uh, the very first time we had a listener comment, uh, that they were listening to the show, and I We did read it I back in the episode 40s or so. And I’m like, wow, people really are listening. And they appreciating our one listener is appreciating the nonsense that we’re putting out there with in hopefully a safe space of commiseration and community and blah, blah, blah. Okay, I won’t get um, you know, nostalgic about that.

David:

But it is weird. It is a weird feeling to be like, oh, other people are listening. Yes, David, to the podcast you put out into the world. Yes, people are listening.

Gavin:

Number two, something I think I have mentioned at another time, which was when my daughter said, Daddy, I’ve been listening to Gatriarchs. And I’m like, oh, uh-huh. And she says, You say a lot of bad words. I remember that. I’m like, I don’t say nearly as many bad words as David does. Oh, that’s true. Um, and number one, set the tone in the very first episode for what I thought the page the podcast would be and then ended up not being, which was your something great, which you told about a woman recently who was at the grocery store who said something to your kids like, Oh, you and your dads, you must be so lucky to have your dads or something. And you, you cold-hearted snake with a lump of lead as cold as steel, here where a woman’s heart should be, started crying on the podcast. And I’m like, Oh, I wasn’t expecting this. And there has not been a single moment of sincere emotion out of you in the last 99 episodes. That was the only time you showed any, any, any humanity, and it’s just been a cold-hearted snake ever since.

David:

I give you humanity once every hundred episodes.

Gavin:

So, yeah, those are my uh three favorites. Now, you know what? I want to stay on this trend. Um, because hey, it’s like a birthday can last for weeks if we want it to, right? Our celebration of our hundreds, our celebration of ourselves for a hundred episodes can go for another few episodes. I just want to know your three funniest moments that come to mind of the last hundred episodes. So, our next guest on Gatriarch is not only a visionary, an intelligent uh being bon vivant out in the greater New York City uh tri-state area, and also somebody who has made my life immensely better, both before parenting and after, is none other than David Franklin and Marshall Vaughn. David F. and Vaughn, welcome to Gatriarchs. I’m so happy to be here. And thank you. In this episode, I don’t think we actually uh warned listener that we’re gonna be our own guests finally. But we’ve talked about doing this for a really long time, and so um uh not that we didn’t have somebody better, we thought these are the best guests we could possibly have for um episode 100. Right? So anyway, having made too many disclaimers here, I want to know first and foremost how have your kids driven you crazy today.

David:

Oh, it’s so fun to be on this side of the table. Um well, as we know, my kids drive me crazy every day. I would say today specifically is I, you know, part of the morning rush of the routine of getting breakfast and getting your shoes on and getting dressed and brushing your teeth and getting your backpacks and all the things. It always makes me crazy. This morning in particular, my uh son and I were doing this a little bit of a dance where I was like, brush your fucking teeth. And he would kind of like dramatically like brush them one way once, and then look at me like, was that good enough? And I was like, more. And we had this like face-off back and forth of how many brushes, and I had to request every fucking movement of the bristles, and um, I almost threw him um into the ocean. So yeah, this morning it was in particular brushing your teeth, which again is always a surprise. It’s always a surprise to him, but yeah, no.

Gavin:

Uh it is that that constant battle is uh just certainly endless, that’s for sure. But I appreciate that um at least it wasn’t your daughter who is going through her own things these days, but she wasn’t the one um at the surface. I’m sure there was another reason that she was driving you crazy. No. Did you always know that you wanted to be a dad?

David:

Yes, I did. Even when I thought I was gonna marry a woman, um, I yeah, I just it’s always kind of I think for a while it was just always assumed. And then when I came out as gay, it was like, no, I had to make the decision to, but yeah, I had always wanted it. I had always, and whether this was like trappings of heteronormativity or whatever, I’d always kind of imagine getting married, having kids, having a house, all that kind of stuff. And so I’ve always definitely wanted to. And I remember when I would fill out my dating profiles on, you know, the various sites. You could choose grinder and scruff. Correct. On sniffies when it says do you want kids or not? Um, uh, it’ll say like definitely wants kids, maybe thinking about it somewhat, definitely not, or whatever. Um, and mine always said definitely wants kids. And that was one of my like screeners, right? Like I had it that had to say maybe or up for me. Yeah.

Gavin:

Was that wait? I don’t know how you and Brian met, but did you meet on the apps?

David:

We did. We met up, we met on match.com before there was an app. It was like you would have to log into the website. For those listener out there, a website is www.htp colon forward slash forward slash. Yeah, so we met on match.com back when it was an actual website.

Gavin:

Um, and he obviously was down for having kids from the get-go.

David:

Yeah, I re I very specifically remember his profile says under once kids, it says like maybe or something like that. It was something a little like, and now that I know him, I’m like, of course he said that. Um, but yeah, he he was maybe, and I think he probably felt the same way a lot of gay people feel was like, well, now that it’s not automatically expected of me, do I really want the like it’s hard to sometimes separate the like pressures of having kids because that’s the kind of quintessential thing to do. Um and also, do I really want to? But yeah, his said hidden maybe. And then um, I think I’ve told the story before um on my podcast, uh Gay Trux, you guys should follow it. Um, where I was a little when I was like, let’s move forward to doing this, I was a little worried that he he would have to be kind of dragged along. And man, the second our kids were born, he was like dove right in. So I have no worries, yeah.

Gavin:

So before you guys became dads, what were you what was your favorite thing to do?

David:

What were your pastimes? You’re talking about other than butt stuff? Um, you know, we our favorite thing to do. So my husband, you know, we met when I was living in Los Angeles, and I I was, you know, working as I do, which is sporadically and weirdly, and have no real hours. And my husband, as he is now, was a nine-to-fiver. And so um, we would always spend weekends together, and our favorite thing would to do would be to sleep in late, which I don’t know if you’ve ever slept in late in the past 10 years, but I sleep. Not in the last 13 years, and then we would kind of like lazily decide to get brunch at this place called uh More Than Waffles in Sino, California. Amazing. And uh we would just stumble over there at like 11:30 in the morning and have breakfast.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh-huh.

David:

And then we would kind of come back and we would watch like Jurassic Park 2 on his little tube TV. Um, and I fucking loved that. Just like the laziest days where there was literally nothing at all on any sort of planner. Like I don’t like I’m thinking about it now. I was like, I don’t even remember that feeling. Yeah, it’s there’s nothing on your schedule to do. You can just watch Jurassic Park at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.

Gavin:

And it isn’t a waste of time.

David:

Yeah. Yeah. So that would be that was our favorite things to do. Yeah.

Gavin:

So now though, um, albeit with the disclaimer that obviously we love our children more than anything, and that is why we’re here complaining about them. Um, what is your favorite thing to do as a family unit now that makes you say, oh yeah, we’re in the game here and I really love this?

David:

That’s a good question. Our favorite thing to do as a family. You know, it’s so there’s a lot of things, but one, and it’s so stupid, but we love is like there’s a there’s a couple parks by us that’s walkable. And just going to the park and like they’re old enough now, they don’t have to be like babysat, but they’re old enough also to like play games and like tag and racing each other, or they want to play by themselves, and Brian and I will just swing on like the big adult swings. Um, so I’d say like going to like a park is one of our favorites. Also, we do love, as you know, going to um our local mall, which is this huge, it’s like the largest mall in the northern hemisphere. And uh we are now that’s not exact an exaggeration. No, it’s it’s real. It’s like the it’s like a great mall of America, I think, is yeah, bigger in square footage, maybe. Right, okay. But um, yeah, and we love going to the water park there. We are like yearly pass holders now. Um, and that’s one of our favorite things to do now, too.

Gavin:

You’re you’re season pass holders just as of a couple weeks ago, right? I remember you talking about that. See, I listened to some of what you say. You do listen to the show. Thank you. Um now wait a minute, you have skipped over something. When I asked you, what did you like to do before kids? You’ve skipped over something that I wanted to interview you about for the last hundred episodes. You know what that is?

David:

Poker. Poker. Poker. So you hardly know her, but yeah. So I like a lot of people who play poker now or have played poker, poker became like really hot on like ESPN in like the mid-2000s. I don’t really know why, but for whatever how would you know that? You don’t watch ESPN. That is very true. I don’t know how I know that. But it just all of a sudden became kind of part of like the kind of public consciousness for some reason. And so I, like a lot of people, were like, oh, I want to learn how to play this game. And I played just for fun every once in a while with you know, um, work uh colleagues and stuff. And then I moved to LA um after working in a show for a really long time, and I didn’t have a job in LA and I didn’t want to just spend all my savings. And so I was like, there in LA, there’s a lot of card rooms. Um, there’s also the world’s largest card room, which is the Commerce Casino in Commerce California. And I was like, well, I’m gonna play there. I’m gonna start playing and see if I’m, you know, very good at this. And I started at the very, very baby tables, you know, the one and two dollar tables. Okay. And I found myself getting really good at it. And so what I did was every time I felt like I kind of outgrew one of these tables, I would move on to the two and five dollar table and then the five ten and the ten and the ten twenty. And I moved all the way up to the largest tables there are at this world’s largest casino. And I found myself doing really well and making good money. And I would play in tournaments and place, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Keep in mind I was single, well, single. I was not married, and also I didn’t have kids. So I could just go to the casino for eight hours on a Tuesday if I wanted. Um, and so it became my day job. It became what paid my bills, it became uh, and I still love playing. I just don’t want to get a chance to play as often as I did, and I would play at least three days a week uh for usually about six hours at a time. So yeah, I still I still play.

Gavin:

Something you explained to me is that it’s a long game, like it’s a marathon. You if you stick with it, it isn’t necessarily that you are so good at it necessarily, but that you have to play knowing that you’re gonna sit there for six to eight hours.

David:

Exactly. Like the the the common saying is um uh you know, a single hand in poker is 90% luck and 10% skill, and like a thousand hands in poker is 90% skill and 10% luck. And it is all about the the long game because the pro poker players play one out of 20 hands, and so it’s a lot of sitting around, and so you can’t just pop down at a table and start grabbing people’s money. It’s I think that’s a cliche of how poker is played. It’s played a lot more strategically and methodically. It’s not just like, hey, I’m gonna get that guy’s money. You maybe you can’t. Maybe the cards don’t go that way or the the pots don’t go that way. So yeah, I I always say if I’m gonna play poker, I have to make sure there’s at least four hours I can sit down, or it’s not gonna be worth it because I’ll feel if it’s an hour, I’m gonna look at the clock and be like, I really need to make some money, and then I’m gonna play worse because when you say pros play one of every 20 hands, does that mean you have to you have to bet every single hand?

Gavin:

But you’re you don’t?

David:

No. So uh no. So uh prior to a hand, there’s two players that have to put money down to start the betting, and that they call those those the small blind and the big blind. Other than that, everyone else around the table, when it comes to them in the the beginning, they can fold their hand at the top of the hand and they’re not they’re not in at all. You don’t have to bet to start. No, but if it’s a tournament, the rules change a little bit where you are, it’s called an ante, where you are putting money in every time. Um, and there’s a little bit of a time limit, but what they call um uh grinding, ironically. Grinding, which is people sitting at these cash games and just for hours just sitting back and waiting for the hands. So yeah, it is it is a lot of waiting, it’s a lot of folding. Now, there’s there’s a lot of different per poker personalities, right? There’s people who sit down at tables and they’re too anti. They gotta play. So they play every three hands, you know. They they play way more than they should, and then I’m those people always lose their money. Um, and then there’s people like me who have learned that like, no, I’ve you got you gotta play really slow. So it’s not as exciting and fun as it looks like on TV and everything, but I really love it because it is a lot of math, it’s a lot of strategy. Um, it’s a it’s a lot, it’s not as much like, oh, I’m watching their eyes blink funny, so I know they’re lying. It’s it’s almost never that.

Gavin:

Uh so when you say you might have already answered this, but when you said earlier you realized, oh, I’m pretty good at this, was it just because you had patience with it? Or do you have a special talent that makes you good at it?

David:

I I just think my special talent is I learn very fast. I am not patient. I am arguably the most impatient person in the world, but I am very, very good at no. We will come back to that. We will come back to that of noticing patterns and learning really quickly. Like often, if there’s just something I have never seen before or know, I just have to watch it once, and then I’m like, I got it. I understand it immediately. And so I found myself just learning really, really, really fast. The only thing I battle um skill-wise is my patience. If it’s been an hour and I haven’t really played, I get impatient too. And that’s what you have to fight. Yeah. This is probably the most boring interview I’ve ever had on Gatriarchs.

Gavin:

Well, like you said earlier, um obviously today’s guests will pale in comparison to all the other good ones we’ve had. Um, so uh back to Showbiz a little bit. You moved to LA because you were like, I just got off a national tour. I made a shitload of money, and I’m gonna go to be a Hollywood star, right? Yeah, and it totally happened.

David:

Um, no, I I was on a national tour that closed in LA. And at the time, there were renters in my apartment. I was subletting my apartment, and they weren’t gonna leave for a couple months. And I was like, you know, I have been doing this particular show for many years, and I was feeling the kind of desire to do something new and challenging. And I have known I’d always wanted to direct. That was something very important to me. Um, but I just hadn’t really done much of it. And so I was like, you know, I’m here in LA, the show’s closed, I have no, I’m not going back to New York City. Why don’t I just stay here and learn, uh direct some shows, maybe learn television writing, um, and just see what that side of the world um would feel like. And as soon as I started doing it, I was like, oh, this is what I was meant to do. Like I’ve been an actor for like 15 years and I loved it, but I realized like, oh, this is this is combining all of my actual talents, which I I know you don’t think I have any, but minimal. Minimal. Um and I was just like so I was reinvigorated with like, oh, this is what I want to be doing full time. Um got it.

Gavin:

Yeah. Share with us a favorite showbiz foible or just great moment from being on stage. Oh god, I’ve so so fucking many so many. Go ahead. We’re listening. Um You know what it’s like to ask these questions. Just give us a good one.

David:

I know. Um, one of my favorites was I don’t know how funny this will be to the audience, but I was doing Lay Miz, and um and Lay Miz. Already funny. Already funny. Uh the fact that I was in that show. Um but we were we had our um there’s the whole act two basically takes place on the barricade, and it’s all the students on the barricade with guns, and there’s fighting and singing and people singing their fighting.

Gavin:

Which never made sense to me until I saw the movie, which the movie was terrible, but at least it gave me a visual context for what the hell is happening in that show.

David:

Exactly. So, anyway, we had uh our first replacement of Javert. So he was relatively new in the show, maybe a couple weeks old, and was an older gentleman, and sometimes sometimes would struggle with lines or whatever, or whatever. So there was a scene where we’re all in the barricade and we finish this one section, and somebody’s line is he’s back, and the music starts and Javert climbs over the barricade from the other side and he goes, This is my friends, I have a story to tell, you know. And we begin this next section of the barricade. And so we hear, he’s back, and I don’t hear anything. And I’m like, huh. And I turn to look because I’m at the top of the barricade because I was playing on Joras, you’re welcome. And I was I looked behind the barricade and no Javert to be seen. And I look in the wings and no Javert to be seen. And I’m like, oh, okay, what do we do? And we’re all just standing there holding guns with our dicks out because we’re like, what do we fucking do? And then you hear over the speakers, because his mic is live now. Yeah, you hear, oh, oh, I think I’m on. Oh, oh, I think I’m on. Shit, I’m on. And then you hear him, because he’s on the fifth floor. You hear him running through the through the stairwell, an older gentleman running. And then he just we’re just standing there. Because if you know Le Miz, it is all sung. It is one giant long song. There are no pot, there’s no like we wait and hold the music until the music is far. We’re we are six choruses beyond when he comes on stage.

Gavin:

You don’t hold it like there. It was I assumed that the he’s back was in the clear and the conductor’s just waiting.

David:

It is, it’s he’s back, but ba-bada. And as soon as the music starts, he starts climbing over. Right, right, right. And so he runs on stage, he’s like half dressed, he’s like, listen, my friends, and we’re like, no, no, no, no. We’re like an hour past that. I don’t know. It was I I have a lot of like funny, like crazy stories, but that one always makes me laugh because a bunch of Broadway professionals standing together, not knowing what to do, because Javert did not appear.

Gavin:

Because it that becomes imminently clear that no matter how many improv classes you take, there is nothing you can do in that moment except just go like automatons through the motions of just continuing the show.

David:

Wait, I know this is your show, but can I say one more theater story that just popped into my head?

Gavin:

Of course you can, but I do want to come back and clarify something. You had your little gay hair flip when you said I was on the barricades because I was Anzuros. And that means absolutely nothing to anybody out there listening, listener, and it means nothing to me, but it did remind me of when I we had some reference to great Broadway songs, and I said, Do you hear the people sing? Because I couldn’t remember the title of the song. Clearly don’t know Lame is at all. But this prompted me to think, oh, were you the do you hear the people sing guy?

David:

Yes. Yes. Lamar just dead. He’s the one who waves the fucking red flag. That’s yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gavin:

That is the most memorable part of the entire show. It’s just the dude who waves the flag. That’s you got to be the dude who raised the raised, you got to be the do you hear the people sing wave the red flag guy.

David:

I did. I I I actually understudied the part for a while and then I took over for when he left. But yes, I got to be that. And it was actually really fun because when you die, you get shot at the top of the barricade and you kind of fall back behind. And then there’s this big break where they do the sewer scene, and then after the sewer scene, the whole Barricade like turns around, and there’s this big dramatic moment where he shows um Andras’s body and it’s like doo-doo doo-doo. So I’m like having to lay back there for a little while, and it’s on like this soft platform. And there were days where I would be shaken awake by the barricade spinning, and I was like, Oh fuck, I fell asleep. And I’m like, quick, look dead, look dead. Um, no, but when my my last story, and it I I I it’s all right, it’s all right.

Gavin:

I expected this. So did listener.

David:

I know. Our poor listeners, like, get to it, get to the real gus, Gavin Knox, lodge. So I’m doing I’m doing a West Side story, and I am um, me and a friend, uh the girl playing Anita, we would have this game where we would stand kind of uh offstage, but like downstage in this little area we call the cove, and it was like this this little entrance, and we would try to make each other laugh. She would stand there during cool while I was doing cool, and she would try to make me laugh. She would do a funny dance or show me her butt or whatever. And then the same thing would happen when she was doing America. I would stand there and I would do something, right? And we built and built. So we’re doing the show for months, and it was the final show. And so obviously, we are raising the fucking bar. Yes, you are. And so she, I’m doing cool, and I I can already tell something’s happening, right? And so she climbs like Spider-Man. She puts a foot on either side of the wall and climbs up like 10 feet. So she’s straddled over this thing, right? And she pulls her top down because there’s like a lighting grid that she’s like put her foot in so she can stand up there. Yeah. She pulls her top down and she has her breasts out, right? And so she like, she like jiggles them or whatever. And I’m like, okay, that’s really funny or whatever. And so I see her, I’m like, haha, and I’m continuing the dance. Towards the end of the dance, I come back to that side of the stage, and there she is with stage management and a ladder because she’s stuck and she’s gotten her foot stuck in this lighting grid. She’s topless and she’s having to be taken off of this lighting thing with her tits out. And you know this person, and I will tell you their name after we record. But it was so that broke me. The fact that she was pet and she was like pulling on her foot with like this panic in her face. Oh man, it was good.

Gavin:

Oh, that’s good. That’s good, that’s good, that’s good. Um, random tidbits about you. You haven’t, you talk about your family a lot, actually, but for listener, what is your family out there? Um, your mom is in Florida still. No.

David:

Yeah. I have What’s the family out there? Yeah, I have a what’s the family out there? I’ve uh we’re mostly spread out uh around in and around the South. My my mom lives, I kind of grew up, I was born in Virginia, but I grew up in Florida. So a lot of my mom’s, my mom still lives in Florida, her whole side of the family lives in Florida. And then my dad now lives in Cal uh, sorry, North Carolina, um, where a lot of his family is, and where like some of my brothers and sisters are, and then I have a brother in Georgia, and so we’re all kind of spread out through the South. Um and I’m of course the Yankee. I have two half brothers and two half sisters. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I was the the my parents were married previously, they had kids, they got divorced from their respective partners, they came together and they finally got it right and had me.

Gavin:

Ah, yeah. And then they didn’t need any more children because why?

David:

Because they they when you get perfection, what else do you need?

Gavin:

What would you say is your biggest parenting fail?

David:

My patience. I I am zero. Prior to having children, I’ve maybe said this before, I am I am, I still think I am. The calmest, chillest, nothing can shake me. Like I’m like, oh, the world’s burning down, whatever, let’s have tacos. Now I’m a rage monster and I can go from zero to 60 with something that’s so stupid. Like that, that that socks on the table. Like I don’t know why, but my biggest parenting fail is I am so impatient. I I have to just be reminded sometimes to just like it’s at the it’s fucking socks on the table. Relax. Um, and I feel like in real stressful situations, I go into like really calm management mode. Like if somebody broke an arm or like whatever, I would be like, all right, honey, let’s go. I got you. Like I would be really, but something about like the little things. So yeah, that is my biggest parenting fail for sure.

Gavin:

I wonder, not to take away your special thing there, but I do wonder if that’s a universal thing, because I can certainly relate to um getting completely upset over the absolutely nonsense things that don’t matter, but when things really do matter, I am cool as a cucumber, knowing this is not the time for me to panic and lose my shit. So I wonder, hey, listener, can you relate to that? Yeah, what about your um biggest parenting win?

David:

Um I think my I don’t know if this is what you’re asking, but I think my parenting superpower or what I’m best at um is I feel like I try to make sure my kids feel safe around me in a very non-judgmental way. Even though I’m very judgmental. I try to make sure that when they do or say something that normally would get a ooh, or a what are you talking? you know, trying to take the shame out of their lives as much as possible. Um, I we all experience shame. We all fucking hate it. And I feel like I’m really good at making sure that when they say or do something that could be considered shameful, that I’m very much present it in a way that is not shameful, so they don’t start adding that to their therapy bill. Yeah.

Gavin:

That’ll be good.

David:

Yeah.

Gavin:

Uh I was definitely looking for just like something light and happy. And there was that time that I caught my kid because he jumped off a slide and he looked at me with um Bambi eyes saying, I I love you, daddy, but that’s a good one.

David:

Okay, I’ll give you a quick no, no, I’ll give you a quick one. I whenever they get like treats from school, Halloween, whatever, um, they don’t they go into the treat basket and they get one treat a night. So they think they’re getting this, like, oh, every night we get a treat. Well, bitch, you’re just in arrears from Halloween. I just didn’t let you eat any of your Halloween candy. So the way we spread out candy for sure.

Gavin:

Um, this is absolving me of some of my guilt for being such an insane micromanager because I believe that you will eventually be an insane micromanager as well. How would you micromanage or engineer your best kids in the next few years? What do you want to mold them as?

David:

Um, I want to find that balance. This will be very familiar to all of our listeners with children. I want to fine-tune that balance of hard and soft with their spirits. Because, you know, if for example, this this morning, my son has recently obsessed, obsessed with getting on the bus first. He wants to be the first kid on the bus. I don’t know why. And so he’s been standing at the spot where they’re supposed to line up when the bus comes 10 minutes early. He just wants to be there. And this other kid, so he’s standing there, so the bus starts coming around the corner, so all the kids run up and line up. And this other kid just fully steps in front of him. And immediately he just kind of goes, he looked at him, you could see hit the like the sadness in his eyes, and he kind of just like started to like back up, and then he turned around. He saw this long line, and then he started to walk back to the end of the line. And I grabbed him, I said, No, no, no, no, you can, you know, and I had a conversation with him about it, and I was like, you know, so that’s how I want to micromanage them is I want to somehow build them in a way that they are still soft and human and kind and can feel things, but fight for things like that, who don’t just bow down to bullies and pressure because I for sure was that kid. I bow down to every bully. I was I hidden, I was afraid. Um, and I don’t I don’t want that for them, but I don’t want a hard, anger-filled child. So I’m gonna try to do that. So do you think I’ll do it?

Gavin:

No, not at all. I I think that your entire um uh delivery will be totally different in four years, and you would answer the question differently. Um but I but I think that everything you said was beautiful for sure. Thanks. And um, all right, trying to keep it more uh focused on like dick jokes and just your normal superficiality. What are your hopes for the next hundred episodes of Gatriarchs?

David:

Um, I hope we grow our listenership. I love you, listener. You are our favorite listener, but um I whenever somebody new finds the show and messages us and says, Oh my god, just find your show, love it so much. I kind of want to be like, where have you been? But also, we have done absolutely no work whatsoever in promoting the show. So it’s partly our fault. So I really want in the next hundred episodes to just not for people who don’t, for people who would like this show, for them to listen to it. Um, I would also really love to grow the community. And I don’t mean that in like the Gavin. It’s like community, it’s so important. Um, I mean in like the, but also kind of that, where like peep parents like us who can laugh into the dark and who want to laugh at this stuff because we know what makes us better parents, can find each other on the internet and to maybe build our, I don’t know if it’s a Facebook group or whatever, just build the Gatriarch’s community, I think would be really fun. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, when the new co-host arrives, I’m looking forward to beating him. Um, and he’s really great.

Gavin:

Well, David, uh we we want to thank I want to thank you for demeaning yourself and being on my stupid little podcast. Thank you for doing everything you do and making the world a better place. Oh, Jesus.

David:

Our guest this week is a man of many talent. A former Broadway actor, dancer, and sometimes singer, his theatrical resume would dwarf even most of my talented friends. Nowadays, he spends his days as the executive director of 4A Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to prioritizing arts and culture in America, and as well as being a dad to two preteens, which are both the light and dark of his day-to-day. But you may know him as the dark of this podcast and the general fly in my ointment. Please welcome to the show, the star of 99% of our cold opens, Gavin Knox Lodge the third.

Gavin:

Fourth! First of all, I’m the fourth. First of all, I’m the fourth. But you get all the points for actually preparing your intro, which I clearly did not do. But I was so excited to just jump in and ask questions and dominate.

David:

So I know. Well, Gavin, we start this uh interview like we do always, which is how does your kids drive you bananas today?

Gavin:

Um today, so my kids are lucky enough to be at a school where they get Chromebooks issued to them, and neither of them had plugged in their Chromebooks this morning. And so there was a massive meltdown over the fact that the Chromebooks were not charged. And why didn’t you plug my computer in last night? Now, listen, the person who really drove me crazy this morning was my partner, because he is usually the one who plugs in the Chromebooks the night before. And I’m like, we should not be doing this. This is their problem. But this was one of those mornings where I just sipped my coffee in silence and I did not poke a bear and I didn’t I chose my battles, but everybody in the household drove me nuts today because they’re all entitled who think that the entire world should be handed to them on a single silver platter.

David:

But that’s the battle, right? Is always like you’re like, oh, well, they should have plugged in their computer, but then you go, but I’m gonna have to deal with a fallout. So then there’s like the how much of it, yeah. Um totally, thank you for coming by. We’re so excited to have you. Um, we’ve we’ve really been looking forward to having you. So I don’t know much about Gavin Lodge prior to Broadway. I know you come from from Colorado, but where did you grow up?

Gavin:

Uh I grew up in Colorado, family very Midwestern. Uh mom was from Illinois, dad from Indiana. And my parents moved out in 1978 when I was already, what, 37? I was three when we moved out. And uh, so they were like pioneers going to live their John Denver lives, uh, their dreams of Rocky Mountain High and Aspen and whatnot. Anyway, uh, so yeah, I was um an overachieving little kid in uh Colorado. Uh went to the University of Colorado, uh, studied international affairs. I wanted to go be a diplomat. Um, I don’t know if you’re asking for my resume, but am I answering the question so far? Uh I’m an only child. Uh-huh. Only child.

David:

My I think our listener can tell.

Gavin:

My um my dad unfortunately passed away when I was eight. Um, he was a Vietnam vet, and um he had a he had a you know, not honestly a grisly cancerous death. And so one a really unique thing about my childhood is just that I grew up um fatherless because of that. And but my mom was like a really amazing mom to pull through from that. Um, and so only child, single mom. Uh, we did lots of road trips growing up because she had summers off like I did. And so fun fact, because of all of the driving we did, I had been to 35 states by the time I was 12 years old. Wow. Just driving from Colorado to both coasts and whatnot. And and uh in one of those road trips, um, when I was uh nine, uh I we came to New York City, and the very first Broadway show I saw was a chorus line, and I was completely dazzled by all the gold, and that definitely stuck with me that that’s something I want to do someday.

David:

So um so this was the original production of Chorus Line.

Gavin:

Yes, but I saw it in 1983. So, but yes, the original. Wow.

David:

Was any of the original actors still in it or they had all moved on?

Gavin:

I another fun fact about me is I was in show business for 20 years. I know no show business trivia, and I don’t know anybody in show business except for you and Eric Scotto, former guest and Ellen Marie Marsh. Ellen Marie Marsh, former guest.

David:

That is actually true. I can attest to that. That like every time I’m like, oh, have you seen that? He’s like, I’m gonna stop you right there.

Gavin:

I have no idea. I have no idea if I saw the original cast, but that would have been 80%.

David:

But I feel like that show it I can see how that show would spark something magical in a young kid who has artistic passions. Like I my the very first Broadway show, uh one of those, it’s hard to really know which one it was, but because we were there for a whole week, but was Beauty and the Beast. And like what a magical fucking show. But I think of course, like also magical for totally different reasons, yep. Where it’s like, look, these are people doing it. Um and so when you you were said you were 14 when you saw it? No, I was uh nine. Oh, okay.

Gavin:

And so did you start taking like classes or um uh no, no, I um in fourth grade, so not long after that, in fourth grade, I joined a uh children’s theater group called the Younger Generation Players in Littleton, Colorado. And I uh my mom and neighbors took me to see a performance of the sound of music that they did. And at intermission, I reached over over dramatically, as was my wont, and I grabbed my mom by like her shirt collar and I said, get me in this group. Because the idea of seeing kids doing shows was just so new to me. And so I joined that summer, and so I was in this children’s theater group from fourth to eighth grade that um gave me migraines because I was so overscheduled as a fourth grader suddenly. I was just so, so, so busy. And uh, but I loved it. And it was the the strictest director I’ve ever worked with in my entire life was my children’s theater director. But she gave me a standard and a work ethic, frankly, that that like really molded my childhood.

David:

I feel like it makes a lot of sense that like you saw sound of music and you got super excited because we know how you feel about the swastika and how excited it can make your entire family. Totally. Um, okay, and so, but you didn’t really make that your career. You were saying you were doing an international.

Gavin:

Yeah, I wanted to go be a diplomat. I wanted to work overseas. I lived in Paris for a semester in college. So je parle français, uh and so tell us about the men in Paris. What were they like? You know what? I wasn’t gay, or I wasn’t out of the closet, and so I did not have a sex life in Paris. I know what a missed opportunity. Oh, yeah. It was um, but it was still really, really fun. I really, really fun. I lived with a French guy. Um, so I really, really, really lived French. I took all my classes in French. Um, and I was studying the European Union back when, listen, for our younger listeners, it was before the European Union had even formed. I was studying that. But God, it was fun to live in Paris. And I rode a bike everywhere. It was it was a blast.

David:

And you spent summers in Atlantis, I assume. It was that far away where you just um but that sounds that sounds very amazing.

Gavin:

Graduated, went into politics, worked for the Gore campaign in 2000. I was uh I worked in the Iowa caucuses for five months, and I did like those the caucus states just as a as an organizer of people, kind of like if I were to compare myself to somebody, I’d say Barack Obama. And how did that go, that Gore campaign? Well, the last six months of that race, I was working for Maria Cantwell, who is still the U.S. Senator from Washington State. So I, while that election was completely stolen by the Supreme Court, uh, I did get at least get to win. And Maria said, Come work for me in DC. And I’m like, nope, I’m done. I’m gonna go tap dance in New York City. And so I’m confused.

David:

How where is that pivot? Where’s that change? Like, what what what changed in you where you were actively doing the thing you wanted to do? And you were like, JK, I want to tap dance on Broadway.

Gavin:

Um, in my theater group, I had learned to tap. I had a college professor, I didn’t major in theater, obviously, but I did some shows, and I asked my professor, hey, do you think I could go to New York? And he said, Yes, I think you could. Mainly because of your height.

David:

Oh man, we’re coming back to the old not not funny, but tall.

Gavin:

Yes, yes. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anybody with such irony. He’s like, You’re you’re tall and you can tap dance, and that’s gonna serve you well. So uh But it did. I mean and but I was there were two moments, there were two moments while working in politics. One was um I had a karaoke night with the senator late at night. It was random, but she said to me, uh and I sang George Michaels Faith and I brought the hamstone because I wasn’t competing with musical theater people, it was just like a bunch of politicians, and she said to me, You can come to New York and you can come to DC and work for me. But the second I saw you do that karaoke uh night, I thought he is meant to go be a performer.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

Gavin:

The other moment was I was driving, I wasn’t on a cell phone or anything, but I was in Seattle, and Seattle has a lot of very, you know, really extreme hills, and I made an illegal left turn. I was just uh I wasn’t I was totally sober, I wasn’t on my phone, I just made a bad left turn. And so a car came over, came up over the hill and T-boned my car. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness. But it was really in the moment that I thought to myself, I need to move somewhere where I don’t need a car after this. I guess I’m moving to New York City. And there’s a third story there, if I may, since you’re asking me the questions. There was a moment we were driving. I was with Maria, Senator Marie and Campbell. We were driving, we were really late to an event, really, really late, like a good 45 minutes to um in stop and go traffic. And we were both driving, we were so stressed, so so, so stressed. And then suddenly a mouse ran out and broad daylight, a mouse ran out of like a uh a bush that was on the side of the road, ran into the road, and the truck in front of us just casually rolled over the mouse and smashed it. And it was a moment where we made it to the event, she’s she gave her speech, and then afterwards she said, All I could think of during that whole speech was that mouse. Ratatouille got rolled up.

David:

Just made this beautiful soup in this kitchen and now he’s dead.

Gavin:

And it was a moment truly where I thought life is too short. Just follow your passion and just go do the thing you want to do. Who knew that mouse was so going to be so inspirational in this case? Ratatouille sacrifice was my gain where I’m on a podcast with a listener.

David:

That is crazy. Well, okay, so now let’s jump forward a little bit. Now, how how did you make how did you book your first Broadway show? What was it?

Gavin:

Uh my first Broadway show was 42nd Street because I was tall and I could tap dance.

David:

Yes. I had I you and I were in many of those auditions together, I think, and you actually booked the job and I did not.

Gavin:

We’ve I fit the costumes um and I was able to be the tall guy in the back who danced well enough and could cover the leads.

David:

And um did you cover both Billy and like did you cover both of the the guys?

Gavin:

Well, on Broadway, I covered Billy. But on the tour, I first I started out on a tour and I covered Julian Marsh and um Pat Denning, the old guy who has five lines. And uh I never once went on while I was on tour for eight months, and then on but on Broadway I covered those two roles and Billy, and I did go on for Billy a couple of times, which was really fun because I was really not that good at dating.

David:

But the original Billy, didn’t he do all those like backflips and stuff? Did you just like Pad Baret or like you’re like I’m not doing that?

Gavin:

I did step kick, step kick, step kick, step kick. Oh my god, of course he did. Yeah, he did uh uh what was his name? Oh god, what’s his name? Uh he was so David Elder. He was so good. He did a backhand spring on a big ass dime.

David:

On a dime in the middle of a tap routine, in tap shoes. And he was a great tapper.

Gavin:

Yeah, he was a great tapper. He was the definitive Billy Lawler, without a doubt. I will say, though, I um while I was auditioning for 42nd Street, I was actually playing the king, the pirate king in the Pirates of Penzance at the Fulton Opera House. So it was within a drive of the city. It was my callback. I had to go. I was showing up because that night I was opening, no, no, the next night I was opening Pirates of Penzance. I had a full beard and um I did my dancing, and then they said, Okay, we need you to come back and sing. I said, No, I’ve oh, it was that night actually. I have to open a show tonight. So I have to get back to Penn Soin. And they said, Okay, well, why don’t you just come backstage at during the matinee? It was a Wednesday, come back during the matinee and you can just sing for the musical director. And I’m like, What? I I can’t do something like that. So I did. I show up backstage at intermission of a Broadway show. I mean, this little gay boy’s Colorado eyes were just all over the place.

David:

Because that never happens, by the way. No way. Yeah.

Gavin:

These chorus, these chorus girls are all walking by me and they’re like, oh, hi, ooh, hi. And I’m like, what the hell is going on? This is so amazing. And I walked in to the musical director’s uh room, and um, the director happened to be there. And so it was the director and the musical director, and they said, Oh, hey, you can just like do the scene and read your songs with the director of 42nd Street and the musical director. I’m in a small dressing room. I’m singing um out there from Hunchback of Notre Dame as as one does, with from a wall six inches away from my face. Uh-huh. Um, and uh, but it went really, really well. And they said, Well, could you lose the beard? I’m like, believe me, I can’t wait to shave this beard off. And I uh they did not offer me the job in the room, but I thought, oh my God, I think I just booked a Broadway show. And who was the musical director of 42nd Street? Tell us. None other than Todd Ellison. Wow. So 20 years later. No, no, 22 years later. Um, I guess uh I don’t know, insert all the jokes here.

David:

Yeah, so the the scandal here is that you you’re not supposed to sleep around at the workplace. However, you did. And listen it ended up working out.

Gavin:

My showmance has endured 21 years. Uh yeah.

David:

And so tell me about um I I had somebody recently asked me this question. Um, had you always wanted to have kids? Oh yeah. And same thing with your partner?

Gavin:

Such a brilliant, um, such a brilliant question. Such a great question. Yeah, really thoughtful. Yes. Uh, when I was coming out of the closet uh at a a late age of 28, actually, which that can be another podcast episode. Um, I my biggest stress was, oh my God, what if I don’t get to have kids? What if I don’t get to have kids? What and and it was still, you know, admittedly, that was 1967, but having kids was possible. Um, so it was just a matter of how am I gonna do this? And um, but yes. And Todd and Todd was always on board with having kids? He took a while to convince. Um, he wasn’t uh against it, but he asked all the right questions, like, I’ve never imagined doing this, I didn’t foresee this. What if I’m too selfish?

David:

What if I’m too well and Gavin’s like, hold my beer, I could be selfish and a dad. Exactly.

Gavin:

Exactly. But um, so we we definitely took a good six months of just sort of discussing it, which by if you want, if if by discussing, you mean we didn’t say anything about it for six months. Sure. And then we were here in Connecticut on the 4th of July, and there was a cute, cute, cute little July 4th parade. I might have mentioned it, except I don’t want anybody to come to it because it’s so cute that I want to keep it small and for myself. And um, I saw a couple, a gay couple with a baby, and Todd hits me and he goes, We’re not the first. At which point I thought, oh, I guess we’re gonna be dads after all. Okay. And so I know those guys and that baby now.

David:

Do you really?

Gavin:

Oh, that’s cute. Um, so how did you become dads? We’re a surrogate carrier. We um how I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story. We were paired with an amazing woman who I’m still friends with. Hopefully, one day we’ll be a guest of the show. Um, she was our surrogate carrier. And um we, you know, as the process goes, the she and our egg donor were aligned um so that they would, you know, ovulate and be able to carry the kid at the same time. And um, my our doctor at the fertility clinic calls me the day that we were supposed to have the transfer. And by the way, a couple days, a couple weeks before that, or whenever it was, um, we flew out to LA in one day, jerked off into a Dixie cup, and um, and flew back, right? So, anyway, when the exchange was supposed to take place, the implant was supposed to take place, the um they couldn’t find my sperm. Have I told the story?

David:

You have, yeah. But it’s a good story because if we have new listeners, they’re gonna want to hear it. There is there is a Dixie cup full of Gavin’s splooge somewhere missing in the world.

Gavin:

The doctor calls me and says, So we’ve had a little hiccup. We don’t know where your specimen is. And I’m like, you are a fertility clinic. How do you lose a specimen?

David:

And so we um I mean you could just ring out some of the the betting at every Hilton in the Northwest and get probably some of your DNA. Let’s be honest.

Gavin:

Yes, that’s exactly right. But uh nevertheless.

David:

So you so you missed that window. You had to do another.

Gavin:

But she luckily the egg donor went through another round and they got more um eggs anyway. And um, yeah, uh, we we did that. And then when we were eight months pregnant, that was when we chose to go on a baby moon. Uh my partner and I went to Italy. It was amazing. All we did was eat and drink our faces off. We went to no museums or had any culture, it was awesome. And it was during that trip, which thank God the kid wasn’t born early, because it was during that trip we said, are we gonna do this another time? Because I’m an only child and I don’t like it, and I want to have another kid. And my um partner said, My life is better because my brother is in it, so yeah, I definitely want to have another kid. And so we kind of said, Okay, we’ll get on that bandwagon. And then um, and then 19 months later, our second kid was born. So wow.

David:

Wow, that’s a lot. And so now you’re dad. And so tell me, what is one of your most humiliating parent experiences? What are you most ashamed of as a parent?

Gavin:

Um so many things come to mind. Choose one. Right. Well, I definitely would say those times that I have lost my shit unjustifiably. So it is, it’s it it relates to you in your um lack of patience. But give me a second.

David:

Um We’re already running late. So I know. Sorry, sir. Cut this out. No, I can’t. I was hoping not to edit this episode at all. Oh, well, um, we can also we can if it’s easier, we can start with the good stuff. What is what is something that you’re like really good at as a parent?

Gavin:

Well, I’m trying to think of these. You know what? It’s funny. I’m trying to answer this the question the way I intended to phrase it. Like what are those an embarrassing moment, not necessarily an embarrassing trait.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

Gavin:

Um, there was a really embarrassing moment when uh I had my daughter, newborn, carrying her in a in, you know, the bucket seat. And I didn’t have a lot of blankets on her, and it was she was born in September, so it was October. I didn’t have a lot of blankets. She was fine, she was totally asleep. And some woman said to me, A newborn, you have got to get some blankets on that baby. What are you thinking? And I told this woman off so in a way that I haven’t actually, I’m not a tell-off kind of person. Actually, I usually am like, oh God, what did I do wrong? And I go with my tail between my legs. But I told her off and definitely used four-letter words. Yes, and to her incredible credit, she was just like, she smirked at me and walked away. Thank goodness. But I was like, I was feeling defensive and covered, and that was not a problem. No, yeah. Yeah, and also proud that I was carrying this adorable baby around.

David:

That was like your negative and positive experience. Like completely asleep.

Gavin:

Yeah. And she criticized me in my moment of pride.

David:

My husband tells this story all the time that we have an elderly neighbor, uh, who who we when one of our kids was a baby or whatever. Same kind of thing. Like the baby was not wearing socks, and she would the this elderly neighbor came over and goes, all wear your socks. Like talking to the baby, but really talking to us through the baby. Oh man. What is it about infancy that makes people think they could just go up and be like, you’re doing the thing?

Gavin:

Give unsolicited advice, yeah. Yeah. But that is hey, let let’s break that trend and not do it ourselves. Although I have so many opinions to share. Um, we’re not interested.

David:

So um, so you had mentioned prior that you are a member of your own school board. And so I think it would be interesting to our listener to give us a little window into because we sometimes will see school board when they’re at their craziest or most wild, like on TikTok or something. But like, what is what is it, what actually happens at the school board? Try to keep it concise under 30 seconds. Go.

Gavin:

I ran to make sure that the school board would stay boring. Keep the boring in school boards because it should be just about maintaining or improving upon the school experience. Really, what you do most is talk about the budget. And um luckily, um, I’m part of a really, really excellent school district, and it’s a privilege to be there and to serve. And it is um, and it’s really about maintaining excellence, which is a great thing. And we happen to be in a bit of a debate right now that I think is a two-sided, reasonable debate that you you can see both sides. We don’t have people coming out of the woodworks trying to ban the Wizard of Oz, thank goodness.

David:

But see, I I mean that you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re hitting on a point that I think is important for also our presidency. We want the presidents to just quietly do their work, right? Like we missed the times where government was boring. Yeah, it was just this entity that kept us protected, that kept the lights on, but it wasn’t part of our fucking day-to-day constant narrative.

Gavin:

And so of people pushing their own agendas and trying to change things that just don’t need to be changed. And but but really to take that mantle back from you and to say, like, it’s meant to be like our the superintendent is the one who runs the school day to day. We are not supposed to get involved in the day to day. We’re the board that oversees, we’re the like we’re we’re at the top level. The superintendent answers to us, and we just make sure that he’s doing a job. If somebody comes and complains that little Johnny was um uh isolated at the uh recess one day, that’s not our job. That’s the principal’s job. And if the principal has a problem with it, they go to the superintendent. So it’s meant to be boring. Um and unfortunately, though, it is a very open book of democracy that anybody can come into and anybody can share their feelings, and that unfortunately drives TikTok drive um likes.

David:

Yeah. Um how would you want your kids to describe their childhood when they’re 30?

Gavin:

Oh, geez. I’m so in the midst right now of with my daughter who wanted to move out on uh pack her bags on Sunday night at 9:30 and move out. I mean, I really hope um that they’re able to say there was a lot of crazy from my dad because he was trying so hard to give us a perfect childhood. So I hope that they do see ours as a house of fun, because we do a lot of fun stuff and um a lot of expectations, hopefully, that I give them responsibilities, that my partner and I actually give them responsibilities so that they aren’t just entitled, you know, little shits. Um, and that it was hopefully the right balance of um fun and learning, I hope. Um got it.

David:

So you you co-host a podcast called the Gatriarchs Podcast.

Gavin:

And so I’m found on the same networks that you can find Michelle Obama’s podcast.

David:

Yes. Um, I’m curious, what is your hope for the next hundred episodes of Gatriarchs?

Gavin:

Did you really write that down?

David:

No.

Gavin:

Oh, good. I’m glad. I’m glad. Uh, I mean, frankly, I’m just gonna steal your answer too. Oh, no, no. Well, in addition to your answer, that I do hope that this can get some more notoriety because um, because I think it deserves to. I think that our platform is um educational and hopefully fun and commiserating and whatnot. But what comes to mind is funny enough, the last hundred episodes where there have been times you and I have had, I wouldn’t even say what few disagreements we’ve had. I wouldn’t even say that there were growing pains, but they were kind of growing pains, like you not wanting to do an episode or me not wanting to do an episode and kind of having to push each other to keep going. And you sometimes asking me, because I am busy as fuck, but I do make time for this because I really like it. And you sometimes being like, Gabe, seriously, can you do this anymore? And and hopefully I’ve delivered in episode 100 to be like, no, no, I this is this is something that I really care about, and I know that you care about it. And so I’m proud of us for getting this far. Um, for the for the next hundred episodes, which I do believe we will get there, um uh can somebody please just send us more time and money? That’s all. But we we might have to think more creatively or differently about our guests because we have tapped a lot of um really, really fantastic guests. And short of getting, frankly, um what’s his name? Pete Houser. Oh, Pete Buttig and Neopatrick Harris, which spoiler, hey Pete Buttig and Neopatrick Harris, will you come be on the show? Um, we um we have had a lot of gay dads, and we kind of remember that.

David:

There’s only like 18 of us. Yeah. So we got them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Gavin:

Yeah. Uh so we have to we might have to think differently about repeat guests, which is hey, great. Tell us what you’ve been up to since episode 42. And um, and on then also aiming high to get some newbies. So well, yeah, yeah.

David:

Well, we’re running out of time, but I do want to end the interview like we do every time, which is tell me about a parenting time when you’re like, I will never forget the time when.

Gavin:

Um I was at a wedding for my friend who actually was the first Billy Lawler understudy on the tour, Kevin Morley. Shout out. Hi, Kev. I love Kevin. He was getting do you know Kevin? Yeah. Oh yeah. We he was getting married in a beautiful uh uh reception in um like morningside heights or something. Anyway, and I had my daughter, and she was uh six months old, and I was gonna be the guy with a baby at the wedding, and it was gonna be super fun, and I was gonna dance with her in my baby bjorn, and everything was gonna be great. My partner wasn’t there for some reason. He was out of town, I think. Anyway, so I show up solo with a baby, it was awesome. Um, that was the only time in her childhood. Nope, I’m gonna tell you the other one too. That was one of the two times that I can recall that she had a massive diarrhea blowout, and she was wearing a onesie that snapped at her crotch. I took her outside. There was no changing table at the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00:

Of course.

Gavin:

I took her outside, put her on the ground on a little um pad. She wasn’t on the bare ground, and I was trying so carefully to pull it up, uh pull up her onesie, and diarrhea smeared up her back and into her hair. Fantastic. And it was corn. I made a bad problem worse, basically. And um, all I had for her, I I I didn’t for some reason have another onesie. I I don’t I just think I was ill-prepared that day, and she was um naked. And I um left the wedding early because I was like, I have a shit-stained child right now, and this isn’t fun for anybody. Anyone. It was funny, but it was not fun. The other time um she had a massive blowout was we were actually in um we can’t afford any of this now, but we were in Italy when she was 10 months old and awesome vacation because she could eat solid foods, but she couldn’t walk yet, so that was great. She had a massive blowout at when we were visiting the David in Florence. And I don’t think you’re supposed to take pictures there or something, but we literally went into a corner and took her diaper off, and I changed her diaper and I snapped a shot of diarrhea butt with Michael’s junk in the ground.

David:

That is art. Do you know what I mean? Like that photo is real art.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

David:

Wow, that’s great. Well, Gavin, thank you so much for stopping by. This has been a complete waste of time, but I appreciate you stopping by and uh thank you for all you do in the world.

Gavin:

Uh, shucks. You too, David. You too. So, kind of going along the theme of my wonderful daughter, who’s a full teenager, that’s for sure. The other day, luckily, for the very first time in her middle school career, she came down to breakfast in tears because she was so angry. It was just one of those mornings, and she was angry that her sweatshirt wasn’t dry and that this sweatshirt didn’t fit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she came down and she said, I hate everything. And sat down and got her butter and spread it on the toast. And she was just so angry. And thank God. I just let her be angry and didn’t try to make anything better. Uh there was nothing I could do, right? It was good parenting judgment. And then I did drive her to school and she said to me in the car, Dad, thanks for just shutting up this morning. That was my something great.

David:

When are you gonna shut up on this podcast? Is my question. Um, my something great this week is my son is in kindergarten at his elementary school, and he this month is student of the month. And he, I about leapt out of my skin when he told me that he was. And it was like, it’s hard to kind of know because you know, I tell as I told you before, my son likes to lie a lot. I I never really know how many kids get student of the month. Is it one per grade? Is it like they switch around? But his student of the month particular was the Good Friend Award. Oh, and so it was just like this like I was fucking beaming, like getting giving me a vision of how I’m gonna be in his little tap concerts and his fucking graduation. Yeah, be like leaping out of my skin beaming that he is the student of the month and he gets this little certificate. And he was like, My my principal signed up, my principal signed it, and he it’s just so fucking cute. So that’s awesome. Emmett is student of the month, and that is my something great, along with 100 episodes with you, my love. And that is our show.

Gavin:

If you have any comments, suggestions, or general compliments, you can email us at gatriarchspodcast at gmail.com.

David:

Or you can DM us on Instagram. We are at Gatriarchspodcast on the internet. David is at DavidFM VaughnEverywhere, and Gavin is at GavinLodge at shit on David. Please leave us a glowing five star review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, and we’ll see you on the next hundred episodes of Gatriarchs.