Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - JEFF DANIELS Went Diving Off Cliffs

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Seth and Josh welcome another Michigander to the pod, Jeff Daniels! Jeff chats about his guitar collection he expanded during COVID, diving off cliffs while on vacation with family when he was younger, accidentally leaving his wife 18 miles down the road, and even eating "open hamburgers." Airbnb.com Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips and for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/download-app.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAo7KqBhDhARIsAKhZ4uiBZme79FOIX8IvDM5Q7xb4_f4Xg3QGcoMy3jRzaMA_WwzX7oy3T_oaArhxEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Hi, Pashi. Hi, Sufi. Before we start this episode, we want to reach out to our listeners and have you send us your holiday season travel stories. These are your Christmas stories, your Hanukkah stories, any holiday you celebrate that maybe you've taken a family trip with. And we need you to go to www.speakpipe.com slash family trips pod.

And Josh, I think we both agree, listening to stories from our listeners, real highlight of the pod so far. Love it. Love it so much. I will say we did one listener episode. I forget what that one was around. It was like Labor Day. Yeah. Yeah. All your favorite Labor Day trips.

Favorite Labor Day stories, yeah. But then we did a Thanksgiving one, and I got to say, of the stories in the Labor Day one, everyone said their name, and then we could sort of refer to them. We'd be like, hey, this is Kathy. This happened to me. And in the Thanksgiving one, nobody said their name. And it just, it's a little less personal, I feel like. And so if you call in and leave a message on Speakpipe, maybe introduce yourself. And, you know, I want to stress, if you're talking about, you know, a holiday travel story where you did commit a crime and you don't want your name out there, I would guess for most of these, the Statue of Libertations is passed. Yeah.

You're probably legally in the clear. Or fake name. Give us a name so we can pretend to be warm with you. Right. It'll give the illusion of intimacy and a more personal interaction. Josh, give me the fake name that you would use right now, first and last name.

Go. Bill Wall. Bill. I'm Bill Wall? Well, I was traveling for the holidays. God, every now and then I forget that you have a background in improv, and then you come up with Bill Wall. Really well done. Thanks. You know what? And here's the thing. We're going to ask you as well.

If you don't want to use your name, please introduce yourself as Bill Wall. Say hi, I'm Bill Wall, and these are my holiday stories. Please, please do. This is a fun episode. This is a fun episode. Jeff Daniels, the man knows how to tell a story. He's a rock country tourer.

He's been telling stories for years. Yeah. He tours and tells stories. So for him to come on here, it's like we're getting someone who's a real pro. Yeah. This is a massive step down for him. To come tell his stories here, when it was over, he probably fired most of his representation. Yeah.

Well, I think we probably also have edited out any time either of us tells a story in this episode. We edited it out. Jeff Daniels. Yeah. Yeah, he had a real like, oh, boy. Oh, boy. These guys. They're with the king.

Yeah. When you got the king, let him tell the stories. Yeah, yeah. He was a wonderful person to talk to, and I'm very excited for everybody to listen to this. And also, he has a really great series on Audible that is half audiobook, half radio play, half something else. It's called Alive and Well Enough, and I highly recommend everybody listen to that as well. He's also a bit of a musician, Jeff Daniels. Yeah. An accomplished musician. Singer-songwriter.

Yeah, more accomplished than you or I. But you know what? And I hope he's not offended. A little bit less accomplished than the man who sings our theme song. Not by much, but when it comes to singer-songwriters, Jeff Tweedy's at the top of my list. Yeah. Top of the pops. Josh, make up the name of a singer-songwriter.

Go now. Gerald Schmiedemann. So for me, it goes Jeff Tweedy, Jeff Daniels, Gerald Schmiedemann. But first, you have to listen to this song. From number one on the list, Jeff Tweedy. Family trips with the Myers brothers. The Myers Brothers, family chips. The Myers Brothers, here we go.

There he is. Hi, guys. How are you? How are you? I'm very pleased by the number of guitarists that are behind you. It's impressive. It's more of an accumulation versus a collection. Oh, that's a good way of putting it.

Yeah. I'm done, though. I have to be done. I can't do this anymore. How many do you add a year, Jeff? I have stopped adding as of about COVID. I added a couple just out of boredom. But that's it. There are a lot of Martins. I'm a big Martin guy. So I was born in 1955. So I needed to get a 1955 Martin for no other reason other than that I was born in that year. Sure. And so it's stuff like that.

Is it hard to track down a 55 Martin? Was that a years-long endeavor? No, not with Google. It's just you find one in the Chicago Music Exchange. And then I bought that one. And then it was like custom-made for a woman, apparently, because it was so small. And then I saw one up in an elderly instruments up in

lansing michigan about an hour away from me and i said okay i'll go get that one now i'm done well just for the listeners jeff is uh sitting in front of a rack that probably has like no fewer than 24 guitars on the wall uh yeah more than that more than that yeah yeah a lot of acoustics when you encounter a guitar i imagine imagine when you're out and about, you probably must just pick it up and play a little something just to see how it sounds, right? Yeah. Yeah. You go into somebody else's house and they've got a guitar over there.

You immediately pick it up. And of course, pass judgment on it within 10 seconds. And the owner of the guitar can see you pass judgment and and then you go tell him no it's good it's good it's good guitar that's good which tells him nothing you know now you you mentioned Lansing and so I don't know if I ever told you this but Josh and I used to live in Okemos Michigan oh yeah yeah and our mom went to grad school at Michigan State. So a lot of our growing up, we learned to ski in Michigan. I had a very embarrassing thing right before you came on.

I said to Josh, oh, since Jeff's coming on, what was the name of that lake we used to go to? And Josh said, Lake Michigan. That's one of them. I'm pretty sure. That's one of them. Yeah. As I recall, Lake Michigan. Now, Michigan has skiing. I would go on those trips. Yeah, it's like a poor man's Colorado. A very poor man's.

Yeah, hills. They're hills. They're large hills, not mountains. Yeah, we went to, I remember, Boyne Mountain, Boyne Highlands. Those were sort of the starter hills. But it was a very good way to start. I would, my dad, we lived down in Chelsea, which is near Ann Arbor. And you've got to drive maybe four hours to Caber Faye, which was a ski resort in Cadillac, Michigan.

And dad would get his guys from town. They were probably 40-somethings, business owners, and let's go up to Caber Fay on a Sunday. And he would throw me in the car with these guys. I'm eight years old. And we would go up to Caber Faye. We would stop in Clare, Michigan and eat breakfast at a little diner there that had a sign out front said, open hamburgers. And I always thought that was the name of the diner. Dad, are we going to be going to open hamburgers? Yes, yes. Just sit in the back seat and color your coloring book. And we would go there and we would eat. And then we would go up to Caber Faye and we would ski and he would ski with me. And then he would say, you stay on this

hill, the bunny hill, whatever. And I'm going to go off with my buddies and ski the big hills. And I would do that three or four times. And then I would get a ski ranger to go get my dad because I didn't know where he was. And that was an early trip that was a bit traumatizing, but we would go every year. We would go every year. And certainly the, you stay here, I'm going to go off with my friends. That part sounds traumatizing. I will say a dad saying, I want to bring you an eight-year-old on a trip with me and my adult friends. that sounds thrilling. Does it?

Yeah. It was. I think as a kid, just being included in an adult trip like that seems really fun. It was fun until I was no longer included. Yeah, I guess that's the – there's the rub. Until you're ditched on the bunny hill. Yes. Would your dad's friends be in the car with you, or was this a multiple car operation?

No, no. Everybody's crammed into the same car. And this was probably right after the invention of a ski rack, which you put on top of the Valiant. And you drive. No, I'm sitting in the back seat. There were dad and another guy. There were three of them and one of me.

So it was all right. It was fun. And they were good guys and they treated me nicely. But as long as I got open hamburgers, and I would order a hamburger, by the way. So is that like an 8 a.m. stop at open hamburgers if you're leaving Sunday morning? Yeah, because we would leave at five in the morning and get up to Claire about 7, 7.38, eat breakfast, and then be up to Caberfay by 10, ski all day till six, and then drive back downstate. Wow. That's a day. That's a day. That is a day. So your kids also grew up in Michigan. Yeah, still. Yeah. Still live here. You met your wife in Michigan, and then obviously you spent a little bit of time in New York, a little bit of time in LA, and then you just decided we're going to raise our kids in Michigan.

Yeah, we had an apartment in New York. I went there in 76, got married in 79, and we were there with a two-year-old in 1986 when I said, let's just go back to Michigan. Let's just raise the kids there. And the Detroit airport is 45 minutes away. And I just did not understand how to live in Hollywood. I didn't want to. And the joke was, if I raise my kids there, I'm going to have to go to Easter egg hunts at Sly Stallone's house. And I just didn't think that that was going to be, I didn't know how to explain that to the kids that that's probably not normal.

Yeah. So we just chose to go back home and raise the kids there. Kathleen is from here. I'm from here. And it turned out all right. It was a bit, It's not like today. I mean, I remember Sissy Spacek was in Virginia. Redford had Sundance. Tommy Lee Jones, maybe he was in Texas. Harrison Ford, probably Wyoming. But that was it. You didn't leave LA. That's where the movie business was. It wasn't Canada yet.

It wasn't Atlanta. It was LA or New York. And I remember telling my agents, I want to move to Michigan. They said, okay, well, we're going to treat it like you're living in Beachwood Canyon. And so when you have an audition tomorrow morning, we expect you to be there. Now, fortunately, I had about three or four movies by that point, by the time we moved. So the movie people were coming to me. I still remember a couple directors who came and showed up in the driveway and I got to put them on the pontoon boat and we rode around the lake while they tried to convince me to do them. I thought I was, you know, I had it made.

And then the career slowed down and I did Dumb and Dumber. Which saved me. We're happy you did, man. I am too. I am too. I would have put a pin in Dumb and Dumber because I want to loop back to pontoon boat. One of the most famous photos of our parents is taken on a Michigan lake in a pontoon boat. And as a kid, I thought that was the highest level

of a boat you could possibly have. And now I realize that it's maybe looked down on a bit. But a pontoon boat, I feel like you've cracked the code of life. Yeah, it's definitely a party barge. It's great for families. You just putt around the lake. It has no speed whatsoever, though you can floor it and maybe you can pull a young kid on a tube, you know, an inner tube behind you. You's, you can't really ski behind them. And now they got what we call the cigarette boats, you know, the Detroit River boats that get on these little lakes and they floor it. And within three seconds, they're at the other end of the lake and they got to turn back around. So we don't have, we have a, we live on a lake, small lake,

and that's basically pontoon boats and a few jet skis and a couple of skiers, a couple of ski boats. But that's about it, mostly pontoon boats. And I think pontoon boats, maybe people would argue they're an eyesore, but they are not loud. No. And they do not create big wakes. And I think that it is very nice. I would like to be on a lake that was more pontoon boat friendly. The grandkids love it. They think they're on, you know, this great ocean liner. So how many grandkids do you have now?

Five. Right now I have five. And are they Michigan-based? Do they grow up there? Do they visit you? They are Michigan-based. Yeah. Okay. Is it a vacation when they come to you? I live on a lake that I grew up on, and we bought some land and built a house, and then I bought the house next to me, and then I bought the house on the other side of me. So my two sons and their young families live in those two houses on either side. So it's a bit like a poor man's Kennedy compound. But it's grandma central because the grandkids come over and Kathleen loves it. And my daughter is about 45 minutes away with the other grandkid. And so, we're all kind of around. They don't have to travel too far to be with us, that's for sure. Do you have a time in the morning where the kids are not allowed to come over yet,

or is it just sort of open season? Open season. One of them's coming over for breakfast. Okay, that's great. They're all kind of five years old and younger, so we're still, there's one of them's in kindergarten. But once they all start getting into elementary school that'll there'll be less activity which will depress my wife but it'll it'll be less activity ours are seven five and two and uh we have a house adjacent to my in-laws uh in the

summer and watching the boys who are seven and five just get they basically wake up in the summer. And watching the boys, who are seven and five, just get, they basically wake up in the morning, they get bored with us so quickly. And watching them put their shoes on and walk, you know, they don't have to cross the street, they don't have to, you know, take any risks. And walking them walk to their grandparents' house gives me a lot of joy. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's special. I mean, to see them, everything they say about grandparenting is true. It just, but I will say one of the best things about grandparenting is that you no longer have to, once you have a grandkid, you no longer have to listen to other grandparents tell you how great grandparenting is. You shut that door. My parents used to always tell us because, you know, I had kids late.

Josh does not have kids yet. And so my parents were always with people their age, always had grandkids. And my dad said nothing is more boring than hearing people talk about their grandchildren. Correct. And he says, I love my grandkids a great deal, but I really try to never bring them up around people my age. He would say also that he hates looking at pictures of other people's grandkids. Yes. Now he shows pictures of Seth's kids all the time to anyone who's around him.

So he's become what he loathed. Yes. When someone goes, I want to show you a picture of my grandkid, I get nauseous. Josh refuses to see pictures of kids if they have food on their face. Josh really hates it. I don't like it. I don't like it. Just don't like it?

No, it's not. I mean, there's one picture of Seth when he was a baby covered in spaghetti. And to me, that's of a time. And I know that it's still happening now. Kids are covering themselves with food or whatever they get into. But I don't want to see those. I don't care for those pictures. Sure.

It's like gross a lot of times. Just grosses me out. So when you grew up in Chelsea, did your family go outside of Michigan ever on trips? We did. I remember going to, we're going to go to Washington, D.C. We are? Yes, we are. And we were, oh, probably 12 and 9 and 6 with three kids in our family. And we went, drove, and the Smithsonian and the Lincoln Memorial, and we did that family trip where you've got to see the government. You've got to, this is good for you.

It wasn't necessarily fun, but it was good for us. And my dad owned the lumber company in town, and it was his life. And now we're coming back home, but there's a shortcut. This is in the 60s. So I don't know all the interstates that were made, but there's I-80, there's 76, there's what we have now. But he found a shortcut through the Appalachian Mountains called Skyline Drive. And it's beautiful. It's this two-lane road that weaves through the Appalachian Mountains. And it's meant to be, you're supposed to drive slowly

so that you can see the incredible views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian. But he was hell-bent on getting home, doing the 12-hour drive in nine hours, you know, that thing, so that he could be at the lumber company the following morning at 7.30. We took the Skyline Drive, but the tires were squealing around the corners. We were moving, and we were in the back just from side to side. My sister threw up, so my dad got a coffee can, a Maxwell coffee can, and put it in the back seat

in case anyone else was going to throw up. And we did. We had the windows down. We were sucking air out of the windows. We were in a station wagon full of luggage, and we were puking. And he was still hell bent on getting home. And he did, he made it. My mom didn't speak to him for two weeks. She was so furious at him. I never forget that. It was just, it ruined the trip. We still talk about it. The kids still talk about just the smell of someone just vomited again. And it's just, you got your nose out the window. You're just trying not to be the next guy. We were just talking about, we took a trip probably about 15 years ago, the four of us. It's just Josh and I with our parents to Positano in Italy, which is gorgeous.

ago, the four of us, it's just Josh and I with our parents to Positano in Italy, which is gorgeous. But the drive up is very narrow roads, which basically seem like they're going straight down a cliff. And my dad, to this day, I don't particularly like being in a car he's driving. And it was the most beautiful place I've ever been. But if you mentioned Positano, all I ever think about is being on the edge of those cliffs while my dad was driving a tick too fast. And also my fear always with my parents is that we will collectively die in a way where during the fall, my mom will have time to yell at my dad. Yeah. Yeah. We went to Switzerland once later on.

And those roads, similar, the two lanes going up the mountain and you could hear, and the people drive, they're nuts. They're nuts. And you could hear the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, and you could see the driver swerve over and just miss a head-on collision. And we're still two hours from the mountain, top of the mountain. over and just miss a head-on collision. We're still two hours from the mountain, top of the mountain. That's my favorite thing about being in Europe is, and you did it very well, is that the horns feel like American horns with a European accent. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

That's what we remember. Was your dad always like that? Was he a, he could go on vacation, but he was very work-oriented, so he could never fully relax? Yeah, he was like that, yeah. Yeah, he really was. Did you have sort of scheduled vacations? Would there be sort of, would you go somewhere in the spring, somewhere in the summer, or was it, you'd sort of figure it out as you went. The only scheduled vacation we had was to Acapulco during high school. There were a couple families in town that were going to Acapulco

between Christmas and New Year's, sometimes over Christmas, where you would take some presents with you in the luggage. They just thought it was the most magical place, and they would stay at the El Mirador Hotel where the cliff divers were. And they went every Christmas. And so dad and mom decided that would be a good idea. They were all good friends, and let's take all of our families down there. And it's the beaches and the waves and Pierre Marquez, which has these huge waves where you body surf, and the divers. You sit on the restaurant and you can look to your right and watch these kids dive off these cliffs down into the thing. There was one year where we went down there and we befriended one of these diver kids

and he got us to come down. And so you've got a bunch of high school age and a couple of college age older brothers and sisters and the other families. And we're Americans down there diving in, we're on the other side, which is a little smaller, but we're diving 20 feet off a cliff down into where they dive. And they dive from like six stories up there on the other side. But, you know, that seemed to be a sensible thing to let your kids do. There was, I mean, it wasn't. It just wasn't. And so, there was that. But then, you know, you're down there and tequila. You find out about tequila and it's available.

Yeah. And so now you're 16, 17, and you and your friend decide to go downtown in the Jeep you've rented because your parents are in, they've taken a two-hour drive to some other place. So you've kind of, you're on your own. So let's get some tequila. And it's a silent killer. We're drinking it and then eventually it becomes like water. And we're sitting in a Hilton Hotel downtown Acapulco, sitting in front of the elevators, just sitting there, watching people come in and out. My friend is now passing out. He's done.

He's gone. He's leaning on me. I got security coming over. You guys got to get out of here. Okay. And I remember getting him in a fireman's carry. I had him up on my shoulders and I'm walking through the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, full of people in gowns and suits and bumping my way through people, getting him, pour him into the jeep drive drive drive the jeep back up to the el mirador hotel put him in the shower

my brother who was 12 at the time watches me carry him into our room and he goes is he dead no he's not dead help me i put him into the shower and turn the cold water on him. And he's just going, ha, ha, ha. He wants hot water. I mean, we're trying to wake him up. Finally, his father is in room 232. And so I call him. And his dad comes up.

And he goes, what happened? I said, I don't know. I think somebody put something in his coca-cola or something he looks at me like okay and you know he survived but the following year we went back and my friend had a girlfriend he found some girl on a beach and suddenly they're in love. So I'm like history. And so I'm down in Acapulco, bored out of my mind. And the brothers, the older brothers decide to have a card game down in their room. And okay, great. So we go down there and we're playing cards and there's tequila. And I remember everything up to 10 o'clock at night. And I remember drinking tequila like it was water.

And the older brother tells the story where he said, we looked to our left and there you were standing on the balcony railing, looking down at the swimming pool, which was four stories down, getting ready to jump. We grabbed you, fought you back onto the balcony, said, we got to get him back up to his parents' room. Carried me, you know, half carried, fighting all the way. We were up a hill, go up the tram, walk upstairs. Now there's another apartment, hotel room building up there with an open stairwell of about four floors. We get to the second floor and they tell me, where's your dad's room? What's the number of your dad's room?

And when I heard my dad's name, I said, I'm out of here. And I got up and I ran through a two by six, broke it, flipped and 14 feet below landed, boom, boom, on my head with my hand behind my head. Now a pool of blood is coming out from behind my head. Oh my gosh. This is the family vacation. Pool of blood is coming out from behind my head. I missed a concrete step by about two feet and they went and got my dad. They carried me up into the room, slammed me down on the bed.

One of the other families, the guy was a doctor. He looked at me. Yeah, it was this hand. I had three stitches in my right index finger, and my nail on my ring finger was bloody. So when I woke up the next morning, I had a bandage on one finger and a bandage on another, and of course, a huge hangover. And I looked at my dad and I said, what happened? He said, we almost went home with a coffin. And he walked out of the room. Oh my goodness. I like, this story began with you talking about jumping off cliffs.

Yeah. And I thought, you know, we're too protective. In the modern era, we're too protective of our kids. We used to jump off cliffs, be fine. And then this story ended with me being like, I'm never going to let them leave the house. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tequila.

I still, if someone, and I don't drink anymore, but when I saw it, when someone says, hey, I smell tequila, it all comes back. Wow. All comes back. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it was good for you. No. Tequila. And I'm not good with it. We're not good partners.

No, no. I feel like, yeah, tequila maybe stopped hanging out with you, too. It's like, this isn't good for either of us. Yeah, yeah. It was like, this isn't good for either of us. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this was not good. The jumping off the cliffs, like those things, like, because it's scary. I'm sure it was scary to jump off,

but also fun and thrilling. Like those kinds of things, I think, are like moments where you really feel alive. But if you dull any of that with alcohol or something else, it's like, that doesn't make you feel alive because if you need to ask someone else what happened yeah then it really yeah it does defeat the purpose you haven't grasped the moment and taken from it what it uh was offering you no the jumping off the jumping off the cliffs was great and that was the year before and we were all you

know and nobody was drinking and it was but it's the climbing back up onto the cliff, the barnacles that cut your feet and all that stuff. I mean, if you were remotely athletic, you could get back up. But there wasn't a ladder. Let me put it that way. Yeah. I was always impressed with the kids. Josh was very much the kid who, if there was a rope swing over a lake, I feel like from a high point, you would do something like that, Josh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would. Yeah. I would crawl down to the lake's edge on my hands and knees and then very slowly slide into the water. Sure. Yeah. Safely and slowly. Oh, yeah. When mom was getting her master's at Michigan State, we used to go, they had like an Olympic swimming pool, a fantastic swim team,

and they had platform diving. And when we were very little, we would climb up to sort of successively higher and higher platforms. And you'd climb up to the high one. And I never jumped off that. Like that was terrifying. We'd crawl to the edge and look over the edge. And yeah, just the notion that you might belly flop or something could go wrong in the air and you hit hit it wrong and did you guys ever go to cedar point i'm not sure i don't know that we did we were very little when we left michigan i remember going to i guess it is holland michigan where there's the windmills and the tulips is that tulips yeah we did that long way to go for tulips yeah long way to go for tulips well then we went way to go for tulips. Well, then we went to Amsterdam. Yeah, we lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years. We went to the source.

Okay. If there are tulips, Jeff, we'll find them. We are going to track them. Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by Nissan. Posh, these days too many people have to settle for the next best thing, especially when it comes to choosing a car. Yeah, but at Nissan, there's a vehicle type for everyone,

for every driver who wants more. Whether you want more adventure, more electric, more action, more guts, or more turbocharged excitement, Nissan is here to make sure you get it. Because Nissan is all about giving people a whole spectrum of thrills to choose from with a diverse lineup of vehicles. Sports cars to sedans to EVs, pickups,

crossovers with Nissan's diverse lineup. Anyone can find something to help them reach their more. What are you looking for more of, Josh? I like a nice ride. I like a nice sound system. I like something that's, yeah, that's comfortable. You like to have room to load up a bunch of gear, go somewhere, do an adventure. I do. I'm never happier than when I have sort of a full car, a roof rack on my car. Makes me happy. And all I need is a cup holder for an iced coffee. And Nissan can provide you with both of those things.

So thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips. And for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. We are supported by Airbnb. Hey, Sufi. Oh, hi, Pashi. You know, I've gone to Coachella, the music festival out in the desert, like 15, 18 times, something like that.

If you add up how many times both of you and I have gone, it's 15 to 18 times. I've gone, you know, since early, early days with the same group of people. And one of the best things about it is the house that we get. And it early days with the same group of people. And one of the best things about it is the house that we get. And it's not always the same house. It's always a different house that we get through Airbnb. And it's just so nice to be with this group of friends. It's such a vacation.

And we're there ostensibly to go to this concert and to see this great collection of bands and musicians. But inevitably, it'll be late. You will have been out at a festival for a long time and it's been hot and you're tired. And as soon as someone says, do you want to go back to the house? Everyone's ready to go. And we get these incredible houses, usually on a golf course. We have our own pool. We get to have lazy mornings together, you know, sipping coffee or dipping in that pool. Do you put your jams on the boombox? You bet we put our jams on and we bring our own boombox. Yeah, man.

Even though sometimes boomboxes are provided, but we've got our own boombox. Well, just in case something happens to the boombox on site, you want to have a backup boombox. Yeah, and it's just the best. And that's something that you wouldn't get staying at sort of a resort. You and I are close. Would you say you and I are close? Yeah, I think we're close. How many times have you invited me to join you on your Coachella trip?

Ask me if I want to go. Do you want to go to Coachella? I don't want to go. Yeah. But this house sounds nice. Maybe I'll just come and go to this house you guys are in i want to ask real quick about alive and well enough your audio memoir that you released on audible so you decided it's somewhere between a memoir and a podcast and an album and a collection of short stories.

It's really wonderfully done. And it's very unique, which is a hard thing to do in this day and age. What made you decide to tell these stories the way you decided to tell them? Well, a couple of years ago, my agent manager called and said, you do know you're the only actor without a podcast, don't you? Yeah. And I said, that's a problem? And they, we think you could do this. I said, okay, well, I didn't want to interview friends. I didn't want to call up Jim Carrey and say, hey, Thursday at four, can you be available? I didn't want to do that. So I said, look, I'll do what I do when I do my gigs.

I mean, I've been playing guitar and gigging. Basically, it's an acoustic guitar and a wooden chair and me. And you hold an audience for 90 minutes. And it's storytelling. And I've been doing it since for almost 25 years now because I really thought the career would end. I thought the acting career, it was slowing down and I would be happy if I just, you know, was that, played clubs

and, you know, I'd be okay. You know, I had a good run and that was it. And then the career didn't die, so I've got all these songs and all these road-tested stories, things like doing a Clint Eastwood movie where you get shot and killed by Clint. And what's that like? And when I play the gig, I tell the story and lead it up to about 10 minutes long. And then I go into the song about what it's like to be killed by Clint Eastwood, which is called The Dirty Hairy Blues.

And it works. So I knew I had the material. And I said, well, let me do what I do. And if somebody buys it, great. If not, don't ask me to do it again. And I knew that there are 7 million podcasts up there like you guys. I mean, it's just how do you break through? And it did.

And the songs helped it. The fact that I've written 21 plays and now much like an audio book, I've done a bunch of audio books where suddenly I'm playing all five parts in a scene from a play I wrote, mainly comedies. And you can mix it like an album. You can interrupt yourself when you're playing five different people. And that became kind of unique. I started writing stuff. I had to get Dumb and Dumber in there. So I came up with Snack Time with Harry Dunn, which Harry has an interview show.

And he interviews the actor who played him in the movie. And so now I get to write that. And it's just nobody else can do that. And so I started looking for stuff like that. And then the memoir stuff started coming because now you realize there are stories that as long as they're entertaining or as long as, stories that as long as they're entertaining or as long as, you know, if I'm talking about newsroom and the Northwestern speech and I talk about Aaron Sorkin and I try to do it in ways where I, here's what I learned from Aaron Sorkin. Here's what Jack Nicholson told me on terms of endearment. Here's what Meryl Streep taught me. And just kind of share that whole thing of,

me and just kind of share that whole thing of, you know, because now I'm, you know, I'm 68 and you sit down with actors and you start talking about acting and they're just hanging on every word because I've lived it, I've done it. And so to be able to share that in this memoir, but this more like an audio adventure, one-man musical kind of storytelling thing. We just threw it out there and hoped somebody would be interested in it. And then Audible Originals bought it and have been nothing but supportive and collaborative and people like it, which is stunning to us. I mean, it's just, it's me and my son, Ben. There is no staff, you know? And the lawyers at Audible Originals were going, okay, the copyrights on the songs, who owns those?

I said, well, I do. Well, what about the plays? I said, I do. Okay, but who wrote the story leading up? I did. Do you have writers? No. I mean, that took a month convincing them that it was just me and my son. And finally, oh, and then we threw it out there

and people are responding to it. Maybe because it's so unique, it's so unlike anything else, which is, you know, with 7 million podcasts up there, that's, you know, it looks like we broke through the noise, you know? Yeah. I was just going to say, it's sort of, you know, with 7 million podcasts up there, that's, you know, it looks like we broke through the noise, you know? Yeah, I was just going to say it's sort of, you know, each episode or chapter, I don't know sort of what the right word is, but they move and they shift from, yeah, from a scene in a play to just a story to a song. And so when you, listening to one chapter is sort of a journey in itself.

Yeah. And I feel like in this world of, you know, where people are listening to a lot of podcasts and you want something that's like a nice bite, but the next bite is going to be, it's a whole new meal. And so you can sit down and enjoy that. And I, you know, took my dog for a couple walks yesterday. How did your dog enjoy it?

Loves it. Loved it? Loves it. Loved it? Loves it. I mean, he's happy to be out there. I do want to go back because you getting interviewed by Harry Dunn is such a novel approach to talking about Dumb and Dumber. And I really enjoyed how quickly, and it's so fun to know that you wrote it, how quickly in the interview you try to explain to Harry that he's not real. Because he's very excited to meet the person who played him in a movie. And I like that basically three lines in, you're taking the premise apart and explaining to him he's not real.

He's not. Yeah. Later on, I did an A&E movie about George Washington years ago, and he asked me about that. Did you ever meet him? No, I did not meet him, Harry. Because I heard he was a dick. No, he was, it's just, it was so easy to write. Speaking of plays, I remember it was years ago you did The Kane Mutiny with Robert Altman, correct?

Yeah. 80s? You're in Michigan then Cane Mutiny with Robert Altman, correct? Yeah. 80s? You're in Michigan then and go back to work with Altman? Yeah, I was in Michigan in 86, and that was, I'm guessing, 88, 89 that we went out. We shot that in Washington State and worked with Altman, yeah. He was one of my favorites. It's really wonderful, and there's a new one. Yeah.

Yeah, he was one of my favorites. It's really wonderful. And there's a new one. Yeah. Which is interesting because it's William Friedkin. And it's so funny that two wonderful directors from a certain era would both find their way to that play. And you mentioning A&E made me think about it because there was that era of sort of TV movie that I sort of miss. Because it's very much made for adults and is very, I don't know, challenging in a way you don't see a lot.

It was back in the days when, I think it was CBS that did Kane Mutiny with us. They make a big deal out of it. You know, it's like Roots. Roots did that. Gettysburg was supposed to be going straight to TNT. It was going to be a four-hour, two-night, two hours, two hours. When we were shooting it, that's where it was headed. And Ted Turner thought it would be a wonderful four-hour movie that would win an Oscar, and

that didn't happen. But it was... I mean, here's Altman dropping down back in the day to do TV, and we were thrilled. I was, it was a good cast, and Altman was so, man, I mean, if you saw Nashville or McCabe and Mrs. Miller, oh, God, what else did he do? The player. I mean, later was the player. No, the player. The player. I had a bit in that that got cut out, but that was you do? The player. I mean, later was the player. The player. I had a bit in that that got cut out, but it was a privilege. He would create scenes, and he would tell us to say whatever we wanted on Kane Mutiny.

And so you got Peter Gallagher and me and Eric Bogosian, and we're all supposed to walk through the door and do this scene that's scripted. And he would send somebody else through the other way. So it became this traffic jam. And the guy coming would say something to get in the middle of our scripted scene. And it would just all go to hell right there in the doorway. And now it's the blockings. And we're trying to get through the door.

Cut, print. All right, we got that. And we would, now it's the blockings. And we're trying to get through the door. Cut, print. All right, we got that. And it was like, whoa. And Altman, he would just do anything. It was fun. He was a lot of fun. I miss him. My freshman year in college, Robert Altman spoke to our class.

And I remember just wishing I could go back now and actually pay attention. Yeah. The way it was. The way it was. The one thing I remember is that somebody said, I know Popeye was a failure. How did that affect you? And he very politely said, oh, no, it didn't succeed at the box office, but it was in no way a failure. Yeah. It was a real nice chill went across.

He was an artist. Yeah. It was a real nice, nice chill went across. He was an artist. He really was an artist and listened to only himself. And it was a joy to jump on him and ride him. It was great. Now, you obviously must have a similar situation, which not a lot of people have, which is you raise your kids in the same place where you grew up.

What were the sort of trips that you would take your families on? And I am eventually just warning you, I'm going to make you tell the wonderful story from your Audible series about your wife and leaving her. Well, it leads in, yes. I shouldn't say you left your wife. I want to make it clear. Oh, I left her.

You're still with your wife. I left her. No, no, no. It's going to keep people listening to this podcast. In her mind, I left her. You're still with her. I left her. No, no, no. It's going to keep people listening to this podcast. In her mind, I left her. Yeah, it was recreational vehicles were a big part of our life because the kids were so young. We would rent one. And later on, I owned a few.

I no longer own one because they're money pits. But we would throw the kids in the RV and go to St. Louis for a baseball tournament that the 12-year-old had. And we would sleep in the Walmart parking lot. And we thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Look, there's a Walmart right there. And we'd be going down the highway and we would seek out a Denny's. We wanted the Denny's, you know, and we had opinions about whether Love's was the best truck stop or Flying J or Pilot. And again, going to hitting a Denny's was like a five-star restaurant in New York City

on the road. Denny's was like a five-star restaurant in New York City on the road. Denny's had everything. And that was, you know, my wife would even take showers in a truck stop, which was, you know, risky. But the kids would, we'd take an RV up to the Upper Peninsula where we've got relatives in Marquette, Michigan up there. And we would get across the bridge and sleep in St. Ignace next to the big boy because we'd eat breakfast there the next morning and then do the three hours drive, the remaining three hours after that. You spread the slide outs out and now the kids are sleeping on the carpeting floor and the sleeping bags.

It's great. It was great. It was great when the kids were younger. And we took a lot of those trips. Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by the McDonald's app. So my favorite thing about the McDonald's app is when I'm on a family trip with my kids and my family, everybody's getting hungry. I can use it to order ahead so that food is ready for us when we get to the McDonald's.

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I'm very excited because the holiday season is coming up. I am going to have mom and dad for Thanksgiving. I believe you're probably going to have them for Christmas. Is this correct? This is correct. And I think we both do a very good job of planning big, special meals. You cook a Christmas dinner.

You have a Thanksgiving dinner. You go out to restaurants. And sometimes You cook a Christmas dinner, you have a Thanksgiving dinner, you go out to restaurants, and sometimes all of a sudden you realize, oh no, I have no idea what we're eating today. And that is why Factor is incredible. It's America's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service. It can help you fuel up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef-prepared, dietitian-approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. You save time, eat well, stay on track with your healthy lifestyle while tackling all your holiday to-dos. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you just can get overwhelmed with these big holiday meals and sort of for those meals around them, it's nice to maybe be able to skip going to the grocery store, all the chopping,

the prepping, the cleaning up, while still getting all the flavor and nutritional quality you need. You know how dad acts like he's the king of England? Yeah, without the accent. Yes. It's like if the king of England grew up in Pittsburgh, he expects to be treated like royalty is what I'm saying. So you can't tell him it's time once again for leftovers from the exceptional meal you made last night. And this summer, we had them at the house, and all of a sudden I remembered, oh, my God, this is great.

We ordered our factor meals this week. Dad, do you want sweet potato grits and sage chicken? Or if not that, how about chicken Alfredo pasta? He was as happy as I'd ever seen him. He took off that crown he wears and wiped his tears with it. Head to factormeals.com slash trips50 and use code trips50 to get 50% off. That's code trips50 at factormeals.com slash trips50 to get 50% off. What age did the kids no longer want to go on an RV trip?

Was there a moment where you recognized it? Girlfriends come into play, and that gets to be uncool. Yeah. That was it. High school was pretty much it. And now they're driving, so they'd rather drive themselves. They'll follow you. We'll be in the car behind the RV, which is like following a building.

Did they have enthusiasm for those trips when they were younger? Was it like, we're all going in the RV? They were very excited about it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was great. And it's in the bathrooms right there. And who wants a sandwich?

Mom's making lunch. Let's not worry about seat belts. Let's not be concerned about that at all. But yeah, it was kind of, and you get to take the dogs, you get to take guitars, you get to take golf clubs, you get to take everything that you can't take on an airplane or in the trunk of a car. So in that sense, it was, we enjoyed them and the kids enjoyed them. And you take one during the winter and you're in a truck stop in Grand Island, Nebraska, and the wind's coming across, coming down from Winnipeg

out of the north. And you can feel the RV just moving with the wind and you're praying to God the heater doesn't go out, you know, and you don't run out of propane. There's a survival thing to it that ends up being a lot of fun, especially if you survive a night like that. Yeah. Did you have like a board game or a card game that the family would play with any regularity? Yeah, there were board games, and there was Euchre, the big Michigan card game. There was stuff to do, yeah. Euchre's such a good game, and I love that anyone that plays Euchre

always says that it's a Midwestern card game. I'm assuming it is. Maybe it isn't. I think it is. It has to be. If it's not then every it's not nearly as complicated as poker

no no it's great bridge bridge looks like algebra to me euchre is like basic math yes

very manageable if you if you are not from the midwest a nice midwestern person can explain euchre in 30 seconds to a minute yeah

yeah so you it was an RV trip when you Midwest, a nice Midwestern person can explain Euchre in 30 seconds to a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So it was an RV trip when you, and it was a truck stop that your wife was inside or a gas station? Well, we got the idea that it would be fun to rent an RV. This was the inaugural trip. So how old are the kids? Kids are, oh, I don't know, 10, 7, and 4. Gotcha.

Young. And we rent an RV from Lloyd's Travel Land, where the motto is travel with Lloyd. And, you know, I mean, there's a song about it that I play. It's My Alice's Restaurant that Arlo Guthrie did. This is My Alice's Restaurant. It goes on for about 12 minutes, and I just play the guitar underneath it, and I tell the story. The short version is that we get in there, and I'm renting this thing. And they don't tell you how to drive it.

They hand you the keys and say, good luck, chief. And you're down the road, and you realize you're driving a building. So you go. We're going to go to Cooperstown, New York, to you realize you're driving a building. So you go. We're going to go to Cooperstown, New York, to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. We're leaving Michigan. We get down to Toledo. We turn left. I know how the slide outs work.

I know we're going to sleep in somewhere. I don't know where. Kathleen says, we're going to sleep in a Best Western hotel. I said, yes, but the slide out sleep six comfortably. She gives me the look. Those who are married know what the look is. So we're in Best Western. We get up the next morning.

Now we're driving and I need gas because we're full of snacks. She bought enough snacks to feed the state of Ohio. And now we're getting 1.8 miles to the gallon, so I need gas. So I stop into a truck stop, Erie, Pennsylvania. I get out. I'm starting to gas up the RV. And I hear this voice behind me say, excuse me, sir, but are you the guy that was in the movie with all them ducks? I had done Fly Away Home or something with geese, but close enough.

Yeah, you assume it's that. Yeah, I said, yeah, yeah, I am. He goes, Jeff Bridges, right? I go, that's right. And I signed an autograph, best wishes, Jeff Bridges. Got back into the 28-foot Jayco, pulled out of the truck stop. I'm merging up onto the highway, and my son taps me on the shoulder and says, Dad, where's Mom? And I said, don't screw with me.

I'm driving a building. And then my daughter said, no, Dad, she's not here. And she wasn't there. I'm on the highway now. And the next exit is 18 miles down the road. Oh, no. I'm on the highway now. And the next exit is 18 miles down the road. Oh, no. So I go back. I circle back.

She, in the meantime, had jumped into some, she found some kid with a Ford Taurus, jumped into his car and said, follow that Jayco. And they're chasing us. And by this point, we've turned off and we're doubling back like ships passing in the night next thing you know boom we just i'm back at the truck stop now i'm thinking it's the kurt russell movie breakout where you know the trucker stole the wife yeah right now i'm thinking about state police what do i do and first and and this is before cell phones were, I mean, cell phones were the size of your shoe. So they were ineffective. And so I just called home.

I don't know why. I just called. Maybe she, and she did. She was at a rest area 30 miles up the road. She had called home. Here's the number of the pay phone. I got the, our house sitter said, Here's the number of the payphone. Our house sitter said, here's the number of their payphone. So I get back in the RV. We drive 30 miles to the rest area,

and I watch this young theology major whom she had jumped into his car. He was a theology major from Princeton, which how lucky was she, and walks her across the parking lot, literally hands me my wife and says, you really need to hang on to this one. Oh, shut up. You know, we get in. We're trying not to laugh. I'm going, kids, whatever happens, don't laugh.

And she tells her side of this 35 minute um epic misadventure which culminated with her making a remark about how the casting of dumb and dumber somehow seemed appropriate so that was kind of the end of it and then like three months later i had to promote a movie and i was i was on letterman and uh. And Dave said, so how was your summer? Do anything interesting? And I just sat there and told the whole story. I mean, that is the dream. I'm now obviously on the other side as a talk show host.

But especially uniquely to Letterman, if you had a story like that that was about humanity and its faults, those would play better on Letterman than almost anywhere else in the world. He just sat back and and let me go i blew the whole segment the whole smang and i mean there was a clip with the movie forget it don't have time yeah at the end they were like make sure you see jeff bridges in his new duck movie jeff bridges yes you were probably happy that guy thought you were jeff bridges because then when they wrote the story about how you lost your wife, it would maybe fall on him. Yeah. Well, with Bridges, I mean, great actor,

and I wish I had the chance to work with him. But I think about all the times where people go up to Jeff Bridges and go, the toilet scene. My God, you were so great. I feel like apologizing to him. Yeah, that's true. I guess the duck thing doesn't seem so bad. No. Now, I would imagine, and this is certainly the case with our family, those disasters, especially when they end well, are the stories you talk about far more than the good vacations. Did that have a long tail in the Daniels household? Well, I gig. I still play out.

in the Daniels household? Well, I gig. I still play out. And my theater company, the Purple Rose Theater Company, every Christmas I'll go on stage for like eight or ten shows. And more often than not, it's the finish. Yeah. And I've been doing that for 15 years or so.

Kathleen's heard it 200 times. I love her. Does she still like it? She's tolerant of it, but she does have to explain to people her side of what happened and why it happened. And it's good to count heads before you pull out of truck stops. So even later when it was just the two of us with a smaller RV by that point, we, you know, we go into the convenience store and we come back out, we get it. Okay. One and two.

Okay. We're good. Yeah. They do say the second time you leave your wife, it starts getting suspicious. I mean, I knew in that long 18 miles to the next exit that this was more than just, oops, I forgot. Yeah. This was leaving your wife.

Oh, God. I paid. I paid for that one. I will say, with all due respect to your wife, still better than if you left a kid and you had to drive 18 miles with your wife. Oh, my God, yes. Oh, my God, yes. Yes, that would have been terrifying. Getting back to your youth a little bit more, were your grandparents, were they nearby or would you ever take trips to go see them? We'd go out to my grandfather's farm. He was a dairy farmer. I remember that. We were townies, small town kids.

So it was just the smell of the farm was a lot. I remember that. My other grandparents had a cottage on the lake that I'm living on now. So that was enjoyable. I was pretty young when they died, so I don't remember too much about them. Sure. Yeah, I was in the car with my grandmother when she was driving through town. I would go out and mow her lawn. Dad thought I should have a job at 11. So he would

take me out there and I would mow her lawn for her and I'd try to do it as fast as I could. So she would, I mean, there was grass that I'd missed and she complained to my dad about, you know, he's going too fast and I don't have enough for him to do. And, and, and, but I was in her car driving back into town and she was driving and she drove right into a parked car. And that was the last day she drove. I remember that. Yeah. I can't ever imagine driving with any of our grandparents at the wheel. I don't know that we ever did. They were all very old. Yeah. We all knew a lot less then.

But yeah. No, we didn't really do trips other than to go out and hang out at their cottage for the afternoon and swim in the lake. Yeah. I know they're young, but I would imagine you're, and my kids have this, and my wife's dad, he's a guitar player as well. Do you entertain them? Do you pick up a guitar when they come over? Do you play songs for them? And do they like it?

The grandkids aren't really that interested. I will have it playing, and they will strum the strings. You know, the two-year-olds and youngers will strum the strings, and they like that for about 10 seconds. That's about it. And then, you know, they're gone. Do you realize you have this moment coming as a grandfather that very few grandfathers have, which is at some point your grandkids are going to discover Dumb and Dumber?

I mean, they're going to discover your other work as well, but that Dumb and Dumber moment is a really special thing to know is in your future. Yeah, I think it's going to buy me a lot of street cred that I maybe otherwise wouldn't have. I'd just be the elderly man with the walker, you know, sitting over there in the chair, can't get out of his chair. Let's put in dumb and dumber again, you know, then we'll watch it together and I can explain parts to it. Yeah, we're not there yet, but I can't wait for the day. We saw you in Dumb and Dumber, you know,

and then it'll just hang in the air, you know. And then I'll just say your grandpappy won an Oscar for that. You know what an Oscar is? Google it. Josh, do you want to ask Jeff some questions? Yeah. These are questions we ask everyone. And they're not too hard. Okay.

All right. You can only pick one of these. Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous, or educational? Relaxing. All right. Very good. What one of these. Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous, or educational? Relaxing. All right. Very good. What's your favorite means of transportation? Train, plane, automobile, boat, bike, your own feet? I have taken a private plane a couple of times.

It's pretty nice. That's really nice. That's really nice, you know, when you land and you turn to the pilot and go, you know, tomorrow or, you know, Wednesday, we got to come back. What time? And the pilot says, what time would you like to leave? Yeah. Earth's stunning moment in my life. They're expensive.

They're really expensive because, you know, and I can't, I mean, Kathleen, we went on one to New York City recently and took one and there was turbulence and a 30 mile an hour wind going into Teterboro. And I've never seen her so ghostly white in my life. And we can't, we just can't do it anymore. So we're happy to make the big drive. It's okay. Yeah. we're happy to make the big drive it's okay yeah if you could take a family vacation with any family other than your own they could be uh fictional uh they could be alive or dead what family would you like to take a trip with this one's a little harder what family you just made a weird noise I've never heard a person make before. Oh, a family. You know, I'll go with Kathleen's side of the family, which is they're all very close, and everybody gets along.

And, you know, we've gone to visit and stuff, but, you know, going somewhere with all of them would probably make her real happy. So that's good. And they're all great people. Maybe you should do that. That sounds like something that is within your means. Well, I'm not in a hurry to do that, but I'm just saying that if someone were to ask me a question about where we're going somewhere with them, I would be fine with that. That'd be fine. Okay, very good. If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one member of your family,

who would it be? Oh, I would be dead if I didn't save my wife. Good call, good answer, good answer. Thank you, thank you very much. And then would you, as you're from Chelsea, Michigan, that's correct? Mm-hmm. Would you recommend Chelsea as a vacation destination? There are things, no, not if you're looking for a vacation, no.

But it is a destination. The theater company, which is 32 years old now, people are coming to Chelsea to see the play. There are five restaurants now. There are hotels. Airbnbs have popped up. There's coffee shops. It's not just a two-stoplight town anymore. Yeah. Is there a lake? You guys have a lake? There are lakes nearby. There are hiking trails nearby. There are bike trails right there. Yeah. I mean, yes, you could turn it into a vacation,

a small-town Midwestern vacation. You could do that, yeah. How big is your theater, Jeff? How many seats? We're usually 170 seats. I directed a play that I wrote five years ago that we brought back where we've gone four-sided in the round. So we're about 202 now.

That's exciting. That's a nice place. The play's called Diva Royale, and the short version is that it's three small-town housewives from the Midwest who absolutely adore Celine Dion go to New York to see Celine Dion in a one night only performance and everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. When I was doing Broadway, you drive through Times Square and you see all those tourists, those wide-eyed, gullible, innocent, naive tourists. And I just said, there's an idea in there. And so I wrote

something out of that. And that's what we're doing right now. That's wonderful. That's great. And Seth, for the last questions. Jeff, have you been to the Grand Canyon? Yes, I have. And do you think it's worth it? Yes. Okay. I have a fear of heights. So do I. So going to the edge, my heart rate was about 200. I almost got on my knees from five feet away of the railing to look down. It's absolutely stunning and beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And I have no interest in going back. All right.

I didn't even go down the trail. Forget that. Yeah. Forget that. Forget that. No, no, no. Okay. See, there's a lot of you saying it was worth it, and then I want to note to our listeners that it ended with you saying no a bunch of times in a row.

Correct. Thanks so much, Jeff. And again, I can't stress enough for everybody who's listening how much fun Alive and Well and Audio Memoir is. Alive and Well Enough. Oh, yes, excuse me. I was so excited to talk to you because it was so fun to listen to you in my headphones this past week, and it was a joy to see you in person.

Oh, I appreciate it. Thanks, Seth. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it. Of course. Thank you. All right. Be well.

Jeff Daniels pulled into a stop for trucks. Got recognized from his movie about ducks. Pulled back on the road feeling good and carefree But there was someone missing from the J.K.R.R.V. He forgot his wife

She's far behind you Maybe she will never find you And now the kids are yelling at their dad Cause he forgot his wife He was filled with self-reproaching She's riding with the theologian Told him to forgive and not be mad He forgot his wife Thanks to Airbnb for sponsoring this episode.