Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - SIMON RICH Played basketball in Boca Raton

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Simon Rich joins Seth and Josh on the pod this week! He talks all about his anxious grandma, drinking celery flavored soda, traveling with his brother, a memorable trip to Venezuela, his trip with Seth when they ran out of gas, and so much more! Family Trips is supported by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much more at airbnb.com/host to learn about hosting. Here's a special, (limited time) deal for our listeners. Right now get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription - but only for our listeners - at Babbel.com/TRIPS. Get your free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase at drinklmnt.com/trips  Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Try LMNT totally risk-free. If you don’t like it, we’ll refund your order So thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips. Now go find your path, and enjoy the ride along the way. Learn more at nissanusa.com

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Here we go. Hey, Pashi. Hey, Sufi. You like my hat? I do. Jimmy Kimmel Live. I'm wearing a Jimmy Kimmel live hat.

I'm a big fan of that Jimmy Kimmel live. Well, you kind of work with him. You might actually work with him more than you work with me. Well, not counting the podcast. Once you start factoring in the podcast. Most of your television work is with Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah, that's true.

You play Gavin Newsom on the show. It's an exceptional, exceptional impression. People should go check it out on YouTube. But yeah, so I'm wearing the hat because I want to support you. Oh, thank you. And you're very welcome. Well, that's nice.

How is everything going with you? Good, we're planning this wedding. Yesterday was sort of dedicated to full, like we're just gonna work on stuff because we gotta start checking off some boxes. Right. So we've made some progress, feeling good. Yeah, looking forward to it.

What's the most stressful thing left you have to decide? Are there big decisions left to make? Yeah, I mean, there's like, there's band, DJ. Right, yes, I will do it, yes. There's, you know, we haven't like rented all the like, chairs and plates and things like that, that has to be done. Have we talked about how mom forced your hand as far as best manning?

Have we done that on the pod? I don't know. I don't even know what you're talking about right now. That you have a best man at your wedding. Oh, well, she didn't force my hand. She forced my hand in terms of when I asked you. Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She didn't say you need to have a best man,

but we were, where were we? We were sitting around in New Hampshire. We were at the copper door, yeah. We were sitting at the copper door. And I had every intention of asking you probably in a one-on-one circumstance, the way you asked me, I believe. Will you be my best man? And instead, over the bread that arrived to the table

that mom rolled her eyes at because she didn't think we needed bread. She was like, and what are you gonna do for speeches? You have a best man? And I was sort of like, well, you were right across from me and I was like, yeah, I'll ask you. And you got a little choked up. I got a little choked up because I was sort of like, well, you were right across from me and I was like, yeah, I'll ask you. And you got a little choked up.

I got a little choked up because I was so sad that mom had ruined that moment. I was crying. And we should say, we've talked about this, you gave one of the all time great best man speeches. So you set a really high bar. And also I'm gonna assume you're gonna let dad have the mic. You gave one of the great dad speeches of all time.

Yeah, so looking forward to that. The famous story about dad's speech at my wedding is that he gave a great speech, a killer speech. Then you gave a speech that was, I mean, there were people at my wedding who said they had a second kid based on how good your speech was. They thought, oh, we need to have, our only child needs a sibling

based on how good your speech was. People went home and just like started procreating based on how the year, yeah, it was, that was what it, it was an aphrodisiac speech. Someone came up to dad and said, oh my God, Josh's speech was so good. It made me cry. And dad said, how do you think I feel before he talked?

I had the best speech of the night? In a way it was sort of like, yeah, when you hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner and then the next day we got Bin Laden. That's true. And it took, it stole my thunder. You were SEAL Team Six to dad speak. Yeah.

And it was certainly, I do really, I think you would agree, we should really get my in-laws on the podcast. Yeah. And Tom, Tom and Joanne are both great, but Tom especially, mostly because I feel he would do an entire, we could do an entire episode with him

and then find out later, not one of it thing was true. Not that he's a liar, he just doesn't have the most reliable memory. But he walked up, I think maybe after dad, and dad had written, it was a written speech. But he was also pretty off book. He wasn't, there was structure to it.

Yeah, he put in some time. Tom just sort of ambled up. And let me just say, one of the most charismatic, lovely people in the world, and I have nothing but praise for my father-in-law. I remember he goes, I'll never forget when Lex and I went to Madrid and then immediately got heckled by my wife who said,

we've never been to Madrid. That was, it got off to what they say was a bad start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I will say we, one of the things we're looking at for this wedding that you can rent along with, you know, chairs and whatnot, they have these little like lounge areas that you can rent. Couple couches, couple chairs,

they set up sort of a little hangout spot. And we were looking at some of those and most of them are themed. They're themed to specific albums. And there was one that has like a guitar that they would put somewhere. And I was like, man, if we get that, then Tom Ash is just gonna sit on that couch

with that guitar, just plucking away. Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, I said both my in-laws are real pluckers because- Oh yeah? Yeah. My mother-in-law plays a ukulele. And she's in a quite famous all women ukulele band.

The Ukuleles. The Ukuleles. And she's in a quite famous all women ukulele band. The Ukuleles. The Ukuleles. And so she's a real plucker. They just kind of walk around and they'll like tell you things and they often are plucking while they're talking. Yeah. It's very endearing.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did say we're not getting that guitar for the wedding lounge area, because as much as Tom might want to be there, picking and a plucking. Yeah, I guess everybody hates that they say I have an inappropriate nickname for my mother-in-law.

What's that? Mother plucker. Yeah, that's inappropriate. Well, that's very exciting. Yeah, so you inappropriate. Well, that's very exciting. Yeah, so you didn't get, that's good that you didn't get the guitar. I think that's a solid move. Yeah, lots of decisions still to be made,

but we got a little time here. We also have a wonderful guest today, Simon Rich. Such a good dude, such a funny writer. If you haven't ever dipped into, if you don't know his written work, it's worth a peek. It brings me such quick joy that it's, yeah, he's really one of my faves. You know, and again, I sometimes forget this.

We always talked about how when we would go on road trips, we would listen to books on tape. Gene Shepard, who was sort of a humorist of his time, in much the same way Simon Rich is now, I would recommend if your parents and you're going on a road trip and you've got kids almost any age, Simon writes really, really funny.

And I bet his books on tape in a car with kids would just be a delight to listen to. I haven't done those yet, but that strikes me as a worthy pursuit. Yes, so please enjoy this conversation with Simon Rich, everybody. Family trips with the mice and brothers. Family trips with the Myers Brothers.

Family trips with the Myers Brothers. Here we go. Yeah! Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. Of course. It's so good to have you. Nice to see you. This is our dear friend, Simon Rich. How are you, Simon?

I'm good, I'm excited we're doing this during the summer because it feels like a very summer subject and I'm having all of these sort of memories from these vacations that I haven't really excavated in decades. That's the best. Hopefully it'll be a happy excavation. Because you are, first of all, you are in my head,

you are what I always wanted a product of New York City to be. Like you strike me as a person who is New York City, everything about you is New York City, and yet I feel like you've had the more, I don't know, the most nature-centric vacations of almost anybody I know. This will be a very stereotypical New York City vacation, I think, the story.

So what is your, because you grew up in the city. Yes. And was it always that you guys immediately went to nature when it was time to go somewhere? Well, so we, so I grew up in an extremely classic New York City Jewish scene. And so the vacations were, you probably know what my vacations were based on pop culture depictions of it.

Because there are so many Jewish comedy writers who would write musicals and Seinfeld episodes about what our vacations were. So we did go to the, my brother and I did go to kind of like a classic Jewish summer camp in Maine, which was its own hilarious, I write a passage, but the vacation we did was to Boca Raton, Florida. Yes. Which has kind of been, I guess best depicted on Seinfeld, I feel like.

The retirement complex is called Boca del Vista, I think. And that's basically where we were multiple times a year, visiting this kind of, this extremely Jewish elderly community. It would be my brother and I, my mother, and the other grandchildren of New York City Jews. Yeah. Who were you there to visit specifically? Did you have grandparents there or did you

just want to go to where old people were? We were in the mood for a cell ray. We just really wanted a Dr. Browns. And we said, you know what? We can take the six down to the Lower East Side or we could just go to Fort Lauderdale. And it was, yeah, it was my grandmother and my step grandfather.

My grandmother was married four times. Wow. Yeah, I only knew the fourth. And she would try to tell me about the previous three while I was there, but then my grandfather would sort of emerge in the edge of the room and she would change the subject. So I never really got to hear too much about the first three, but I knew Al very well. And it was, yeah, it was this Twilight Zone situation

where everyone you saw was an elderly Jewish person. And based on the fact that there were other New York kids there, I'm assuming you went down based on school breaks. So it was always the same kids each time you went? Exactly. And it was really, Boca Raton vacations were really about one thing and one thing only for me And that's streetball. Okay, great

You have you have always been a kid who is both of the era you were born and also 50 years ago That's definitely true I I think in terms of yeah in terms of, I was definitely like a child of the 90s, I'm obsessed with a New York City child in the 90s, obsessed with the Patrick Ewing Knicks. In terms of physical height, I was more like a child from the 1650s. Despite being completely in love with basketball, obsessed with it, and devoted to it, you know, training every day as hard as I could for hours. I was in the second or third percentile for height. Yeah. You classically disprove the theory that you can be whatever you want to be.

Absolutely. And I remember having that conversation, that conversation, that Frank conversation with another kid. And we had just sat through, I believe, like a self-esteem musical. And I said we were like, well, on our way to basketball practice. And I was like, I'm not sure that that's true. Well, we we we had three teams because basketball was like the only sport in my school.

It was everyone's favorite sport. It was so popular, there were three teams to accommodate all the players, or self-identifying players. And there was the A team, the B team, and the C team, which was euphemistically called the Friday team. So I was on the Friday, I was the starting point guard for the Friday team. So I was on the Friday.

I was a starting point guard for the Friday team. And the the the only way to describe the Friday team is is that I cannot I cannot tell you what it looked like without using adjectives that are no longer socially acceptable. But the the team got the most, you know, the A team got a lot of spectators. The B team had fewer spectators and the C team, we had the most spectators, but not for the reasons that you would want. It was more of a PT Barnum style atmosphere. So I felt sort of like, you know, I felt as an NBA aspirant, I felt like probably how, like, Bronny James felt

when he entered, like, the transfer portal, you know, in the draft. It's like, I'm not... They're not getting me. You know? And then Boca Raton came calling. And it was a different scene. There's that famous story about like how Jordan didn't make his high school team and like that,

you know, that gave him the drive to show everybody he was the best. I feel like there is a massive leap between not making your varsity team and being on the Friday squad. Yes, but something about Boca Raton, all of that noise kind of just dissipated. And all of a sudden, my skills are very much in demand

because the court that I went to was was populated entirely by the extremely asthmatic, very small grandchildren of elderly Jews. Yeah, it was it was sort of like the show. There was a popular show that I was also really into at this time called Nickelodeon Guts. Okay. So that was a show where basically children were attached to gigantic elastic cords that allow them

to do incredible physical feats that they could never do in real life. So it felt sort of like being on Nickelodeon guts, except instead of being aided by huge elastic bands, I was helped by the revelant epigenetic Jewish disorders that surrounded me. So just by having slightly less bad asthma, other kids, I was suddenly, if not like a powerhouse, like definitely like a Hubert Davis or a role player. Was this your brother, did he have the same skill leap

when he got down to bokeh? My brother was incredibly gifted athletically by the standards of my family. Okay. So he actually is six feet tall. Oh my God. Yeah, giant. So he's by far the tallest person in my family.

And he made the B team. Oh wow. I don't know how to this day I still think about it. I mean he was squarely in the B-Team and yeah I'd go to games I'd see him there proudly sitting on the bench and be like he made the B-Team bench this is unbelievable. For Jewish parents that's right below doctor to is to make the B team. Exactly. And he was, your brother's four years older, right? Just to establish? Yeah, he's four years, yeah, so two of us, yeah. So the vacation would be my mother,

my parents were divorced, so it'd be my mother taking me and my older brother to see the grandparents. And when you say street ball, it is basketball that you're playing down there, it's not some weird like stick ball or fast pitch. It depends on how you define basketball. Okay.

Is the answer to that question. It is a Boca Raton variant of basketball. Okay. But yeah, no, we're, yeah, it's like two on two, three on three, a small court. We would say to ourselves that the basket was regulation height. But in hindsight, I don't know if like, I don't know if like Mikey Green,

green bound was like actually able to dunk. Right. Looking back. So like, maybe it wasn't quite 10 feet. But it did drop off the map professionally. Yeah. The spoker trips. Yeah. For an eighth grader who could, eighth grader who could full on dunk

after eating an entire tongue and pastrami sandwich. Just because, since you mentioned that, I do wanna go back. Can you just explain for those who don't, who've never heard Cel-Ray before, explain what this soda is? Because it's kind of beyond my comprehension. It is a straight up celery flavored soda, full stop.

Like just shove it, you know, shove it in your mouth, full on celery flavor. Where do you get these? This is a Boca Raton special or? Or any Jewish deli, right? Yeah, yeah, but it has to be a very Jewish deli. Like you're not gonna find it at the Jewish deli in Milwaukee. It's like Lower East Side, and I assume probably Boca Raton and that.

Yeah. And it's so intense. But it was the only sugary thing, really, that we were allowed to have in the house, because my grandfather Al was a health nut. Gotcha. So it was cell ray or bust. Yeah.

Were there ever any retirees out on the court or was it just the sort of grandchildren of these? It was just the grandchildren on the basketball court and these baffled grandparents dropping off there, you know, their grandchildren who were obsessed with a sport that they knew nothing about. And, but it was like, it was packed because there was, there was, you know, not, not a lot to do for,

for these, you know, I mean, there was the, there was the Jewish, like the tennis club. Yeah. There were, there was a healthy pick of synagogues. The deli. But yeah, the court was kind of. So it's not, again, you're not walking around Boca when you're a kid. You were basically stuck in the community

that you have grandparents at. And were you, was this hours and hours of basketball? Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, no, I would play all day every day like it was my job. Did you, was this a trip you anticipated? Were you excited about it? I couldn't wait.

I mean, it was like, what kind of sneakers am I gonna wear? It was hard to find sneakers because they didn't make them in like child sizes. Like I was still wearing through like sixth or seventh grade. But yeah, I absolutely could not wait. Yeah. And did you, was it a gated community?

Did you have like bikes to get around or did you have to be driven everywhere? We had to be driven everywhere. Yeah, it was absolutely like suburban gated community next to a swamp. We had a pool and an alligator would frequently end up in the pool. And my grandmother, this may not surprise you,

my Jewish grandmother, Anita, Grandma Anita as I called her, she was an anxious woman. An outlier. Yeah. What's known in the Jewish community as an outlier. Yes. I want to make sure I describe this correctly. She would draw on her eyebrows,

but she would draw them a little bit higher than she ought to have. And the net result was that she perpetually looked astonished. Yeah. And if you look into a mirror and raise your eyebrows slightly, and then couple that with with extreme anxiety and

At a great depression upbringing You get a woman who's freaked out already even before she sees an alligator in her pool He was my grandmother was I? terrified of cats house cats domesticate house cats so Her reaction to a house cat would be your reaction to an alligator. Right, so now, so now where are you gonna go for, yeah. Yeah, so she would scream, scream for Al

to take care of the situation. And Al would shuffle out to the pool and just kind of ineffectively like raise a fist and shake it. Yeah, right. The alligator does not. Alligators hate that. Yeah.

Yeah. And the alligator would just kind of stare into the middle distance. While he would do that, would she go back to the bathroom and draw her eyebrows even higher? I feel like this is not getting across how scary this is. So it was her pool. it wasn't the community pool. Right, yeah, it was the pool where I learned how to swim, which I think the alligators had something to do

with me being motivated to learn. Yeah, I want to get out. I was like, this is, I don't like swimming and I don't like being in the water, but I should be able to get to the edge of this thing. Hey, we're going gonna take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. Family Trips is supported by Airbnb.

Hey, Pachi. Yeah, Sufi. You know we have an annual trip. Yeah, we sure do. We get a couple regular trips, but which trip are you talking about? I'm talking about the fact that you and I and 10 of our closest college friends

get together every September for our fantasy football draft. Such a trip. And very little of the trip is about a fantasy football draft. Yeah, I always feel a little nerdy saying that we're going on a fantasy football draft, but we're going to hang out with our buddies. Yeah, that's why I say it's a fantasy friendship draft.

Would that make it less nerdy or is that maybe worth? No, I think it's charming, it's sweet. So this year for our fantasy friendship draft, we have a fantasy location booked. And it's all thanks to Airbnb. We found a place that has enough space for all of us and enough bedrooms for all of us, and has a lot of outdoor activities.

A fire pit? There's a fire pit, Pachi. There's a fire pit. I want to say there's a volleyball court. Yeah. There's a pickleball court. There's a lot. It's driving distance to a hospital that a bunch of 50-year-old guys are going to have to go to when we blow our ACLs. Yeah.

But in general, it is so nice that it has all the things that we could not get with our group at a hotel. Oh, absolutely not. Because what you want is you want to be able to hang out together for as long as you can, and then if it's time to go to bed, you go to bed, but everyone else is sort of in the same place. And one thing that we're sort of focused on on trips like this is no new friends. No new friends. We don't want to meet them. We don't want to make them. We're happy with who we are. And maybe you're someone who's thinking,

you know what, my home could be a great get together for old friends who are not looking to meet new people. You've put a lot of time, effort, and work into your home and someone out there would probably love to experience it while they're traveling. And then they would rave about how it was the highlight of their trip. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Support for family trips comes from Babbel. Hey Pashi. Yes, Sufi. Immersion is the best way to learn a foreign language. Just get all the way in there if you're gonna learn it. You wanna learn it or not? Well, I got some bad news here.

I don't have time to immerse myself anymore. You're not gonna go to a foreign country and just live the life and the language? No, which is why I'm leaning on the second best way to learn a language, Babbel. Oh yeah, gotta get Babbel. And I'm really excited. I'm excited to have a conversation with people in a foreign language.

You and I, we both lived in the Netherlands. I never learned Dutch because Dutch people just switch and speak English. Babbel though, Babbel's gonna force me to learn it. That's right, they will because they use real life conversational skills in different languages. It's so easy to learn how to order food, ask for directions, speak to merchants without having to consult language apps while you're on your vacation.

And Babbel's quick 10 minute lessons are handcrafted by over 200 language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks. Babbel's designed by real people for real conversations. Real quick though, Josh, how do you order a beer in Holland? Ein biertje, alsjeblieft. Great work. Babbel's over 16. Real quick though, Josh, how do you order a beer in Holland? One beer, please. Great work.

Can I have a beer? Yeah, good, good. That's enough. Can I have a beer? That's enough. Babbel has over 16 million... See, this, by the way, if you learned from Josh, you'd be so frustrated right now. Babbel's not gonna frustrate you. And here's a special limited time deal for our listeners.

Right now, get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash trips. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash trips, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash trips. Rules and restrictions may apply. Did your mom look forward to these trips? I mean, obviously she's seeing her mother, and I'm assuming Al's not her father. Right.

And do you think she's just, oh, this is at least I can bring my kids here and they will have stuff to do? Do you think she found it to be a relaxing week as a single mom? I think so. I mean, my memory is really just my mother and my brother just reading for hours. So they would, yeah, my mother is like, is a book editor. She would have, you know, like 5,000 pages to read with all this before, before iPad. So she would bring like a suitcase that just had like literally like reams and reams of paper.

And these are the manuscripts that she wanted to read, was excited to read. So I remember her kind of sitting in the corner just reading from sun up to sundown. And my brother was in the same boat, but with Stephen King. Great. Yeah. Did you feel guilted into reading or were you sort of just standing in the corner like, can we go do something? Yeah, I was very much like, because at that age I didn't have the attention span to spend like a full day reading. Even the best issue of Mad Magazine

would have me for an hour maybe, but at a certain point, you know, it's time to hoop. Right. Yeah. You gotta hoop. Otherwise, the skills deteriorate. That's it. Yeah. You need to get a run in.

I don't know what this says about Nurture versus Nature, but I do like that you fought it with everything you had and then became an incredibly successful author. I was not on purpose. If I had just, you know, if I had had a, if I had been able to, my vertical leap had been three to four feet higher. Yeah, that's all that was holding it. I don't think I would have written any books.

For those who are not watching this, I will only tell you that behind Simon right now, there's not a single trophy, but there's thousands of books. That is true. The sad thing is that my basketball career was cut short by injury. Oh God. Which, it's a tragic story. I was being dropped off at the court by my grandmother. And I was making sure I had my snacks and my son's screams.

They're dawdling by the car for a little longer maybe than normally. And I felt a sharp pressure on my foot. And I realized that my grandmother had backed the car up over my foot. And so I screamed, um, you're up, grandma, grandma, you're on, you're on my foot. And I'll never forget what she said in response. She said, what? So I screamed again, you're on my foot. And this sort of, this played out for quite some time.

And she finally backed up and I sort of collapsed. And I know amazingly no bones broken. I think my bones were so like pliable at that age, but it ended my summer of basketball. Yeah. Yeah. And then you give up a year, you're not gonna get it back. The funny thing about having an anxious grandmother,

did you actually think it's better not to say anything? Like, if she now thinks that every time she backs up, like, she might roll over a foot, I can't give her another thing to worry about. Like, eventually she'll drive off, and that's maybe easier for me. Like, there are people in my life where when something goes wrong, I'm just, I'll just eat it. There's no reason. It was definitely a mistake to tell her what was going on. So was that the whole, that was that the whole summer that you would go down there?

No, we would go down. Um, we would go through like three times a year and summer would, summer would always be like the longest trip and we would, we would stay for like a couple of weeks, but we would also go yeah during other school holidays. And what about uh like the uh the other sort of stereotypical Jewish summer experience? Did you guys go to camps? Oh yeah big time. So we went to uh camp Winnebago, my brother and I, uh which was extremely fun. Still friends with people I went to camp with. And you can see a canoe paddle. Yeah. Oh, I can. Yeah. That's not Winnebago era, but my brother and I,

after camp was over, continued to do canoe trips together, like in our twenties. And yeah, it was thrilling. I mean, it was an all boys camp. Again, like not officially Jewish, but Jewish enough for me to compete. Right. It's like how like Greek basketball leagues, every team can only have one American.

Exactly. That's what I thought. Yeah, exactly. Each team can only have like one or two. Yeah. Did you, so talk about these trips in the twenties. Was this something, whose idea was it? Was it you or your brother who said,

you know what, we as adults should take a canoe trip? Oh, definitely my brother, because he's just way more rugged and tough, and also just responsible. There's a lot of planning that goes into these trips. You have to make sure you have enough beans, and you have to keep how many ounces of this and ounces of that. So, he, he organized it all. And yeah, I would go when I was at SNL, like in between every

season, I would go on one of these river trips with my brother. And is, was it just the two of you? We would always take two friends who had no knowledge of canoeing whatsoever so that we could seem like we were expert canoeers. Like, oh no, you have to, what you do is you use your arms to, you know. I like your entire approach. Your entire approach to physical activity is like, find people you compare well against.

That's it. Everything is relative. It's all perspective. There's no reality. I mean, there's a lot of high level physicists who believe that there's no such thing even as objective reality. Right, you're still saying that your basketball career

was ended by a car rolling over your foot, when in fact, it might've just been reality. I'm not listening, I'm not listening. I'm not listening to the fact, you know, I could just shut that out. Yeah, I can live in your reality or I can live in mine. Sure. Who's to say which one is accurate? That's fair. Right. Yeah. I can live in your reality or I can live in mine. Sure.

Who's to say which one is accurate? That's fair. Did you, where would your brother pick different places every year for the canoe trips? Yeah. So we made the mistake of like, we're like, okay, well, when we were 14, we were strong enough canoeists to do the Allagash River. So now we're, you know, 23, we'll do a higher level river. More treacherous rapids, longer portages,

longer distances that you have to carry your gear through the woods. Surely we have physically advanced since eighth grade. That was a mistake. Surely we have physically advanced since eighth grade. That was a mistake. And we ended up just regressing and just repeating our childhood rivers, which were, and it was really fun. And we still felt like this incredible sense

of physical accomplishment. And we'd go through rapids and we'd finish off a long day. And we'd be like high-fiving. And then we would see like eight year old boy scouts. You know, merging, just like really arching the vibe. But yeah, it was so fun. And we would get weeks, we'd go for like six, seven nights on the river. And with the exception of the occasional troop of boy scouts or girl scouts.

One night, I remember we were basically on our own. But, yeah, one night we were asleep kind of congratulating each other on a really treacherous day. And we heard that then all of a sudden the silence was broken by a group Taylor Swift sing-along broken by a group Taylor Swift sing-along. From girls who were like too young for the content of some of those songs. Yeah. It was not like a middle school, it was like six year old.

I like how you're shifting the narrative here to like, it was inappropriate. Yeah, they should not have been there. Yeah. It was a trip for men. Did you ever take trips with your dad after your parents split up? We did take trips, but not as many. Like when I really look back, when I think about vacation, I really do think about either

me and my brother at camp or my mom taking us somewhere. Yeah. Were there ever any outlier trips where you'd go somewhere that wasn't Boca Raton? Was there ever like, let's go to Disney or let's go out and see the American West? We went to Venezuela. And the reason why it's kind of interesting is my mother was actually born in Venezuela. So it's her parents are, you know, New York City Jews, Brooklyn. But they moved to Venezuela in the late 40s.

It was my grandfather had a fruit canning business, where I guess they would just take the fruit there and send it to the US or wherever. And so my mom grew up in Venezuela and we went back to visit her childhood home in Caracas. Yeah. Oh, wow. Was that a cool trip? It was really cool.

It's like, I was, again, I was like, you know, nine years old. So I wasn't really aware of like what was happening geopolitically, which was a lot. Yeah. And I was more just interested. The sounds made up, but my my biggest memory of it was how weird the basketball courts were because the paint was trapezoidal. So instead of it being a rectangle, it was it was a trapezoid really thick near the basket. And the idea was to make the game less easy to dominate for big men. Ah, interesting.

Yeah, and that sort of, so this did not really have a huge impact on my own strategy. really have a huge impact on my own strategy. Right. I think based on our age gap, I was probably in Venezuela the one time I went to Venezuela, Venezuela is probably around the same time, a friend of mine worked in the State Department, married a Colombian woman and the wedding was in Bogota and my parents really didn't want me to go

because of the time. And my friend who again worked for the State Department, was like, it's totally safe, it'll be fine. I went, obviously I was totally safe and it was fine. But while I was there, I met a New York Times journalist who was at the wedding and I was telling him, ha ha, my parent, and he goes, oh, did they read the New York Times?

And I said, yeah, they read the New York Times. And he's like, I wrote a cover story for New York Times Magazine about how this is basically the worst place in the world. And so sure enough, while I was there, my parents read that and immediately were calling me on the phone telling me to come home. It was, yeah, no, it was, but for me,

it was like, wow, passion fruit juice. Sure. I mean, you've been drinking celery, you've carbonated celery. Yeah, right, exactly. Huge improvement. So I loved it. Yeah, right, exactly. Huge improvement. So I loved it. Yeah, that was a really like exotic trip.

And then, but I always, I liked the comfort of Boca Raton. I mean, I was like, I think I could retire here. And like nine years ago. There's still time, there's still time. Would you go out to the beach? Would you spend any time on the beach in Boca? We would never go to the beach.

We would go to the club, which was like tennis and a pool. And you'd sit around the pool and you'd order yourself, right, instead of getting it from the fridge. And you'd meet your grandparents' friends, which was this very interesting thing, to see this social scene of people in their 60s and 70s. Yeah, they had gossip and they had vendettas and it was really interesting and entertaining.

I remember thinking, from my childhood perspective, I was like, this is the center of the world. Like this is, it felt like Wall Street and it felt like this is where deals are happening. I had never seen, as a kid, I didn't see grown-up social very often. Right. Right. My parents were divorced.

They I didn't there weren't there weren't like dinner parties in my home. I wasn't around groups of adults talking a lot. And but sitting around the pool at the Boca Raton Club, like, oh, that person thinks he's going to win for for Boca Council, but he's going to lose because he didn't get that person's endorsement. I was like, wow, I'm in the room where it's happening. This is amazing. I will say my summers with my in-laws,

it is, there is such a coming and going where no one calls ahead or knocks or it just, people are coming in and out constantly. And it took me a few years to realize this was not a massive intrusion of privacy. It was more just, oh, we live in a community and we're all part of it and we're just going to treat every house like it's our house. And I'm like, I kind of come around to realizing there's a there's something very charming about that.

It was very sweet. Yeah, it was very social. And then, you know, sadly, over the years, that just that it thins out as people die or become incapacitated. So that was like, and it was like this, yeah, it was sort of this time lapse thing, because you're coming every three months or six months and you're like, oh, that person is slower, that person is gone, or that person is, you know. And so it's, there was, it was like you're watching it and fast forward. Right. Was like, was shuffleboard a thing?

It feels like it would be a shuffleboard kind of community. Like what were the older folks occupying their time with? Was it golf and I guess? It was, yeah, shuffleboard for sure. But the women would play canasta and mahjong, which were these these sort of early 20th century games, which I still cannot comprehend, but they they would absolutely go at it. And it was loud and it was boisterous and it was fun to see out of the corner of my eye.

Yeah, I don't know if there were real rules. Maybe for all I know it was just like, who can shout and slap the most energetically? That's what it felt like. It felt like they were just having a table-slapping contest. Which was cool. I was like, that's exciting. That was a fun game. Did you guys ever take a European trip?

Was that somewhere the rich boys went? Yeah, we went to we went to Switzerland. Yeah, we went to Switzerland because my mother liked to ski. Oh, wow. And that's everything. We would go to Vermont sometimes because my and first game. So we would go. We went to Switzerland, I think maybe even twice.

You said your mom liked it. Does that mean that you and your brother didn't? I think my brother liked it better than I did. I really, I struggled. I mean, that was not, I don't have a skiers, a skiers body or a skiers mindset. I think you need both. You need to, you need to, I think, be excited to go down the mountain. Yeah, it helps. As opposed to like every single inch of your body,

like trying to retain purchase on where you're standing. I had like a mountain goats like approach to skiing. I'm just like, I'm gonna try really hard to stay put and fight the gravitational pull that is taking me away from safety and into the unknown. But so my brother and it was like my mom would take my brother on like the real slopes, like

the black diamonds or whatever. And then she'd come with me down the greens and I would just, you know, put my skis in the triangle shape and just very slowly inch down. Yeah. I also realized, because now I'm doing it a lot with my kids and I think to myself, skis in the triangle shape and just very slowly inch down. Yeah. I also realized, because now I'm doing it a lot with my kids, and I think to myself,

well, because I never cared for it when I was young, and I'm like, well, it's still just a nice, it's Zen to sort of be by yourself. And then I feel like I'm always about to fall when I realize I've stopped thinking about skiing, which also requires some of your mental state, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be aware of it.. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have to be aware of it. I mean, the really, yeah, what was really fun was the chairlift though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I actually really enjoyed that. I don't have a fear of heights miraculously. And yeah, I wish I could just, I remember asking if it was all right,

if I could just loop it around, you know. Right, yeah. They're out there all day but they wouldn't let you do that, unfortunately. Yeah. I think Josh will allow us this concession. We took a trip once, you and I, and three of our friends, Simon, went to Montreal.

Yeah. We road trip, this was a summer trip with three other SNL writers, Colin Jost, Rob Klein, Eric Kenward. We drove to Montreal without much of a plan. It was like very last minute. And the most memorable thing that happened is we ran out of gas, which was very much Colin Jost's fault.

Well, the most memorable thing to me that happened was five minutes before we ran out of gas. Oh, what happened? That's when Colin said, wouldn't it be, we're really low on gas, wouldn't it be so funny if we ran out of gas? Sure enough. And we ran out of gas on a highway. Yeah. A full highway. Yep.

And the only solution, you and I ran to a gas station. Yeah, afar. I mean, miles. Miles, yeah. Yeah. Through like an eight lane. Yeah, like whatever quaintness you're thinking of Montreal, it wasn't that.

It was a regular old highway. Yeah. And we got the gas and we ran back. And I think when we were running back with a full can of gas, somebody stopped to get it. They drove it like, so we didn't run all the way back because I remember on the way there, nobody thought to help us. But I think when they saw it. Yeah, because it was just two't run all the way back, because I remember on the way there, nobody thought to help us. But I think when they saw-

Well, yeah, because it was just two people running down the side of the highway. Those are- Yeah. Not, by the way, not in running shoes. Not in, like in sneakers probably, but not in running shoes. Yeah, that sounds right.

Definitely, yeah, definitely not shorts or a t-shirt. The other thing I remember about that trip is We were running late before we ran out of gas I think we were running late for a dinner reservation that had been hard to get and We had gone to like a very nice spa Do you remember this and we had all we had all come up and there was this giant glass wall that looked over sort of the spa grounds and all four of us, save for Colin,

had obeyed the rules of when we were gonna leave. And then we looked and we saw him just in a robe, just sort of walking around the grass. It was the funniest thing. And we were banging on the glass, like, I feel like in the graduate, trying to get his attention. And he just was in another world. No sense in the time, never looked up.

Yeah, Colin's not somebody you would ever want to entrust with a thing that starts at a specific time each week. Like if a thing were to start at 11.30 each week, hypothetically. You know, like a set time. Like that just- Like it had to be that time. Yeah, he's super talented, incredibly funny,

but like very smart, but like, yeah, that's like the one. Definitely give him a wiggle room job as far as time goes. Not a thing where it's like at this exact hour, like that would be, you know, no one in their right mind would give him power over that. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors.

This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by Nissan. Hey, Sufi, let's play a quick game. I'm going to say a word and we both say the first word it makes us think of at the same time. Ready? I am ready poshie. All right. First word, cereal. Killers. All right.

Oh, okay. We thought of different cereals. Okay. Yeah, that's going to happen, but maybe let's try to lock in. We thought of different cereals. Okay. Yeah, that's gonna happen, but maybe let's try to lock in. Let's try to mind meld here. Next word. Museum. The Louvre.

Gift shop as one word. Okay. I said the Louvre. You said gift shop. I know we can be better at this. Let's try one more, all right? Okay. All right, last one.

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That's drinklmnt.com slash trips. Have you taken your children on anything outdoorsy yet? Kind of the canoe trips? So we are a big agrotainment family. Keep going. So we have a seven-year-old and three-year-old, and we basically go to these farms that are... I mean, I don't want to say this too out because they might be in the next room, but they're not real farms.

Keep going. But between you and me and the door, they're not real farms. But they seem like real farms and the kids, they pick, they pick up the eggs and they, you know, and and they do their chores, which is to like pet the goats. And it's delightful. I don't know what what the animals think about what about what's going on. Is this an overnight trip? Do you stay at a farm? Yeah. So we will often like stay at the cabin on this on like a property

and we'll stay for like a week. And during the day, the kids will put on their overalls and we'll say, all right, time to do the chores. The animals are counting on you. Is there someone there to sort of like guide them around and be like, all right, now let's do this. It's not just like, all right, here's a farm and you can have it for a week.

Right, right, yeah, I. There's grownups watching everything. I feel like if I told my kids it's time to get the eggs, they would basically tell me to go jump in a lake. But if somebody who I told them was a professional farmer asked them to get the eggs, they would be amazing. Is that, do your kids sort of like full attention to someone who you've entrusted or? It's very much the vibe, yeah.

It makes me feel like I should invest in a hat. Yeah, good time. It really does a lot, you know, it does a lot in terms of authority. Who's the best in your family at picking up a chicken? Oh, good question. Without question, my wife Kathleen. Okay.

But she is unbelievable with poultry in general and birds in general. We were we were living in the Bay Area for a couple of years. We are in a Starbucks and a pigeon flew into the glass walled Starbucks. And it was all these are busy tech people, you know, typing, ignoring this flailing bird. Kathleen heroically grabbed the pigeon and released it out of the Starbucks.

It was unbelievable. And so yeah, she's fearless when it comes to birds. Yeah. My wife would be so, my wife would not go near a person who picked up a pigeon. That would be... Like, she would very quietly go into her contacts and delete Kathleen.

Did Kathleen grow up in a sort of more rural, friendly-to-handle-birds area? So she grew up in Milwaukee, but like very much like suburban. Yeah, like, like the mall and, you know, school and, and, but she grew up near rural areas that she would like trek out to sometimes. And so we just got back from a couple of weeks in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and had like a, had like this great kind of rural camp experience where we put our seven year old in, in like a kind of four H camp. Yeah.

It was goat week. And on Friday, we got to see the culmination of that, which was the goat display where, where all the kids kind of, with varying degrees of success, led their goats around in a circle. Had to be fantastic. It was a triumph. Yeah, I mean, smiles all around, just from hearing about it, I can't imagine seeing it.

It was the absolute best. Yeah, and not easy to walk a goat around in a circle. People might be scoffing at the idea of this, but- Well, I actually, Seth, thanks to you, have experience trying to walk a goat, which is that when you were my boss at SNL, you wrote a sketch that involved, I don't remember what the sketch was,

but I do remember that the goat was incidental to it. Yeah. But you did tell the department heads that a goat was called for. And I was assisting that week, me and Malaney were assisting you on the sketch. And the goat did not want to be in the sketch. No. Yes. But it had to be and it got to a point where me and John were helping the the animal trainer

shove the goat. The goat had to move like six inches to get on camera and I remember pushing it and the animal trainer saying I distinctly remember over and over stubborn goat. over and over, stubborn goat. I was like, I cannot believe that this is Hollywood. This is me and John, and we weren't really pushing it. We were just kind of making noises under it. You didn't want, if Lorne was there, you didn't want to get caught looking like you weren't trying.

Yeah. So it was like soft pushes. It was mainly just watching this animal trainer just curse under his breath and say, ah, stubborn goat. It's a classic. I will say when it comes to animal wranglers, they will blame their tools. I've never seen the amount to at the last minute they're like, and just FYI, goats can't

be trained. Like they always at the last minute. I'm more of a goat bringer. Well, Seth, your in-laws had a goat. Yeah, raisin. And I feel like maybe because that goat was in your life, you started writing some goat stuff. I thought, yeah, goat material was asked for.

It was a background goat. Yeah, it was just a background goat. I do remember, I don't remember writing it, I do remember, yeah, there was like a scene with Jerry Butler, where was just a background goat. I do remember, I don't remember writing it. I do remember, yeah, there was like a scene with Jerry Butler where there was a goat that was like got caught halfway between two sets. Yeah. It is funny how many times you just, you know,

you just ignore the rule of like, don't work with children or animals. And you're like, but this could really use a animal. I mean, the temptation is so strong. Seth, do you want wanna tell the story real quick of how Raisin the Goat got his name? Oh yeah, so my, well, so basically somebody bought a goat to cook, they were gonna kill and cook it

and brought it over to my father-in-law's house. He immediately laid eyes on this goat, looked into this goat's eyes. By the way, fell in love. He tells the story, I looked at him and fell in love. If you look, a goat's eyes are the worst eyes of all of God's creations. Just devil slits, dead eyes.

The only thing, yeah, just the worst. It's like a Venezuelan basketball court. Yeah. Just trapezoidal. Yeah, don't they have rectangular pupils? They do. Everything about it stinks when you look at a goat. And he fell in love with this goat.

And then he decided, he basically said, I wanna keep the goat, don't cook the goat. I'm gonna keep the goat as a pet. And they went inside to get a, they wanted to get a collar, you know, because obviously nobody's gonna kill and eat a goat with a, you know, a dog collar. And they somehow had a friend's dog named Raisin had died

and they'd ended up with a collar. So they just threw a dead dog's collar around this goat and then started calling it Raisin, not realizing that eventually, which is what happened, that person came over and not only was shocked to hear that they'd given this Raisin, given the name to a goat, but also found out the reason was that it was wearing a dead dog's collar. That is a Stephen King. That is like, we're right back into King Man with that. Yeah, there was probably also a phone number on the back of that tag. So if somebody found the goat,

they would call and be like, hey, we found raisin. You'd be like, what? Wow. Our dog? And then that's the Stephen King. They're like, they found, this is the craziest news. They found raisin and now it's a goat. Can you come get him? That is horrifying. Yeah, well, yeah, that's like all quiet

on the Western front when that person's wearing the dead soldier's uniform and they don't tell him. That's a good move. I think that's one of my favorite moves when you just are somewhere in a battlefield. It's like the Mad Men, right? Like Don Draper, who's just his buddy, got blown up. That's it.

Yeah. You can't beat it. I mean, it is. I think all of us, you know, and again, we're all happy with our lives. Back of our head though, we'd love the idea that everybody we know thought we were dead and we got to be a new person.

Yeah. There's a great crime writer named Cornell Woolrick who wrote Rear Window. And he wrote like 10 separate short stories that are that premise. The body is destroyed in various ways. It's like, it was run over by a train, but it's my exact clothes size.

You know? Yeah. And then they're like, oh, it was a tornado lunged the body out of its clothes, which fit me. But he was just addicted to that premise. And I never get tired of it. So it's a tornado flung the body out of its clothes, which fit me pretty well. But he was just addicted to that premise and I never get tired of it. And it's always, yeah, just a Great Depression era person,

usually about to blow their brains out and when they happen upon the perfectly fitting clothes of a corpse. That's enough purpose to keep on keeping on. All right, so Simon, I know you to be one of the, again, you're a fantastic writer. I also know you to be a voracious reader, but I'm curious because as a parent,

do you still find time to read over the course of, say, a summer when maybe there's less going on or because your kids are seven and three, has it completely exited your life? I read all the time. Yeah, I'm still a really big reader. I'm great. I read for hours every day. I love it. I mean, it's also where I get like most of my ideas. So I feel like I'm able to justify it. Yeah, it's like a loss leader. Yeah. I'm like, okay, well, yeah, I technically didn't write anything.

For the last six hours. I just read this book, but maybe it'll, you know, maybe there are ideas that are gestating. So, so I kind of let myself off the hook. And yeah, I mean, my plan for today is basically to read this book for hours. I mean, oh, my God, it's a big book. What are you reading now? The Grey War. The Grey War by Paul Fosssell. Paul, an incredible writer.

So grim and so mean. Do you have a reading chair? Do you have a place that you read consistently? I usually, yeah, I mean, not to sound lazier, but I usually read while lying down on the couch. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, like a drink in hand, like a water within reach. And then people like quietly

and from the other room point at you and go, you know, before his grandmother rolled over his foot, you'd never believe it now. Yeah, exactly. That's right, he was on track. This wasn't his path, you know. Yeah, yeah. This is plan B.

Exactly. This is, it is always wonderful to talk to you. You're gonna, and you're gonna be out in the city this fall. Yes, I'm really excited. Excited to see you there. I'm very excited to see you. I'm very happy you're gonna be back. We miss you.

You belong here. Thank you. I have a little stack, row of books at the top of my stairs and I forget who it was. Maybe it was like a Marie Kondo thing, but they were like, get rid of a lot of your books and you should have books like one set of books that you just sort of really like.

And I've got your ant farm was up in there and I was just reading some of this this morning. It's still, I mean, it's so funny. Thank you so much. I'm so happy that it sparks joy. It really does. It does. I mean, I read of this this morning. It's still, I mean, it's so funny. Thank you so much. I'm so happy that it sparks joy. It really does. It does. I mean, I read like three of them.

They're such quick pops and yeah, it was a delight back then. And it had been a while since I'd opened it up and I did this morning and it's, yeah, it's just great. Oh, thank you. There are two things I would say that even as a sketch writer, you were a merciless cutter.

Would you say that is true of you? Absolutely, yes. Yes, and sort of a merciless cutter, and I've always been so impressed because even your short story writing, I'm like, God, this is so dense, every line's funny, and I know there's a version three times as long that Simon started with that was equally funny,

but he was just condensed it down to this perfect piece of writing. I always think, I think part of that is being like the younger sibling is just like, I have very little time to get everybody's attention. And so I need to be very succinct and very to the point. But yeah, I like when I'm writing a short story, I'm constantly imagining the reader just being surrounded by a million other distractions and screens and the full corpus of 21st century pornography.

And I'm like, they've got my book in their hand, like somehow like a gust of wind blew my physical book into their hands. And I have like five seconds to hook them and keep them reading. And so I'm just like, frantically trying to get them to want to turn the page. Yeah. The other thing I always think about this as well,

because you, John Mulaney and America Sawyer, you wrote a lot together and you were three children in the nineties. Josh and I are children of the eighties. And you so lovingly, you were so inspired by the 90s and genuinely loved 90s culture. Yeah. And you wrote about it in a way that was both

incredibly funny and enjoyable for me to consume and also never once made me wish I was a child of the 90s. Yes. Yeah, and a lot of our references were very baffling to audience members and the other writers. We did one sketch which, it's unbelievable that I'm going to be talking about this right now, but I am, I guess, called Jazz or Alzheimer's. Oh yeah. Really funny. Jazz or Alzheimer's? And it's a game show. And the idea is you are going to watch a sitcom, a family sitcom, where an elderly character who you've never met is introduced.

And you have to guess whether it's going to be a very special episode about jazz or a very special episode about Alzheimer's. It's a sketch built around the famous, very well-known trope of very special early 90s children's programming. And yeah, it played to silence. And that was a sketch where my Spartan minimalism was not on display. I believe that sketch was 30 pages long. Well, yeah, sometimes even the most brutal,

unforgiving cutter of sketches has an idea that just needs 30 pages to explain it. Premise alone. Yeah, it's like of humid bondage has to be 800 pages. I'm putting that down, you know, Jazz or Alzheimer's might have to be thrown into the mix for Second Chance Theater. Just cause of, yeah. Oh wow.

You're gonna need another half hour. We'll call it. I also remember it being expensive. I remember like, there were like multiple sets cause we had to recreate. Right, like a six-hump set. Nobody built, I mean, just to be clear for anyone listening, nobody built these sets.

It died before it even got to that. Yes, way before, yeah. But yeah, if we had made it, it would have been a real undertaking. All right, before we let you go, Josh is gonna ask you our speed round of questions, all of our guests get. Okay, here we go, Simon.

You can only pick one of these. Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous, or educational? Oh, it's so embarrassing, educational. That's not embarrassing. That's the truth. What is your favorite means of transportation? Train, plane, automobile, boat, bike, walking.

Definitely train. Train. What's the best train you've taken? The best train from London to Bath. Yeah. Like just like a, like just the normal train that you took from, like it wasn't, there wasn't particularly fancy, but it was beautiful. Actually, London Bath or London to Edinburgh. Okay. If you could take a vacation with any family,

alive or dead, real or fictional, other than your own family, what family would you like to take a family vacation with? Ooh, wow. That's a really good question. I guess like, yeah, Kingsley and Martin Amis, just cause you know that the drinks will be good. Great.

Agreed. If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one member of your family, who would it be? Oh, it would have to be my brother. I mean, just, I mean, as much as I love my wife, like I want to survive, like I don't want to die. I mean, as much as I love my wife, like I wanna survive. Like I don't wanna die. I need- You wanna get home to her.

Yeah, exactly. And I need somebody to fish and like make the fire and you know. Right. Give me an ore. Yeah, and he's six feet tall, so he can stand on the beach. Oh yeah, he reached the highest coconuts, yeah. You're from New York City proper? Yes. Would you recommend New York City proper? Yes.

Would you recommend New York City as a vacation destination for a family? Yeah, I think so. I think I genuinely would, yeah. Yeah, I think so. And then Seth has our finishing questions. Simon, have you been to the Grand Canyon? I have not.

Do you wanna go? No. Yeah. That's, I'm very proud of you. Yeah, I mean, it's just, and there's a wait list, right? And to go, or a wait list to take the river through it. Yeah, to get, to stay at the bottom at Phantom Ranch, it's hard to get those spots.

And then, yeah, going down the river, I'm not sure what it takes, but yeah. My feeling is I have flown over it. Yeah. Isn't that the same exact experience? The best is this is yet another thing you have in common with Leslie Jones, who said the same thing.

That's great. The two of you once again are completely in lockstep. You know, I've sort of, you know, staked out my position, which is very similar to your, Simon, and people, one of our producers just sent me pictures. You're missing out of the Grand Canyon, and I look at the pictures, and I don't think I am.

No, the only place I really want to go is to see the ruins of the Titanic in, like, a small, submersible... Oh, you do? One they built quickly. That's what I wanted. New technology. That's what I want to do. Like new technology. It feels similar to that.

I mean, it feels like why go to this very remote, scary cliff that I could, I mean, best case scenario, I just stay there and stare down into the abyss. I mean. Yeah. I mean, this is, you're singing my song buddy Alright, I really hope to see you. Let me know when you're back in the city. It is great to see you buddy Thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for having me great Simon came down on his summer vacay to Boca, but he wasn't there to meet himself a senorita. Oldies sitting around sipping-Rey tapioca. It was a regular trip to see his grandma Anita. The pool was cool but was a gator there. House cats gave his grandmother a scare

and on the court Simon was a star. Back in New York, point guard on the C team. But Simon Rich, he had a richer dream. Till Grandma crunched his foot with the car. And they say, if not, he probably would have been in the NBA. Who knows what this little Jewish kid could have been. Likely a cross between Steve Nash and Steph Curry. With just a touch of magic sprinkled in. You should have seen that boy Simon Was kinda like Maravich if you saw that boy Simon A little Isaiah cause no one can stop Simon So much potential inside. Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode. Learn more at NissanUSA.com.