Full Transcript
Or you can DM us on Instagram. We are at Gatriarchspodcast. On the internet, David is at DavidFMVonEverywhere, and Gavin is at GavinLodge in a movie. No. That’s really good. Hold on, I gotta think about two things now. I haven’t done this in a while. Or you can DM us. Or you can DM us on Instagram. We are at Gatriarchspodcast. On the internet, David is at DavidFM VaughnEverywhere, and Gavin is at Gavin Lodge in the comment section of a porn site.
David:
Oh my god, Gavin. You had a second shot at it.
Gavin:
I know.
David:
Do you need a third shot?
Gavin:
Probably. And this is Gatriarchs.
David:
So we we are now officially bi. We’re officially bi weekly.
Gavin:
How’s bi going for you, David?
David:
Well, um, it’s hilarious because the second our episode dropped, we got more responses from people saying, No, why are you going bi-weekly? No, we want it every week than we’ve ever had from you fuckers ever. We got more DMs and emails and messages than you’ve ever sent us over this thing. Well, bitches, where have you been when we asked you to join the Facebook page? So it’s your fault. You’re the problem. You’re the one, you’re the reason we’re going by. And it’s just through the end of the year, so everybody calm down. But it was hilarious because literally the second the episode dropped, all of a sudden I was like, why are we getting all these DMs? Oh my god.
Gavin:
Well, please make Gatriarchs gay again and not buy. And uh send us your friends and your contacts, and um, and you know, how about your corporate sponsorships as well, right? But in large part, we did this to keep our say keep our sanity and um and uh finding the guests is really tough. And uh so, in all honesty, we could use some help. And we’ve been asking y’all for your friends and relatives and whatnot for a long time. So send us send them your our way and also send us, you know, truly strollers and um and keebler crackers and Carter clothing and all the baby industrial complex stuff that could serve as our corporate sponsors as well, please.
David:
Um, so it has been a couple of weeks since school started. And I know we did our back to school episode, we’ve talked a lot about school, but I feel like now things have settled down. So I’m curious as to like checking in how is school going for everyone. So, how’s school going for your kids?
Gavin:
Uh, so first of all, my son is a walking zombie right now because he has to get up so much earlier than he’s used to. Now, this is my son. So he’s famous in our family for his quote that says, I have to get my 10 and a half hours of sleep tonight. And he realized like he just pulled the blanket over his head and like immediately went to sleep uh one night when we were up late talking. But anyway, poor kid, he is just walking into walls. He is so tired. Furthermore, we made the terrible decision of following his passion and indulging his interests. And he tried out for the middle school soccer team and made it, which I we have on good authority was a very big deal. And then that, and we were so proud, we’re like, our kid is a superstar, right? And then we realized, oh, wait a minute, he’s on three soccer teams. Like, who’s the asshole here? You don’t let your child be on three sports teams at the same time.
David:
You and I are proof positive to never chase your dreams because look what happens. Look what it gets. Look, look, look, look at what we have become.
Gavin:
We it and it makes you hate your dream, I would imagine. So then we were the dream killers, and we very we psychologically manipulated him into agreeing that he needed to bail on that team, which of course we’re a never quit family, but we’re like, no, no, no, this is too much, dude. You are doing two-a-day practices five days, four days a week, plus games the other three days of the week. Like, this is unsustainable. Furthermore, you’re sacrificing the team for which we pay a lot of money. So it all comes down to money and not chasing dreams. Because if we’re gonna pay for you to become Lionel Messi, then you’re gonna go to your expensive um team instead. So he quit his middle school team.
David:
I love that you have an actual soccer player reference for that because mine would mine would be Pele from like the late 90s. Like that is my most recent 70s. I’m a decade away. I’m a god. Holy shit. Well, come on, Beckham.
Gavin:
Oh, that’s true. And his abs. That’s true, David Beckham. Anyway, so he’s walking the walls, but um, we’re uh adjusting, but man, are his um his bedtime has to get earlier and earlier. I mean, we’re in the sevens right now, and uh, but poor kid, he’s so tired. And then my daughter, you know, who she is just living her best middle school life, and she’s bouncing off the walls in the morning and also refusing to eat. And so we’re going through I did you eat in middle school?
David:
Never. I would get a Pop Dart on the way in the car to school. Yeah.
Gavin:
What did you stop at 7-Eleven? Or do you mean we had pop darts at home, but yeah, yeah, exactly.
David:
Yeah.
Gavin:
Oh, I mean, I don’t know. I was so conventional and boring and only child and doing it.
David:
This is my surprised face.
Gavin:
That there was a bowl of steaming hot oatmeal every single morning for me, which is embarrassing, I suppose.
David:
But now But this was also the Puritanical time. Like this was the this was like the original colonies, right? That’s so that’s a pretty common breakfast.
Gavin:
It wasn’t even oatmeal, it was porridge. It was mush, it was hot mush orat. Muslicks. Yeah, so in those puritanical times, when I after I had already milked all the cows and came in to go to my one room schoolhouse, uh, there was food waiting for me. And I never went through a stage of like not eating in middle school. And um, and so you know, you gotta how do you instill these values it well, you know, in this knowledge and eating well without like skinny shaming or fat-shaming your kids and being like, listen, you cannot skip a meal in the morning and think you’re gonna go buy an orange juice at school, and then that’s gonna be okay.
David:
But I’m a little or a Celsius or whatever. Oh, you started. Yeah, I I mean it’s so hard because like I remember middle school just being there was nutrition was out the fucking window. Like there was no concept of nutrition.
Gavin:
I am overthinking the nutrition 100% in comparison. Like, here I am, and I mean, I am only 48 and only look 57. And that is probably largely because of my nutrition, right? So I know I’m overthinking it.
David:
No, you’re not overthinking it because there is something to like we are trying to create a healthy relationship with food with our kids while at the same time not planting these seeds of food is a killer, food makes you fat, being fat is bad. It’s such a tight rope to walk, but like I grew up in a house where like you can have anything you want at any time. And so I got a little fat, and I’ve always been a little fat, and it’s been my entire identity for so long is that like skinny equals successful and happy or whatever. And so I want to instill good eating habits for my kids, if I’m being honest, to avoid them having to go through the I’m fat and then not as attractive psycho psychosis that I went through.
Gavin:
And you are a psycho as far as that goes. You are not fat, David F. M. Vaughn. But I but I agree with you entirely. Food is food, I mean, our relationship with food is so difficult. Yesterday, I was just telling you before, um, I had just kind of a crappy day yesterday, and I missed working out. And so instead of working out, I bought um on impulse a bag of Buffalo flavored Cheetos. Wow. I love Cheetos. I love Cheetos.
David:
You can take the boy out of the Walmart.
Gavin:
I ate half of that bag. And with every handful, fistful, that I shoved into my cheese-covered face, I kept my mantra was don’t feel guilty, don’t feel guilty, don’t feel guilty.
David:
Oh no, I get it. If if you’ve ever seen me eat popcorn, it’s it’s like witnessing a zebra being attacked in the savannah and just being torn apart by a lion. It’s disgusting. All right.
Gavin:
Um speaking of how no, how’s no no no? Don’t you dare change the topic.
David:
Sorry.
Gavin:
How is school with you?
David:
Well, you know, it’s it’s going good. So I think I said the first day was really rough, lots of crying. Uh, and an administrator had to peel my child off of me. Um, but after that, he has been so he’s gone to kindergarten now. He’s been really excited every morning. He’s has his backpack on before we’re ready to go because he wants to get on the bus. The one thing that I’ve noticed, which is so fucking fascinating, is that at the bus stop, it’s kind of at a park. And so the kids who are there early run around and play. They play tag, they whatever. And so the first couple of days, my son would not leave our side. He just watched them all because there’s like the really aggressive kids and there’s whatever. And then slowly and but surely, he’s like slowly inched his way closer. And then one day he wanted to go near them, but he didn’t want to talk to them. And then he like said something to one kid. Now he’s one of the kids. Now he’s one of the wolf pack running around. He drops his bag as soon as he gets to the bus stop and he runs with these crazy people. But it was fascinating to watch because we as parents were like, go have fun, meet some other kids. But he was it was all new to him, but he’s slowly gotten there. So we’re very fortunate that he loves school and he loves his aftercare program. Um, but we still have yet to be in the building. We still have no idea what his classroom looks like. We have no idea. We ask him every day, we’re like, where do you eat lunch? And it changes every day. So we have no idea what the truth is. So our back to school night is in a couple weeks. Um, and so I am eager to see all of this because there’s something as a parent, as you know, that is really important to like feel like when you think about where your kid is at a certain point in uh of the day, you want to kind of have an image in your head. You want to be like, oh, what’s lunch time? And this is what lunch looks like for him. Yeah, I don’t have that for I drop him off at 8 05. I don’t see him till six. I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing at any point. Yeah, so anyway, um, but it’s going great.
Gavin:
Um and I can’t wait for you to be able to plant that flag on that PTA and be like, step aside, bitches. Here’s your new picture.
David:
I signed up already. I signed up already, and the president emailing us, like, uh, you know, he says his name and then, comma, PTA president. I’m like, bitch, not for long. Um, so yeah, things are fine. But um, I was reading a book. Uh, my son got a uh Snow, like a Disney stories book from the library and rereading them. Uh-huh. And it’s one of those moments where you’re like, oh, I had no idea how fucking dark this story was until you read it as an adult. I was reading him Snow White, and really all I remembered with Snow White was like, I don’t know, there’s like dwarfs and like there’s an apple, and then she falls asleep, and then he has to like the mirror. Yeah, exactly. Let me read you a quote from this story that I read out loud to my son. In a jealous rage, the queen called her royal huntsman into the throne room, take Snow White far into the forest and kill her, she commanded. And as proof of your deed, bring me back her heart in this. She handed the stun huntsman a beautiful carved box. I was like, what the fuck is happening in here? There’s murder, there is like decapitation. I mean, it is like this is wild.
Gavin:
Biblical levels of murder and mayhem in a children’s story, which are so much, hey, Disney has disnified our whole like sanitized it’s storytelling.
David:
It’s wild how they that like their dark, their stories used to be so dark. And so I realized that this week I have um fucked up my kids in uh individually, but via classic storytelling. So for my son, Snow White, he’s like, What why is he she gonna murder her? And he’s gonna take the heart out, and you could see the panic in his face. For my daughter, we were playing her songs from Sound of Music, and so you know, you know all the songs from Sound of Music. It’s all very flat old school comedy, um, old school musical theater. Well, we were playing her the goodnight song, you know, so long, farewell, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there’s all the kids, and they all say their goodnights. We thought, oh, this would be really fun. For whatever reason, the last little girl, the tiniest little girl Gruddle, sure, she she says, Good night, good night, good night. And she does a little octave jump at the very end as she’s like waving. She’s like I’m playing it for my daughter, and as soon as that note hits, she bursts into tears. Whoa. And I said, What’s wrong? She goes, going to bed. And something about the music, it’s either the literal tone and the wavelength or whatever, hits her soul in a way that stirs it stirs emotion. So she immediately, sobbing, said, I want to watch it again. And she watches it again. And the second she hits that last little note, burst into tears. So now she is requiring us to play it for her every day. And every day we have to prepare for this little girl to be inconsolable because she thinks that Greta sound singing that last bit of sound of music is the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard.
Gavin:
Wow. That I mean, hey, we know we want to think of music and musicals as being so emotionally evocative that we could just burst into tears. And maybe this is like because her soul hasn’t been tarnished and destroyed yet, and she still has a sense of awe and wonder.
David:
And it’s beauty. I mean, I I mean, when’s the last time you were watching a musical and you burst into tears? I can tell you for me, it was the revival of color purple when she’s saying, Oh, um, I’m here. And I just went like it was one of those things that like something was escaping my body. What about you?
Gavin:
I I cannot think of a time ever because I’m not sure. Because I’m dead inside. Right, right. Because I’m absolutely dead inside. I can’t think of well, I I did see the original color of purple in 1875. Right. Yeah, that was definitely the color of purple, it was definitely not a Broadway musical in 1875. No, in what, like 2006 or 7 or something, somewhere it’s eight, nine, eight or nine. Anyway, and um, I didn’t know the story at all. And so when the sister comes down the aisle returning, that that I didn’t know the story, so I was completely thrown over by that one. But um, being able to hear something so beautiful is um it’s a privilege to be able to like just be that emotionally raw and take the journey. And I wish that every artistic experience were like that.
David:
But anyway, so I have an actual helpful dad hack this week that I don’t think we’ve ever done before, but I did it this past weekend and I went, This is the purest form of hack where you’re like unexpected, easy, and and very impactful. So we went outside and we painted with water, just paintbrushes or little artistic paintbrushes and just little cups of water everywhere, and we just go on the sidewalk and they paint with water. It makes a really cool mark and it eventually disappears after three or four minutes, and it’s just a constant stream of painting with water, and then when you’re done, zero fucking cleanup. And I know it sounds a little like babyish, you’re like, Yeah, whatever, blah, blah, blah. My five and two-year-old are fascinated with this, they love it so much. So painting with water.
Gavin:
It’s the original etch a sketch. Yeah, you still make etch a sketches? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Um, yeah, yeah, that’s uh hey, I mean, I definitely I I have I compare that to being at a pool, even in I don’t know, middle school or high school. And when you get out of the pool and lay down on the warm concrete, and you can’t help, who doesn’t want to just kind of write with their wet fingers or write on the yeah, yeah. We all need to do a little wet graffiti once in a while. That’s awesome. Um, and then uh, hey, how about some gay news, huh? Please tell me you have good gay news. I you know what? I have so much good gay news that I’m just gonna read you headlines. Amazing. I will and one of the best parts of the good gay news is that that our friend Joe Starbuck or whatever the fuck his name is, Jimmy Starbuck, he is not in the news right now. Thank goodness. So another corporation has not kowtowed to him. But I’m just gonna read some headlines for you real quick to just make you smile, okay? Okay. First of all, Governor Andy Bashir. Do you know who Governor Andy Bashir is? I do. I mean, first of all, America’s hottest governor, probably.
David:
Yeah. I mean, like him and Gavin Newsom, just like just raw dogging each other would be a video I would watch. Excuse me. I know this is listen, it’s labeled NSFW, people. It’s labeled NSFW. You guys chose to click on this fucking episode.
Gavin:
Governor Andy Bashir bans conversion therapy in Kentucky with an executive order. He’s just like, I’m not even gonna let anybody else vote on this. We’re just gonna say conversion therapy is BS. Biden breaks the record for the most LGBTQ judges, confirmed.
David:
Amazing.
Gavin:
Florida district agrees to return 36 obscene books to the libraries. Nice. Thank you very much. An LGBT group endorses a straight Democrat over a gay Republican. Hey, principled. Absolutely. Principled, principled, principled. And then, of course, there is the saga of the lieutenant governor in North Carolina who’s running for governor and is all over the news right now because he put himself all over the chat room of a porn site. I love it. Hilarious.
David:
I love it. It’s so nana forwarding the Nigerian Prince email. It’s so like, who comments on porn videos? What you do is when you’re done, you slam your laptop down and you pretend it never go back to live with guilt for the rest of your day. Exactly.
Gavin:
God, be in the world. You live with guilt and you go back to your everyday life. But no, he has doubled down. So Robertson. And finally, one more bit of great gay news for you. Do you know who Laura Loomer is? Does that name sound familiar? Yes. Crazy right wing. Yeah. Right wing, just it provocateur who’s going around throwing bombs all over the place. And yet she’s also like getting into scruffles, right? With with uh her the people on her own side, particularly uh Marjorie Taylor Green, etc. Well, apparently she and Lindsey Graham are going after each other, and her headline to him is just we all know you’re gay, which is so funny. I mean, have you gone down the much of the Lindsey Graham is gay factor? Like, there’s a whole hashtag that says calls him Lady G.
David:
I just can’t like to me, it’s it’s like not fun because it’s so obvious. Like, what what’s the fun part of like figuring out if he’s gay or not? He’s so clearly homosexual of like the southern 1960s type. Yeah, totally. You know what I mean? He’s like a little fussy. Um, so yeah, no.
Gavin:
Anyway, so there you go. I think um I we’re we’re gonna leave it with a bunch of great gay news there for you. All right.
David:
You know what’s not great and definitely not in the news? Do tell. Our top three list. Gay triarts, top three list, three, two, one. So this week is my week. It is the top three movies starring a lesbian. A lesbian actress, not the character, not the character’s not a lesbian, or could be, I guess, but top three movies starring a lesbian to honor all of our lesbian listeners.
Gavin:
Sure.
David:
Um, so I will go first. Uh, in number three for me, Ellen de Generous as Dory and Finding Nemo.
Gavin:
Oh that is a great, great movie.
David:
In the screenwriting world.
Gavin:
That’s number three. I can’t wait to hear what your two number one are.
David:
Um, in the screenwriting world, Finding Nemo is one of those like perfect stories where you’re like, this is how you tell a story. These characters are great or whatever. So Ellen de Generous as Dory and Finding Nemo. Uh, number two, I don’t know if you remember this character, is Holland Taylor as Professor Stromwell in Legally Blonde, the movie. Because in the musical, they combined Callahan and Stromwell as one character, but in the movie, Elle Wood’s first, like, you know, kerfuffle in the class is with Holland Taylor playing Professor Stromwell. So number two, legally great. Love it. Love it. And number one, my favorite movie of all time with my favorite lesbian actress of all time. Jody Foster playing Ellie Arrowway in Contact. Best movie of all time. And my favorite. No, sorry, not my not the best movie of all time. My personal favorite movie of all time captures my fascination and just the magic of space every single time I watch it.
Gavin:
So I don’t think I’ve seen contact. I that’s worth going back and seeing.
David:
Absolutely. It’s it’s it’s it’s if you if you love the idea of just kind of the universe and what’s out there and also maybe making contact with other people. And and to me, what’s interesting about the movie is other than like she goes out into space and you know sees things and people, is that how we as humans on the ground react to the discovery of this and how humans are terrible is basically the summation of the entire movie. Humans are terrible people. Uh, what about you, Gavin? Did you really prepare this and you were really ready today?
Gavin:
You know, some things are harder than others, and uh I admit I stood here and I thought I’m not just gonna go Google lesbians in movies because somehow that didn’t seem like the right way to go. Um and so uh my uh mine is gonna be a succinct list, okay? Ready? Number three, Mulan.
David:
Is Mulan a lesbian? Wait, no. Is Leah Solonga who voiced Mulan?
Gavin:
I didn’t get the assignment and I sucked it this week, but I was just making why don’t you just do the why don’t you just pull a bite in and just bow out?
David:
Do do do the heroic thing and just bow out.
Gavin:
I I my claim to fame is as far as movies goes, aside from children’s movies, which I’ve certainly seen Dory and um uh legally blonde, which is not a children’s movie. But um my claim to fame is I’ve never seen the Breakfast Club because I have seen so few movies.
David:
So yeah, I’m I’m gonna pull up Biden and bow out of this one. Battle of the shit. Well, well, can you at least choose what next week’s top three or no next episode’s top three list will be?
Gavin:
Next episode’s uh top three list is going to be the top three animated movies you watch with your kids that are not Disney.
David:
This week, our guest is yet another straight man I have seen naked way too many times. He is an Emmy nominated actor who is the star of shows like AMC’s Kevin Can Fuck Himself and Kirsty on TV Land. He’s also starred in a million Broadway shows like School of Rock, Spelling Bee, Escaped Margaritaville, Shrek, and Peter and the Starcatcher. He’s also, most importantly, a dad. And someone that’s in my inner circle and knows where all my personal bodies are buried. Please welcome to the show Mr. Mushy Bananas himself, Eric Peterson.
Gavin:
What is Mushy Bananas? I take personal offense to that, but Okay, listen, Mushy Bananas is true.
SPEAKER_03:
I okay, let’s just jump right into it. Here we’ll jump right in. I hate with all of the passion of my entire being mushy anything, but especially mushy bananas. I can in honest, it’s hard for me to say it.
Gavin:
Yeah, I’m getting it.
SPEAKER_03:
It’s hard for me to even say it. So and David knew this, and so he would one time I came back to my dressing room during Shrek, and he had I also hate whipped cream. I I because again, mushy. It’s it’s I like things that I can hold. You know, I want to be able to grab it. And uh I came back to my dressing room, and in my dressing room on my seat was a little styrofoam bowl that was filled with I swear they must have left these bananas out for a week and then they put whipped cream on top of it. It was so bad.
Gavin:
It was so bad. I Eric, I am so I so relate to this. I have gagged the that nothing makes me gag. All right? Yes. In search joke here, David? But mushy bananas are the most disgusting thing on the entire planet. I can only eat them. Bananas really, I only enjoy them where they’re basically crunchy, you know, like just just almost green. But um, oh god, quishy bananas. It’s just like the men at the banana factory just squish it through their teeth, and that’s what you’re eating, is disgusting.
David:
So I think the lesson here is never show weakness in front of me, or I will I will capitalize on that weakness. Eric, he had literally mentioned it, and I was like, okay, team, we need to find the mushiest bananas in Chicago. Like it was it was like um anyway. Welcome to the show, Eric. Eric is obviously, I’ve known Eric for tw 15, 20, 100 years. I don’t know how many years for way too long. And uh, before we get into it, please tell us how your children have annoyed you today.
SPEAKER_03:
How my children have annoyed me today. Well, I have so I have two kids. I have uh a daughter, Sophie, who is 14, who David met the the day she was born, maybe the next day. The next day after she was born.
David:
Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
Um and uh so she’s 14, so she’s a freshman in high school now. And then my son, Miles, is nine years old and is in fourth grade. Uh my daughter is in the throes of the beginning of high school. So it is, you know, she I will say I’m very uh lucky and blessed that she is not a snotty teen. Yeah, that’s good. She is she still loves us and she doesn’t like hate to be around us. Um but she is 14 and dealing with just like too many clubs and too many friend issues and trying to juggle all that stuff. And then when we try to talk to her and be like, how was your day? It seems like maybe you had a tough day. And she’s like, It’s I’m just really stressed. There’s a lot going on. And then we’re like, Okay, well, can we can we help you? Like, tell us what’s going on, and maybe we can help you manage it. And then she’s like, You wouldn’t understand. And then we try to tell her once we get a little bit of information, and then she’s like, I don’t need a lecture, I just need to come home to a safe space where I can just be like able to let down.
SPEAKER_04:
And I was like, I know, but we’re just trying to help you, you know.
SPEAKER_03:
Uh it reminds me, have you seen um, I think it’s This Is 40, the um the movie with uh Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. There’s like a scene where their like teenage daughter is like trying to pick out what to wear to school or something, and she’s just like, I have nothing to wear, I hate my life, I hate everything. And you’re like, oh my god, there’s just so many feelings just like feeling all over the place. Yeah, so so I’m dealing with that with my daughter, and then my son Miles is like I said, is nine and is uh you know, he’s getting stronger. So we you know, we wrestle a lot and we love the rough house and all that. And he’s now like, I’m pretty sure he I’m gonna need surgery on my thumb because he like he like pulled my thumb back really hard once, and I was like, and now I’m like, oh, my thumb hurts all the time. I wonder if you can call CPS on him. Like, I wonder if it works the same way. I need child protective services. Like, that’s I that’s what I need, you know.
David:
Um yeah, but no, he’s he’s the best, yeah. My two-year-old is so strong right now. She I do the same thing where I like I’ll tickle her and she’s like, oh, she pushes me away. She kicked me so hard in the chest the other day that it knocked the wind out of me. I was like, I can’t breathe. You know how like when you go on the Gravitron, but as an adult and you just breathe for a while. Yeah, that’s how it felt. And I was like, wait a minute, you’re too young for this. So, oh wow.
Gavin:
In my takeaway from what you’ve just described, also, though, because I have a preteen, soon-to-be teen, who I’m trying to help navigate through, I don’t know, are we in a mean girl state or not? And joining clubs is only what losers do. In fact, when I asked her, when I was trying to encourage her to get to try theater, listen, yeah, I am not going to encourage her to follow in my footsteps by what happens. Oh my god. What happens? 82 episodes and 24 cents later, that’s what you’re left with. However, I do feel like um I’m I just wanted to try it. You know, like obviously theater folk are fun folk, right? And she said to me, and I quote, and David, I forget if I’ve already said this on the show, um, theater is just rehab for emos. I mean that needs to be on a t-shirt.
David:
I mean kind of that shirt. Can we sell that on Zazzle? We could get some money for that.
Gavin:
Merch.
SPEAKER_03:
Merch, we got merch coming right now.
Gavin:
It sounds like you have uh the just right amount of nerdiness in your daughter. And how how do you cultivate that? Because I’m so jealous.
SPEAKER_03:
Uh, I mean, I do think, and I think you guys would both agree, being theater folks, I think that it’s in your blood or it’s not. You know, like it’s either you’re born with it or you’re not. And like my daughter clearly, and David knows this, I mean, like, came out of the womb with jazz hands. I mean, she just was like a 16-bar cut right now. I mean, she was like ready to go. We always go, we always tell this story about we went to go see me and my wife Lisa uh went to go see Lakage uh on Broadway when she was pregnant with Sophie. And during one of the kick line moments, Sophie was kicking to the beat uh in Lisa’s tummy. And so I like felt her stomach in the theater like while it was happening, and it was like and so it was, yeah, she was she was really uh that meant to do it.
David:
That’s amazing. I remember there’s a there’s an old video of like Sophie leading a dance. Do you remember? And me and my husband are like following her around the living room. Um I know it was a long time ago because like the quality of the video is not great. Very green, yeah.
Gavin:
iPhone iPhone 4 instead of iPhone 16.
David:
It’s just a bunch of cave drawings of what it is. Yeah. Well, so that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about on the show is that like you had her while we were on the road. We had literally in the middle, well, not in the middle, the very beginning of a decor. And you gave your wife gave birth to your first child, and then you toured for the next year. Like, yeah. I mean, I was I obviously had a front row seat to it, but I’m curious, like, how how did you do that? How did you survive?
SPEAKER_03:
Well, okay, so here’s how the story goes. Uh, we found out that we were pregnant, um, which this I’ll tell that quick version of that story, because that is a good story, too. Um uh when the Broadway company of Shrek was just finishing up, we had like four or five weeks to go. Uh uh this guy, Ben Crawford, was becoming Shrek uh because Brian Darcy James was moving on. Uh, he had been the standby, I was becoming the standby, but we knew we only had like three or four weeks left of the run, so I was pretty sure I was never gonna go on, but I did get to have a put-in rehearsal. Um, I did my put-in rehearsal on a Friday, went pretty great. I felt good about it. Came home when my wife answered the door, she was videotaping me, and I thought she just wanted to know how great I was in the put-in, and I was like, Yeah, that was awesome, and people love me, yeah, it was pretty great. And she kept filming me, and I was like, Why are you still filming me? And she said, Look at the sink. And on the sink was uh four positive pregnancy tests. And so, like, we knew, and so we spent the whole night, of course. We’re like, Oh my god, we’re gonna be parents, it’s amazing! Like, what if it’s a boy? What if it’s a girl? What are we gonna name it? Oh my god, our life has changed, it’s amazing. Got like no sleep, and then the next morning they called and they were like, Ben’s sick, uh, it’s a Saturday, you’re on for both shows today. And so that was like my first time playing Trek on Broadway was like seven hours after I found out that I was gonna be a dad. And uh, and so a lot of people I remember, you may remember this, David, like everybody was like, Oh my god, you were so like focused and in the moment, it didn’t seem to like overwhelm you. And in truth, it was because half my brain was like, I’m gonna be a dad, oh my god. So I wasn’t able to totally freak out in the way that I probably would have had that not happened. So, anyway, so now my wife is pregnant, the tour is coming up, we’re kind of looking at the dates, and we’re like, this could prove to be problematic. Like just looking at when, like, basically, we had two opening nights scheduled for basically the same time. And so uh my wife did all of her prenatal care in New York, and then we found a doctor in Chicago that was willing to take us at nine months pregnant, and uh we she my wife had done one trip out to Chicago to like meet with this woman at least once, and then at nine months pregnant, we bought a minivan and we drove from New York to Chicago, and we like prayed that we didn’t have the baby in Cleveland. We made it to Chicago at the reserve square apartment chickless from the bus station.
SPEAKER_04:
Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:
And so we made it to Chicago, and then we we had like two weeks of tech and dress and stuff like that, and we figured, well, that’s when the baby will come at some point in that. And I was very clear with DreamWorks where I was like, I am gonna leave to go to the birth of my my child, like no matter and I said, Right, I said, if we’re in a show, I said I won’t leave in the middle of an act, but if I find out during the first act that my wife’s in labor, I’m gonna leave an intermission. And they were like, Okay, we get it. Um, but we just kept thinking it would happen during one of the tech rehearsals or dress rehearsals. No baby, no baby, no baby, no baby. Now we’re like past the due date, so it really could be any moment. Uh we get to opening night was on a Tuesday, uh, or like first preview, you know. So we did like uh Tuesday show, no baby. Wednesday we had two shows. So I called my wife. I mean, obviously, I after before I left, I was like, You’re not feeling anything? She was like, No, I’m good, go do the show. So I did the matinee. I called her after the matinee. She’s like, No, I’m good, do the second show. And I said, Okay, great. Then on the way home on Wednesday night, I called her and I said, You know, how are you feeling? And she said, Well, my contractions are probably about like seven, eight minutes apart. And I was like, When did they start? And she said, Noon. Noon! They started at noon, which means that was before the matinee. Wow. But she was like, I didn’t want to worry you. You had a show to do, it takes a while. And I was like, Lisa, what are you doing? So, anyways, we went to the uh hospital, had Sophie on uh Thursday afternoons when she finally came. Um, I was out of the show on Thursday night. I was back in the show on Friday, on Saturday, on Saturday for the matinee when we left the hospital. I had a matinee, and so Lisa drove from the hospital as opposed to me. I was in the passenger seat, Sophie was in a car seat, Lisa like rolled out of the hospital, like dropped us off at the theater, and then it was like, all right, have a good matinee, and went home with the baby. And then it’s really, you know, David, you say, How did we do it? I didn’t do it. It was all Lisa. Like, she really just she A was so brave to want to take that on, you know, of just of being together, right? Um she put a lot of trust in, you know, our sort of community of the people involved in the show. And luckily, everybody really was awesome. And you know, it’s not that we necessarily needed a lot of like babysitting, but just even just emotional support and like being around Sophie and around Lisa and giving her a sense of community and not feeling like she was just alone in a hotel room with a newborn was really huge and helpful. Um, and we just I mean, my wife was an actress at one point as well and still works in the theater, you know. So she’s a theater person, she gets that sort of like gypsy lifestyle, and we just kind of were like, let’s have this adventure together. And I still think to this day, and I think I’ve told you this, David, that Sophie, my daughter, even though she’s just a was just a baby and it was just the first year of her life on tour, I think she is super amenable to change and new situations because of that first year of her life. Because from the get-go, she was in a new hotel room every week and with new dressers around her and new people, and you know, like, and like so. She just is she has an ability to be dropped into a new situation and just kind of be like, okay, I took a lay of the land and now let’s let’s go. And so I do think that it was a great experience for it, and it’s a great story for her to tell. Whenever people are like, Where are you from? And she’s like, Well, I’m actually from 26 cities in the first year of my life, you know.
David:
And her frequent flyer miles are insane. No doubt.
Gavin:
Yeah, wait a minute, you were driving that, you doubled down on the grocery getter from the get-go. You’re saying you had you drove a minivan out of New York City.
David:
I remember on days when we would leave. I remember like, like you, if you walked by the minivan, just like just new parents stress packing the back of this like Toyota Highlander to get to the next venue.
SPEAKER_03:
It was wild. I mean, it was, I gotta say, it was and David will remember this, and I’ve told this story before. I I had let’s just get right into the good stuff. I I had what might be considered a nervous breakdown or at the very least, a massive panic attack. In do you remember this in San Francisco?
David:
I remember it so well because our dressing rooms were were close enough to each other where I could hear you before and during the show.
SPEAKER_03:
So basically, what so okay, let’s get into it this way. Um, the because we were driving, our our weekly schedule usually was we’d finish the show on a Sunday, and then me and Lisa and Sophie would get in the minivan. And if we didn’t drive that night, we’d drive early Monday morning and spend most of Monday driving to whatever the next city was, six, seven, eight, nine, ten hours away, right? We’d get to the next city. Uh, on Tuesday, we would do sound check and then do a show. Wednesday morning, I was usually doing some kind of press early in the morning and then show on Wednesday, Thursday morning, usually some kind of press, show on Thursday, Friday mornings usually were free. Then we’d do a Friday night show, do two Saturday, two Sunday, and then travel and do the next week. So I was loving it and I was feeling great about it, but I I definitely was getting a little exhausted. And, you know, I will say, luckily, Sophie was a very good sleeper, and my wife handled a lot of the like late night feedings and stuff like that. Um, but I still was a new parent, and it was, you know, a lot going on and and distress about it.
Gavin:
But I mean, you were already so incredibly sleep-deprived at that moment. Right. And your job is to look awake, although admittedly, you were playing Shrek, so you didn’t have to be in the city. The grumpiness. I can I could lean into it, yeah.
David:
Also buried under prosthetics.
SPEAKER_03:
Like you couldn’t see the circles under the eyes. But, anyways, we were in San Francisco, and it was uh like a Wednesday matinee, and I was feeling totally fine. I was not feeling in any kind of like, oh, it’s all building to this moment, I can’t take it. I was really felt like totally fine. Excuse me. And uh we I came up for the open the opening of Shrek has kind of a little like you know, prologue thing, and then they’re like, and here comes Shrek. And then Shrek comes out and sings this big opening number. And this particular day, I I come out and I’m like got my big buckets or whatever, and we had a turntable on the stage, and when I was walking to downstage center, our turntable had like a tiny little lip, and I tripped just a little bit, not like to the where I fell, but just kind of like caught my foot a little bit. And it was as if I could hear, like in the matrix, like somebody unplug the back of my brain, and in my head, I just heard like all the systems shut down, and I’m standing there down center stage, top of the show, all alone, in Shrek the Musical as Shrek, and I I don’t have a fucking clue what the name of the song is, what the tune is, any of the lyrics, where I’m supposed to be standing. I mean, I got nothing. Billy Porter calls that the white room. He called it the white room.
David:
All of a sudden you’re just standing in a white room and you’re like, You have no information.
SPEAKER_03:
No information. I got nothing to do here. And so, and I’m looking down at the music director, and he’s kind of like, what the hell are you doing? And and so I just, for not a verse, not a verse and a chorus, but an entire, an entire four-minute song just went like this. And then eventually I remember the title of the song. I eventually got to that. So I think I finished with like World. Like with just one word. And the audience sort of was like, What the hell was that?
David:
For those of you who know the show, the last words of that number is all mine. So already you’re not doing great.
SPEAKER_03:
And and then I came off stage and I was like, somebody give me a script. I don’t know what anything is. And no, this is six months into the tour. Six months into a run of a show you’ve been doing forever. And they’re like, What are you telling about a script? And so I was like literally looking at the script until I’d walk on stage. And I had a couple more moments in that show and then and the night show were not like full songs where I went up, but I had a couple more moments because I was just now I’m like truly, I’d never experienced uh stage fright ever in my life, but then then I finally understood it. And um, and then eventually the the stage manager came to me at intermission on the evening show, and he was like, How you doing, buddy?
SPEAKER_04:
And I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t be an actor, I need to go home and go to bed. I’m so scared and tired and mad and sad.
David:
And like I even mind an ogre, a grown man dressed like an ogre, is having this conversation.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah. And so they were like, All right, can you finish the show? And I was like, I think so. And so I finished the show, but then I was out of the show. But I finished it, and then I took a week out of the show. I took a full week off, and I sent Lisa and Sophie down to Florida where uh my wife is from and her family’s down there, and so she just went to visit grandparents. And I I I like wandered the streets of San Francisco for a week by myself in like a peacoat and just like thinking about my life, and like, and then I was back to normal and I’ve been fine ever since. But like it was, I think it really was my brain got to a point of like, okay, this is too this is too much. Like, we’ve we’ve stacked too many things into the thing, yeah, into the systems.
David:
I obviously could hear you prior to every show in the overture, you would be singing your song because the overture had the same tune in it, and I could hear you just being like, it’s a big, bright, beautiful world, like just mumbling as a crazy person up and down the hallways. And I know, and I know as you do, when you go to the white room, going over the lyrics isn’t focusing on is not gonna help. You have to you have to do a hard reset, you have to unplug, you have to do a hard reset as you did. But oh my god, I remember that. And I also know how terrifying that is. I remember that happened to me. There’s a number in the show that I did where you basically am just sitting there for the first three verses, and they’re all kind of similar. Um, uh Ballad of Farquad. And I would just be singing the song, and I got too comfortable where I would be like daydreaming about like, do uh have I, do I have a Marriott Bonvoy? I don’t know if I have a Marriott, but I did I want to get my point because Omni is next week. I’m like going, and I remember one time being like, Daddy, he’s a and I went, Oh god, I’m in the white room. Oh no, David, you cannot and I was like, never do so. Then every night at that point, I’d go, Focus, David. Yeah, focus on the song you’re singing. Oh man. Yeah, I mean, you you you survived a year, your first year as a dad, on tour in hotel rooms with a newborn, leading a show. Poorly, I might add, but you led the show.
Gavin:
Um I cannot imagine. I mean, we have said many times on this show, you don’t need all the shit that people say you need when you’ve got a newborn, right? You don’t need the wiper, wipe warmers, you don’t need this, that, and the other. They’re just houseplants. They don’t need anything more than Tupperware till about a year and a half. However, however, being in a hotel where nothing is yours, I can’t imagine that sense of like rootless, like, I don’t even know. If I needed something, I don’t know what it is because I’m in a hotel and you can’t like go accrue stuff, although hence minivan, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_03:
But like, I think because we started that way, there was no sense of like It was your normal. Oh, but where’s the the the wipe warmer? Like, we didn’t need any, like we were we had a crib, she had a couple of toys, she had a car seat, she had a playmat, we had a little bumpy seat or whatever the hell it was called.
Gavin:
You know, yeah, that’s all you need.
SPEAKER_03:
We’re good, you know.
Gavin:
And how and how old was she when you left tour?
SPEAKER_03:
A year the the tour ended in ended in LA, and she had her first birthday, like the last week or two of the show. Yeah. Wild.
David:
I mean that that what a while like looking back now and like t pulling it all apart. It’s like how how any of us did it, but how you did it is absolutely beyond me. One of the ways we got through it, and I will week you and I could literally spend an hour and a half on this podcast. We’ve lost all of our audience stories anyway. I know, I know, I know. I don’t I just want to I just want to tell one story because it it is in my top three favorite stories to tell about the theater. It’s not a mishap, which I want to ask you about a mishap on stage, but um Eric mentioned that we do a lot of press, and every week the there were four principles on the show. All four of us would always do radio interviews, TV stuff, and it’s always the same stuff. And you know, it it’s fun, it’s wonderful, but it can get a little repetitive. And so we all four of us decided that we were gonna create a little game and we were gonna come up with a bunch of phrases and words and stuff that were just really weird to say, but if we could get it into a live interview, we got a certain amount of points. And if we got it, and at the end of the you know, tour, we would add up our points and you know somebody would win a prize. And so they were just silly things. And what one of the things we met mentioned and that we had to get points were we had to mention that Eric was a big fan of unicorns and that he had an entire unicorn collection at home. Somehow, and uh one of our way.
SPEAKER_02:
I I do not I’m not really. Please don’t send him unicorns.
David:
Please don’t send him unicorns. But so Haven somehow got it into one of the interviews that yeah, Eric has this huge unicorn collection. He it’s his whole life, he’s unicorns. We are in San Diego, California. And this is months after this. Months, like four or five months. Maybe a year afterwards. It was it was a long time. And we’re at the stage door signing autographs. You’re very welcome. And I’m out first, obviously, because Eric takes a long time to get out. And so I’m signing autographs, and this kid comes up to me and he goes, Hey, is Eric coming out? I said, Oh yeah, he’ll he’ll he’ll he’ll be out soon. And he goes, Oh, because I made this for him. He pulls out a hand stitch, hand-stitched with love unicorn shirt. Like jersey, like almost like a sports jersey. Yeah, but it was made out of like girls’ figure skating material, kind of like silvery mesh kind of thing. Yeah, like silver mesh and purple, and it hand-stitched a unicorn. Big unicorn on the chest. And when I tell you this boy was beaming with pride, he was so excited to hand this to Eric Peterson. I floated out of there. Now, I I knew it would be an hour before he came out, so I was like, and I just remember waiting for the text. I was like, please, please let this happen soon. I to date, one of my favorite things that is happening. And I still have it. I still have it. He still has the shirt. I should have made you wear it for this video. I should have, I should have bought it, yeah. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03:
I have a Okay, let me tell, oh, I’m gonna totally this is I’m I apologize. There’s one more good press story that was similar to this. So when Haven, who was playing Fiona and I, we were on, I think in Oklahoma City or something like that, again, middle of the tour, we’re getting a little exhausted, and they’re playing B-roll of uh Fiona, and she has that song I know it’s today, where she’s like flipping through the book, right? And she like is ripping out pages and stuff. And as they’re showing this B-roll, and Haven’s giving some answer to the morning show person about the show. I just pipe in and I go, you know, fun fact, Haven actually learned to read for this show. And I just said it just like that. Like, not too, I just like said this isn’t a cool fact. And the morning show host was like, congratulations, that’s really great. And like totally bought it. And Haven just like went with it.
David:
Oh, that’s one of my favorites. Do you think Dreamworks ever knew that we were putting on like we had like words like bison that we had to get into an interview about theater? Like, it was just the weirdest thing. And I I won’t tell the story about us pranking you on Broadway, but that was a pretty good story, too. Bring it back to kids. So you did this whole tour with a newborn. After doing that, do you feel like you have one or two dad hacks where you’re like, this is one thing I learned that could maybe help dads in the future?
SPEAKER_03:
Um, yes, I have two things. One is one, and I always tell this to new dads. Um when you find out you’re gonna be a dad, everybody tells you to read what to expect while you’re expecting, right? And it is a great book, and there is good information in it. Uh, but it’s long and there’s a lot of stuff. And really, all you need to know when it’s you’re expecting is keep the mom fed and let her sleep. Like that’s it. Just go to the doctor.
Gavin:
You know, this is like valuable information for a podcast that caters to gay men. Absolutely. Let them talk, David. Let them talk.
SPEAKER_03:
But what I always say is the tr the thing to read before the baby comes, because once the baby comes, you have no time, is to read the first year of what to expect in the first year. Because that’s actually the information that you need to know. What are the milestones? When should you be looking for crawling? When should you be looking for rolling over? When should they have words? And because you’re not gonna have time to read that book when it’s happening, but in that pre-time, that’s when to read that book. Don’t worry about the what to expect. Um, and then my second, my second hack is don’t do anything that you’re not willing to do 10,000 times. And what I mean is, I was really bad at early days of I’d be like, oh, I can put my kid in like a laundry basket and spin him around in the air. And it’s like they love that. Then I had to do it a bajillion times. So, like, that’s the hack is don’t don’t do anything that you’re not willing to do a bajillion times.
David:
Uh former guest on the show, Derek Cahill, mentioned something called bedtime math, which is similar. Where, like, if you do something at bedtime, like you do a little dance when you walk out the door, that’s it forever. Don’t add, because if you add a little song to that dance, now you’re beholden to that.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes, 100%.
unknown:
Yeah.
David:
Um, so you’ve done a lot of stage stuff. You’ve do you’re you’re you’re starring in, or you starred in Kevin Can Fuck Himself on AMC, which was so great, but also went away and now is having some weird resurgence. Yes. What is happening?
SPEAKER_03:
Okay, so basically, we shot this show, Kevin Can Fuck Himself, for AMC, two years ago. Uh, it aired, you know, people don’t watch AMC as much as they did when it was Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Uh and also at the time AMC was launching their AMC Plus streaming service, which um excuse me, I’m pretty sure is gone now. Um it may still be alive, but it did it didn’t pop off. Yes, and uh they were really trying to use our show to like funnel people to that, so we didn’t get like a bajillion eyeballs of press, uh, but then they recently sold it to Netflix, and it just got released on Netflix like three, four weeks ago, and it is like popping off on social media. Like people are watching it, they’re loving it, and they’re really enjoying like dissecting it and talking about what it means and all the different subplots of it. And so it’s been very cool to sort of have this like show that I was very proud of, but I was kind of like, eh, nobody really saw it. You know, the people that saw it liked it, but I guess that’s it’s just another one into the you know, into the resume box. Uh, but now it’s sort of popping off again, which is very, very exciting.
David:
Part of it is because the show does something pretty groundbreaking in its format. Like every show is unique or different, but like this show was a traditional multicam look, right? You have you have four cameras, you have a studio audience. Yep. But then also it has a single cam dark side of it. And though, if if you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch an episode of the show because you don’t realize how jolting it is to go from one of those formats to the other until you watch it. And that was such a unique twist on this like sitcom world.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah. It really was a a truly original idea, which is so rare in any entertainment format nowadays. Uh, it really was like, whoa, no one’s ever really done this before. Um, yeah, if you want to get a sense of what the show is, just watch the first 10 minutes of the pilot, and you’ll get both both sides and you’ll see what the show is gonna feel like. Basically, David’s right, it it varies between a multicam and a single cam. Anytime I’m on screen, it’s a multicam, and then anytime I leave the screen, it becomes a single cam uh drama. So it’s it’s a very cool show. And very much.
David:
As soon as you’re off screen, it’s better. Now that it’s a journey name, it just gets better. It just is a better show, is my opinion. Now that it’s my opinion.
Gavin:
Now that it’s had a resurgence, also and your daughter is 14. Given the the subject matter of the title, at least, are you when she was 12? Are we were you like, hey, I’m in a show called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. Um and but now she’s 14, it’s like it’s kind of cool. I mean, what does she think of it? Isn’t she watching?
SPEAKER_03:
Um well, my kids always call it the Kevin Show. They just call it because they know what it’s called, and so like that’s what you call it, let’s be honest. Basically, yeah. But no, like they, you know, we don’t we attempt to not curse in our house. I we’re definitely we definitely break that rule, but like we attempt to, you know, keep it kosher, and uh, but so that’s why they would always just call it the Kevin show, especially when like other adults would be like, Oh, your dad’s on a TV show, and they’d be like, Yeah, it’s the Kevin Show. And they’d always say it with a little wink in their eye, you know. Um, they have not watched it, they’ve watched scenes of it, um, but it it is more of an adult show, so they haven’t really watched it.
David:
Yeah, because Kirsty was more of a traditional traditional multicam where kids could watch that and you know, whatever. But yeah, this one is this one gets it gets very dark. It does, right? Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_02:
There are moments of even in the pilot, there’s it gets pretty, pretty gruesome. Yeah.
David:
It is a cool show, though. I I I will say that. So before we wrap up, I’d listen, I literally could talk to you forever and uh we we could tell so many more embarrassing stories about each other. But uh there are they’re at the top of my cue. Like, I’m just like, should I should I do it? No, this is a public platform, there’s hundreds of listeners, and so I just want to make sure that we keep it good. But I want to ask you, what is a uh what is your favorite stage mishap, other than the one you told us? I love like things go wrong on Broadway stories, and we all have a million of them. So do you have like your favorite, like, oh, this went, this is when everything went wrong on stage?
SPEAKER_03:
Oh, I mean, I usually I tell the story of what that I told earlier where I it’s a pretty good one. That one was pretty epic.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
Um, oh my gosh. You know, I I I’m trying I’ll I’ll tell this story. It’s not okay, yes. I actually have a great story, and it’s your story, David. So this is good.
SPEAKER_00:
Oh, good. We’re all here. We’re all here.
SPEAKER_03:
This is a good story. Okay, so while we were doing Shrek on Broadway together, uh David and I did the voices. There’s a song called The Travel Song. And David and I did the voices of during the travel song, there was like a little puppet crossing kind of thing that would happen upstage. And one thing was like they threw a cow over the moon, and I would just go, as the cow like went over the moon. Uh, there was a bit of a Lion King gag, and so David would go, nah, it’s a gone, you know, or whatever, like sing the thing from Lion King. Yeah, and we would always stand next to each other on stage right in wing three. We just stood there so we could sort of time it out, we could see what was happening, we’d time it out to the thing. It was like our little bit in the track of our show. And we always stood next to each other, we’d do our little bit, and then we’d walk off and chat about whatever.
Gavin:
I can’t imagine doing that without laughing 75% of the time.
SPEAKER_03:
Yes. And so we uh one day I’m I go to wing three and stage right, and I I do my moo, and David’s not next to me, and I was like, Yeah, I wonder where he’s at. He must be doing it from somewhere else today, I guess. I don’t know. Not you know, not my problem. And I but then it’s like I’ve done my moo and it’s coming up to his thing, and I’m kind of like, where is he? And I kind of peek my head around backstage, and I happen to look into the quick change area where there’s like 15 people all doing big costume changes and makeup changes, and it’s very loud and chaotic and everything. And I just happen to catch David’s eye as he like it just happens to turn to the right, sees me, his brain goes, Oh shit. And then he in the middle of this group of people just goes, and he does his thing. Now I go up to David afterwards and I was like, dude, where were you? And he was like, I totally forgot, and thank God you saw me, because he said that he was in the middle of telling the dirtiest joke, and had they turned, had they turned on his mic in this kid’s show, and he would have been like, and then you stick it deep into this, and then you, you know, like I don’t know what he was saying, but it was bad. And it they just happened, he just happened to catch my eye just in time to say uh his life.
David:
Thank God for the good sound engineers on that Broadway show because what I was we were we were I was talking to the girls in the dressing room and we were talking about, you know, like the the the white dragon and like all the like the gross. Yeah, like all of those things. Well, everyone was one-upping each other, and I was like, wait, guys, I got the one. And I I don’t even know if I could say it on this podcast is NSFW. I didn’t even know if I could say it, but let’s just say I’m gonna perform it as I did it in the same timing, and Eric can Eric can totally confirm this. I was so I’m gonna start telling the joke and then I’m gonna do it. Like, so I was like, and then you shit into a condom, and then you put it in the van, nah, babadi, chuj. It was that close. And I remember walking up the stairs at an intermission going, I’m gonna get fired. And I remember thinking, like, what should I pack first? Should I like get my like I was literally like, should I get dressed now? Or should I like when when should I get fired? Because this, there’s I a sea of children just heard me say shit into a con. 1,500 children are crying because of what I said. Oh my god, I will never get that. That is a great story. Of course, it’s embarrassing for me.
Gavin:
It was lovely for all the rest of us to come and have cocktail hour with reminiscing with David and Eric in taking time. Would please do share with us, Eric. Oh, we love to be able to end on one good note of I will never forget the time when, and no, this isn’t about you on stage. This is about you and a kiddo. Tell us the time you’ll never forget with your with. Sophie or Miles?
SPEAKER_03:
Um, I mean, I’ll say this. There, you know, I definitely I have a great picture somewhere of Sophie threw up on me one time. Yeah. And it literally was the shape of Africa. I mean, it was like the exact shape of like with all the little inlets and like, you know, bays that would be around.
SPEAKER_04:
Kenya was correctly rings, like it was geographically perfect.
SPEAKER_03:
Uh, that was one. Uh here’s what here’s a Shrek one that was embarrassing for me. I had uh I we were in some city, I think we were in uh Kansas City actually. I had been sick, I went to an urgent care. While I was at the urgent care, I happened to see a dad, and he had his little kid, his little like probably six-month, one-year-old, and it was the kid was sitting on his like on his hands like this between his legs, and he was sort of like made his hands into a swing. And he was sort of swinging back and forth between his legs. And the kid looked so happy, and I was like, Oh, that’s a great dad move. I’m stealing that. And so I went back to the hotel room and I did it with Sophie, and she loved it, and she was swinging back and forth, and I was like, oh, this is I’m next level. This is great. I like this. And uh then that night, uh Lisa and Sophie came to pick me up at the theater, and I was like, Oh, I I want to show all the dressers and all the all the other, you know, whoever the cast is left. I want to show my new dad move. And so I literally like assembled a crowd to watch my little dad move. And I put Sophie between my hands, and we’re standing in the hallway of this, like, you know, uh theater, and I did like one, two, and on the third swing, Sophie totally just fell backwards, hit her head on the cement, made a good loud thud. Lisa screamed. I like was like, all the and all these people that I had assembled to use me. You know, were like, okay, we’re gonna go now.
SPEAKER_04:
Lisa’s like, what are you doing? And I was like, You’re okay, Sylvie, you’re okay, you’re okay.
SPEAKER_02:
It was so bad. It was like I love that you invited the audience.
David:
Like you could have just done that privately and had a lot of time. I didn’t have a well you had workshopped it.
Gavin:
In your defense, you had workshopped it, but that’s right.
David:
Um Eric, yeah. I I cannot think of a better way to waste 45 minutes than to spend here talking with you. Thank you for demeaning yourself by being on our stupid little podcast.
SPEAKER_03:
No, this was so fun. I would love to come back and chat more if you guys ever want me. No, thanks. David, David, instantly. No, we’re good. We’re good. In fact, oh, I don’t think it recorded.
SPEAKER_07:
Oh, it’s just so weird.
Gavin:
So often, our days are hectic and full of, uh, dare I say raised voices and all sorts of cataclysmic middle school nonsense that unfortunately my son generally runs away from, and my daughter and I um are combative about. But at the end of the day, uh, we always end on a good note, and I am able to like converse with her and say, okay, let’s debrief the little fight. And so often, um listen, this is not to say that I’m always right. Far from it. She’s becoming quite the argumentative kid, making her own case and advocating for herself. And often she’s right, but occasionally it is nice to hear a teenager just say, I don’t know, my I’m just having growing pains and my emotions are all over the place. And sometimes I just need to yell at you, Dad. I still love you though. And that happened twice this week. Wow.
David:
And I know that’s very like introspective and thoughtful, and yeah, that’s amazing.
Gavin:
Totally. And you’re reminded, I’m not raising monsters when you are, you know, at bedtime and everything is okay and you all love each other again. So my something great is just thank you, introspective preteens who still get that their feelings are fleeting and love is eternal. So I roll.
David:
Um, our our something greats couldn’t be more perfect for each other. Yours is like schmalty and stupid, and mine is gonna be stupid and stupid. So, my something great this week. So, my son is now in a my little pony phase. Everything is my little pony. We have to watch my little pony uh movies and TV shows, and we have to have my little pony ponies that we play around with. So it’s my little pony life.
Gavin:
I just heard in the news this morning, NPR was having a story about how there’s a there’s a museum in upstate New York called the Museum of Play. And every single year, it’s only been around for maybe a decade or so, and every single year, maybe two decades, whatever. It’s it, you know, it’s not been around for 50 years. Every single year they put a toy into the Hall of Fame, and they’ve thought outside the box to have like a cardboard box as their Hall of Fame. This year, for the seventh year in a row, is My Little Pony has been nominated, and they don’t yet know if My Little Pony will be in the Museum of Play Hall of Fame yet. Was that okay to interject with?
David:
Yeah, you just just railroad My Something Great with a story that doesn’t matter. But okay. Um, no, it’s great. Um, so I have been watching everything My Little Pony, which is as mindless as you think, because there’s five generations of this show. There’s the original 80s one and there’s a current one. So I want to give a shout out, and My Something Great is there is a new movie called My Little Pony, a New Generation. And listen, the movie is a movie, right? They all go chase the crystal and they win or something. But the music, it’s a musical. The music in this movie is a bop. It is slapping, it is whatever the kids are saying now for great music. The music is so good. It has this like six on Broadway kind of vibe, like super, super pop, pop, pop. But it is so it’s written by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler, which is a great last name. And there is a song called Fit Right In, which we’re gonna close our episode with, which is just it’s so good. I I literally am bobbing in the car when I play. So I love it so much. Thank you for writing really cool music in movies that listen, they don’t really fucking matter. But I I actually, my one of my personal goals this year is to give more compliments. I’ve maybe said this before, but it’s it’s like whenever you think something nice, like, oh, that waiter’s really good or whatever, don’t just keep it to yourself. So I wrote, reached out to these guys, and I said, Hey, I want to tell you, as a dad who listens to this shit all the time, these songs are great, and thank you. So that’s my something great, is fit right in from My Little Pony, a new generation. And that’s our show. If you have any comments, suggestions, or general compliments, you can email us at Gatriarchspodcast at gmail.com.
Gavin:
Or you can DM us on Instagram. We are at Gatriarchspodcast. On the internet, David is at DavidFFEverywhere, and Gaben is at Gaben Lodge in the comment section of a porn site near you. Please leave us a glowing five-star review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, and we’ll compliment you next time on another episode of Gatriarchs.
SPEAKER_06:
I thought those ponies were the pony ladder’s bottom run. I heard them tagged cyberproof. You’d hate to be a mom. You smell like fishes. I bet you meet your young. Meet anyone of you. The thing to do is run away. But all the different trees take away.
SPEAKER_00:
This is a new blow. It’s never gonna work. They taught us unicorns were super scary, maybe with horns like razors and tongues like tasers and teeth like tacks. They take your hooves and then they grind them in the mid like snacks. The basic gist of that is unicorns are not okay.
SPEAKER_06:
You’re gonna fit right in. You say so. You’re gonna fit right in. I know you will now watch and learn. This is how a unicorn locks walks. This is how a unicorn talks talks. This is how a unicorn hoops.
unknown:
Oops!
SPEAKER_06:
This is how a unicorn. Oh, jeez, stop! This is how a unicorn talks. Oh, I just took our unicorn box. Now you’re in the unicorn. A unicorn horn makes a unicorn fried. Every unicorn who’s born has one a horn that’s unique. So what’s a look that sweet sweet?