The Bill Simmons Podcast - Parent Corner: 2019 Edition | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons presents every parent corner with Cousin Sal from the 2019 NFL season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's very special 2019 Parent Corner edition of the Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by CarMax. The folks at CarMax make your shopping, test driving, and car buying experience easy the way it should be. In fact, they make it so easy that my nephew Kyle did it. He started his search at CarMax.com, filtered through over 50,000 CarMax vehicles nationwide, and found a CarMax vehicles nationwide and found a CarMax certified Ford Mustang within his budget that he named Maxine. CarMax took him through all the tricky stuff, financing options, credit applications, down payments, and pros and cons without haggling or the pressure to buy. You always get a seven-day money-back guarantee to make sure the car is right for you. And with full disclosure, after a week, Kyle kept the Mustang. Stop by your local CarMax for details and discover how easy buying a car at CarMax can really be.

We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, where we are still cranking away at the tail end of 2019 here and the end of the decade. And The Ringer Podcast Network, where the rewatchables. Quentin Tarantino, first of three films that we did with him, which ironically the 100th, the third of these films will be the 100th episode of the rewatchables. Yeah, so this week was Dunkirk, QT, Chris Ryan, Sean Fantasy, and then one next week, and then the 100th rewatchables episode the week after that. Subscribe to the 103 Watchables episode the week after that. Subscribe to the Rewatchables on Apple, on Spotify,

wherever you get your podcasts. All right, coming up. Here are all the parent corners that Cousin Sal and I did over the course of the 2019 NFL season. If you're not familiar with this gimmick, we started doing it, I'm going to say, five years ago, four or five years ago. We started joking about, I'm going to say, five years ago, four or five years ago. We started joking about things that were happening with our kids. I jokingly called it Parent Corner.

Then we seriously called it Parent Corner. Then we started doing them every week, and it took a life of its own. Here it is, a best of Parent Corner 2019. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. Go ahead. You have the floor. Okay. Well, my son is a freshman. Your daughter's a freshman in high school.

She's playing football. Yes. I broke the old lady down. Yeah. He just loves it so much. He was done with flag football. He's putting the pads on. They had their first game last week.

He's tall, somehow. And I have to look into this even more, but he's almost 6'1". He's playing linebacker. What do you mean look into it? I'm short. My wife's short. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. I'm eyeballing every FedEx guy that comes by. Any FedEx guy who's 6'2

and over? Yeah, that's not right. I try to ignore it, but it's obvious So we have to figure it out Your son, he's like a mutant He is very big He's 14? Yeah, he's 14 And he's like 6'1

Right And it just looks like he's going to be like 6'8 Right, so he has to play football Yeah He loves the game He watches all the games and plays Never tackled before Goes in there

First game, two tackles. Only played half the game at linebacker. Played the full game guard. Two tackles. Recovered a fumble. Tipped two passes. They beat a team from Compton 34-16. Yeah.

The quarterback's good. Quarterback trained with Matt Leinart over the summer. Could be a good team. This is Manhattan Beach, ninth grade? Ninth grade, freshman year. Everything's great. And we get the announcement from the

wife that one concussion and he's done. And so... Wow. And I thought about this and I'm like, I have to have her back. And so I did. And I told my son, I was like, I have to have her back. And so I did. And I told my son, I was like, that's right. One and you're done.

And that's why if you ever feel woozy, don't freaking say anything. And my wife didn't like that too much. It's terrible. I know it's a bad day. We shouldn't be laughing about this, but is that fair in your estimation? One and done? Am I just a horrible father

if he gets one and I'm like, you can keep going. It's like half a one? Yeah. I mean, is it bad enough we're letting him play? And then if he had one, I shouldn't even be talking about it, but it's a possibility, right? It's an incredible start to Paracorder. Is CarMax still on?

They're still on? They're canceled. Start the search for your next car at CarMax.com anyway, even though they're not with us anymore. I don't want to make a joke of it, but is that where we're at? If you let your kid play, you can only allow one of these. I think that's a way to handle this yeah all right the one and done okay the new one and done i'm fine i'm fine with

that my son my mother-in-law comes and sends him a gift certificate for amazon because she's coming and um i forget it was for it was was for like back to school or something. So he's all excited and he decides he's going to spend the money on the gift strip kit himself. We get a $50 BB gun. Oh, that was for ages 16 and over. And what do you mean we get it? We get it in the mail oh we're like oh it's some package from amazon it's a bb gun with 200 bullets in it and it's for people 16 and over

and we're and my wife's like what the hell is this why why did we get a bb gun ben claims it was a he wanted to buy a prop gun because when he acts out scenes from movies in the backyard, he wanted to have a prop gun. Acting out Scarface? What kind of movies is it? He sees different movies. Freddie Mercury shot up Live Aid?

I don't remember. I don't understand it. So that happens. And then a day later, this fake knife comes in the mail oh no and it's one of those knives where you stab somebody and the blade just sinks right it's like a prop thing yeah yeah and we're like what's going on do you need to see a psychiatrist he's like i just need props for the backyard and we're, what the hell is going on with you? And he thought it was like the funniest thing. And I forget what was the other thing he bought.

Oh, the third thing was the Szechuan sauce. $50. So Rick and Morty's has this McDonald's Szechuan sauce. You can't kill anyone with that. You can't kill anyone with the Szechuan sauce. It's like a joke, right?

Yeah. It's an episode that Ben loves Rick and Morty and he just wanted to get it. And they brought it back for a limited right yeah it's an episode that ben loves rick and morty and he just wanted to get it and they brought it back for a limited time for mcdonald's and now you can only get it from third-party sellers for like x amount of dollars so he bought that as well it all came in it was all it was all smushed half of the szechuan sauce was all whatever it was more than 50 because he'd already had some stuff so three things he bought were um something he thought was a prop toy gun that was actually a bb gun yeah he's never even seen a knife that he was pretending to stab us with but then immediately broke because it was like a dollar

that's good and then set you on stuff that all broke and it spilled all over the place the other thing was when we bought kyle a flash gordon jersey and ben's grown now so none of the patch jerseys fit so i was like do you need another patch jersey and he's like i do so i'm like all right i'm gonna get you a new patch jersey would it which one do you want he's like i want my name on it aaron hernandez no he didn't like that so i'm like all right you want your name on it so i'll get simmons what number is it no no i want melatonin that's his rap name you should know about it of course that's the name he wants so he wanted melatonin 69 because the rappers have 69 and he's like and i'm like i'm a thousand percent not doing that so So he got 33.

So Kyle has a flash quarter jersey and my son has a melatonin 33. And he's like, it's going to be good for our first video. And I'm like, you're 11? You're going to jail? You just bought a BB gun online? You're 11? Oh, man. So 33 for Larry Bird, but on the Patriots and melatonin.

Is that why? Yeah. Okay. 33, it's like a Simmons family number and melatonin and he's all fired up. I'll post an Instagram photo. He's all fired up. He thinks it's going to be great for the rap video. Nice. And that's my son, who's now

starting sixth grade, who is playing he's going to do the travel baseball and play for the football team. Oh, really? And hopefully not do last Boy Scout with the prop gun he bought as he's running on the field. Well, there you go, CarMax. BB guns, knives, and concussions.

We're back. All right, so this weekend I was watching the three boys, and my wife was away for the weekend. And, you know, I have to say, like, she does a great these kids wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her. Like, it has nothing to do with me at all. But watching kids over the weekend versus during the week is different. Right. Like during the week, you have to bring them to all kinds of practices and extracurricular activities. After school, you have to do homework. It's bad. It's tough. You have to make lunches. She does a great job with that. But on the weekend, as long as there's no sports and soccer hasn't started for my little one yet, my oldest one plays football during the week.

If there's no sports, that's easy pickings, right? You could just set them on their own. They're on their iPad and you feed them a couple of times a day. And that's that. So that was my plan. So I wake up Saturday morning and I start on my book and I get done about 9 a.m., 9.30. I'm like, all right, I should go down and feed these kids. I go downstairs. I say to the youngest one, I was like, what do you want? Do you want cereal or oatmeal? I'm praying he doesn't say oatmeal because that involves me putting hot water in something. You know what I mean? Rather than just pouring cold milk into a bowl he says cereal

we go through it he likes checks and i go in the pantry i go to pull out the checks and he comes behind me he's got a full bag he's got now an empty bag of peanut butter pretzels he's eaten all of these and i was like oh my, he's already had breakfast on his own. He didn't wait for me, but a terrible father I am. And I'm like, Oh, I'm like,

I'm like, look at you. You're going to be a real fatty. And he says to me, he's like, well, you're already fat and just walks away. Wow.

And that was it. I was like, all right, I'm going back up to my room. I'm going to ride alone. I don't need to see these little bastard kids for another three hours. You just ditched them. So that's it.

Yeah. Not that much of a great story, but. You feel like it's easier on the weekends because it's really up to you how much you want to put in. Right. Oh, it's got to be easy. Because you can just throw iPads and cereal at them and basically do your own thing on a Saturday.

But on like a Friday, you got to drive people places. You could also just feed them and not see them. I could order Postmates or they could come to the door. Do you let your kids order from eating apps? I haven't yet. I'm a little worried about that. You're at that stage now, right? Well, my son, the immortal Ben Simmons, had a very brief Postmates run that ended abruptly when guys were showing up from Chipotle with one burrito. And we were like, all right, that's coming off your phone. So my parent corner, I want to preface this by saying that my daughter's soccer team, I think our parents are really particularly, it's a good group.

We have no bad apples. We have been trained to behave really well on the sidelines. Our coach really does believe like if we're supposed to stay quiet, just cheer, not tell our kids what to do, all that stuff.

And definitely don't yell at the refs. Let him handle it if it gets mad. So we're playing this big tournament this weekend in Oceanside. We win the first two games and we advance to the semifinals, but there's still one game left on a Sunday morning.

Basically, it's like, all right, we'll just kick the ball around. Just try not to get anyone hurt. It's one of those games because we got to be really ready because semifinals and the finals are on Monday. Right. So game starts, really physical, getting more and more physical.

And the lead, the center umpire, whatever he's called, the lead ref, it seems pretty young. Doesn't seem like an adult. Seems like he might be 16 or 17 max and has no idea what he's doing. It's starting to get chippier. It's starting to get chippier. Second half starts and now it's like rollerball and our kids are getting taken out. It's fouls left and right. At one point, I thought our midfielder, who's a nice kid, actually rolled around with their fist clenched. I thought we're actually going to have a fight on the field.

Like it was getting like that out of control. The ref's doing nothing. We start, we're yelling. And, you know, from a parent standpoint, the only thing you want is you don't want your kid to get hurt in a game. Right? So we're all like, we're reacting as parents. Like you got to get control

of this game. What are you doing now? He's getting mad at us. The other team's doing more and more. Finally, one of our kids just gets decked and her head hits the grass. Oh no. She's like kind of half crying, but really more upset. We're all going nuts. And now it's like, you know, in the NBA where it's like the trainer, when there's a fight, the trainers pretend that they have to like make sure the players don't run on the court so they don't get suspended. So we're a combination of making sure nobody gets mad enough to actually like charge somebody. Our coach comes out and he's like the maddest I've ever seen him. He ends up getting thrown out.

It's a red card. So now we're up one, nothing in this game. Now we just want it to end. Cause it's like, somebody is going to get hurt in this game. This is crazy. It's like a 15 year old girl soccer game. So stupid game.

There's a penalty kick with like a minute left that they call us for some penalty in the box. This ref who is now like, uh, you know, he's like the 1972 Olympics basketball ref. Calls this crazy penalty. And now this other team has a penalty kick with a chance to tie it. Our goalie ends up saving it.

We win the game. The ref sprints off past us to get away from us. And runs to the whatever, the tent to put in the score. And our manager follows him. And I follow because I want to make sure like nothing else happens yeah go over and the ref is basically like unraveling like he's in the blair witch project and he's telling our manager like i'm sorry i know i didn't do my best and it becomes clear this kid's like 15 oh no and somebody must have in sick, but this is like a big tournament. Like

you have like real refs for this. And it's clear, like he just shouldn't have been in this spot. And meanwhile, we almost had roller ball in this youth soccer thing. So I'm like conflicted. Cause I'm like, we're, we're yelling at this guy, but we also wanted our kids to be safe. But on the other hand, we're, you know, yelling at this kid and he's 15 and whatever. So for this episode of Parent Corner, I'm not sure how I feel about this whole thing. But at one point, one of the parents on our team, because somebody was taking pictures and was like, we have pictures. And the guy looked over, was scared, like we're going to blackmail him. Meanwhile, it's just pictures of our kids getting elbowed in the back and tripped and

knocked over. Yeah. Why does he have to see pictures? He lived the game, right? All right, so hearing that story, what do you think our role is on the sidelines? A normal group of parents who are just supportive, who don't say a lot,

who are now worried one of their kids are going to get hurt. How far can we go in that situation? I think, first of all, I think it's very hard to see your kid get repeatedly injured or busted up and nothing being done about it. But I think you did well keeping your cool. The X factor could be the other parents. How much are they egging it on? Or are they just telling you, oh, shut up, stop being a baby? Because that could put you, that could turn nuclear so and then you

lose it all right so this was i will say the other parents did not do that which i thought was a good thing um and then you did the right thing you recognize that it was a young overwhelmed referee and it sucked that uh these calls weren't made but i think the answer is you have to send Ben Simmons to these games with his BB gun. Well, I did. So we had this semifinal game today and we lost in penalty kicks, which was devastating. But right before the game, and I say this every year, I'm just going to say this again for everyone's benefit. You're supposed to pick a side and put your chairs on one side, all the parents on one one side the parents from the other team on the other side and the reason you do this is just because if there's a situation like that game when it turns into rollerball you don't want parents right next to each other because then that could god knows what happens um parents right near the start of the game these two ladies put the

chairs on our side and i kind of looked at him was like, you guys have to go to your side. And the lady does the eye roll and goes, oh, really? Like offended that she has to go to her side. So I'm going to say this again for America's benefit. Stay on your own fucking side. There's two sides. All the parents are on the side that you know. You're on that side. We're on the other side. There's a midfield. There's a whole line that goes right down the middle and you're on one side or the other. You can't be on both. I like it. I like it. I'll tell you about my five-year-old who is playing soccer. Now, he was on this team last season, actually in the spring with all his friends in school. Every one of them. There was like six friends

in his preschool class. They're all on this baseball team. They were the Mets. He loved it. We got along with the parents. We held the end of the year party at our house. They weren't insufferable, the parents. I actually liked them, which is tough for me. It was great. Now they have the soccer team in the fall. And Harrison, my son, is two days too old to be in that league. The soccer, the way they sort out the ages for the soccer is different than the way they do it for baseball. So he's two days too old. There's a kid on the team that's two days younger than him. But my son can't do it because he's two days too old.

So he has to play on another team. So but the coach offers this he says hey why don't i'll just order an extra jersey he could show up he's five who gives a shit that you know they're not competing for a giant trophy here the coaches other coaches are going to know there's no roster he's not going to call me out and uh that'll be that he can come in as a sub or there's always two kids that can't make it or whatever. I was like, that sounds really good. My wife's like, no, no, no, let's do this by the book. They'll probably let us do that anyway, but let's just let the league decide. I was like,

I don't think it's a good idea, but go ahead. Godspeed, do it. Sure enough, calls up, gets a commissioner on the phone or email through email. There are absolutely no exceptions. He cannot play with his friends. He's going to have to be on this other team. So now she's furious. And now I'm not furious. Now I'm like, well, this is your fault. You screwed this up. We could have had the extra jersey. We could have ordered it. It would have been fine. And now he has to play on this other team. And not only now is he playing on this other team they move those that game for some reason the schedule there's three games on sunday so i have to see it was everything was great everything's lined up for a saturday season now he has half the schedule is on sunday and and and their practices are saturday at two oh two days two weekend days

are ruined for five-year-old soccer. I have a question. In the middle of the day Saturday. I was like, what kind of maniac? I have a question. Yeah.

Why are they having practice for five-year-olds? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. What are they doing? That's what I said. Five-year-olds run around like a chicken

with their head cut off. There's no practice for them. That's what I said. I was like, he shouldn't go to the practices. We have a couple of beach days left. We have a million things going on. Why at two o'clock do we have to bring him to practice? Like, well, maybe he won't play. Maybe they won't play him. If they, I was like, this is not a scholarship team. Like I don't get it. So that's that we're stuck with a Saturday and Sunday real quick. The older one, the freshman

has a game in Anaheim football yeah on thursday i'm driving out there i'm about halfway there and i get a call from my wife saying the game is canceled because it's too hot oh my god it's 90 and it's and it's humid and they don't want to take any chances and i was like you got to be kidding me i know i play through heat like this i don't want to be the old man saying this but first of all this reminds me of the NFL, what we talked about. Why are they scheduling early September games in Carolina and Tampa Bay if they know there's going to be a storm hitting? Same thing here, same weather in Anaheim every September 10th, have their games on the road. No, that's it. So I had to turn back. I was in traffic for four hours, but that's that. I'm done.

That's brutal. I can't believe they have practice for five-year-olds. What is going on with this country? Yeah. Isn't that... The coaches are nuts. They love it. I was like, if they love it so much, take off work Friday. We'll do Friday at five or something. You throw a soccer ball out with people wearing uniforms of two different teams and all of them just cluster around the ball. There's no, what are they going to practice? Just running into each other. I was like, you know what?

He's not going to remember any of this. He might remember playing with his friends that he grew up with. That would have been cool. But all right, take that away. What are we going to do? What's his birthday? When's his birthday? December 30th.

So there's a kid who was born January 2nd who's on the team. Oh, man, that's a tough sports birthday. When people ask me for advice for parenting, the only thing I say is, if you think your kids are going to be athletic, try to game it so that they're born late January, early February. That's the move. Yeah, that's good.

Do you really want to stack the deck for your children? I understand for leagues, there has to be a cutoff, and it matters when they're 8, 9, 10, and above, but come on. Five? Five is... Let him play with his friends. Five's pretty ridiculous. Yeah. My parent corner, there's just a lot to choose from with my son these days.

He's really turning into one of the all-time characters my wife gave him 40 dollars to because he was walking downtown to go get coffee or some coffee drink with his friend ben and they're gonna go walk around that's good that story's good enough right there you can stop that was my whole thing i was like why did you him $40? Why didn't you give him like $10? She's like, I don't know. I just grabbed money for my wallet. So giving him $40, you know, it's like a game show where you're giving like just dumb 11 year olds money to just spend. And they, so anyway, he comes back and there was some sale from a store and he's carrying all this stuff. And he's like, mom,

the store had a sale. I don't forget the name of it. And I carrying all this stuff. And he's like, mom, the store at a sale, I don't forget the name of it. And I got all this stuff. And it was, I can't even describe what the stuff to one was a thing. It almost looked like a stand. And he's like, I'm going to keep my trophies on this. He hasn't won a trophy. I don't think yet. I think he won one baseball trophy. So it was like, so that's great. This ugly stand. I don't even know where it's going to go. You have that. And then it was like, there was one giant long key that he really liked.

Cause it looked like a key from a scary movie. It's like, look at this. It was marked down from $10 to $1. It's like, yeah. Cause it's a fucking giant key. Who would want this? You know what it says? You sure it wasn't another one?

It says the key to my heart on it. Oh my God. And then there was like some gold chains. So anyway, he spent the whole $40. Then my wife's mad at him. I was like, why are you mad at him? He's an idiot. You should be mad at yourself.

So we have that. Then the other thing was I rejoined my fantasy league with my friends from high school. The one that I was in from like 1990, which I had skipped out on because I didn't want to be in multiple leagues. Oh, really? They made me feel guilty. So I'm back in that, did the online draft, the whole thing.

But I wanted, I told my son, I was like, we should be partners for this. He's like, great. So we do the draft. He's interested right to the point where he really wanted me to take Baker Mayfield, which might be the only quarterback he knows other than Tom Brady. So we take him

and then disappears. He's gone for the rest of the draft. Downloads the CBS app on his phone. And then he can look at our team and he's all excited about that. He's like, hey, dad, look at our team. We're favored to win this week, all this stuff.

I'm going to watch football with you and Kyle on Sunday. Like, great. So comes around. It's like 9.55 West Coast time. Like, you're going to come out and watch football? He's like, yeah, I'm going to be out there in one second. I'm just going to go on the trampoline. Comes in.

He's in for two minutes. Watches like two Baker Mayfield passes. Like, I'll be right back. I never see him again. It's just gone the rest of the day. No interest in anything. Then comes back in and starts yelling at me because we also have Lamar Jackson,

who I didn't start because I started Baker Mayfield because that's the only football player my son's heard of other than the Patriots. And I'm like, I started at Baker Mayfield because that was the guy you were all excited about. You wanted Baker Mayfield. He's like, yeah, but dad, Lamar has five touchdowns. What are you doing?

What are you doing? You're so dumb. I'm like, you don't even watch football. You're not even out here. So now we're yelling at each other. And then he ends up not watching any football at all. And now he doesn't care about the fantasy team because we lost and we suck.

And I picked a bad team and he doesn't want to be on my team anymore. So that's it. He's going to end up stabbing you with that giant key. Well, and then the other thing is he has a Pats jersey that has his rap name on the back. Cause I got Kyle, the flash Gordon jersey.

So he got his melatonin jersey and then wouldn't wear that tonight because he was still mad about the fantasy team. Wow. Bastard. Yeah, because I didn't start Lamar Jackson. So Baker Mayfield basically turned the child off to sports really or off to football. All we needed to see was two Baker Mayfield passes. Well, what you realize is when we were growing up

all we want to do is like watch sports with our dad, right? It was like what was better than, oh yeah watch a game with my pops they don't want to do that they just want to watch you know a prank video on youtube yeah who's imagine yelling at your father for starting so cracked upside the head so fast well and then he was he's been researching his halloween costume who's the guy's gonna be kyle he's gonna be this guy from is Who's the guy who's going to be Kyle? He's going to be this guy from... Is it a YouTuber? It's a YouTube video. That goes right in one ear out of my other. I don't know.

And I'm like, who's that Zoe? And Zoe goes, he's this guy in Daniel Dobrik's video who he sleeps with all these girls and smokes a lot of pot. So Ben thought it'd be funny to be him for Halloween. I'm like, that doesn't sound funny at all. Can he not do that

oh and then when kyle came in today ben tried to stab him with his knife that plunges it broken so i wasn't on the lookout for it i thought he was actually going to stab me so he came at ben with a knife and then it plunged in and then it receded into itself because this was the one dollar thing he bought he's gonna put kyle on his trophy case yeah that's gonna be the first i'm telling you he's you do character of the year every year. This is going to be the first child in character of the year. I love it. Sal usually goes first on Parent Corner,

but we're going to let House go first this time. House has a good one, Sal. Well, this is really a testament to the many inadequacies that I possess as a father, as a grown man, as a tech savvy human being in the 21st century. My son loves the game Roblox. It is one of these character driven, avatar driven, you know, you're the character in all of these environments and situations. And like a lot of these games where, you know, you have one character interfacing with others, you can enhance the shit out of this character's attributes and his navigation skills, his fashion. fashion and my son very early on showed a real appetite for making his his avatar as handsome as possible yeah and also equipping him with whatever modern technology whatever warfare technology so he spent 460 last week on uh roblox enhancements because I have probably four times gone into the stupid effing app and be disabled and untethered by PayPal and taken the effing credit card off the thing.

And I'll be goddamned if he hasn't figured out what he just did. And then I get a bill from iTunes, $460 mother effing dollars. I was like, for what? For what is it? Oh, daddy, he has a mohawk. Daddy. I got him a mohawk, a pink mohawk. My character has an 11-inch penis, dad.

It costs $90. So he stuck it right in my ass. He sure did. Are you kidding me? Yeah, so that's my parent quarter. I'm sure there's a fix for this. If you know the fix, please send it to me on the Twitter, at House from DC.

Please help me fix the effing Roblox. I don't think you have to pay for that, but I think it's funnier that you do. $460, I hope not. Just to piggyback on that, my son also did the same thing, and we had to change all the passwords. It's impossible for him to order anything. I hope not. Just to piggyback on that, my son also did the same thing. And we had to change all the passwords.

It's impossible for him to order anything. But somehow, I got this bill last night when I was at Rembrandt's wedding. Shout out to Rembrandt's wedding, by the way. Great time. Nice. And it was a $19.99 Sony Interactive Services PlayStation thing. So he went on my account and bought something that I didn't know what it was. So I emailed him.

Did you buy, or I texted him, did you buy something? And he emailed me back, look out, it's the Ofo Show Snoop Dogg GIF. What?

He emailed me a GIF of Snoop Dogg nodding and it said, Ofo Show. It's a question mark. Bill Simmons to Ben Simmons. Did you buy something? And he texted me, oh, for sure.

And then he texted me, I have money. And then he texted, I pay you back. Not even I'll pay you back. I pay you back. So his grammar continues to be terrible. It turns 12 in two months. And he's going, this isn't even my parent corner. I pay you back. So his grammar continues to be terrible. It turns 12 in two months. And he's going, this isn't even my parent corner.

Sal, you're up. All right, I'm up. So I told you last week or the week before about my five-year-old who wants to play soccer with his friends, but he's exactly two days too old for that league. So he has to play a league up. And this league plays on Sundays.

So good for me. And not only do they play on Sundays, they played Sunday at 1 PM, which for a football fan on the West coast is the worst time, the worst time for a game to start. And by the way, even worse when there's 10 fricking early games, yeah.

Three late afternoon, 10 and three is not the ratio anybody wants. So you, as you know, you guys are watching and house, you had most of these games on your parlay there. Green Bay game, Baltimore game, Detroit game houses. You were watching the Pittsburgh game all came down to the wire. So I'm scrambling to get out of the house. I finally get to the game. I'm like five minutes late, but not too late to see my five-year-old allow two goals in 45 seconds. He's playing goalie.

And he's throwing a fit. And so they take him out of goal. And now he's slide tackling everyone. He's playing good defense, but he's getting called for fouls every time. And he's really tackling everybody, diving into everybody, doesn't know what he's doing. But when he gets called for a foul, he's crying. So he's like this big bully that turns into a wuss.

Like, what the hell's going on here? So they end up losing like 5-0, and I'm like, oh, I can't wait to talk to this kid. I have to get his head straight. This is crazy. He's aggressive, and he's sobbing, and it's really weird. And he's crying after every goal by the other team. Wait until I get a hold of him. But before I can get a hold of him, he has to talk to his team.

The coach tells him, oh, you did good. We lost, but losing doesn't matter anyway. Not only does the coach feed him that, but they're the Sharks, and he dedicates the Shark of the Week. He acknowledges that there's a Shark of the Week. He pulls out a plastic shark and gives it to Harrison for being the Shark of the Week. And I'm like, what the hell is going on here?

How is he the shark of the week? He was like blubbering on the ground and pounding. Now how am I going to say, hey, you did wrong. You got to get it together. And when he's going to hold up the shark and say, oh, really? Someone says I behave properly. So the shark of the week. So I don't know.

This coach is a nice guy and everything, but you didn't do me any favors with these participation trophies. This one coming in the form of a plastic shark with his name on it. It's not like you pass it around. So now he's waving it around. I can't teach this kid that he behaved improperly. I don't know what to do. Do you guys have any recommendations?

This is just, you just explained everybody under 30. Yeah. I'm going to go to my parent corner. Under 30 months. That's ridiculous. Awful. Shark of the week. My parent corner.

So my daughter, who I love, who's been on this podcast, who is a really sweet and thoughtful kid. That's nice. The one hole she has in her sweet and thoughtful resume, not like great at cards and gifts, which makes her like me. The best person I've ever seen at cards and gifts is me and Sal's cousin, Jimmy. Right, for sure. Who is kind of the Michael Jordan of gifts. He's, I don't know, what does he have, like a Google Doc, Sal? He knows when everybody's birthday and everything is.

He's buying christmas we heard he probably heard you say that and to thank you for anointing him the best of cards and gifts bought you like a rookie uh larry berger's right just just for saying that really incredibly thoughtful gifts he's buying gifts for people in like july and march and just has 300 people filed away in his brain that he's just buying stuff for. My daughter is not that person. And I just somehow ended up with these kids that it's like Mother's Day and my wife's home and we're about to have dinner and they're scrambling around grabbing pieces of paper from the printer and hastily making Mother's Day cards. I don't think I've ever gotten a gift from my daughter ever. Maybe I have, but my wife probably bought it.

So I bring this up because she's been dating this guy and they had their one month anniversary this weekend. Colin, nice guy. I'll give him a shout out. Colin, I like him. Good first boyfriend. Zoe, I'm like,

where's Zoe? She went downtown to buy some gifts for her anniversary. I'm like, where's Zoe? Is she out? Oh, she went downtown to buy some gifts for her anniversary. I'm like, what? She ends up, she comes back and has this whole thing of all these different gifts she bought. And she got him a card. And she made him. So she spent hours, like, gifts and arranged some photo thing. And I'm listening to this.

And I'm just getting madder and madder. So we were fate. We're in DC for, for the wedding and we're FaceTiming her and she's telling my wife about these gifts. She got her, got him and I'm going to see him tomorrow and I'm so excited. And finally I got mad and I'd be like,

Oh, I know you've never gotten me a fucking gift ever. And then she comes back with, that's not true. I made you that Celtics thing once, which was like seven years ago. I was away for the finals and she made me this painting

with like six Celtics on it. So she had to go back to 2013. So my point is this. You can do the whole daddy's little girl, all that stuff. But as soon as they meet a guy, you're just dumped. Yeah. It's like nine gifts for the new guy.

Meanwhile, all I've done is I've been her fucking chauffeur for her entire life. Driven her all around Southern California for every soccer tournament. Where's my nine gifts? Where's my, I went down to Larchmont and bought dad some gifts. Because I'm so thankful he stood in 100-degree weather last week to watch me play soccer and sweated and then had to drive two hours. No gifts for me. I think dad's being a bad first boyfriend. That's what it sounds like to me.

That's a great point. If you're a better boyfriend, you would get a gift for one anniversary. I just stand for, I stand for what's right is what I stand for. And you know what's right? Get me a father's day card. Go to the store. Get me like three cards.

Just write a nice note, write a nice sappy note. Make me feel good for a minute. If you want to feel good, Bill, I could send you a plastic shark. I don't care. I'll put it in the mail tomorrow.

I think you would like it. If car max sent me a car. I do love my daughter though. I should say she will be taking care of me someday when I'm in a nursing shark. I'll put it in the mail tomorrow. I think you would like it if CarMax sent me a car. I do love my daughter, though, I should say. She will be taking care of me someday when I'm in a nursing home. She's a good kid. Hopefully there's a view of the ocean. Well, I feel bad because this is neither fun or funny, but I'll tell you, I'll say in advance, it has

a not-so-terrible ending, but my son is playing freshman football. It took a lot of convincing of my wife to get this going. I even had Tony Romo a few years back try to convince her and say, hey, come on, he can play contact, right? Contact football is fine. And he's like, eh, he doesn't have to start until ninth grade. So he didn't start until ninth grade, even though all his friends were playing in seventh grade. Now he's on the freshman team. He loves it. The team's pretty good.

They have a game, a Thursday afternoon game. One of his teammates catches a ball in the flat, turns around and gets pummeled helmet to helmet by a kid who's probably a foot taller. And then he's on the field, this kid, my son's teammate for the next 40 minutes and uh you know and his and his feet are flailing oh no like holy crap is this involuntary or like at some point uh the mother's pretty good with it she's on the field it took a long time finally an ambulance came 40 minutes later uh take him to the hospital he had like a neck injury he's he's fine he has a neck brace he texted a thumbs up to all his teammates but yeah i i don't know what to say except that you know when you watch your favorite team play and a player on your favorite team after that sucks and you're like oh this is brutal even on someone on another team when you're watching your

kid's game and it's someone on your kid's team it's like times a thousand and then i cannot even imagine as a parent what this is like for 40 minutes not knowing what's going on like i said everything well ended up good but um i'm okay if he decides not to play and he seems okay that everyone on the team is okay with it, but it's just so scary. And also, it's really bad for my brand. I mean, a lot of the parents are like, oh, how's your brand? Is your brand okay? You know, don't worry about my brand.

There's a kid on the field. But no, I don't know. I just had a big wake-up call with that. And yeah, nothing to say more than that. Jesus. This is the most depressing parent corner of all time. I'm sorry. I know. It was 40 minutes, but it's relevant relative

to what we say. Irrelevant. The other thing is, I have to go to every game. I don't care where the road games are. I have to kind of make every one because this is... Now I have that on my mind, too. Man. Sorry to bum you out,

but this is reality being a parent. Thank God for Ben Simmons. Cause, cause just when you thought parent corner was going to get depressing, we've been Simmons. So I can get on his Instagram account and read his DMS and stuff because I pay for his phone. And that's part of,

you know, that's part of the deal. What I didn't realize I hadn't checked in a while, is he has this new habit now of DMing celebrities on Instagram and hoping they email him back. So he emailed after we went to the It Too screening, he DMed Bill Hader and was like, what's up, dude?

He was like, sent him a photo and he was like, I was at the premiere for it. I don't know if he thinks Bill Hader's going to sift through his DMs and maybe hit him back,

but it's been a lot of that. There might have been some women that he's attracted to who's been like, hey, what's up? I think you're great. But my favorite, he texted this rapper named 916 Frosty, who's actually fantastic.

He hasn't blown up yet, but has a couple really good songs. But as you know, my son and his buddy Lucci, they have their rap band. We played that song at the start of the podcast today. Right. Tic Tac and Melatonin. So he DMs 916 Frosty on July 23rd and says, dude, you're a god, but it's Y-O-U-R.

Doesn't even have the, no response from 916 Frosty. Oh. Then on August 12th. He frosted him out. DMs him again and says, I'm Melatonin. I'm a rapper. I work with Tic Tac. You a god.

And then adds Tic Tac for reals, his rap partner. Adds him just in case maybe he knows Tic Tac for reals. Yeah, that had to get his attention, no? So poor 916 Frosty's going through his DMs and gets, I'm Melatonin. I'm a rapper. I work with Tic Tac for reals. Yeah, that had to get his attention, no? So poor 916 Frosty's going through his DMs and gets, I'm melatonin, I'm a rapper, I work with Tic Tac. You guys, oh, I didn't realize you work with Tic Tac.

Then texts him, you're my hero. Still no response. Eight days later, you're the best. Y-O-U-R, the best. So, to be fair, I don't think 916 Frosty is disregarding the direct message because he got his your and yours wrong. You don't think it was... I don't think it's important.

He also emailed an actress named McKenna. He just emailed a clapping emoji. He's just going through. It's Nick Kroll he really likes. He told Nick Kroll, hey, Nick, big fan. No response from Nick. So my son's celebrity Instagram DM game has been a little off so far. It's going to sound obnoxious to start off because it was one day,

it was like a Tuesday, and we had the cleaning lady. It only comes once a week. I don't want to sound too crazy, too presentious. And the window washers who never, ever come, but we weren't able to see outside. Our windows were so filthy. We finally broke down and got window washers to come to the house. So cleaning lady and the window washers are there the same day. That's Tuesday. Wednesday, we get a text from the cleaning lady. Tough to read, little language barrier, but she says, the oldest boy, I put his money in the black suit in his closet so that the window washers couldn't get to it. I was like, oh, wow, that's nice. First of all, I don't know why my son has money

in the first place, but she took the money and put it away because she thought some of the strangers were going to take it. So I said to my son, I was like, what happened? He was like, oh, yeah, I wondered about that. I had like $110 out on my end table, and it was gone. I was like, well, why didn't you say anything? He's like, I thought the housekeeper took it, and I didn't want to rat her out. What a good kid. Wow.

Yeah. Pretty good. Wait a second. Why did he have $110? Well, that's the other thing. Now I'm going to find out he's selling meth in the courtyard or something. He's not such a good kid. But no, I think he got it from babysitting and stuff. It doesn't matter. He lost his effing phone in the camping. So he's going to have to use that to pay that anyway. But anyway, the sentiment is nice. He didn't rat out the cleaning lady.

Or maybe the sentiment isn't nice. Maybe you could have had this terrible thief in your house and he just would have sat passively and watched it happen. Oh, interesting. Am I looking at this the wrong way? Shit. See, I don't know how to evaluate anything anymore. This is why I'm a bad parent. This isn't my parent corner, but I, I turned 50 last week. Oh yeah. And, um, I had talked about how my kids, you know, aren't really like, they don't make cards. They don't do stuff like that. And how mad I was when my daughter had her one month anniversary with her boyfriend and went to downtown and got her nine gifts and cards. So needless to say, I turned 50. No card from either of my children.

Oh, no. No card. Did I get a gift from either of them? No. No. You know what I did get, though, that apparently was more meaningful? Instagram posts from each of them on their Instagram stories, including one from my daughter where she wrote like a really nice long note on Instagram that she claimed she

worked forever on. It was more important than a card. Wow. And then my son actually did a very nice short thing for him because he's the least sentimental kid who ever lived. They also did a nice little thing with a picture of us and they both seem pretty convinced that that's a bigger deal than giving somebody a card because their friends can see it you know it's it's the instagram currency matters more than just handing somebody a hallmark card i don't know how i feel about this so we're gonna have

to go to nephew kyle for his reaction kyle what matters more to kids under 15 well to the kids we're talking about kids yeah so the kids they they kind of do get something out of it though they probably took a good picture of them or like a cute one where people are gonna dm right oh my god you look so cute in that picture when you're four so you know right so it ties into the the narcissistic era we live in now where now we're raising a generation of kids who can't even give a card because they would rather actually be in the quote unquote card themselves. They also want to win with the card.

Yeah. They're not going to get any likes out of filling out a card for you. No. They get one like. You're going to read it twice and then you're going to throw it out. It's a one liker for them. They're not going to do that. So Friday night, my daughter's boyfriend comes over, brings me a card.

Oh. Oh, no. Wrote me a really nice card with a note. I'm like, I didn't get a card from either kid and my freaking daughter's cool boyfriend, Colin, got me a card. Now I like the kid even more. Now I'm going to be devastated when they break up. Wow. Yeah. You have to make sure they don't break up no that's big well you know what you should

tell your kids from now on take a picture take a video of the card and then put that on instagram but i still want a freaking card get some likes out of it yeah yeah i think everyone wins in that scenario well that's not even my parent corner. Oh. Got home today, and there were these packages at the front door. It said Ben Simmons in them. Immediately, my reaction, as you can guess, is, oh, no. It's two different packages. One of them contained two things. Vampire blood, which looked like an oil thing.

And then the other thing was Hollywood quality FX latex wound. So you could put these things out and it makes it look like you've had latex wound. Right. So I'm like, all right, that's really weird. What's in the other box it was a fake axe a fake axe yeah an axe an axe like jack nicholson a few weeks ago right so now he has a fake knife a retractable fake knife now he has a fake axe and he has vampire blood and latex wound so naturally i had to ask him like like, are you a serial killer?

And he said, no, no, I'm getting ready for Halloween. And that was his answer to that. It is a little more disturbing if it's February and these things are coming to the door. I understand. Yeah, it's awesome. So my dad, who they call Papa Doc, because he's Dr. Bill, they call him Papa Doc. When he comes,

Ben always ropes him into buying him stuff on Amazon. He calls him Papa's on. So he's like, let's go to pop. Can we go to Papa's on.com? And then my dad, cause kids figure out pretty quickly, like the,

the grandparents, especially when they don't live in the same place, they're just the easiest marks there are. Right. Like, right. They're just so desperate to win over affection over the course of two they're cramming three days of you know friendship and affection

whatever else that hat now has to last for the next three months until they see the grandkids again so they're basically the easiest mark on the planet my son realized that pretty quickly and uh now gave him the nickname Papa Zahn. So now my dad now gets something out of it. He's like, yeah, it's Papa Zahn time. It's like a whole thing. Like he's enjoying it. Meanwhile, he's getting his credit card just, you know, filleted.

So there you go. That's my parent corner. That's great. Yeah. Well, I could have at least picked up a card for you, please. As long as you're shopping, right? Again, it's only one like. Cards are a one like gift.

Need a lot more. Pop is on prime. I love it. Well, I actually have two quick things. But one quick thing was I went camping with a bunch of families, fancy camping. And one of the, I don't want to name drop, but Johnny Knoxville was there. And my wife tells me, I asked where my son was, my five-year-old. And she's like, oh, Knoxville teaching him how to ride a bike.

I said, is that a good idea? Knoxville's teaching him how to ride a bike. The guy from Jackass? Yeah. I was like, I don't know. Should child protective services just come right here, right now? Don't say that too loud. But he has seven of his teeth left.

So that's, that's fine, but not much of a story there, but I will say this earlier in the week, we went to SmackDown. Yeah. A lot of fun. I'm sure we'll talk about it in a minute,

but that was on Friday on Monday night raw. I'm sitting my five-year-old down. We watch and Ray Mysterio's in the ring and Brock Lesnar's throwing him around. They keep cutting to Ray Mysterio's son, who's in like the second row. And I said, you know, I said to my son, like Harrison, we're probably Friday going to sit in a seat like that pretty close. That'll be good. Right. And he's like, yeah, he's excited. Brock Lesnar then decides after he's done throwing Ray Mysterio around like a rag doll, comes out of the ring, reaches into the crowd, grabs Ray Mysterio's son and beats the living piss out of him for like 10 minutes. And now my son

Harrison is beside himself. He's like in tears. He's biting his knuckles. I was like, don't worry. We'll sit further back. That's going to be fine. So I think I scarred him for life. That's my story. But then we went and we had a good time, right? Yeah. Part of mine was going to be how we sat next to each other and it was your son. He was losing his wrestling virginity or his live wrestling show virginity. And I was with my son, who is now six years older than him, who's a veteran of the process at this point. And it was really fun reliving that first show through your son. Cause for 25 minutes, they're just catatonic. Yeah. Right. They basically look like

the cart has to come out and carry it and take them off the field. Just deer in the headlights. Can't believe it. Can't process anything. Just glazed over. And then about at the half hour mark, they start to liven up and then about an hour and a half in really start to get into it. But it was, it was funny to hit those checkpoints again. Yeah. And it's like,

it's everything you do at home and everything you can't do in school, you get in trouble for, and they're allowing it right in front of our eyes. Guys are beating the hell out of each other in costumes and daddy and mommy and daddy's friend and his son are, are enjoying it too. So they're like, all right, this is interesting. I forgot about that dynamic of it. So the parent corner I really want to tell was going to get sushi with my son last night after he watched season three of Big Mouth. But I'm not going to tell that because I don't want CarMax to get upset, but it's probably the best one. Trust me, it's the best one. You ran it by me over text.

Yeah. Unfortunately, my son is now working so hot, we can't even put the stories in the podcast anymore. So I should say he watched season three of Big Mouth. It came out on Friday night. He got up at 4.30 in the morning the next morning to keep watching it and finished it pretty early on Saturday. Unclear if he can read, but he finished Big Mouth. This is after SmackDown? Yeah, this is after. He watched two that night and then got up early and banged out the rest. He just loves that show so much.

So my daughter, every Friday she has a date with her boyfriend who she's had for almost two months now. I've talked about him before. He's a really nice kid. So I'm watching Friday night. I'm watching the Dodger game. My wife's away. And it's probably seventh, eighth inning. And they're upstairs watching a movie,

and then they come down to watch the game, but I could tell she's pissed off about it. And he sits down, he's like, what's the score? And he just really wanted to watch the Dodgers. He's a huge Dodger fan, really wanted to watch the Dodgers game, also wanted to hang out and watch the game. And my daughter is doing the whole, not really excited about this. She was having much more fun in their room watching a movie that she was choosing. And finally she

leaves and goes to play the piano and ditches him for like 20 minutes and then comes back and she still got a little bit of an attitude, then goes upstairs for a little bit and we kind of had a moment where i was like yeah man women are difficult i'm like he's not my friend even though it's my daughter and uh and we just kind of had a moment we had like a bonding moment for like a half hour watching the dodger game kind of complaining about his girlfriend who happened to be my daughter so then the next day we're driving to a soccer game and I'm like, hey, you know, you got to take one for the team every once in a while. I hate to give you advice.

I've had a lot of failed relationships over the years, but you know, he's a good kid. He's doing just about everything you want to do. You want to watch the Dodger game for a half hour. You got to take one for the team. So now she's frantic. She's sending him messages. The game's about like 20 minutes away from warmups. And she's worried, like she made him upset and she didn't realize

and they're sorting this out. And I'm like, I'm like, so finally I'm like, oh man, I shouldn't have told you. And she's like, you're right. You shouldn't have. So now she's mad at me and the soccer game's going. So I, I don't know how I got in this so i i don't know how this plays out you love it you had to be i'm gonna tell everybody something like so we had a chat at the end of smackdown i was like all right so let's go backstage we could maybe uh there's an area where you wait for your car and it's with the wrestlers if you're on the vip list yeah you know so i was like let's do that that's always fun you're know, you're, you're side by side with triple H. He's waiting for his, you know, car to pick him up and you're waiting for your, um, your

Mazda 360. But, uh, and you're like, nah, I gotta go home. I don't know. I don't know who's supervising my daughter and her boyfriend. I was like, wow, you wanted to get out of there. Yeah. Cause it was my mom. Who's, you know's downstairs watching Bill Maher

and having her seventh glass of Chardonnay. God knows what's going on. So I was like, there's no way my mom is going up every 20 minutes to make sure the door's open, all that stuff. God, Parent Corner's really getting dark. It really is, yeah. It's really tough. Kyle's bummed out.

Yeah. Kyle's uncomfortable. We need these tough. Kyle's bummed out. Yeah. Kyle's uncomfortable. We need these kids to go off to college already. Jesus. Parent corner. This is why Kyle doesn't come over anymore.

Yeah. I think you're like me in that professional wrestling. We loved it. Now, we've come back around to love it again, but when we were growing up, we loved it when it was Piper,

when it was Hogan, when it was Hogan, when it was Snooker a little before maybe Bob Backlund, then Ricky Steamboat a little bit. And then everybody started to love it. Speaking of groundswell. And I backed off a little that, that bummed me out a little bit. Right.

Were you the same way? Yeah. Like, like a band when they record in a garage and you're hearing them and then they, they're on top 40 radio and you're like, ah, that's enough. Yeah. So that's what happened with wrestling.

Well, so that's kind of what has happened with my son, my middle son. My older son loved wrestling, went at it hard for a few years. Then my middle son, Jack, loved it, went at it hard, still going, tailing off a little bit, but liking it. And then the youngest son really is into it now. Just over the last few months, he got an Undertaker costume for Halloween. It doesn't fit at all. We're like constantly cutting things down to the right size, the wig and the shoes and the hat and everything else.

And now the middle son, who does not like my younger son at all, is now done with wrestling. He's like, screw it. I don't want to even compete and wrestling's dumb because uh my little brother likes it okay the problem is we have and i think you have you you might be the only one who has more of these these wrestling figures yeah i think we have like 200 you might have like uh like 1200 i don't know but um you know and there's no shortage of rings there's ladders There's all kinds of things. And so you could have matches.

I used to use Star Wars figures when I was a kid, but they now have a wrestler for everyone. Now we have like 200 of these. My little one's playing with them. The middle one's like, no, no, no. Those are mine. These are off limits. And so the little one comes crying into my bed. I'm trying to watch the London game.

It's 630 in the morning, for God's sakes. Give me some room. And he comes crying, says his older brother says they're off limits. And I was like, no, that's ridiculous. Those are his brothers. They're not even his. And my wife is like, you know what? Just buy new ones. It's like, I'm not going to buy new ones. There's 200 of these. How much do they cost? Between $ 15 and $50, right? I'm not doing it. I'm getting pressured into buying the new ones. I'm not buying them. I'm not looking for anyone to send them to me. I just need some advice. I'm crazy not to buy new ones, right? You don't need 500 of these things laying around. First of all, I was at a wrestling event with your son nine days ago, the middle one,

and he brought a giant championship belt and was holding it over his head and screaming for two hours. So now he's out of wrestling? Well, he's out of it because he doesn't want to make the little one look cool. So if the little one likes something, he wants it to be deemed babyish, right? So he's got to kind of walk away from it. I know he's at a weird spot here. He really is. So he sounds a little hypocritical.

Sure. Second, I thought the best thing about having a third son was you just got to take all the shit you bought for the other two and just give it to the third kid. That would seem like it should be a perk for me. Yeah. It's almost like half the cost of a real son because they just have the old shit from the other sons. Yes. All right. the cost of a real son because you they just have the old shit from the other sons yes all right so now i need your wife to call my wife or text her and say you're you're acting foolish here keep the

wrestlers don't buy any more that's all it sounds like this is a nice place for jack your middle son to prove and show that he can be a bigger man really he doesn't have that in him you can't jet out mind trick and be like jack you could you could be the bigger man. Really? He doesn't have that in him. You can't jet out of mind track and be like, Jack, you could be the bigger man here. Give him your figures. No, no, he's not ready to have that conversation. No. What if- He wants to quit himself

and not let anyone have his figures. What if you bought the figures from Jack and then replaced that asset with another asset, then you're not buying more figures. Well, that would have been a nice plan if I didn't have the Cowboys on a teaser and then the Chargers on a teaser and whoever else. How are we so bad at gambling every year?

Georgia yesterday, Saturday, yeah. My parent corner, my son was on my podcast the other day because Nick Kroll was here. I loved it. And so it was the first time I'd really ever seen him nervous, which was just shocking. The good news is, I think we filmed that on a Wednesday. He recovered in time. It was Yom Kippur. Went to a friend's house that night who has one of our friends, me and my wife's,

who also has two daughters who, the younger daughter and Ben are in the same class. And a bunch of her friends are there. They're just a bunch of girls. So Ben was in his glory because he just had all of these sixth grade girls that he could like do his thing with. So my wife decides she wants to leave

and Ben is like, I'm staying. So he stays. Somebody else is gonna give him a ride home. So he's staying now. And there's two reasons he wants to stay. One is he's got all these sixth grade girls. The other one is the Dodger game is on, the Clayton Kershaw disaster. Ben decides to troll all the Dodger fans in the living room and is telling people that Kershaw is going to choke doing this whole thing. And then he did. And he was like, see, I told you he's trash. He's doing like the cocky 11 year old, barely know anything about sports thing. And it's actually like pouring gasoline into the fire with these poor Dodger fans who were just, you know, enjoying the game after Yom Kippur and then all hell is broken loose. I know nothing about this. I went to a party last

night that had multiple dads who were at the thing and all of them separately brought it up to me how my son was like, you should have seen your son trolling everyone at this Yom Kippur thing about the Dodgers. So now I have to talk with him about how that's not cool to troll people as they're going through just one of the most horrible sports experience of their life. Yeah, and as a Red Sox fan and a Patriots fan, how are you going to do it? You should pay someone else to do it. You can't do that. It's a good point. I might have to get like a Rams fan or something.

Pay Nick Kroll to do it or something. Talk to to do it. You can't do that. It's a good point. I might have to get like a Rams fan to talk to him about it. But yeah, he's doing the, he was doing the cackling thing. Oh no. It's like, oh my God, Kershaw does this all the time.

It's just pouring gasoline. It sounded horrible. I was mortified. So anyway, that's the parent corner for this week. Let's take a break from this very special parent corner episode to remind you that CarMax is simply the better way to buy a great used car.

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Did not tell him what to name the car. He came up with that himself. Maxine. Why Maxine, Kyle? Because I just want to give a little nod to CarMax. Okay. Oh, that's a good point. I didn't even think of that. Maxine. God, I'm dumb. CarMax walked Kyle through all the tricky stuff,

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You just kept the car. It's so right. You notice I can't stop parking it on the street. Yeah, because you like showing it off. I want people to know. Yeah, he doesn't park it in our garage. He parks it on the street. Full disclosure, he kept the Mustang.

He also got MaxCare for extra coverage. He loved that option as well. He loves Maxine. Stop by your local CarMax for details and discover how easy buying a car at CarMax can really be. Back to Parent Corner 2019. All right, so I have three boys.

I have a 14, 11, right? 14, how old is this? 14, 11, and 5. And the 11- old quirky kid, he's going to run for spirit commissioner, which is crazy because he wants nothing to do with school at all. Not a damn thing. And all of a sudden he comes home and he says,

I want to be spirit commissioner, which involves like writing a speech, making posters, campaigning, and all this other stuff. And he's going against another fifth grader and this kid Miles. So I have a lot of suggestions for posters, which really are all about a smear campaign against Miles. And the kids are laughing, but my wife is furious at all the suggestions I'm making. But everybody's laughing, except for my youngest son, because my youngest son, they partner kindergartners with fifth graders. You know how you have a fifth grade buddy if

you're in kindergarten? Yeah. Like the oldest kids in the school taught you? Well, it should have been my son and my other son, kindergarten, fifth grade, but they don't get along. So my fifth grade son passed. He's like, no, let someone else take Harrison. I don't want to take him. So guess who picks him up? Miles picks up Harrison.

And Harrison loves Miles and is rooting for Miles against my son in the race against Spirit Commission, which got so bad that my fifth grader and Harrison are like nose to nose yelling at each other about it. It was like the Civil War when brothers fought each other. Yeah. I'm like both laughing and trying to pull them apart. And it's just going to be bad. It's just going to be bad next few weeks. It's amazing.

The feud between the two brothers, we really haven't seen anything like this since Michael and Fredo it feels like it's got that level of intensity right yeah yeah I'm not taking either of them

through a toll booth anytime soon like when when you or Melissa at your funeral one of them is gonna be like I'm not I'm not going

until I'm sure I'm positive he's out the other one's out I don't want my brother there there is a lot of succession elements to it Positive he's out. The other one's out. I don't want my brother there. There is a lot of succession elements to it. My parent corner, I've talked about this before, but my daughter and her boyfriend,

they have a date every, usually Friday night. This time it was Saturday night. And they hang out, they watch movies, and it's really adorable. They really like each other. But this time around, his mom came to come pick her up at, pick him up at like 11.15 or something like that. And the mom shows up. We're talking to her like, hey, Zoe, come on down.

And nothing. Two minutes pass. Hey, come on, guys, let's go. Nothing. Hey, what are you guys doing up there? Hear some movement. Don't worry, this story is not going to get gross. Okay.

They come down. They're both like, look like they've been asleep for like an hour. They fell asleep watching a movie. And they explained it as he had had a baseball game early. He was tired. She had played a soccer game. She was tired.

It was like, wow, you guys literally are a married couple now. You're falling asleep when you're watching TV at 10 o'clock at night. You've skipped all the stages of a relationship. You've already gotten to the end, the worst part. The 10 o'clock fall asleep. Oh, yeah. All right. Oh, what happened? Oh, I don't know.

I was just, I was surprised. I thought you said it wasn't going to get gross. They're a married couple. I don't want to hear that. I was like, this is really incredible. It's been 10 weeks, but it's really been 15 years. So yeah, that's good. So they're getting a divorce soon, I think is how this is going to play out. I was gone all week. I was in Brooklyn. My wife came with me for the first time. She came like Wednesday through Saturday or Tuesday through Saturday. Yeah. She's never been there. It's a fun experience. She knows everyone on the show. She also doesn't trust me on the road but that's another story uh but she got her she got her father and his wife her stepmother to fly out and um to watch our kids and they're like quiet people they're from the midwest they settled in florida they take a zumba class they go on walks and that's it. They really don't do a lot, but they're responsible

and they're going to watch our kids. And I don't think they know what they got into. Oh no. Yeah. Because, you know, I mean, you have a 14 year old who not great about letting anyone know what she's doing or in my case, what my son is doing. My wife has a tracker on her phone, so it's not as bad. She could figure it out, but they don't, they don't see him. They get nervous. There's that thing. Um, the other one won't, the, the middle child won't eat.

He won't eat anything except he'll ravage the, uh, he'll ravage the, uh, the pantry and they go crazy for that. And he invites the neighbor kid over to also go through the pantry and so they were flipping out about that they're like it's just it's just off everything's off center and then the little one this little bastard keeps asking my father-in-law why he's not still married to his grandmother grandma yeah all throughout the weekend apparently didn't end all throughout the week and so that's really it there's not

we called to check in they're in the car they're nice they're shuttling the kids to practices soccer practices and football practices and they're all in the car stepmother father-in-law and the three kids and I'm like hey guys how's it going? And the middle kid goes,

you have to come home right now. You have to come home enough of this with grandma. And they're right there. He's like, you need to come home right now. We can't have them. I was like, what are you doing? So that's it. So if anyone wants to watch Three Monsters next year, if we go to Brooklyn, please submit a resume. It's not going to take much. You just really have to know how to drive. It sounds like there should be a parent version of CarMax where it's people who can watch your kids for a week. Oh, yeah.

That's good. Like guest parent max. That could work. What did you call it? I don't know. Parents for a week max. Yeah, I like that. The fact that you did this to your wife's uh parents was

really kind of cruel yeah it is to welcome somebody else into your insane world with that you know the two parents with the kids together all the time you don't realize how weird some of this stuff is until somebody else is in charge for a couple days. And they realize your middle son and younger son are feuding. Like, for real? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that was bad all week, too. They did not handle that. Yeah, I don't know.

I mentioned that. Playing off last week, my son lost that election. He was bummed out, and the little one was happy, and so they had to deal with that, too. Oh, my God. Well, playing off that, welcoming people into your world, He was bummed out and the little one was happy. And so they had to deal with that. Oh my God. Yeah. Um, well playing off that, what welcoming people into your world.

So we had a whole bunch of people here today cause we were doing this state farm shoot for post game after the Pats and right after the Packers chief. So we had probably like 10 to 12 ringer people here setting up in the back cause we're filming stuff. And, uh, and I was like i really hope my son doesn't look at this as an opportunity just to be just just to basically have an audience and uh and he didn't right now of course he did and um he got this new football that

half of it is is square so So you throw it like a spiral and then you know what? It bounces off the wall and bounces back to you. I would have played with this for, I don't know, a thousand hours when I was a kid. How about you? Yeah, for sure. I would never stop.

So he has that and it came in the mail today for some reason. So he really wants to play, but in the backyard, we have all these people and there's cameras and there's barbecue and all this stuff didn't stop him he's still whipping the ball off things and going around and just doing his thing smashing the propane lamps all that stuff it's like all right i knew this was gonna happen he's walking through he's coming in he's coming out around i would say six o'clock now he's just in the t-shirt

and his underwear and uh wait how would you describe his underwear kyle i think they're spongebob underwear spongebob underwear not like tighty-whities like a little longer yeah small briefs you know we have men we have women here it doesn't stop him so he's walking around he's playing football he's on the trampoline and uh and just like just ben put some pants on no no pants at all so the good news is he left his phone in the in the guest house uh which i was able to crack the code. And I went and I looked through all his texts with his girlfriend, which I hadn't done in a while. That's great.

And so he calls boo. And it's not just boo. It's boo in the address book, but there's a hard and smiley faces and all this stuff. So there was one text about, she was talking about applying to schools and she was really nervous about getting in all this stuff. So there was one text about, she was talking about applying to schools and she was really nervous about getting in, all this stuff.

And Ben texts her back, you are the though. I don't, not English. And then I really screwed because I'm not even sure I'll get into any other schools when I leave Willows, three hearts. I was like, you might be really scared because you can't spell you're turning 12 in a week uh so anyway we look through the text

and we're just a lot of hard emojis and we're really laughing so innocent love it's the best does ben let me ask you does ben know does ben know the stories you tell? The Parent Corner stories? It's unclear. Yeah. Because I worry about this. Yeah. Is Carmack going to pay for a coffin when our kids rebel and murder us?

I just feel like he'll get his revenge later. I mean, you could say I really screwed. Yeah, sure. That's just Ben. I also really screwed. Yeah. Four hearts. Why not? Four hearts really screwed. Yeah, four hearts. Why not?

Four hearts. Got to talk to Boo later. I'm just glad they're back together. Yeah. They really are an adorable couple. Ben and Boo. Yeah, Ben and Boo. I hope they make it.

So this week for Thursday Night Football, the Halloween fell on Thursday, which is Thursday Night Football. I went Wednesday at the Grove dressed as Michael Strahan's teeth. And so we had this big prop, a big gap in his, in the front teeth. And I ran around and I terrified people at the Grove. Um, and as Michael Strahan's teeth and say, saying stupid things like I have 10 jobs and, uh, and you know, uh, back to you aaron andrew i don't know

i was just yelling stupid things and people didn't know what the hell was going on and uh then we throw back to to michael strahan and he's gonna get mad it's something my cousin jimmy taught me just get everyone in studio furious at you and good things happen so we do this and at the end of the thing i have to give a pick so um i take the mask off and I go to my kids, my 11 year old and my five year old. And one of them's dressed as a 49 or a prospector and the other's dressed as an angry bird. And I'm going to say, so I say final score, 49ers 27. And I pour 27 candy corns into his pumpkin, his plastic pumpkin. And then for the five-year-old, I was like, and Arizona three, plop, plop, plop. And then he kicks me and then he yells back to you, Michael.

So that's the angry bird kicks me. And that's that. So now we're all home Thursday and we're going to watch it. I was like, all right, guys, it's coming on. Here we go. It's on TV. We're going to watch in like 30 seconds. They reluctantly put their iPads down.

They're on. It should be a bigger deal when three fifthfifths of the family is on tv right for you think a prime time thing okay it wasn't at my house and even my wife was like all right let's if they want to watch it otherwise they can watch it later i'm like no let's watch it now it's on now so let's watch it now stop being so jaded so they down. They watch. They know how it's going to end with me giving the 11-year-old 27 and the five-year-old three. And at the point where I poured into the 11-year-old's bucket 27, he turns to the kid, the five-year-old, and says, aha. And now the five-year-old jumps at his throat. And the 11-year-old's got his fingers in the

five-year-old's eye. I can't even see the can't even see the end of the bit. Like I couldn't even hear what Strahan said in response to the bit because they're screaming at each other and fighting. And to make things matters worse, my friend Harry is there. He's 300 pounds. He's trying to get in between them. They're falling on him. They're falling all over the couch. So I don't know what the moral of the story is, but I just don't put your kids in bits or don't talk to your kids. I think that's the moral of the story. The moral of the story is the blood feud in your house between your two sons. It's unbelievable. This is a recurring theme of Parrot Corner.

This is a nice thing. They're on television. How often does this happen to their friends? I don't think a lot. They couldn't even watch for 40 seconds. I remember Bret Hart and Owen Hart had a whole a lot they couldn't even watch for 40 seconds i remember brett hart no one heart had a whole thing where they turned on each other for like that's right six months yeah oh and then my brett no one were intensely watching the game is the most intense they've watched a football game all year to make sure their team won of course 49ers did. Jesus. Dope. My parent corner, it's, you know, my son went as Jack Nicholson from The Shining for Halloween. I did not know that. Okay.

He made my wife take him to a store where he could buy like a kind of the overcoat that looked like Jack Nicholson's overcoat. He did his hair like Jack Nicholson. He bought an ax, which I mentioned on a previous Parent Corner that he had bought on Amazon, an ax with a foam handle, which he was running around plunging into people's chests and they were legitimately terrified. Did you watch this movie with him?

Was it this year? Oh, we've watched it. He was watching it when he was like five. I'm not a great father. He went as Jack Nicholson for Halloween. He had the limp, the whole thing. That leads into his birthday, which is

next day. We had 13 kids over. Oh, I left out of the part of Halloween. We ran out of Halloween candy because we had so many people in my neighborhood. It was, I think, the first year. My wife always buys an insane We ran out of Halloween candy because we had so many people in my neighborhood. Really? That it was, I think, the first year.

And my wife always buys an insane amount of candy. And we actually ran out. We bought my son's Halloween candy from him. He had him and his friend, Ben Williams. They had this big garbage because they had been going around for five hours and we negotiated and we actually bought all their candy and they were all fired up about it what's the going rate if i might ask i think it was 80 dollars yeah yeah so they they split that so that was that is the worst so then so then the next i mean it was really a good deal for both

sides it would have caught we'd gone to cS that would have been a huge pain in the ass I know but did you then charge him for his costume that you made your wife go out and get I should have I didn't think of that I wish she would have been here so then Friday is his birthday because he was born on November 1st day after Halloween and we had

13 kids here and my wife did you know you could rent like these big kind of blow-up big screens that are attached to an Apple? It's basically like your own drive-in theater. Oh, right. Yes, I have seen those. So sets up the backyard. And Good Boys is out on Amazon, my son's favorite movie of all time.

He's seen it like 11 times. And he got all of his other friends. They're all watching. It's completely inappropriate. I can't defend it. So she sets it up for some reason, can't control the volume. So it's blaring. When I say blaring, like it's blaring. You could hear it on the, like parents who are parking on our street, way far in the front, hear it. And this is a movie where it starts out where they're talking about like, hey, hand job, jerk off.

And it's just blaring through our neighborhood for two solid hours as my wife is like, I can't figure this out. Damn it. And doing her whole thing with the volume. And we just blasted Good Boys through our entire neighborhood. Oh, that's great.

And it wasn't great. At one point, Ben is like, you know what? I can turn the volume lower, but it's going to cost you $750. He probably. Oh yeah.

Well, you know what? I don't have anything great for this week, but I did post a video. Uh, this happened last Sunday, but i i didn't even know the video existed my mother shot it of my son running all the way down the field and slide tackling and taking uh taking a kid out and it was as red as a red card can go i mean he

ran the length of the field and took him out right before he shot on goal and it has like 500 000 i called him a dick on twitter maybe i shouldn't have goal. And it has like 500,000. I called him a dick on Twitter. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. But it has like a half a million views on Twitter. And I was getting a lot of feedback, mostly negative. But from you, you gave me some positive. You were one of the few that gave me positive. Like, that's good.

Those are good instincts. That's a terrible kid, but those are good instincts, right? No, I like that he has a nasty side because I think with boys' soccer, you have to have that side or you're not going to make it so with boys said not not as necessary in girls but boys and the boy yeah because the boys are nasty we watch some when my daughter has the games and there'll be a boys game on a field next door and we watch them those kids are like trying to kill each other really yeah it's interesting and because this is now so this is week eight or nine they haven't not only haven't they won since week one they haven't scored a goal as a team Really? Yeah. It's interesting. And because this is now, so this is week eight or nine.

They haven't, not only haven't they won since week one, they haven't scored a goal as a team since week one. So it's all about, this is what it is. It's all about, these are five-year-olds running after and just taking guys out because they know they can't score. A lot of fun. Well, I have a good parent corner that will take the one you had and push it up a level because it involves my kid playing sports. My son,

Ben football playoffs. First game is against a team that they had beaten the week before by like three touchdowns. My son is in sixth grade, but he's playing the seventh grade team. Nice. With four of his friends and then some seventh graders. They weren't going to win the whole league,

but they had a chance to make the finals potentially. They're up 22 to nothing in the first half. And it seems like it's... And I'm not there, thank God, because I honestly would have lost my mind and I don't know what would happen. On the sidelines, it's decided that they're going to ease up a little bit.

So it's not a blowout because this is, you know, this is a classic thing that happens out here in LA. It's a little softer out here. Let's be honest. Like it's a tiny bit softer. Don't want to run up the score. My whole feeling is it's a playoff game. You can't fuck around. Three scores is not a big enough lead when you're talking about 12-year-olds. My son five days earlier was dressed like Jack Nicholson

from The Shining limping around with a fake ax. I mean, these are not brain surgeons. So we ease up and the other team starts coming back. And because we had a younger team, it just kind of falls apart. So all of a sudden it is, I think we're up 24-22 and we have the ball and the other sideline's going crazy.

We have a chance to put the game away. We got screwed by a couple of calls. And at some point, there's some call or some flag or some flag guarding penalty or something. And one of the kids on our team goes, that's fucking bullshit. I'll get you take one guess who got the 10 yard penalty for that. Was it your son, Ben? Well, it's even worse because they thought it was somebody else on the team and they gave him the penalty and the kid that they gave the penalty to is somebody who would never

in a million years swear, unlike my degenerate son, who was so mad that they were losing this game that he just lost it and ended up swearing. And then 10-yard penalty, we go backwards, it ends up missing the drive. So now he's like... 10's not bad. Not 15, 10? Which one? 10-yard penalty, we go backwards. It ends up missing the drive. So now he's like- 10's not bad.

Not 15, 10. Which one? 10-yard penalty? It's 10-yard swearing penalty, I guess, in seventh grade football. Yeah. So now he's so upset. He feels like he caused the game. Yeah.

But we're still winning. And he's upset. And the sidelines, the whole thing. Comes down. They get a play. And the clock's supposed to run. And the game's supposed to end, they get a play, and the clock's supposed to run and the game's supposed to end. For some reason, they stop the clock. Give them a chance

for a Hail Mary throw, which of course they complete, and our team loses. And we get knocked out of the playoffs in round one after having a 24-point lead. Or 22-point lead, whatever it was. That's not good. And then my son is convinced

that because he swore during the game and they didn't put the game away in the last drive that it was his fault. Well, listen, and then you probably said, no, no, no, it's not your fault. Let him take one of these every now and then. Let him say, yeah, Ben, yeah, you shouldn't have said anything. We did say, you know, this is what happens. This is, we tell you not to swear. And then you actually swear and you get a 10 yard penalty in a playoff game. Right. So I think there's some lessons. I told you to fuck off.

Mark, we discussed like pushing our favorite teams on our kids. And, you know, he, like me, is not from the city of the team that he roots for you were never born in Cleveland you were like a kid and you like Brian Sipe and everything and I was a Cowboys fan I liked anyway and we have four-star children to watch these teams and some some that makes sense to a lot of people maybe it's too harsh but where does it end so I played football in high school and I wrestled in high school and I wanted my kid to play football. It's a great team sport. I love the smell of the grass, everything about it. It's awesome. If we can get, get it past his mother to agree,

let's do it. So he played football. He had a great time. I also wrestle and I never told him I thought he should wrestle, but he convinced the kid on the football team to go out for the wrestling team. And now he's finding out it's hell. And it really is. Did you wrestle at night? No. It really is. It's tough.

It's the toughest practice. You have to be in shape. You're wrestling around with sick people all year long, you know. I just remember playing basketball in high school and college and the wrestlers running the stairs. That's it. With, like, sweatshirts and the heaviest possible clothes and they just looked like they were in the seventh circle yeah you're sucking weight and it's three

and a half months long and it's you know nothing seems fun about it at all yeah i i actually think it stunted my growth trying to lose weight i'll blame losing like 15 pounds for like four weeks in a year on that but uh but uh and now he's doing it and I feel like to be like me and I feel bad cause I never had this talk with him. And he's like, boy, I'm, I'm getting my ass kicked. And I was like, yeah, that's, what's going to happen the whole first year. You don't have any skills. You don't know any moves you're going to get beat up. And he's like, well, I think I'm just going to do this for one year. And now I feel awful. I'm like, right. You're never going to get a chance to get good if you only do it for one year. But I would hate for you to do it for more than one year because it's the toughest workout.

You get discipline that the army could teach you and stuff. And you can handle yourself in a fight for the most part if it ends up on the ground. But you also end up with emphytago and other terrible diseases when some poor school doesn't wipe their mats down. And you have like big red marks on your neck for all of February. So I don't know what to do. I don't know how honest we need to be with our kids. Do you have to have a checklist of, all right, here's all the things I've done. Here's all the things I've known for.

Here's what I want you to avoid. I wonder if we're at that stage, if that's a good way to go about it. But I feel bad that I've now done this to this kid. That's all. Does he like it, though? I don't think he likes it. But it's also part of the curriculum. So you're either taking football or you're taking wrestling.

You're either doing football workout in the offseason where you get credit or you get wrestling credit. You have to do some kind of sport. Yeah. That's what it is. So now you'll get credit for that. And I think he feels like he's going to disappoint. See, to me, wrestling and gymnastics are very similar in this respect.

If you talk to people who are grown adults who did it when they were in high school or college, and you'd be like, would you do it again if you had to? They'd be like, oh, God, no. Yeah. Oh, I would never do it. Yeah. And I think that's important for kids to know it's so good on so many levels but i just like i just feel bad i don't know as i said earlier

i watched the miles garrett helmet swinging thing live waiting for the game 10 to flipped over to basketball and wanted to see if he wanted to throw the fifth pick and my son just happened to come down my son is the best timing of all. Comes down with a minute left in the game and he's watching it. And the fight happens and they show Garrett swinging the helmet and Joe Buck is reacting like this is, you know, like a boat is sinking

in the Hudson River or something. He's so, the gravest tones. And Troy Aikman's just appalled and it's just this appalling moment. And my son is laughing and he thinks this is like, he's like, who's this guy who did this? I love this guy, Miles Garrett. He immediately thinks it's like professional wrestling.

So then he's asking, how can I get a Miles Garrett jersey? Would it be weird if I wore it to school? My two favorite players are Miles Garrett and Montez Burfecht, which is actually true. He has watched Montez Burfecht on YouTube and now wants to go as Miles Garrett for the next Halloween. He wants to wear a Browns jersey and carry around a Steelers helmet and just go around our neighborhood as Miles Garrett. He loved this. He thought it was hilarious.

He should go on a tour of talk shows. This would be a very original take. He really would. Just coming in and bringing in his helmet. That's great. So yeah, he lived it. Maybe 350 days to maybe forget it before the next couple of weeks. So Miles Garrett, you have one fan out there.

All right. Well, Thanksgiving coming up, and I have a five-year-old. And at school around Thanksgiving, they do it up. They'll make paper plates with up they'll make like paper plates with um with fall leaves on them or paper plates you could turn into like a pumpkin pie or something and then they do it like a controversial like feather thing to commemorate the first thanksgiving that's not that's a no-no now the pilgrims and natives americans so some schools do it some don't and he also made an apron with his picture on it and his name underneath.

And he gets this thing and he takes it home. And his name is Harrison, but it's written out. And we don't know if this is a helper, a kindergarten helper, or a teacher, but it's H-A-R-R-I-S-O. The N didn't make it. It didn't make the play. It was too small, too narrow to fit the N. So it says Harris-O. And then me and the wife

and his two brothers just start laughing and calling him Harris-O. And he attacks us all. He goes crazy. He's like the guy who hasn't been tagged in for 15 minutes. And finally he's stomping his foot and finally gets tagged in. He comes at all of us like a house of fire. Like throwing haymakers because we're calling him Harris-O. 15 minutes and like finally he's like stomping his foot and finally gets tagged in he comes out

all of us like a house of fire really like throwing haymakers because we're calling him harris so to the point where my wife is just like cut it out stop it right now and i was like i cannot stop it i want to call this kid harris so for the next at least six years she's like no you need to grow up here and so i grew up for the rest of the evening, but the remainder of the week, I snuck a Harris-O in there at least once a night. And she's like, he's going to go into therapy. I mean, he just attacks us. I love it. But this is abuse, right? It's no good. He reminds me so much of my son because my son would do the same thing, the tag in without being tagged, throwing just sweeping haymakers. And those five-year-old

haymaker punches really hurt. They land either inside groin, balls, hip, all things that don't normally get punched. Yeah. And they don't feel good. Does not feel great. Right.

I'm like, hey, one more of these and I'm maybe not going to let you watch 11 hours of raw NXT, SmackDown, and whatever pay-per-view was tonight, Survivor Series. Take it easy. I was going to do my... Yesterday, Ben and I played like five hours of... So Madden 2020, this is not a plug.

Madden 2020 is this game called Knockout that Ben loves. It's Superstar Knockout. And we played for like five straight hours. It's really fun. So they're quick games. They're like 10 minute games. Ben's doing defense. I'm doing offense.

And he's shutting people down. And then I'm on offense. And then I'll throw a pick to lose the thing. And he's just assaulting me and berating me with swears and at one point Zoe comes in and says Ben you can't talk to dad like that I'm like he's fine he's fine let the boy vent

he's just losing his mind and Ben's like we should live stream this and I'm like no we absolutely shouldn't live stream this that would be the worst idea ever. You're swearing at me. He just hates losing. Well, he just told the story to like a million people.

So it's kind of the same thing. He hates losing, which makes it such a shame that he doesn't have a favorite football team. Right. Because the Cowboys situation during the day with the tripping, you take the intensity and psychotic nature of how he handles these losses and if it had been the tripping call

he would have punched Donald Trump Jr. So I had that experience and then Zoe's boyfriend was over. He's a huge Broncos fan. He watched football with us and he's got a fantasy team, nice mellow kid. He's watching the Broncos. We have them on one of the TVs for a while. They're just getting demolished. He's okay with it. He's like,

I thought we could lose. I'm just thinking like, man, it's just funny how this stuff works out. Like this was the son I thought I would have had. And instead I have the son who's assaulting me as we share this mad and stupid super knockout game. And he's calling me a dick and a jerk. I can't believe you blew it. He's throwing the controller. You just never know. I'll be calling you a dick in no time.

You just wait it out. It's fine. I want him to get to know Harrison so he can call him Harris-o. And then they can just fight each other. That'll be, that'll be it. They'll fight to the death. So we're on a,

it's Thanksgiving. I got my parents are there. They're not speaking to each other. There's a whole crazy dynamics. You know, my Thanksgiving and my parents are there. My friend, our friend Don Barris is there.

He warms up Jimmy Kimmel live, his girlfriend, my friend, Ken Harry's Ken's butler. We have a lot of misfits. We have a lot of family. And then we have my immediate family there. So the kids are running around. Archie, my oldest, is watching football with us.

My youngest is watching football with us. My middle kid, Jack, is going to be 12 years old in February. He doesn't really want anything to football with us my middle kid jack uh it's gonna be 12 years old in february he doesn't really want anything to do with us so he goes up on his ipad and gives us exactly as much time as we have for dinner that that's how much we're gonna see him so because he knows he has to be at the table and when we go around the table say what we're thankful for he barely gets out and i'm thankful for my parents and my family, my friends. So that hurts him to even say that. And then he eats and he's like, can I go up? Can I go play on my iPad again? I'm like, yeah, fine, whatever. Just do it. We don't want you throwing a fit. That's fine. Go play on your iPad. So we eat and we eat dessert. And then with karaoke, my wife has friends over and some more

friends come by and we're doing karaoke until like 11.30 at night. And we haven't seen Jack in hours, and Jack comes down, grabs the mic, puts in a song, ACDC's TNT. Knocks it out of the park. I didn't even know he knew this song. He's not even using it. He's playing to the crowd. He's not even using the words on playing to the crowd he's not even using the um the words on the screen he's doing tnt and then that if that wasn't enough he follows it up with what's it uh

what's the nwa song there um california love what california love and tnt and he's going crazy and he's talking like like he really like feels the lyrics yeah um he's you know he's talking about uh we in that sunshine state with a bomb ass hempy and uh you know diamond shining looking like i robbed liberace and he knows it um in the good old city city of good old watts like he's really looking at us and feeling the music. And then he's done. And then he drops the mic like Chappelle and walks off. And that's it. We didn't see him the rest of the night.

So there you go. Tell America how old Jack is. He's 12 in February. That's fantastic. So my son who turned 12 earlier this month, he's just been a dick lately. He's just a dick. Kyle, how much of a dick is he? It's so bad.

It's so bad. I hate him. He's just a dick. But can get away with it with my wife because, as you know, the mother-son bond is just unbreakable. Right. And there could be 92 straight offenses

and then three minutes of hugging or just affection for the mom and all is forgotten. If our judicial system worked like motherhood with sons, everyone would just get out of prison immediately. Right. So we've come, I think Zoe came up with this term, but when Ben is like just being a dick, we call it menstruating. He's menstruating. So there's been a lot of menstruating lately. And on Thursday night, he was just such a dick.

And just the whole day, and he was just a huge pain in the ass. And then at the end of the night, my wife was mad at me. And she's like, I'm like, what are you mad at me? What did I do? She's like, you know, he just, he acts like a dick. And then, you know, you don't, you don't step in and then I have to be the bad guy. And now I'm getting blamed. So I go talk to Ben and I'm like, look, you got to stop being a dick to your mom. Like this is your mom. Be nice. I know we're in the family. We're together all the time, all that.

But this is your mom. You, you, you have to listen to her. You can't like snap at her. And yeah, she's the one that's always on your side. Yeah. And you're a nice kid. Like you don't get to just be a dick and then think like it's funny. So I talked to him.

I go downstairs, come back up and he's just lying on the bed with her cuddling and she's totally forgotten the whole thing. And it's, I've just, the whole son thing, it's like 30 seconds of him just pouring it on and, and that's it. She's back in the palm of his hand. I don't understand it. Well, he, he understands it. He's figured it out palm of his hand. I don't understand it. Well, he understands it. He's figured it out, right? He's figured it out. I'll tell you who he hasn't figured it out with, Kyle. Oh, really?

Yeah, Kyle's going to throw him through a sofa at some point. Really? So anyway, I don't know what the rules are for assaulting your kids, but I'm going to Google them after we finish the podcast. All right, good. Google it. It's good. I think you're going to Google them after we finish the podcast. All right. Good. Google it. It's good. I think you're going to like what you find.

All right. This is not going to make me look too good, but none of them do. So it doesn't really matter. So my son is wrestling. He's a ninth grader. Every week or so, he has like a novice tournament somewhere different.

This week it was in Santa Monica. Now here's the thing. There's no buses for the freshmen and sophomore. So they have to get to the, wherever it was in Santa Monica. Now here's the thing. There's no buses for the freshmen and sophomore. So they have to get to the, wherever it is on their own. So luckily my wife has to drop him off at the school. He's carpooling at 6.15 in the morning and he gets to Santa Monica. He weighs in. He's been wrestling for like three weeks. He doesn't have many skills other than what I've taught him and through a few practices. And he's heavy.

He's like six foot one. He's 153, 155 pounds. And so he's wrestling all sophomores pretty much. So it's been a rough road. And he gets there. And the way they do weight classes out here, you don't get like, you know, when I grew up, it was 132, 138, 145. And I think it's like that here too, once you get to varsity. But here, when you get to the tournament, they take all the kids in a pool

and they bracket them off like every 15 pounds. So he was in the 150 to 166 weight class. He's 153 because he overate on Thanksgiving. So now he's wrestling older kids, bigger kids, more skilled kids, 13 pounds so i was like all right call me when they call the 120 pounders and i drive over to santa monica so i said text me so he texts me i get there and he's about to wrestle and he gets flattened in the second period like the kid obviously had more it was like very low center of gravity he was closer to 170 than 150 it wasn't even close so he comes up and he's like i think that's it i was like very low center of gravity he was closer to 170 than 150 it wasn't even close so he comes up and he's like i think that's it i was like oh shit you're quitting and he says

no no no i think that's it it was double elimination i already lost earlier i was like what are you talking about you just called me as would you wrestle 10 minutes ago he's like yeah i wrestled like 25 minutes ago i was like what is this a wwe don't they give you a what is this is dumb he's like i was like so what happens now there's no bust and he's like well i should stick around i was like yeah i think you should stick around watch the rest of your kid the tournament so i call uh my wife i'm like hey no reason to come out here it looks like archie's done for the day and she's like oh i wanted pizza in santa monica joe's pizza you've been there right yeah one of the best it's great i was like

all right i don't care. I'm out here. If you want to make the drive, that's fine. We watch a few more matches. The tournament ends. We go to Joe's Pizza. He's down in the dumps. We order a pie, half pepperoni, half cheese. It's great. And I have one slice. I'm about to have my second slice.

And a homeless man, the homelessness is crazy in Santa Monica. He walks in and asks, he's like, can I have a slice of pizza? And there's three slices left. It's one pepperoni, two regular. And my son Archie is like, oh, yeah, of course. And hands him the pepperoni. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I want the pepperoni.

And now we have a Curb Your Enthusiasm moment where everybody, not only my family, but everyone in the place is looking at me. And I was like, I want the pepperoni. I don't mind parting with a slice. And now the homeless guy is looking at me like, come on, dude. Are you fucking kidding me? I don't even know that he likes pepperoni. It was just offered the pepperoni. If he didn't say that he preferred pepperoni, why are we offering the pepperoni it was just offered the right if he didn't make say that he preferred pepperoni

why are we offering the pepperoni but anyway archie gives me the look everybody gives me the look i'm like all right i'm beat now and uh he walks off with the pepperoni and like by the way i'm very i'm very uh charitable a giving tuesday i uh you know i donated a ton but and i could have just bought another slice for another $2.50. But was I wrong to want the pepperoni in that instance? Yeah. I mean, that's definitely you should ask everyone else at the table if they want the pepperoni. Thank you.

Would have been my move. Yeah. Right. Okay. So it sounds like it was a really fun car ride home after that. It was really good. It was my father's a lunatic. Taking pepperoni from the homeless guy.

I'm worried about homeless people's clogged arteries. I think I should take the pepperoni. Jesus, you better. So I was on the phone the other night and my wife and my daughter were downstairs in the kitchen. And my son came down the stairs and he was crying. So we thought he was crying. He was holding the back of his head. And we're like, oh my God, like he fell off the bunk bed

or he fell doing a wrestling move or he jumped off the dresser and onto his wrestling dummy. Like all the usual things you do to get hurt. Now, he hadn't gotten a haircut in a long time and his hair is like kyle it's it's his hair was crazy yeah it was getting unruly it was it was just i i can't even describe how long it was and out of control it was and and you can get away with this in california and he decided he was getting a mullet in the back so he took he took the scissors like you would use to you know to to cut paper or something and he tries to cut the mullet in the what he thought was like a mullet in the back and then he didn't do it even

and then he went to the right and then all of a sudden he had basically cut. Now he looks like Moe from the Three Stooges in the back. And he's crying. He's like, I ruined my hair. And we're like, Ben, are you serious? Like, how freaking vain are you right now? He's like, I ruined my hair. Super upset. And it's inconsolable.

So then Carrie's like, I'll fix it. I'll fix it. And they go upstairs they come back down and she's she comes down first and gives us the look me and zoe the look like whatever you do don't start laughing like that that looks and we're like okay so he comes down and we're like oh it looks good it looks good it looks terrible it looks honestly looks like he's a 12-year-old with a toupee. So about 10 minutes in, I just can't take it. I start making fun of him.

He gets super upset. He runs upstairs. So then the next two days, he goes to school wearing a ski cap. So his whole back of his head. But the ski cap's pulled down so you can't see his toupee shelf back of his head but the ski caps pulled down so you can't see that like his toupee shelf back of his head so then carrie takes him to somebody somebody close to us like somebody close to our house to just get a psychologist no no it probably should have been a salon that's like in our neighborhood just to quickly like fix it up so it looks better and she's like no i'm gonna fix them fix them it's like all right great well

i think i think we should just cut it he's had crew cuts before he's had he's you know tight cuts whatever just cut it start over she's like no no she can fix it so he comes back and now it's like a bull haircut. And I'm dying. I'm calling him Dorothy Hamill. Remember Dorothy Hamill's haircut from 1976 Olympics? Probably doesn't hurt his feelings because he has no idea. No, because he's actually a good ball buster. So now he's making fun of himself and he's just wearing a cap every day.

And we're calling him Dorothy and i'm calling him cagney lacy and all these different things he doesn't even get the jokes i'll make it myself laugh and uh and so he has that going for a couple days and then finally kyle steps in and takes him to fernando the barber kyle's barber what did he think about it and and ben actually ends up this saturday yesterday with a with a pretty cool haircut it was it was a four-day odyssey but the important lesson here is uh don't cut your own hair right yeah for those of you scoring in tears but for a girl for sure and for a boy yeah it's bad in his defense the back of his hair was completely mangled it actually looked like it like a hate crime had been committed like somebody had

jumped on him on the sidewalk and cut the back of his hair so anyway so there you go well doesn't he's had a mohawk before right that's the thing he's had a mohawk he's had crew cuts he's had all this stuff but yeah um he's just he's just lost his mind sal you're on the clock all right hold on we're not both going to be able to hear but mike is there a speaker phone or anything um yeah there's speak all right go ahead what's going on simmons what kind of a slave driver are you i mean it is we're having christmas eve right now we're almost done i mean what kind of what how many how much of this do people need to hear we're done we're about to do parent corner do you have a parent corner yeah i have a parent corner i it's here's the parent corner sal is nowhere near his children on christmas eve parent corner is empty there's no parent in the parent corner.

I have a parent corner for you, though. All right, let's hear it. Okay, so, you know, the elf on the shelf is a big thing in our house. Yeah. And like a big thing, like it consumes us because we forget it. Then we have to lie the whole next day. So we try to remember it and most of the time we do but my daughter jane who's five years old says where does the elf go at night

and my wife molly says well the elf goes to the north pole to tell santa what he saw and jane says well how does he get all the way back here in the morning? And Molly says, well, magic, I guess. And Jane says, am I supposed to believe all of this? She's five, by the way. That's fantastic. It's a smart kid. She hasn't started kindergarten yet. Well, watch out.

She'll be lurking on the stairwell when you're putting the presents on on there trying to tell you what's going on right now yeah child's children are opening their gifts is that really true yeah oh we gotta finish then yeah that's why i came up because people because there are tears downstairs like where's daddy and and everyone's saying well daddy's doing a podcast and everybody's's going, what's a podcast? And they say, well, you know, you'll know when you're a little bit older what a podcast is. But right now, daddy's doing it. And it might as well be heroin. You might as well say daddy's doing heroin.

You know what's bad when Carolla's rolling his eyes. Yeah, Carolla. Oh, Jesus. By the way, Carolla's totally sober and bonding with his children right now. No way. Meanwhile, Sal is. You should see where Sal is right now. He might as well be sitting in my bathroom. I don't believe the Carolla thing for a second.

Well, yeah. Either part of that. I may have exaggerated a little with Carolla. I don't believe either part of that, or nor do I believe the elf on the shelf. Well, I'm glad. I'm excited. I got a chance to be part of parent quarter. That's really why.

That was great. Thanks for coming on, Jimmy. Okay. I'm going to wind it up. I've winded down. All right. I'm not going to top that parent corner. You want to borrow that for your parent corner? That'll be mine. All right. Say hi to the family.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. All that stuff. And we will talk to you before round one. Okay. Good job by you. Good job by you. All right. Well, I might as well go right to Christmas morning.

I got a 14-year-old, very appreciative of everything. And the other two are kind of bratty. 12-year-old and 6-year-old. Tomorrow, 5-year-old turns 6. And they open like 15 presents each. You know, we're very blessed. Everyone, they get, we have a lot of cousins and everything. So the gifts are coming in all say from Santa on it, you know, Santa, this Santa, that, um, everyone believes not, not the 14 year old, but the 12 year old still believes. And then a six year old for

sure believes. And all we need is a picture of them by the tree after everything. And after they open these gifts, I'm like, all right, let's get a picture. And they're like, oh, but the two young ones like, dad, enough already. Just get out of our faces. And I was like, you sons of bitches, you. I can't even count how much money and how much wrapping and everything else goes on. And I was like, hey, we got you all these gifts. The least you could do is take a picture.

And the 12-year-old is like, you didn't get them for us. Santa did. I was like, that's it. I'm doing it. I'm blowing the lid right off. You're 12 years old. You can't do it. I'm not doing it.

I have to tell him. First of all, this kid has had access to porn. He's seen porn online, all right? And he believes in that and Santa. I don't think there's an overlap. I don't think you can believe in both. I really don't. I don't think there should be one day where you witness pornography by accident and believe also in Santa.

And I was ready. And she was holding me back, my wife. Mick was holding Rocky back when the statue was unveiled. And he was going after Clubber Lang outside there. And I really, I was going to blow the whole Santa thing. But I showed some restraint. And I held back. And we got the picture.

And it's a shitty picture. And shitty kids. There you go. Happy holidays. You didn't get us anything. What do you say to that? It is funny to have the holidays where you have a lot more time with your family. Yeah.

And then you need a holiday from the holiday. Right. Last year, we went back, the Simmons family, my dad's family, my dad has six brothers and sisters. They celebrate Christmas every year because their parents are dead and they've just very close Irish family. So last year we actually went back, we surprised my dad and we crashed the Yankee Christmas swap. We brought gifts and they ended up, they had some extra gifts. So we're all in it and it goes around and Ben a year ago gets this gift that

includes these scratch cards. And he's all excited about the scratch cards. So it goes through the whole order. And then after, as you know, the Yankee swap, then it goes, then you count down in reverse. And if you don't like your gift, you can swipe it as it goes from like- The white elephant, you call it Yankee swap? Or whatever. We call it Yankee swap. It's white elephant. So it's it goes from 23 to 1. We call it Yankee Swap. It's White Elephant. It's going backwards from 23 to 1. He's holding his scratch cards. He's just about to do it.

With five spots to go, my cousin Lauren, it's her turn. She goes over and swaps gifts with Ben. It takes the scratch cards. Ethically, it was pretty dubious. I felt like, I think like over maybe under age 13, you, you kind of don't take the kid's gift. Would it would have been my

role? Takes the gift. So now Ben has no scratch cards and Ben's devastated, but pretending he's not, but more, more importantly, knowing him and knowing that he can fly off the handle, I'm not worried he's going to fly off the handle and start being the offensive coordinator of Friday Night Tikes and just go nuts. He reigns it in. Then on the way home, he's like, I'm never going to Yankee Swap again.

Sucks. I hate Cousin Lord. That's bullshit. And he's just furious. So we calm him down. So then he's talked about it for the whole year about how he wants to go back to Yankee Swap and take Lauren's gift. Right. How old is cousin Lauren? She's like in her mid thirties. Oh, great. She's your cousin. It's my cousin. yeah. She's in her early 30s. So for a year, he's like,

it's vacillated between I'm never going back. No, I hate the Simmons family too. I want to go back. I'm going to take Lauren's gift. Right. Because he's a maniac. That's why he's ordering knives on Amazon. Yeah, he tried to bring those on the plane. So we didn't know we were

going to go back. And then last minute we decided we'd go back. So we go back, but the catch is cousin Lauren, she's not at Yankee Swap. So now Ben can't get revenge. Right. Yankee Swap happens. Lauren's brother ends up getting scratch cards. Ben, on the way

back, takes the scratch cards from Lauren's brother and gets the revenge. And is acting like this is the 86 Red Sox going back into Shea and taking the World Series. Gets the scratch cards back and is now riding high ever since.

Because he is a lunatic. That's great. So yeah, the little nice holiday family story for you. And I'm going to guess, oh, under $2.50, one on those scratch cards. One, $2 out of like $50 of scratch cards. Good call, good call. So there you go.

Yeah, got to love the holidays. A couple of heartwarming holiday stories for you. Awesome. That's it for Parent Corner 2019. We have one more BS podcast coming this week. Don't forget about CarMax.com. 50,000 CarMax vehicles nationwide, all available. Stop by your local CarMax for details

and discover how easy buying a car at CarMax can really be. Don't forget about the rewatchables of Quentin Tarantino as well. Dunkirk, that is up now. And Book of Basketball comes back next week as well as the second episode of the rewatchables and all the other awesome podcasts we have on the Ringer Podcast Network. Plus, don't forget about the ones we put up this week. Some new ones.

Russillo has one, Big Picture. A whole bunch of ones. So check all that out, and we will see you here on Thursday. I want to see them on the way. So I don't have a few years with them on the wayside.