Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - JIMMY KIMMEL Threw Cookies in the Pool

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Growing up in Las Vegas, owning a working hotel, flyfishing, camping in California, and what it was like raising his kids when he was in his twenties versus raising the young kids he has now....it's Jimmy Kimmel everybody! And if you hear thunder and lightning...Seth did not approve. Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips and for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com.

This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by Nissan. Whether you want more adventure, more electric, more action, more guts, or more turbocharged excitement, Nissan is here to make sure you get it. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Hi, Pashi. Hi, Sufi. A little awkward today with our guest. Well, it's another person I've done a podcast with. Oh, yeah, but I don't mind.

Okay. I was concerned that you were threatened about the fact that, you know, we started this podcast, and then the next thing you know, I got a second podcast. Yeah. You're okay with it? I'm cool with it. Okay, good.

This is Jimmy Kimmel's our guest, and I know Jimmy a little bit. He's always been lovely, but he had this really wonderful idea to get together with the other hosts, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon, myself, Stephen Colbert, to do a podcast that would raise money for our staffs who were out of work because of the writer's strike.

So we did it because it was a really good cause, but the benefit of it was getting to spend time with all these guys. And I've always had a lot of respect for them professionally, but as you and I know, Josh, I mean, we barely knew each other before we started doing this podcast together. Nothing brings people together more than hosting a podcast together. I do think this has brought us, I mean, not that we needed to be closer, but I do feel like i'm hanging out with you more than i have previously exponentially more yeah because i you know i don't know if you

if mckenzie ever gives uh you uh this kind of shit alexi will say to me what is she'll ask me a question about you after i get off the phone she'll say what about this and i'll say oh it didn't come up and she's like what are you talking about i'm like i don't know and yeah I think maybe it's a thing that brothers do in a different way but we don't we never had like long hour-long conversations no and so it's awesome to spend an hour together yeah I think you're more of a phone guy than I am I feel like you and dad talk on the phone right those are the longest phone conversations that happen in our family. Well, I think dad talks. I'm on the phone, and I listen. Okay.

Well, I mean, I certainly speak to him as well, but I guess I'm just like, I got to go. Yeah, maybe. Well, you have more. I do feel like you're a good I got to go. It's very hard to catch you when you're not about to go on a walk. Yeah. Your dog life is a lot of I'm on my way, take the dogs out, or I'm going on a walk yeah your dog life is a lot of uh i'm on my way take the dogs out or i'm going on a hike you often your life i think brings you to a lot of places with bad cell service due to you being outdoorsy guy i also i think i'm happy about this although i certainly do miss some calls that i

would like to get my do not disturb is on about a hundred percent of the time yeah so i will look at my phone and then see that i've missed calls and i will try to call people back and sometimes it doesn't line up but i just don't like being bothered by my phone you know uh why you can do that and i can't there's a real good answer because you have a job kids oh yeah yeah i have kids like once you have kids that's very hard to be like i'm kind kind of in a do not disturb place today. I should also... Oh, wait.

I almost did it. I almost did the thing I was... Oh, right. You're trying to take a phrase. I'm trying not to say it. I'm trying to take a phrase out of my vernacular. I don't know if vernacular is the right word, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to take a phrase out of my vernacular I don't know if vernacular is the right word but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to do

I'm trying to stop saying a thing so it has been really lovely to get together and do this hour long podcast and the same was true of Strike Force 5 because there was never I can't remember the last time the five of us were ever in a room together

things like the Emmys, maybe you run into somebody and you say hi but it's very brief so to actually sit down and and talk to those guys 12 times for an hour was really special and Kimmel is just like a host he outside of being a talk show host he likes to bring people together he's very warm and um I really uh enjoyed talking to him yeah such a sweet guy and yeah I enjoyed listening to that podcast despite not being on it, which goes for a lot of podcasts that I listen to. Yeah. Despite you not being on it, you do enjoy a podcast every now and then? Yeah.

Yeah. I remember because when you first started listening to The Daily, your criticism early on was you're never on it. And I would say, what would you be on the daily and then you came to just enjoy it i don't know that's a question for michael barbaro yeah i just ran into michael barbaro oh yeah yeah i did i was at a i was at a charity event and michael barbaro has been on my show i said something on michael barbaro once did i ever tell you this that i feel like he took as a criticism and i didn't mean it as criticism. Because I love The Daily. And I love Michael Barbaro, and I think he does a great job.

I said, I listen to your podcast at 1.5, and certain podcast hosts don't want to hear that. Oh, yeah. Well, I got bad news for him, because I listen to 2X. No way. Oh, yeah. You 2X? You can 2X a podcast? I can 2X a podcast if it's about sports, but I can't 2X a news podcast.

Oh, I 2X news podcast for sure. If someone's telling me a story, if it's like something like Radiolab or This American Life, I listen to those at the regular speed. Or an audio book, I will listen to it at a regular speed. Interesting. I can listen to a nonfiction audiobook at like 1.2, 1.5. Can I just say real quick, to our listeners, I want to say two things. One, Josh and I do not take offense. You can listen to this at whatever speed you want.

You feel that way, Josh? Yeah, that's fine. I will say my laugh in particular goes pretty full chipmunk pretty fast if you're speeding it up. Yeah, we have the same. That was a problem. Every now and then I would listen to Strike Force 5, and I fell very out of love with what I, at normal speed, think is a very infectious laugh, but then it was awful. So you and I both have that problem.

Second thing I want to say, so one, listen to whatever, although, you know what, middle of the podcast, go to 1X just so you can hear what the guest sounds like without speeding up. Just for a second, and then you can jump right back in. But establish a baseline because then you don't want to see the guest later and wonder why they're talking so slow in their movie or TV show. Second thing, you guys, we are going to do another listener episode where we want to hear your stories. It was one of the favorite ones we've done so far. We did one that was sort of summer, Labor Day themed.

We want to hear your fall travel stories. Maybe your family went leaf peeping. And, you know, maybe you're a foliage family. Or maybe you have a good Thanksgiving story to tell us about. We would love to hear those. And to record those for us, to leave those for us so that we can play them on the podcast, go to Speakpipe, that's S-P-E-A-K, like speaking, speakpipe.com backslash family trips pod. Do you like listening to those stories, Josh? Yeah, I do. I really do. And so without further ado,

you're going to hear our conversation with our very good friend, Jimmy Kimmel. But first, you're going to hear a beautiful song from our equally very good friend, Jeff Tweedy. Family trips with the Myers brothers Meyers Brothers, family chips. The Meyers Brothers, here we go. Wow. Hello, Meyers Brothers.

Yeah, look at that microphone. Yeah, he really shows off. Yeah, that's a radio guy right there. did you not get one of these sent um sent your way yeah we should just get this out of the way jimmy kimmel and i do a different podcast together so hopefully this won't be too awkward for josh yeah josh i'll step in for the other three fellows uh of the strike force five the key would be to never stop talking. I will say I've been listening to your podcast and I enjoy it. And I really love this area, but I cannot tell which one of you is speaking. I mean,

the idea that you decided you guys thought I'll do a podcast with the person who sounds most like me in the world. One of you could not be here one week and no one would have any idea. If someone's telling an old story about Lorne Michaels, it ain't me. in the world. One of you could not be here one week and no one would have any idea. If someone's telling an old story about Lorne Michaels, it ain't me. It's also not on topic. And if one of you likes to go outdoors, then that's you, Josh, right? That's me. See, you figured it out. You figured out the hack to the fact that we have not just the same voice, but the same mannerisms, everything about it. Yeah. You know, the theme song also,

it's interesting because it's kind of melancholy and also a little bit spooky. And it took me a little while to get used to it. But I will say the song at the end of this show is under-mentioned and absolutely fantastic. Oh, thank you. Again, I want to hammer it home for our listeners, Jimmy, because I feel like Josh wants to sort of keep it subtle and slow play it, but Josh does write and record a song based on each interview. Josh, that is the greatest. I mean, that is absolutely, I love that.

And I'm going to put in a request, and I'm sure the other guys will be anxious to see this or hear it also, but I'd love to have one of those for the last episode of Strike Force 5. Fuck off. Don't bring the sound effects. You had to know that was coming. I actually didn't, and that's why I'm angrier at myself than I am at you right now.

How have you taken to podcasting? I feel as though you are a radio guy. So it was not a giant leap away from a skill set you didn't have. I will say that, first of all, it's more complicated than I thought it would be. Secondly, the idea that people just kind of talk and then expect it to be pieced together afterwards is, as the guy who used to have to piece those things together, it's very alien to me.

So it bothers me. I also know it doesn't matter and I need to get over it. But, you know, I like things to be done in a very particular way. And I've learned to let that go. Yeah, I would not have clocked you as being or having that attitude about the other podcast, which is a clusterfuck shit show. So the fact that I haven't seen that on your face, if it bothers you, if that kind of thing bothers you, what we're doing with the other podcast would be infuriating. Well, I'm enjoying the podcast. I think it's a lot of fun.

I heard you guys talking about me with Jake Tapper. Yes. And our fishing trip. Did it feel accurate to you? Everything that heard you guys talking about me with jake tapper yes and our fishing trip did you feel accurate to you everything that tapper told us about your fishing trip it felt accurate it felt more like a cnn report on what went on there but um it felt accurate little dry you mean yeah yeah it was uh the fun was squeezed out of it. CNN style. Tapper did, I will say. He sent me a copy of his book afterwards, which he promised to do on that show

and signed it. And so, yeah, I got that. I got that waiting for me. Did Tapper bring his new work of fiction to your fishing vacation and sort of hand it out to all the guests? Well, that's an interesting question because yes, he did.

And in fact, oh, this is a great story. He put it in all of the rooms. Like a Gideon's Bible. Yes. Except for Gideon's Bible. They have the courtesy of putting in the drawer. This was out on the desk. And at some point my daughter saw it and was frightened by, you know what the cover looks like, Josh, right? There's like hell flames on it, was frightened by the book.

And it actually, all the kids wound up getting out of bed scared and running to us in the middle of the night because of Jake's book. Now, how old is your daughter? She's 32. 32. So she shouldn't be scared. You're talking about the other daughter. The other daughter is nine years old. Okay.

And they're easily frightened. They are. I mean, we watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids with them. You know that scene where the grasshopper or the ant defends the kids, and then there's a battle and the insect dies. They were horrified and screaming at us. I mean, it was as if we showed them the exorcist or something. They're not brave kids. We should show them the exorcist or something. They're not brave kids.

We should show them the exorcist, see what happens. They've been seeing those exorcist billboards all over town. I'm not for censorship in general, but someone needs to do something about that. These bloody, horrifying billboards that scare even me while I'm driving and my kids are having nightmares because these billboards on the street. Yeah, that does sound somehow even more right wing than people who want to shut down libraries. When you start saying in the billboards, it may, but it's true. I had friends that lived in L.A. who moved up to Portland and like it wasn't their only deciding factor. But they were like, we like we leave our house and we turn on to melrose and there's this

huge billboard for a sex shop and it's just like every day like every month or so it would be like a new like very sexy picture or and like dirty sexy and they they were like it's just going to be nice to not have to talk to our like tiny children about what's going on up there anymore i love that that was a factor. They moved up to Portland? Yeah, they moved to... Oh, for a whole new set of horrors. Yeah, exactly.

Well, they moved to Lake Oswego. I see, okay. We showed our boys the first of the Paddington movies, and we had the same problem. We just haven't shown them enough movies. And so they don't understand that the good guys always win and nobody dies. There'll be moments where Paddington will be in peril, but I cannot stress to you enough that Paddington's going to be fine because they kick Paddington out of the

house and he's in one of those British telephone boxes. And my oldest, who I think was six at the time, so he was a little young, was just sobbing, just sobbing. And we had to pause the movie and just stressed him. Paddington makes it. There's a Paddington 2, the same cast. It's all good. Yeah. I watched What About Bob with my nine-year-old daughter yesterday as we recuperated from COVID.

And then we watched Big, was um fun to watch with the kids my daughter's nine and my son is six and there's almost kind of maybe a sex scene in big yeah that's the one problematic moment in big it's hinted at and as soon as it started i'd forgotten about it of course i was like oh oh no here we go and my kids they don't know anything about i knew all this stuff when i was their age but they don't know anything and they're just like what why she takes off for you know short and she's standing there in her bra my touch is like why would she do that and then our son go of course he is full-on delighted what did he say he goes if i had a wife i would pull her bra down it's part of the contract it's part of the

marriage contract save it for the vows i should say he sang it he did not um he did not yell it he sang it a couple of times in a row yeah that helps your honor i sang it i was nice about it so uh jimmy i I know just broad stroke stuff. I know you got Italian roots. I know born in Brooklyn. I know grew up in Vegas. But when you were a kid, especially those Brooklyn years, and you have two siblings.

Yep. I have a sister who's three years old, Jill. She's a comedian, Jill Kimmel. I have a brother, John Kimmel, who's a writer and director who is nine years younger than I am. So I was kind of a brother, Jill Kimmel. I have a brother, John Kimmel, who's a writer and director who is nine years younger than I am. So I was kind of a brother slash uncle to him. So what were your early travels? Our early travels when we lived in Brooklyn and I moved from Brooklyn when I was nine.

So most of our travels occurred in Vegas and there weren't many travels. We didn't take a whole lot of vacations. Now, we did go to Vegas a couple of times before we moved there to visit my grandparents but we would go exclusively we had one vacation when we lived in brooklyn and one vacation when we lived in vegas in brooklyn we would go to hershey park which i assume you guys are familiar with i'm not i've never been believe it or not shocking wow hershey park you know what it is, though, right? Yes.

It's a theme park. It's a chocolate theme park, and it smells great. And they have streetlights with candy kisses on the top. And it's very exciting for a kid. You drive through Amish country. We'd stop at this place called Good and Plenty, which was an Amish restaurant. And I remember vividly, because this has been my father's theme through my whole life is how big the portions are. And he would always, he never talked about the quality of food. He

always talked about how big the portions were at Good & Plenty. And of course, they would have to be with a name like that. I just want to say before we get into this that I have great parents, okay? By every measure, they are great parents. However, when it comes to vacations, we had the worst vacations of any family I know. You couldn't even call them vacations. I've started to figure out over the years that what would happen is my mother would pester my father. And so we have to take the kids on vacation. We have to do something with the kids because we didn't really see my dad. You know, he worked.

He went to work at 7 o'clock in the morning and came home you know whatever seven o'clock at night then we'd see him in the yard working out there i thought he was the gardener for about three and a half years you didn't even want to be around him on the weekends because he was mad in the garden no one was helping him he wanted me out there raking rocks or whatever the hell we had in our las vegas garden he'd be wearing a v-neck undershirt with big yellow pit stains you know he had no t-shirts you know this is this kind of a person he had asthma he'd be wearing a mask it was just not something you want to escape from that situation as quickly as you could and he hated to spend money and he hated to take us on vacation and that is now clear and most of the time we didn't even get to our destination because the car would break down so the plan was usually to go to

disneyland about once a year we made it to disneyland every other year like everyone else we had a tan 1973 chevy impala station wagon oh beautiful yeah with like one of those back rows that faced traffic behind you you know had like a seat at yeah you could flip off the people driving behind you it was very very unsafe if you get rear-ended you lose two kids no problem right and whenever somebody from our family in Brooklyn would come out to visit, we'd load them into the car. We'd take them either to Hoover Dam, which is the worst day trip imaginable, or we would go to Disneyland. My dad would take the car to Sears to get it checked out beforehand.

The guy who worked at Sears lived on our block end still, and he would give the car the thumbs up. We'd head out to Vegas. We'd get to Barstow, and then we'd have to be towed back to las vegas the hope was that we would get the car would break down as quickly as possible so that we weren't towed that far but we had terrible trips i had car sickness i would throw up on almost every trip i I eventually, at age 14, realized I didn't have to go on those trips anymore. And I would make up some school excuse or some reason that I had to stay back with my friend Cleto, who is my band leader now, who lived across the street from me. So I would just stay

with his family while my poor sister and little brother went on these terrible trips with my family. But they weren't good trips. And I realize this is not like a therapy session. They were not good trips. And it makes me even madder thinking about them when I think about the trips that I have taken them on now. Right. You have turned it around. I took 25 members of my family to our home island of Ischia, which is in Italy. It's off the coast of Italy. And it's where my grandparents, my grandfather's family is from. It was supposed to be a beautiful trip. We rented this very expensive house that we could all stay in.

Some of the rooms did not have air conditioning. The service was not what I would call top-notch. And after this very, very expensive trip, we're back in Brooklyn doing the show. And a lot of the distant relatives gather. And one of them comes up to me. She goes, so I hear you went to Ishkia. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Your father told me the house was a disaster.

And I just look over at him. He looks he tries to avert his eyes, you know, but this is the way they look at vacations. They only take the negative from them. And now that's how I'm going to describe these vacations. So they never took you guys to Italy when you were kids? We never left the country. No, no, there was never, we had no money.

That was not even an option going to Italy or something. What we would do was we would stay in the worst motels, and we had a dog named Fluffy. It was, as I recall, one of the most anxious situations of my life was they charged another $2 if you wanted to keep a dog in your motel room. And, of course, my father did not want to pay that $2 for the dog. And so we had to keep the dog quiet in our room. And of course, the dog was not quiet at all in the room and was barking.

And the motel manager came and demanded $2 for my father, who was then mad at the motel manager for whatever reason. But that was what we would do. We'd go to shitty restaurants if you wanted to stay in my dad's good graces you would order the cheapest thing on the menu if you ordered like an orange juice may god help you he wouldn't talk to you the whole rest of the trip so these do not sound like relaxing trips your dad didn't want to be on him he was not making a vibe that was fun

to be around. What was your mom's energy? My mom's energy. It's interesting because my mom is a dominant force in our house always. And she was the focus of everything for 99% of my life, except for when we were in the car. Then my dad was in control. And my dad is a very mild mannered guy. I mean, he is like you, you would find nothing wrong with my father other than an hour and a half long explanation of his latest knee surgery. That would probably bother you a little bit, but he is the guy who pick you up at the airport. He does everyone's yard work for, he pays for everything. He does my cousin's yard yard my everyone in our family he goes around and does their yards on the weekend he's a great guy but on vacations he was absolutely

just terrible just on edge and awful the whole time they live right by you now correct they live pretty close to me yeah gotcha and do you uh this is a decision you made on their behalf correct i did yes i got them a house in um in california so they could be closer to us actually i got them one house and they did not move out to it they'd come and visit every once in a while and i finally said you know i bought you a big house so you could move into it and they said yeah it's not big enough we have too much stuff to move into. And so we sold that house and bought an even larger house. And then it still took them five years to move into it. But no regrets about having them close?

Oh, no, not at all. Not at all. You know, it's great. The kids love hanging out with them, and we enjoy seeing them. But the vacations, I will say, it is something that sticks in my craw. My dad, one time we were parking, he had a Chevy Vega. Do you remember those cars? You probably don't because none of them were still on the road by the time you guys were

born. It was one of the worst cars ever made. It was a hatchback, little green car, terrible car. My brother's stroller was in the back. car, terrible car. My brother's stroller was in the back. My dad was having just a fit. And he decided instead of trying to readjust the stroller, he would slam the glass hatchback window down and smash the whole thing. And I remember that moment. We're all watching him. He smashed through the window of the hatchback and there was a moment of tension. And then he started laughing and we're all like

oh thank god he's laughing but it was an accident it was an accident to smash the window i guess it was an accident yeah it was kind of an act it was a half accident but it was born out of uh frustration and anger and i'm gonna try and yeah jam this thing in here i feel like there's three or four times dad did something like that to us, none of which ended in laughter. And I think most of which were on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

yeah, they're kind of fuzzy now because of the trauma of watching your dad just destroy a thing. It is hard. Like every now and again, like I, you know, I feel like I get it from dad,

but I do want to just destroy a thing. Yeah. I want to like, you know, throw the printer on the ground and just stomp on it. But then it's like, well, then the rest of my day is like,

I got to go get a new printer. And I see the sort of the next chapters. I don't even like seeing that in movies when they go here, smash this lamp. You'll feel better. I imagine the grips cleaning it up. You up. I don't know about you guys, but I've only had one moment like that. I think, I don't know, maybe my kids remember differently, but I think I've only had one full freak out moment as a father. And it was the problem that we have.

The biggest problem in our house is the kids won't eat. And this drives me nuts because they'll request something and then not eat it. And they'll have some stupid reason for not eating it. My daughter was not eating, which she's very good at. And we'd made cookies. And I knew that she was going to skip dinner and go right to the chocolate chip cookies. And we had this big tray of cookies cooling on the counter and she would not eat her dinner and i went nuts and i started chucking the chocolate chip cookies one by one into the pool hard like nolan ryan throwing them in the pool one after the other and it shocked her and my wife to an extent that she actually did finish her meal so give that a go So I have this terrible thing happening, which is I have exactly my dad's temper. Josh and I both do when we lose it. I think we try not to because we

have seen it be incredibly ineffective. Yeah. I don't think we walked away from it being like, oh man, if I have a temper like him, that'll get me ahead in life. People like being around it. But when he would yell at us as kids, it terrified me. Right. Like it was very scary when he yelled. I yell at my kids the exact same way. They think it is so funny.

They are not scared at all. It's like I'm doing an impression of him on stage that they just think is the best. Because I will be like, cut it out, both of you, cut it out. And they just look at me and then they're like. And then you just have to retreat because you realize the next move is like putting hands on them and you're not gonna do that but if they just think it's so funny you can't you have to just walk out of the room i hope i haven't said this before but i was driving once and i was

starting to lose my temper and ash my oldest had a friend with him in the backseat. And Ash, I heard Ash say to the friend, oh, my dad's about to lose it. It's so funny. And I was just heartbroken. Dad would lose it. And I mean, I feel like it wasn't not effective. Like in terms of like correcting bad behavior. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. You wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of that. Did your parents curse in front of you guys? Did they use foul language? Yes. I don't. Yeah. They did.

I will say my dad did a lot when he got mad. And then my mom would just casually use bad language in a way that's really funny and endearing to this day. My mom will say we were 11 or 12 before she just started saying something was bullshit. She says a lot of things are bullshit. Like she got bullshit service or this charge was bullshit, that airline's bullshit. And that was fun. I enjoyed that because it felt like adults. Josh, does it bother you when Seth says my parents like they're only his parents?

I mean, it little possessive. It's weird. Let me stress, by the way, it is definitely Josh's mom. I happen to be her son as well. But it is. I'm very aware that my mom is Josh's mom. I do remember my hearing my dad curse, which was out the window of the car at another car the first time.

And I was with my buddy clito we're in the back seat and he's like your horse's ass you know something like that shit bird or something like that yeah they're sort of like the old timey curses or just they're great and do you remember the days when like a a friend's parent would hit you like it was kind of okay in the in the 70s or maybe you guys are a little too young for that i think like maybe we were just we grew up in a different area maybe brooklyn and vegas where they were just throwing the hands around yeah where you'd get hit like i remember getting hit a lot in the car i remember never wearing seat belts and in fact my head went through the

windshield of my parents car when i was a kid my dad stopped short and I hit and there's a big spiderweb crack that we never got fixed from my head. Wow. That's like a reminder. Which is interesting because my parents then, with my niece and nephew, my sister's kids, they would take care of them a lot. And they had those kids in booster seats until my nephew was six foot three. They couldn't have been more careful with their grandchildren. My Aunt Chippy was smoking the station wagon up. The clouds of smoke were billowing out the windows. 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. I do remember one time a dad losing his temper in a very classic dad way in defense of me so much that I had to then take the side of the person that I had been fighting with. Which is we were in, Josh and I used to live in Amsterdam and my parents would visit us. We worked for this comedy theater over there. And Dutch taxi drivers, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s,

maybe my least favorite human beings I've ever interacted with. Yeah, it was like a mob. It was like a mob, but they all wore like three-piece suits and they drove BMWs. And when you told them where you wanted to go, they would tell you where they wanted to go.

And then you would maybe, that's what it felt like. And so I remember we were going over to Josh's apartment. I was with my parents and we walk over and you have to wait in a cab line. You don't hail them. You just go over and you stand in line. And this guy's smoking outside his car and there's two other cab drivers with him

just so they're all waiting. And I give him the address and he says, that's too close. Basically, he's been waiting for customers and he doesn't want to take, you know, he wants somebody who's going to the airport. He thought we could have walked to Josh's apartment, but I'm with my parents. They didn't want to walk. It was late at night. And we'd actually gotten into the taxi when he told him this. And I'm arguing with the guy. Finally, he's like, get out of my cab. And I said, we're not getting out of the cab. You're taking us where you want to go.

And he goes, get out of my cab or I'm going to call the police. And then dad snaps. And he's like, listen to me, you motherfucker. You call the fucking police. And my mom and I were both like, we got to get him out of the cab. He's going to spend the night in the Dutch jail. And we had to pull him out of the cab. And they'd never seen anything like it.

There's no Dutch person that's reacted like my dad. And we were like pulling him away. He slapped, he slapped on the hood of the car. And he's like, I'm a Mario. And it was the best. It'd be like running into a Wolverine in the wild. Yeah. Just like, whoa, this is a weird thing.

Do you think there's anything to the possibility that your parents were expecting much different from the dutch you don't expect dutch people you know with all the tulips and whatnot yeah to be assholes yeah i think they were very taken aback another famous story my dad also hates uh snobs and he hates people who think they are living life to a different set of rules than him and he was in line leaving amsterdam he was in line with my mom and uh he said it was like a long check-in line and uh two guys uh dutch businessmen had their rolling suitcases and just kind of like tried to get in the front of the line as if they didn't notice that there was a long line right yeah and my dad stepped out of the line as if they didn't notice that there was a long line. Right, yeah.

And my dad stepped out of the line at Skipple Airport and said, Hey! And I guess it was like 100 feet away. He goes, You saw the fucking line? And he goes, You can cut everybody here, but you can't cut me. And I guess they very, like, slowly walked back. So I think the real takeaway is my dad probably shouldn't go back my dad's uh faces on multiple flyers that are pinned up in amsterdam

and if i was in that line i probably wouldn't say anything i'd grumble quietly but i would consider your father to be a hero i probably would have applauded him yeah absolutely if somebody is willing to like break the social norm to say what everybody is thinking. Yeah. To enforce that social norm. You love it. Yeah. Are your parents listening? You guys parents listening to this? Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to hear this. Does that change the tenor of the conversation in any way? No, I don't think so. No, we got a good vibe going similar to the way you say, you know, I love my parents. They're great.

They're great parents. However, on vacations, it's like on the bed of it is so much love. And we haven't pushed the envelope so far that someone's like, hey, my dad has taken issue with, you know, we've talked about when he and my mom come visit, our kitchen counters are always like soaking wet and they just like they don't like they spill coffee and we're constantly it's maintenance in the kitchen and the last time i was home my dad was like i had coffee and he's like hey i just want you to look at this up here and he just pointed out how dry his kitchen counter was and so he wants he wants me

to see that he is capable of it. And I was like, all right, well, let's see if you can translate this to Los Angeles next time you come. It's a real funny hill to die on that my dad is perfectly happy with everyone who listens knowing that he'll call a Dutch person a motherfucker in public at the drop of a hat. But he does not spill water on a counter. We redid our kitchen a couple of years ago, and now it's just like a flat sort of faux marble surface.

And he'll like cut anything, but he'll take a big knife and he cuts it like right on the counter. We have cutting boards and he's like, no, you can do this. And I'm like, I don't know that you can, but I would just prefer you not take the biggest knife I have and jam it through like a hunk of cheese and then like tink it off my brand new countertops, which aren't priceless. But they're also like, I don't want to have to do this again. And like there's three cutting boards.

Do you think just psychologically that they are doing that kind of a thing to get us back for the million times we did not listen to them. Perhaps. I think that's what it is. Like my dad, my parents, my, you know,

my parents will watch the kids. And so they had the kids overnight and we have to go over the rules every single time. It's just like, please, they have to brush their teeth before bed. And when they wake up, did not feed them a little bit of sugar, cookies, whatever.

A little bit's okay. My mother, you know, it's like living in a Dunkin' Donut shop. She's just constantly cranking out the baked goods. And put them to bed. They don't have to go to bed as early as they usually do, but we would like them to be in bed by 9 o'clock because they're still going to wake up at 7 o'clock and they're going to be very tired and very unhappy the next day if you don't let put them to some place okay my dad sends a picture

of the kids and i look at the time stamp he sent it the next day and it's like 10 30 p.m and he comes and drops the kids off i go so you had them up pretty late huh he goes no no they went to bed at uh nine o'clock i go uh really that's interesting because the time stamp on the photograph that you texted us uh indicated that it was 10 30 and he's no he's obviously not scrambling and lying you know and he badly lies and then jumps into his car and speeds away and then my niece tells me that he called her to ask how to get the timestamp feature off of his phone. Do your kids love going over there? They love going over there.

Yeah, they have a lot of fun over there. Yeah. There's a little diplomatic immunity for grandparent rules. But you do have to hammer it home so they don't take it too far. Yeah, we just have to repeat it over and over and over and over again. And it doesn't really matter because they don't listen to us. And I think that ultimately that's just them. That's just their revenge for all the things we didn't listen to and that they love it. They love not listening to us.

Where we go in the summer, there's this ice cream shop that Alexi loved when she was a kid. And I think she was really looking forward to bringing Ash the first time and then my father-in-law who's an incredible my in-laws are amazing my father-in-law Tom had ash and took him to this ice cream place and when he was like two and a half and uh Alexi said you took him for ice cream and he said yeah but he liked it and I said we weren't worried he wasn't going to like it. We weren't waiting until we knew he liked ice cream. But I thought that was his panic move was, oh, no, I think he would have had a second cone. It's a good move because it does change the direction of the conversation significantly.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I do want to try to swing back to some family trip stuff. Yeah, okay. Josh is the taskmaster. Do you think we have a taskmaster at Strikeforce 5? I guess it would have to be me, right? I mean, I deal with- Yeah, I think you're very good at it. You're a very affable taskmaster. I try to be. I'm used to making decisions completely on my own, so-

I think we all are. So that is a weird part of the old- Yeah, right. SF5. All right right go ahead josh so when you went to hershey park after you'd go to good and plenty is your uh is your brother even with you or is your brother even alive at that point he wasn't born yet no he was okay he was not born my it's just me and my sister and occasionally my aunt joanne and uncle tony and and their kids and i did torture them them one full ride up to Hershey Park reading from an albino cockroach joke book.

These were all jokes that had albino cockroaches as the theme. And I just wouldn't stop reading them the whole trip there and back. That's right. I remember that joke book era. I don't know if it's still existing, but getting a joke book and being so excited. And I think it's the first time I realized they put the best jokes up front.

That by the time you're on page 30 of a hundred page joke book, you realize they're just mailing them in now. These are all dogs. This, you saying that is the first time I'm realizing that, but it's definitely true. You remember those grosser than gross joke books that kids loved? Oh, grosser than gross and grosser than grosser than gross. They continued coming up with them.

I always wonder who wrote these jokes that we hear on the golf course or whatever. Where did these jokes come from? It is that funny oral history type jokes that just somebody realized oh i know a lot of gross ones i've heard over the years you put them in a book and monetize this what were the highlights of hershey park you know i was pretty young so i don't remember much other than that you got free chocolate that was great and you got to see it being made which was great and it is funny now as an american when you meet people from europe or whatever and you talk about hershey bars how disgusted they are and how i just can't understand it i'm like listen i

know your chocolate is great i've had your chocolate but a hershey special dark chocolate bar to me is is untoppable i mean there's nothing better than that yeah it's a great chocolate bar i agree i don't have a ton of memories i i do remember that it was a little low rent i think they remodeled the whole thing um over the years after we used to go there but there was a zoo there also which seems weird with its proximity to a chocolate factory but um there was a little zoo and hershey park is it weird because you think they when animals move on they get turned into chocolate it's Is it weird because you think that when animals move on, they get turned into chocolate? It's weird because it seems unsanitary.

It's like the glue factory for horses, but you can turn any zoo animal into chocolate. Even in Willy Wonka, once Augustus Glue put his hands in the chocolate river, that was it. It was over. They had to shut the whole thing down. Yeah, it doesn't seem like you should have uh like a hippopotamus anywhere near the factory yeah what's bad about a day trip to uh the hoover dam i would love to i would love to show you guys what's bad about it how many hours

from vegas to the hoover dam it's not even an hour it's just under an hour to get to the Hoover Dam, also known as the Boulder Dam. As a kid, I had and still have allergies, but they went completely untreated when I was a child. There was never other than, you know, maybe a bottle of Afrin, which my sister and I would pass back and forth for some kind of coke addicts. some kind of coke addicts but so i remember my nose always being very stuffed up and taking some cousin or aunt or uncle who probably wasn't interested in hoover dam to the hoover dam everyone from brooklyn would come and stay with us because we're living in las vegas so it was like a free hotel room so my sister had to vacate her bedroom pretty much every weekend so that you know cousin laurie and her new husband joey could honeymoon in her bedroom in a child's bedroom we'd take them to the hoover dam we'd go stand at the edge and then sometimes we'd take the tour which was the worst because

but they did do a good job with the tour in which they terrify you right off the bat. And they talk about how many men died building the Hoover Dam and how when they would die, they didn't have the equipment to remove their bodies. So they would just pave over their bodies. And so it is now a living monument to those men who gave their lives building this dam. And to this day, I don't know if that's true or not. It sounds pretty horrible. If it is, you know, if more people died building the Brooklyn bridge or the Hoover dam,

I know that's not a fact I have handy. Those are your, those are your jams. Those are the two. It is funny. There's no real upside to telling kids, you know, people died building a dam because it's not you know prescriptive

it's like so you know don't mess around when you're on a dam like not enough kids don't work don't work hard don't get a dam job are you ever on the dam when water is released no i wouldn't say that i i've seen that i i don't think it's a particularly spectacular site it's done gradually and now there's not much water at all right but the dam is basically just a traffic jam in the middle of the desert is what it is yeah and it's why las vegas exists because at that time there were a lot of guys working on that dam and they had money they had income and nowhere to spend it. So they started these casinos not far by and houses of prostitution and shows, etc. to capitalize on those workers being in the desert.

Bugsy Siegel did. And that's how we wound up with Las Vegas. Did the idea, did that sort of classic Vegas appeal to you as a kid who was growing up in Vegas as a hometown? I didn't see it like that when I lived there. I was too close to it. When I moved or when I would travel, I noticed the reaction I would get when I told people I lived in Las Vegas, which would, you know, coming from a kid is, I guess, a funny thing to hear, or at least it was then. That's when I realized that Las Vegas was kind

of different, but it wasn't until then. Were you close to the strip? Did you grow up close to the strip? Yeah, very close to the strip. I think most everyone lived pretty close to the strip back then. I think there were only like 250,000 people living in Vegas when we moved there, but we lived about four miles from the strip. Did you ever go see comedians and shows? Was that something your dad liked to do or take you to? my you know what my dad would when he would get free tickets he would take us to a show we went to see sigfried and roy when we were kids at the frontier hotel it was um arranged through the company he worked for they own the frontier hotel and i remember the magic not being particularly good basically like sigfried's on one side of the stage and he puts on a helmet and there's a puff of smoke and now sigfried's on

the other side of the stage you know there's a lot of yeah a lot of lazy body double type stuff you know yeah but i do remember from that show and i remember it very vividly was the elephants urinating forcefully on the stage and dousing a group of suited japanese businessmen who were diving under the tables for cover and i remember thinking that was the highlight of the show and very very funny and i would imagine you can't train an elephant to wait right that must have happened every night and there are no diapers for elephants either yeah it probably happened a lot it was like a gallagher type situation except with the urine imagine spending the rest of your night going to vegas smelling like elephant urine

it would be weird if somebody who passed you in vegas made the distinction and their nose was such that they could tell you what kind of animal somebody here is that a pachyderm somebody here's been pissed on by a pachyderm my friend Clito he lived across the street from me his dad was a room service waiter for Sammy Davis Jr and Bill Cosby a lot of the big performers who came through Caesar's Palace. And so through him, we would do stuff. The first concert I ever went to was Sammy Davis Jr. I was 14 years old. I borrowed my cousin's sport jacket, had patches on the sleeves.

It didn't really fit, but I went to go see Sammy. And then afterwards, they brought us to Sammy's dressing room to meet Sammy and to talk to Sammy. And I do remember talking to Sammy. But what I remember most was there was a big bowl of potato chips on the table. And I was starving, but too scared to eat any of them because I didn't know if it was OK to eat Sammy's potato chips. I think that's the right instinct.

I am actually impressed at that age that you were willing to show that restraint. I will say throughout my whole childhood, I was fearful of ever taking anything from anybody, even Cleto and his family, whose house I slept at one summer, 33 nights in a row. I don't think I ever ate a single. Maybe I had a cucumber there once. I never ate anything at their house. Wow.

It felt rude. Would you just run across the street and get some food from home and then come back? Yeah, more or less. Yeah. I remember I had a friend sleep over. He wasn't really a friend. He was a kid I knew at school. He came over and went into our refrigerator, opened the door and started perusing. And I remember looking at my mother and without saying anything, just giving the message that i'm so sorry i brought this animal into our home and don't worry i get it he will never be invited back again yeah i love that you say he wasn't a friend because in that moment he ruined all possibility you know you realize like oh i don't know this guy at all i don't know he came he came a friend

and left a stranger that's right his, when his dad dropped him off, it's funny the little things you remember, but I do remember his dad picking something up, something that was on a table at our house and looking at the bottom of it as if he was looking for like a price tag or to see what brand it was or something. And I remember being bothered by that too.

Yeah, it seems like just a shithill family, top to bottom. And what about when you made it to disneyland yeah when the car sort of that was lived up to its that was fun promise yeah yeah how are those that was fun because you know in disneyland even my dad's demeanor changed i think the fact that you'd you'd mostly paid for everything at the entry was good like all-inclusive is really good for my dad even now like you know for him we go to a buffet like a dollar 99 stardust buffet some disgusting buffet we'd go to and i'd get a plate of mashed potatoes and my father would be furious he'd go you know how much that plate of mashed potatoes cost them like five cents.

I'd be like, okay, I'm not really here to eat a profit. You know, take some meat. Yeah, get those king crab legs. It wasn't about eating healthy or getting some protein in my body. It was really more just about feeding them, is eating more than they charged. really more just about beating them is eating more than they charged so we go to disneyland and you know i do remember like we were allowed to get a meal we were allowed to have like whatever a hamburger and a cherry coke or something we go to that carnation um ice cream uh place and maybe have an ice cream and things were they were different i think my parents even bought me something in the magic store,

which is, you know, we didn't do a lot of buying stuff. So I got a Donald Duck hat with a squeaky beak. So you'd squeeze Donald's beak and that was the brim of the cap. And that seemed pretty great at the time. But we did have fun once we got to Disneyland. And were you ever there with your younger brother?

Yes, we did go with my younger brother. In fact, I don't think we would have been taken to disneyland were it not for my younger brother who is is the clear favorite and also uh my dad was a completely different dad with my younger brother and i don't know if it's because he he had a better schedule at work or whatever but like you know he was like at all the little league games. He sometimes played catch. It was really, it was a whole deal. So you, you've had a similar, you have two sets of kids with a big gap in between. Did you have massively different family trips as a dad with your two sets?

Do you feel like, yeah, we did. Well, I had no money at all when I was a younger dad. I had my daughter when I was 24 years old, so I was pretty young. Wow. And our trips mostly because we did not have any money were to visit like our parents or my ex-wife's parents, or we go back to visit the family in Brooklyn and Long Island, Staten Island. We go visit everybody.

But we did have a couple of Disneyland trips, but we didn't live too far away. So they were day type Disneyland trips. They weren't like stay in the candy cane motel type Disneyland trips. That, you know, that's, that's really a Disneyland trip. A day trip to Disney is traffic twice in a day. You guys, what, we went to Disney World? Is that where you went?

Yeah. I mean, we didn't go a lot, but we did go to Disney World. Do you remember approaching and seeing the castle from the road and just that feeling of excitement? Well, my kids now, you know, we live in LA. You know, we're not that far from Disneyland. So what we have done, like we did do a thing once where we told them they were going to the doctor

to get shots and then pulled up to Disneyland, which is a terrible precedent to set when they're actually going to get shots because it's a double whammy. But going to Disneyland now is not like Universal Studios

is right up the block from our house. So we pass by it like almost every day. It's not that same journey and that moment where you see it rise up before you for the first time. I do like that you prank your own kids after you've basically made a career out of tricking people into pranking their kids for your content. Well, yeah, it's funny because I don't even look at it like that because a prank is to me has a negative outcome, but. Right, that's true.

That's true. You would ask people to send in videos of telling their kids they were going to Disneyland and then taking them to the doctor for shots. Well, that might be a little much even for me. You're not going to see Mickey.key you are gonna get the covid booster one of those uh halloween candy videos there's always like two kids who are nice yes when they get the news like they're very sweet yeah and someone like what i remember there's kids like well maybe next year we could just share it you know it's just just really sweet and awesome.

And I remember Alexi and I saying, we have to try to raise a kid who would be the good kid in a Kimmel prank video, the one who would just look to the future. I couldn't agree more. I have tried it on my kids, and now they're old enough to know better. They know what's going on, but they didn't have that horrible reaction.

I was a little bit disappointed because I had nothing for the show, but I was so relieved and so happy. But in fairness to these kids, like this is the first time they've worked, like they've never worked before. And so they, they went out,

they went door to door, not unlike a salesperson. And they asked for candy and they carried it in a bag. And then they brought it back and they did an candy and they carried it in a bag. And then they brought it back and they did an accounting and they added it all up and compared it to how they did with the other kids. And then we just stole their whole paycheck. The fruits of their labor, just gone.

We have a very funny thing. You mentioning the buffet and getting mashed potatoes. My wife makes our kids eat very healthy and it's great. I have no criticism, but now they go to school and they get the, you know, they have one meal a day where they choose. And so they have very healthy breakfast and very healthy dinners.

And yesterday I said in front of her, I said, what did you have for lunch today? And my son, the oldest one goes, nah, mom's not going to like it. French fries and granola.

It's just so great. And then the younger one terrible the the middle one i should say eyes lit up he's like oh you would like mine either even less i had a bun with cheese and ketchup and pickles that's like that's just ridiculous and i just watched like as just her face fell and she realized this is now out of her control forever like she can get two out of three meals but the rest of the time they're having like bagel and corn. I like, Oh,

you would like this even less. Again, they just think we're funny. Like we think we're like, and, and you know, I get angry. She gets disappointed.

They're like, it's so funny. They're so predictable. It took me such a long time to figure that out. Your kids are very smart because you, you now have no power over them at all. It took me until I was, i think physically bigger than my mother and she did one of those italian things where she bites her knuckle and she she bites her knuckle real do you know what i'm

talking about yes yes she would she bit colin quinn move too i feel like yeah yeah i could imagine colin doing that yeah yeah she bit her her knuckle and she was scowling at me and biting herself. And I just started laughing. And then she started laughing. And that was the end of it. That was the end of me being scared of her. With Family Trips Now, obviously mentioned on this podcast by other guests, I think you have a reputation for being not just on television, but in life, a host. You like having other people's families. You're a fishing cabin. This is an event where you basically provide a place for other people to have their family trips. We bought a fishing lodge in Swan Valley, Idaho, and it was really my dream. I was not looking to buy a hotel. I was looking to buy a house.

And it was really my dream. I was not looking to buy a hotel. I was looking to buy a house. But to buy a house that would hold like 20 people in Jackson Hole, in the Jackson Hole area, is like $70 million. It's a ridiculous amount of money. And so I couldn't find a place. And I found this lodge. And I went and visited. I thought, this place seems like it has potential.

I brought my wife up there. I said, what do you think? She said, well, I think it's nice for you. I will never come here, but enjoy. And that was enough for me, but I was determined to make it nice enough for her to want to come up there. And then we started making it really nice. And then it became a situation where it was all we would talk about and it's still that you know of course people say hey i want to come so we have three trips every year one of the trips is for our family one of the trips is for a group of friends and then another trip is for my like kind of hardcore fishing buddies it's a serious fishing trip and yeah and so there are a lot of celebrities on the Friends trip, and including some of the people from Friends.

And it's a lot of fun, and I love it. I really do. I love being the host and sharing that with people who are fun and who appreciate it. And we have a great time. That sounds great. I know you're also a consummate chef as well. Do you do food prep for people on those trips, or is it just too many?

It's a working hotel, so we have a cooking staff there. But I'm very involved in the menu. And my buddies, I have chef friends, Chris Bianco, David Chang, Adam Perry Lang, Mark Vetri. You probably know Mark Vetri, right, from Philadelphia? menu and my buddies i have chef friends chris bianco david chang adam perry lang mark vetri i know you know you probably know mark vetri right from philadelphia or is that i don't know if i met mark yeah i've met david and then so the rest of the year people you go for the three weeks and the rest of the year other people go there yeah the rest of the year it's cut for customers yeah it's great and you trick your chef friends into working there they love

fly fishing it's interesting a lot of chefs love to fly fish i'm not sure what the connection is exactly uh but they love to fly fish and so they love coming up there billy durney from brooklyn the barbecue guy came up there this summer john shook for john and vinnie's yeah i bet they like it it must be nice for a chef. I think that is so much more high pressure even than what any of us do. But I would imagine being on a river fly fishing just slows things down in a way they don't often get to do. Yeah, there's something there. And it's really hard to put a finger on.

And I was hearing you guys talk about fly fishing and your experiences with it. And I would like to change those experiences because I don't think. And it was funny. You're a cast man. I couldn't tell which of you was saying that. That was me. It was you. Okay, Josh.

And I was laughing at that because that's right. You know, guys, men, men, men, men, big men, little men. Yeah. I actually thought about making a T-shirt that just says men, men, men little men yeah i actually thought about making a t-shirt that just says men men men i love talking to the guides and just bullshitting the whole day because you never really get a chance to talk to someone you don't know for nine hours you know yeah and that might sound terrible to some people but it's actually pretty great. And it started raining and we were fishing dry fly, which means the bugs floating on top of the river. And I had the occasion to say,

it's raining, mend. So that's a good day. I've been holding onto it for a long time. How did that play with a professional fly fishing guy? Heiggled he liked it he actually got it you also do these big camping trips up to el capitan or you have in the past that's right yeah how do you know about that josh we do research this is unlike strike force five we put a little bit of a pre-work you know we're about to go on one of those actually with our kid school i stole the idea from carson daly who is a old pal actually i've known carson since he was 12 years old i met him in a bar when i was 17 i was on a church trip i was in a bar in maui and so was he at 12 and he was well it was like one of those bars they have food to. He was there with his parents and his parents were very chatty and very friendly. His mom started

talking to us. We then eventually moved to their table and sat with them. And that's how I met Carson. And then years later, I saw his parents in the newspaper. I was a morning disc jockey in Palm Springs. They lived there. I saw them, a picture of them at a charity event. I started talking about them on the air and they called the radio station and we got in touch. And then Carson became my intern. And then he took over the show for me when I moved on to Tucson. And then later we worked at K rock together in LA and we've been friends for a long time, but he would do this trip with his family, and he had it all figured out. He invited me to come with his family, and I loved it. Then I would go with his family, and then I started a trip with our family.

It's a great little spot. It's an hour and a half drive from L.A., and you can get these cabins. It's pretty Spartan, but it's a lot of fun. Are you playing games? Is there a lawn situation, or how do you occupy your time? I know you like a lawn situation. Yes, there is a lawn situation, but I'm mostly cooking, and none of the cooking equipment is quite up to par. So making hamburgers takes like four hours because the grill's pretty rickety. But i make now i'll make like a big pot of chili before we go up

there and just kind of heat it up when we get there yeah it's fun i like to cook for big groups do your kids like these trips do they like the the fly fishing launch do they like el capitan they love love loving because there are a lot of other kids their cousins their friends the truth is you know it seems like it's just celebrities there and there are a lot of other kids their cousins their friends the truth is you know it seems like it's just celebrities there and there are a lot of celebrities but there are a lot of friends from the kids school and some of the friends from the kids school happen to also have celebrity parents but a lot of the friends on the friends trip are the parents of my kids friends so they have a lot of kids to play with they love it they take it for granted i'm sure they will punish me for coming up with these great vacations for them by doing whatever the version of a

podcast is in 30 years and criticizing me and i'll be at home listening to it going you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna soak their counters when i get to their house yeah Yeah, I'm going to drench the place. Dad would make this chili that took forever. Remember dad's four-hour hamburgers? Just fucking shitting all over you. I did make two huge batches of chili, a vegan batch and a good batch. And when we got up there, someone, for reasons unknown,

just combined them into one pot, leaving nothing for the vegans to eat. Now, Josh is a vegan, and Josh had a recent incident with our mother, who, again, this is Josh's mother. She would never do this on purpose. But what was your... I was going home, and she's like, oh, I got this recipe for this soup out of the New York Times. And she made it.

And I was looking at the ingredients. And maybe I saw that there was chicken stock in the fridge. And I was like, did you make this with vegetable stock? And she's like, oh, no, no, no. Is that bad? And I'm like, yeah, well, that's not vegan anymore. That's the deal. Parents have a hard time with that.

They really don't understand. Organic is another one that's beyond them. It's like, and it's all organic. And I'm looking around. No, no, no, not even close. It's organic. My wife asked my dad if his blueberries were organic. And I felt like he didn't even know.

He didn't even know how to process what... I could tell he was thinking like, are they plastic? Do they exist? Yeah, are they toy blueberries? No, I'm going to eat them. What do you mean? And at some point I'm like,

you know, let's try to be better with our questions. You know who we're asking, what we're trying to get to the bottom of. Do you have anything else, Josh? Or should we move to our questions? Just one more thing on the El Capitan. Oh, yes, please.

Josh is, again, he's the camper, so he's very excited about this. How big is your group? Oh, it can be big. It can be like 40 families. I assume that people are off doing their own thing. Is there ever like a,

hey, seven o'clock, we're all around the campfire. We're doing like, we've got a thing. You know, nobody does their own thing.. We're all around the campfire. We're doing like, we've got a thing. You know, no, nobody does their own thing. Everybody sticks together pretty much the whole time.

And it's funny. You guys were talking about Johnny Knoxville. And I do want to say something because I think it's one of the more interesting things I've witnessed. Johnny Knoxville is a helicopter parent. And I don't mean like jumping out of a helicopter parent. I mean, like his kids are riding bicycles and he never takes his eyes off them and it's very very funny and i often will

say to him like how are you ever going to reprimand them for anything i mean it's you know he was definitely not the catalyst for that golf cart accident that that occurred at the fishing lot right as far as famous people go he's the most different than you expected him to be of anyone i've ever met in my life huh yeah maybe he's just nostalgic and he's like man i wish i was riding that bike i wish i was riding bikes over there with those kids but it'd be weird. No, kids have helmets on. They are heavily supervised. It is a really, it is a funny thing to see. I had a moment that just the difference between when you have three kids and someone with one kid, I was walking with a parent. I had my two older boys and this woman who has just the daughter and we're talking. And then her daughter says, let's race. And they just started running towards the school.

Now, there was no more streets to cross. This was all just sidewalk running. But as soon as they ran off, this woman ran after them. And I realized, oh, yeah, no. That moment for me is long past where I chase my children. I know. Isn't that great? Isn't that the best?

It is so funny when you just join that moment. You're like, they good. They don't want to run into traffic either. All right, we can do these questions. Now, I want to tell you, I've heard the questions. So I'm not going to even pretend to be. I've thought about them, okay? Well, we appreciate that.

I would like the future of our listeners to be a little bit more ready. Do you want me to not even ask the questions and you could just go through your list? Do you? Because we talked about this. I think we alluded to the end of Inside the Actor's Studio where he would ask those same questions every time. And it was always funny to me, actors who pretended like they were hearing it for the first time. Yeah, right. The really good actors who would try to get away with, oh, gosh, what would I say? You're like, dude, come on.

Yeah, you know what you're going to say, John. Deal good. So the first question is vacation with any family member, right? No, no, no. The first one is your ideal vacation, relaxing, adventurous, or educational. Oh, right. Okay. Well, definitely not educational um

enlightening i mean i don't i don't i can't even imagine what it would be like to experience an enlightening vacation but i feel like that's the one i would want the most i love that because i used to say enlightening and i don't think i said it right now but i i love that you pulled that out it's got to be it's back in the mix and like yeah that is the only way i can imagine though having enlightenment is if somebody brought like mushrooms or something and i had some which i've never really done you know and um and i but i would like to and i i'm curious as to whether I would feel enlightened. Yeah. If you achieved nirvana, that would be a pretty great trip. Yeah, sure.

Fair enough. Your favorite means of transportation, train, plane, automobile, boat, bike, foot? I wonder about foot because, I mean, if we're talking about vacations, what kind of vacation could you go on by foot? Like a through hike you could do. You could go into Yosemite and get off the but you'd first have to take another form of transportation right so i mean foot really you wouldn't just walk out of your front door yeah yeah because we would go like to the arco at the bottom of the

hill but that's about it from our house i think i would have to say i love boats but i am a vomiter i'm fine on a river i'm bad on else, so it wouldn't be a boat. I don't love planes. I think a train would probably be the answer. Yeah. A train. We love trains. You can't beat a train.

I mean, a train isn't. You can't beat a good train. I will say I sometimes get my hopes up for Amtrak, and when you're walking down the middle of an Amtrak, you feel like you're on an old rope bridge, and you just think to yourself, I feel like this is a country that should have better tracks. When we lived in Amsterdam, we would do corporate shows sort of all over Holland.

And if you had somebody with you who had like this pass, everyone was automatically upgraded to first class. And so we would have like three actors and our technician and we would get our own little sort of closed like cab. And it was great. It was just so nice. You could sit and play cards and you could get a beer from the like beer cart and beer cart, a Dutch beer cart.

If you don't stay away from the Dutch taxi drivers and stay away from their airports, but we got nothing but nice things to say about their trains. Now, here we go. If you could take a vacation with any family, alive or dead, fictional or real, other than your own family. I've thought about this.

And my answer, it may sound strange, but it is the Kardashian family. That's the family. That's not a bad. They seem to have fantastic vacations. I mean, and they don't have to pay for them. They just like post one picture on Instagram and the whole thing is free so you'd feel no guilt you'd eat food you would never feel the guilt you used to feel across the street at your friend's house you'd be like they're not paying for it either yeah no yeah i wouldn't feel i wouldn't feel any guilt whatsoever with the

kardashians if you had to be stranded on a desert island with one member of your family, who would it be? Well, it would definitely be my wife because I can't fuck my cousin, Sal. He told me, he specifically said, don't. For the purposes of this podcast. You could, it's physically possible. But if Sal says no, then maybe you couldn't physically even. Do you consider yourself more from Brooklyn or more from Vegas? More from Vegas.

Okay. Would you recommend Vegas as a family vacation destination? A hundred percent. I mean, Vegas is a great place. My kids, they've been many places, and their number one favorite place is Las Vegas. And if they hear we're going to Vegas, they get so mad if they're not coming along with us. Vegas is... And what's their favorite thing to do? Like you have kids that are at 10 there's a full aquarium at the mandalay bay

you know there's a giant like hershey store the m&m store rather there are all sorts of like visual experience buildings that you can go to there's a lot of fun stuff for them. The pool, just the pools. There's a big wave pool at the Mandalay Bay. They love those giant pools with a million people in them. Yeah. The first times I went to Vegas were like in my twenties, like from Los Angeles. And so they were like, they were pretty hard party and Vegas trips. And then we went with our parents one year and it was amazing. Like we'd play golf, then we'd have lunch or we'd sit by the pool. We'd have dinner. We'd gamble a little bit, go see a show. And then we'd go to bed and I'd wake up and I felt so good and so like healthy. And it was so jarring to be like, oh yeah, you don't have to do Vegas like an absolute idiot.

to be like, oh yeah, you don't have to do Vegas like an absolute idiot. Like it can be very nice if you choose for it to be nice. And Seth, your final questions. Have you been to the Grand Canyon? After living in Vegas for nine years, Phoenix for five years, Tucson for a year, Palm Springs for a year and a half. I had never been to the Grand Canyon and it started to become ridiculous. So the summer before last, we got in our RV,

which I can't wait to get rid of, and we drove to the Grand Canyon with the kids. And I know you ask if it was worth it. It wasn't. I think it was not worth it to me. I spent the whole time, and I mean the whole time, yelling at the kids to get

away from the edge. That's my fear. I was on edge, both literally and figuratively. You were essentially Johnny Knoxville. I was so nervous, and my wife was getting mad because I was yelling at the kids the whole time, but I did not want them going over the side. When I was in the gift shop, I found a book called Over the Edge, Death in the Grand Canyon, which details all the many, many deaths that have happened there. They even had an expanded 10th anniversary edition of that book to include all the recent suicides and dehydration deaths and flash flood drownings and a lot of jokes a lot of people died as the result of like screwing around and like there's a little landing underneath so dad jumps over the

landing to scare his kids and then bounces and then goes into the canyon and actually dies and i'll also add a lot of deaths due to urinating see this makes me feel better about us asking this question and sometimes getting a negative bounce on it. The very fact that the Grand Canyon bookstore has that book means the Grand Canyon is review-proof. There's no way that people will stop going. If the bookshop's like,

we're going to have a whole book of other people who've died here joking around, peeing, making an accident, then people are still going to come. Yeah, there's a lot of nice things about it. There's some kind of cool old hotels up there that aren't in great shape, but they're interesting to see because they're 100 years old, and the park rangers are very nice, and they share a lot of information with the kids, and they'll make you a junior ranger, and you got to go around, and the kids liked it, I think just uh for me it was it wasn't you know it was it was what you expect it to be i feel like we didn't do our job by

missing this rv detail how long have you had this rv and why do you want to get rid of it i bought the rv and like the first week of covid my daughter and i went down to the rv store in downey and i think they had one left. It was Winnebago. I've driven it probably a total of 8,000 miles. I think I've had 170 different mechanical issues with it. The kids absolutely love it. I had flat tires. The generator is constantly breaking down.

The air conditioning is never working. Everything is leaking and broken and not working. And I couldn't not recommend it enough. I mean, it's just the service is absolutely terrible. It's just a nightmare for me the whole time and a lot of fun for the rest of the family. Well, Winnebago was going to sponsor this episode. I did buy it new. They gouged me on the price they offered me the full

um repair plan you know if anything goes wrong it's like another four thousand dollars i was like you know i'm too smart for that so i'm like no thank you i don't need that well it turns out i wasn't that bright after all but i do love that moment where somebody is telling you how great this piece of machinery is how you know well it works how advanced it is how this is the new latest everything and then you go in the room and the guy tries to sell you the warranty he's like this stuff breaks constantly this stuff is garbage you are gonna want this i think that is probably the most valuable piece of information you've given uh our listeners today like they should definitely take that one with you thank you so much for doing this buddy hey that was fun yeah much appreciated i can't wait to hear the

song i have to say i'm dying to hear the song i wanted to see you don't even know what piece of information you gave him to inspire i know the word winnebago is a fun one to rhyme, though, Josh. It sure is. It sure is. But now that you've, like, tipped that, it's like, well, now I don't want to go. Oh, okay. All right. Now you've made it too hacky.

I'll say no more. And again, I will just put in a request if there should happen to be a closing theme song for the Strike Force 5. I don't even do it anymore. It just happens. I should say, I mean, the real takeaway of the time we've spent here is those other three guys

are just dragging us down. Yeah, we don't need them. We really don't need them. We really don't. Yeah, we can get Josh for a third of the price. Yeah. A song, truly.

Well, thanks, guys. That was fun. Thanks, buddy. I'll see you next week. All right. Take care. Thanks Josh. All right. Adios. When Jimmy used to go to Cleto's house and found that he was just a little hungry. He never even asked for a smidge. He'd keep out of the fridge, keep out of the fridge, keep out of the fridge. Now he's grown up and has kids of his own and sometimes they won't eat

the food on their plate he uses a unique parenting tool he takes a batch of cookies and throws them in the pool And throws them in the pool