The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - David Cross - HoneyCross

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

My HoneyDew this week is comedian, David Cross! (Arrested Development, Mr. Show) David Highlights the Lowlights of his absentee father who he hasn’t spoken to in forty years, and his anxiety about being a better father. SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://youtube.com/@rsickler SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew What’s your story?? Submit at [e-mail] SUBSCRIBE to The HoneyDew Clips Channel http://bit.ly/ryansicklerclips SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRABFEAST PODCAST https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crabfeast-with-ryan-sickler-and-jay-larson/id1452403187 SPONSORS: Dad Grass -Go to https://www.DadGrass.com/HONEYDEW for 20% off your first order Rocket Money -Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://www.RocketMoney.com

The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to The Honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the Night Pant Studios. I'm Ryan Sickler, ryansickler.com and ryansickler on all your social media. And again, I want to say thank you. Since I've been back, the outpouring of love has been so overwhelming. We're going to do an episode very soon. My special's dropping very soon as well, so keep an eye out for that.

Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube. And if you've got to have more, I'm telling you, just go check out the Patreon. It's $5 a month. If you sign up for a year, you get over a month free. You get the honeydew a month free. You get the honeydew a day early. You get it ad free at no additional cost. And it's the honeydew with y'all. It's your stories. It's the I'm telling you every week. I'm like, what are we going to hear this time? And every week I leave being like, what the fuck did we just hear? You guys have the absolute

wildest story. So go check that out. If you're looking for a new podcast, check out my old podcast. It's called The Crab Feast. It's a storytelling podcast. It's audio only. There's a seven-year library there. Go download it and have fun with it. All right? Now, that's the biz. You guys know what we do over here. We highlight the low lights. I always say these are the stories behind the storytellers. I can't tell you how excited I am today to have this guest here. First time on The Honeydew. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Cross. Welcome to The Honeydew, David Cross.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Brian. Thank you for being here. You've been a pleasure since you got here. I watched you parallel park and you fucking nailed it. And I said, dude, that's impressive. You said New York, man. East Coast.

Well, I didn't know who was talking to me at first. Yeah, I just walked up to your car. There's just like people with, I'm like looking, is that a laminate? And I got a rental car. I don't even know how. And you remember, I left it on. I started walking away without turning it off. And I don't, you know, and I just, and there's, it was a tight fit.

It was good. You nailed it. That's Boston. That's the driving in Boston. Yeah. It gave me that, taught me that skill. Yeah. And then there were like two strangers who were like, that was impressive, man.

I'm like, all right. What? Okay. Put this permit in your car. Who the fuck are you? Listen, before we get into everything we're going to talk about, please plug, promote everything you'd like. Sure.

I'm going to be going back out on the road on tour starting March 2nd. It's called the Worst Daddy in the World Tour. And you can find all the information, where I'm going and where to get tickets at my website, which is officialdavidcross.com We got 40 cities on the first leg. Oh yeah. There's more to come. They're all kind of coming in and then I'm going to take a couple months off

to visit my daughter, who I understand misses me or something. And then I'll go back out again and I'll hit the rest of Canada and Europe and the rest of the states. And I don't hit in the first leg. And where can they get tickets? OfficialDavidCross.com. Boom.

What's your Instagram and all that stuff? Are you just at David Cross cross or the day i know the one on twitter has three s's it's david cross with three s's and instagram i'm not sure i'm gonna guess is probably official david cross i i mean i post stuff on there so people can know about it but i'm i i had to get a new phone quite recently and purposely didn't put Instagram and Twitter on there because Twitter's awful. Instagram's fine, but Twitter's just terrible. And even pre-Elon Musk was bad.

Yeah, Twitter's the dumpster fire for sure. Just awful. And, you know, I can't say my life is better because I'm not on there, but it probably is. I'm just, you know, for mental health issues when I get out of there. And it's also a waste of time.

And, you know, I think about a lot more stuff when I'm taking a shit now. My world has opened up. Man, listen, you said you're 58. I'm about a lot more stuff when I'm taking a shit now. My world has opened up. Man, listen, you said you're 58. I'm about to be 50. And before the internet, I used to read – the reason I know that there's placenta in shampoo is because there was nothing else to read in the bathroom while I was taking a shit. And I started reading the back of shampoo ingredients.

I was like, there's placenta in this? Yeah, why do you think there are so many abortions? so many abortions because of actually that no they wouldn't you wouldn't have a placenta you wouldn't come out i don't know excuse my ignorance ladies uh yeah you wouldn't if you're having an abortion you wouldn't the placenta wouldn't come with it would it i i don't know i would imagine the placenta is not formed yet because that's what protects the baby so if you're doing it it's probably not formed yet that's my guess as an ignorant man that's no it's a good guess it's a solid i feel like it's a solid one ignorant guy backing up another ignorant guy you know and that my friends is the internet

that's the internet in a nutshell it is dude it is we should be that is the internet in a nutshell we should be at a bar ordering our fifth beer talking about placentas no man no no listen listen listen

listen it just makes sense listen listen to me what I'm saying oh my god alright so I do want to talk to you about being a dad but before we do that i want to get to know you so where are you where are you originally from boston no no no tell me tell me all about you uh the longer story is i was born in atlanta uh moved uh when i was one to florida lived in three places in Florida and then two places in Connecticut and then three places in New York every year, moving every year. Before I moved back down to Georgia when I was nine and then lived in Atlanta or kind of suburban.

But when I was a kid, it was very rural, rural suburban. Georgia, outside of Atlanta until I was 19 and then moved to Boston for nine years. Got it. And that was for comedy? I mean, yes, but ostensibly it was to go to college. I took a year off because I had no money, but between high school and college, I went to Emerson College, but I dropped out immediately. I just had no money. I had enough money to go there part-time. I had enough money to go there part-time.

They did it by two semesters, and then a full-time a semester, and then part-time, and then I dropped out. I just ran out of money, and my student loans, that was it. And I had a Pell Grant for X amount of money. Pell Grant. Pell Grant. I remember Pell Grant. So why were you bouncing around so much up to age nine? What was going on where you're moving to Connecticut and three places in Florida and um this is it sounds like a joke but it's just it's true uh my dad just got fired a lot

he got fired a lot a lot boy did that guy get fired my goodness he was the king of getting fired and he was one of those do you remember why he got fired um well i was a kid like he he's uh the dude's a of uh he's not a good guy and he's a pathological liar in the sense that um nothing and i mean nothing was ever his fault so he was one of those classic, you know, you can't fire me, I quit. Like, well, no, we did fire you already. You're trying to quit retroactively, and it doesn't work that way, sir. You're like, I will not stand for this treatment, I quit. No, you don't understand. We fired you over 72 hours ago. He's still coming back. So he, yeah, he had a series of jobs.

He was a, initially when I first met him, he was a salesman for women's swimwear. And I remember the company. Are you being for real? Yeah, yeah, for real. He's a salesman for women's swimwear. And I remember the company. Are you being for real? Yeah, yeah, for real. He's a salesman for women's swimwear. It was called Cole of California, C-O-L-E, Cole of California. And I don't know what brought him to Georgia. He met my mom.

He was in the army. He came over on the boat with his whole family in different stages. He came from a larger family from Leeds, England. Okay. And he was 15 when he came over, the youngest of five kids, and aunts and uncles and all that came over as well. And they all settled in the Bronx or Long Island. And my dad grew up, you know, he was in Leeds and then he was in the Bronx and then he joined the army, I think, to help speed up his citizenship. And met my mom in Ann Arbor where she was teaching English. And, and then they, I don't know the whole story of their kind of, you know, courtship. It was fairly quick. And, and then I was a honeymoon baby. And then, and it was, I don't know why he, why this English dude would be in Atlanta Georgia in the 60s but he was and I don't know what he was doing then and then then we moved to Florida and he

was definitely doing this women's swimwear and he was a traveling salesman too for a while and you know later on it was, and I have two younger sisters, I'm very close with one of them. And we just, over the years, started doing kind of deductive, detective type work and realized Justin like, oh, that explains this. And then like he was having affairs all over the place. He, you know, he was, again, not a great guy. And so from there, we were in Florida in three different places. And then when I was, I guess, around five, we probably moved up to Connecticut

because that's when I moved up to Connecticut. Cause that's when I started going to school. So that'd be like five, six. Yeah. And there were a couple of places there and then he was working for, oh, he, he had at some point, he and this other guy opened up a store uh in connecticut i remember this too the le bon marché it was like the good uh was marché in french internet help me out get back to us don't respond the it's like the good you know market or something like that but it was this store and they sold uh um you know it was a little place you know um somewhere in connecticut and uh um and they sold women's clothing but then they had this uh uh contest

right to to entice people to come in you get a certain thing, then you enter the drawing and you could win a vacation for two in the Bahamas. And the craziest coincidental thing happened. It's fucking bonkers. I don't know what the odds are scientifically, but he ended up winning. It's crazy. How does that work? How is it possible?

So he and... Yeah. Hey, guess what I got? I got a steel drum out of it. I got a mini steel drum. That's what I got. There's one of those downstairs at the music store. Yeah.

Congrats, man. What a lot. Pretty sweet. And then we were in New york and then he was working for wait who did he take you take your mom yeah him him and my mom and then the other couple also went okay he didn't take like a i was oh no no no no no no no he took he no that would that's pretty that would be bad. And then we ended up, you know, that went out of business.

No way, it did? I know. I know. Even when he's not getting fired. I know, the bargains. Shutting places down. Well, no, he fired himself. It was really odd. He fired himself, then tried to quit, and then himself said, you can't quit, I fired you.

No, you can't do this to me. And then he had a, you know, it broke the time continuum. Oh, my God. And then we were in New York for a while. We were living with my grandmom because I know he had no money. And so we were living with my grandmom. My grandmother. No, wait, your mom's mom my mom's aunt yeah uh uh really didn't care for him and i didn't understand when i was younger my grandmother

was really like one of the coldest like odd people uh just no warmth at all and didn't particularly care for us and we were the byproduct of this uh and you know she was also shitty to my mom and um uh and you know just judgmental and ridiculing her and she didn't like my dad from the get-go. And she called, I mean, she, to her credit, she kind of did say this guy's bad news. And my mom, who was very, didn't have a whole lot of experience, wasn't very social. You know, there's this guy, I don't think she had, you know, I think she had one relationship before she met my dad, one like legit. And like here's this guy. And my mom and dad were completely different. Like my mom is really smart, book smart, not very social, very intellectual.

But again, doesn't have a lot of friends, never did. And isn't particularly interested in that. And is just happy to read and stuff. And my dad, not very bright, street smart. He was street smart, but not intellectually smart, but really social and life of the party, funny guy, just two completely different people uh and you know my mom was uh you know fell in love with this guy who's finally there's somebody and he's really popular and people and he was i

was i hung out with my dad a bunch before you know we i haven't seen him since i was 19 i really like cut him off yeah i was like this he's he's not, as I said, he's a piece of shit. It took me a while to get over, to see it, and not just to see it, but to lift the veil in a sense. Yeah, there's a point as a kid, too, when you think every adult is smarter or whatever because they're older. And then there's a point when you get old enough, you're like, oh, you're a dumb one of those. Yeah. I'm smarter than you. And then you start to really do the math on your parents and, you know, it's 19s.

I mean, look, I had the same situation, but then you go on to be who you are. Does he reach out? Does he try to contact you? No. Part of the whole – Man, you fired him from being your dad. Yeah, yeah. He's gotten fired from every –

Well, and this is – I mean this sincerely, following the logic of our conversation. you know, following the logic of our conversation, he really did pull a, you can't fire me, I quit kind of thing. Meaning he told, so I'll tell you exactly, there's this whole long story that led up to this, but just, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. You know, nothing like shocking, but it was just accumulation of all this stuff.

Just another one. To go, all right, I'm done, man. And I already knew he was a piece of shit. But I had gotten back from Florida where we were supposed to hang out. It was just a long story. story but I got back and he called and I should also say my my mom and dad separated like right after I turned 10 so we were in Georgia for maybe I want to say five months you know I probably just turned 10 and then and then he left to go to you know work his shit out and find you know and and when I say he left he left a um a mountain of debt and responsibilities and and just left my mom and with three kids zero money less than zero uh no credit um my mom didn't have any skills really and uh

we're in fucking roswell georgia and uh i mean just uh massively uh self-centered, you know, zero responsibility, no money, nothing. And he left to go work his shit out or whatever the fuck it is. But he left, he didn't go like, he didn't go downtown. He went to Phoenix, Arizona. Sorry, that's way too far. Yeah. It's not even, I thought you were going to say Florida, which is still a drive from Atlanta. Phoenix.

He went to Phoenix. And now, Wendy and I, my sister and I, haven't really cracked this one. But what brings a dude who's never been to Phoenixoenix to phoenix of all places to escape his family and we still haven't figured it out but there must have been something for him to go to phoenix seems like a hot bikini market though those women, uh, then he had, uh, he was a maitre d' at a restaurant, um, in Florida. Um, I don't know some of the other jobs he had, but, uh, again, he was really good at, you know, nailing the interview as it were. And, you know, like a lot of – he's the most Trumpian guy.

Like he – literally nothing is ever his fault. Cannot – can't, you know, take responsibility for anything. I'm sitting here thinking about that. That would be an interesting podcast to have a guest like that every week and say, all right, these are the things. Oh, my God. These are why you were fired. What's your side?

I'll tell you my side and then just hear them never take ownership. Never. Never. The guy never took ownership. I'm telling you, he's so similar to Trump in that way of like, you know, I'm the only guy. You know, and just never says I'm sorry you know, I'm the only guy who can da-da-da, and, you know, and just never says I'm sorry, never takes ownership, nothing's his fault. And so, so we called the apartment, and my little sister is like, you know, talking to

him, and it's like, it's dad, dad wants to talk to you, and I said, some, you know, talking to him. And it's like, it's dad. Dad wants to talk to you. And I said some, you know, variation of, no, I'm not talking to him anymore, something like that. And there's this little silence. And she goes, he says good because the only time you ever talk to him is when you ask him for money, which is so. He's relaying this to your little sister to tell you it's so but it's so the opposite it's the it's the thing that he thinks is gonna hurt me that did hurt me but not in the way that he thought it was gonna hurt me and because it's

it's it's so not true like i had reached out the guy never he didn't he didn't you know he when i when he abandoned the family he abandoned the family and uh it was only through kind of reaching out that anything you know, deadbeat dad. I actually went to court in Arizona. I went to go live with them when I was 13, I think. Some were sixth grade. What is sixth grade? Yeah, about that.

13, 14. And that's its own set of crazy stories. Just you? Just me. Went to live with him? Yeah, yeah. And I had to go to court one day because there was nothing to do with – where was he going to put me? There's nothing – and that became its own issue.

And he made no plans for having having a 13 year old boy there and uh and didn't also didn't alter his uh like did nothing to alter it didn't shift a thing and and uh and so like i there were a couple times that I went to this bar and he wasn't like an alcoholic or drug abuser or anything. But he did like – he did scare up odd jobs and there were always this, you know, oh, Patsy owes me money, you know, whatever. And, you know, he's got to go to a bar and do some kind of deal. And he'd give me, you know, $2.25 to go play pinball for an hour, you know, that kind of thing. And what's the point of all this? Oh, yeah.

So I went to – I had to go to a court date in court, whatever the court is for family, social, you know, debt stuff. And there's a big, I remember they had those big kind of cement, big columns that they just painted white, you know, it was like one of those kind of places in this court, big courthouse in Phoenix. And there's clipboards hanging off them them like rubber bands and then clipboards with all kinds of just lines and lines and lines and there's your name and here you got to sign in and your court date is here's the time is at 2.10 PM, whatever. And we went into a little courtroom, kind of people's court type thing but more fluorescent fluorescent light and, you know, not no wood, but, uh, sat there, waited. We watched person after person go through those little saloon doors, walk up,

you know, uh, stand behind a table. What's your name? You know, Gary Revere. And, uh, um, you know, have you, uh, you know, you're here because you, uh, owe remittance to this thing or uh to this person uh have you uh paid remittance uh no your honor i haven't uh and what is the reason i've not found uh i've not found employment or gainful employment i did this uh for 10 days but then i couldn't that was the extent of the job have you looked yes i have uh okay thank you and then and this just line of guys it didn't stop and it was quick it was like it was just a machine all right boom boom boom and then barry cross my dad goes up and uh uh you know does the 30 seconds of who are you, what's your number,

Susie Cross has brought your name up. Do you have the money? No, I do not. Have you been able to send money? No, I have not. What's the reason? I have not found gainful employment. What is your record of trying to find gainful employment?

I did this and this and this and this thing. And I'm sitting there going like, no, he didn't. I don't think that's true. There was that, I mean, I know he was fucking the landlord's wife to get free, but I don't remember him going, I mean, we went to that bar. We went to the bar I don't remember playing fireball the fireball pinball machine but I don't remember

I don't remember him maybe he was trying to get you know whatever and and then we just like okay thank and then we just walked out and I was on the other side of that in Atlanta where we had no money and and like –

Now you're seeing why you're not getting any money. That's all that – you just go up and you say these things. Even if he wasn't lying or even exaggerating, it's still just – it was very eye-opening, like, oh, nobody cares. This is all you have to do. It's just a perfunctory thing. You have to go to the court on this, you know, on the 16th at 1142. You go in there, they ask you 10 questions, you answer them, and then you leave. And five minutes later, you're back home not sending money to your kids. You know? And just the barest.

Talking about that. My mom never asked for a penny more than – we didn't get anything. But anyway, yeah. So what happens at 19 for you to finally say, all right, that's it? Well, again, it was cumulative. It was also just becoming my own person, becoming independent and becoming, you know, that stuff starts taking shape when you're a teenager anyway. And having a clear- You actually got to live both sides of that equation too and really see how the hot dogs are made.

Yeah. Or not. Not that it wouldn't have surprised me if somebody had said that, but just kind of being a part of that. And also there's the unspoken kind of underlying part of it that was there, which is he didn't even bother to, like he didn't care that, or he didn't, not that he didn't care. It was such a part of his thing and part of his world. And this is just how it works. It didn't matter whether I was there to go, hey, dad, I don't, when did you try to get a job? And it didn't matter. It was, that's the thing he

did. And you go in and even if I had a big argument with him, he'd probably just go, well, And you go in and even if I had a big argument with him, he'd probably just go, well, then go the fuck home then. Go back to Atlanta, you know, without the swear words. But, you know, he. That was just a weird part of it was like, that's that's OK. It's just like, yeah, you know, but but there were there were just so many. So he ended up coming back to – so we – I mean, it was comical. First, we were – when I got out there, we were in a suburb of Scottsdale called Fountain Hills, and we were at somebody's house, somebody he made friends with and told some sob story to.

Again, I don't know what brought him to Phoenix in the first place. It's such a weird, and my sister Wendy and I have just not cracked that yet. Is he still alive? Yeah, he's alive. He's in New York. He's been there since I moved there in early 2001, spring of 2001, and he was there. Can't have one of the fans just hit him with an anonymous email.

Hey, Barry. Oh, I have no interest. Don't get a Phoenix. And he, you know, he's out of my head, really, you know. But occasionally, very rarely, I very rarely find myself on the Upper East Side, but occasionally, I'll be riding my bike or whatever, I'll have some work or something will bring me to, because I know he's in like the upper 60s, 70s on the East Side somewhere, like, like First or Second Avenue or Third Avenue, something like that.

And I'll just have forgotten about his existence. And then as I get closer, I'll be like, oh, right, dad lives up here somewhere. But he's, you know, there are a couple of relatives, his nieces that are still in touch with him. That's their uncle. Then the uncle outweighs the cousins in a sense. And when – there was a marked split when my mom and dad separated. And again, he left. My mom didn't ask him to leave.

My mom didn't, you know, I'm sure it came as quite a shock and a punch in the stomach to her that he would move us all down to Roswell, Georgia and then leave soon afterwards. Right after we were evicted too. We were evicted from our- Nah, man. He said see ya? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Holy shit. evicted from our um yeah yeah yeah it was so so we lived in a we lived in a um uh like a motel for a couple weeks and uh um and we were we were there while again i don't know why the fuck he came went down there it obviously had to been for some work because why else would you go to fucking Roswell, Georgia? But went down there. We were in a motel a couple weeks. We got an apartment. And we were there for about three months, I want to say. And that's where I turned 10. And that's where I turned 10.

And then we got picked up. Our neighbor was this guy named Peter George, really cool guy. He's the first guy to kind of get me into, like, rock music. Like, he got me into The Who and Sgt. Pepper's. I remember that. music. He got me into the Who and Sergeant Peppers, I remember that. And he, usually, the bus would let us off at the bus stop and then when all the kids would walk down through the apartment complex into their various, it wasn't a fancy place. And I don't think my younger sister was in school yet, but this guy, Peter George, our neighbor, drove up after we were let off by the bus. And he was going to give us a ride down to the apartment, which is a two and a half minute ride tops just because of speed bumps. ride tops just because of speed bumps, you know. And the whole reason was to kind of soften the blow of what we were about to see. That's why my mom sent him up there. And we come down there,

and they're literally, I mean, it's very filmic in a sense as we're approaching. These guys, I mean, it's very filmic in a sense as we're approaching. These guys, they had locked some of the doors to, I guess, take some of the things that we had to – because we hadn't paid rent. My mom found out, you know, like an hour prior prior to that that my dad had been lying about paying rent and we had it had been months and they you know so they took our a bunch of our shit and just put it uh with uh i wouldn't say lovingly uh put it on the on the you know front area where where you know there's like those apartment buildings where you have like four units in a thing or six unit, whatever. And just tossing it on the concrete

and the, and, you know, I had a ham radio. I remember I had a ham radio that I hadn't really used, but I loved the idea of it, you know? And this, I didn't't i wasn't old enough to really get it but you'd see it in movies where people and i and i think my uncle um might have given it to me somehow i had this ham radio uh that was gone they took that they're gonna sell it and took that shit yeah yeah and they had things that they didn't care about this was a shit pile to them even though these are your things things, and we might be able to get some money out of this.

And they locked some of the storage drawer, whatever, and we didn't have a whole lot, but there was stuff, bedding, clothes, that's literally on the ground. And, uh, um, and then, you know, we got split up cause, uh, and we had some really, really super cool neighbors who were very sympathetic.

And they said, well, you know, Wendy and Julie can sleep with us and, uh, you know, stay at our house and David can stay here and you guys can stay, you know?

So we did have places to go. We weren't like, uh, sleeping on the street as work work because people kind of came together. I remember really well a girl who was relatively new, like probably had been in the complex for less than a month, starting a collection and going around and getting like a coffee can. And, you know, it was like a dollar and 76 cents or something like going to the kids and going to people. That's nice. It's really nice. Really sweet. Have you ever just been too damn high? Well, we've all been there. And with today's weed, finding your perfect dose can be a dangerous game. Daggrass is reviving the pleasure of the casual toke so you can chill out

without the stress. Daggrass is legal, organic, smokable hemp that relaxes your body and mellows your mind. They're 100% organic pre-rolled joints, which are my favorite, and flour are very low in THC and high in CBD so you can enjoy the effects of CBD while keeping a clear head. Not looking to toke, Daggrass also offers the finest tinctures and gummies on the market. All the mellow goodness, no smoke required. All Dagrass products are federally legal for ages 18 and over, and it ships right to your door anywhere in the U.S. Whether you're looking for a new buzz or a chill way to enjoy an old favorite,

Dagrass will leave you in a euphoric mood. Right now, Dadgrass is offering my listeners 20% off your first order when you go to dadgrass.com slash honeydew. Go to dadgrass.com slash honeydew for 20% off your first order. That's dadgrass.com slash honeydew. Try it free for 30 days is enough time to try and completely forget about a subscription or a service.

Before you know it, you're paying for a subscription you don't use every single month. With Rocket Money, you can change that with a few quick taps. Rocket Money, formerly known as Truebill, is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. Over 80% of people have subscriptions they forgot about, like that streaming service you bought to watch just one show on or that free trial that you never even used. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want. Simply find the subscription you don't want and press cancel and Rocket Money will cancel it for you. No more long

hold times with customer service or emailing back and forth. Over 3 million people have used Rocket Money, saving the average person up to $720 a year. I'm going to tell you right now, as a person who just spent a month in the hospital, I signed up for every subscription. And I went back and I had no idea that I was on Discovery Plus, Showtime, Apple TV, YouTube TV, HBO, all of them. And I had to go in and be like, I don't use this. I don't use this. I don't use this. Boom. Rocket Money took care of all of it, y'all. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash honeydew. That's rocketmoney.com slash honeydew, rocketmoney.com slash honeydew.

Now, let's get back to the do. But that, boy, Ryan, I ramble down these roads and I can't remember the original question from 20 minutes ago. You cut him out of your life at 19, I said. Yes. So you're about to come up on a 40th anniversary of not talking to your father. Yeah, there's going to be a celebration. We're going to go to the Wolfgang Puck on Main Street there in Santa Monica.

I rented the place out, and it's just going to be me and my dad. It's going to be weird. It's going to be weird. Talk to me about – because my father died at 16, so this is, in a sense, it's a death for you. Holy shit. So he had you when he was 15 and then died immediately? When I was 16. All right.

I get it. But in a sense, when you cut this man off, this is a death to you. And what is that like knowing that you are a 19-year-old man now, a young man, and you don't have a dad going forward? Well, I didn't really have a dad. I hear what you're saying. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, he really wasn't there. He did this great, it's just so classic, my dad did this thing where we were, so I went out there to live with him. We were – so I went out there to live with him, and he clearly hadn't thought it through and had no money, had no job, and there were all these fun little anecdotal things. We had chocolate – he knew a guy who filled vending machines, this guy named Taki, Polynesian guy.

And is that politically correct or is that? Polynesian? Yeah. I think so. Here we go again. I want to say he was Hawaiian, but there's no Polynesia, is it? I don't know. I just know from like Disney films.

Islands, islands. An island, yeah. But I don't know if he was, he might have been Samoan or, I don't know. Forgive me. It's the internet again, right? But he's described to me as Polynesian, but that might not be right anymore. But anyway, so this guy gave my my dad we were living in this this i'll never forget either it was uh i've never seen this anywhere except uh phoenix it was um these it

was it was clearly a motel that was bigger like um let's say 24 units, right? 12, just two floors, 12 across, 12 on the bottom, kind of angled a little bit maybe. And then there was like a little shitty kidney-shaped pool, teeny tiny, that didn't have any water in it and a faded shuffleboard thing next to it. And the apartment, the motel had been divided into three

things that not not physically divided but just like um there'd be like a a you know a different color for like these these six would have a different color than the middle six had different color than the other six and um and they were called like geronimo Courts and Sitting Bull Lane. That one you can't yell anymore. No, seriously. It was all like Indian themed, you know. And it was just this motel that had been, I don't know, somebody purchased it and divided it into three. And so we were living in a motel room. And also,

I was a super skinny kid. I was pretty skinny until, you know, maybe I was 40 or something. And I just, you know, was one of those, I was a light kid, you know, I didn't have a lot of meat on me. And, uh, and my dad was, uh, I don't know, he's like six foot one or something like that. And, um, uh, and we slept, there was no, uh, you know, we slept in the bed together and it was a bed that he had slept in. So he was kind of in the middle and that there was like you know of quite a concave uh like a dip and then i would and i couldn't sleep in the bed i couldn't sleep because i would roll right into him if i just moved for an int and uh uh so i ended up having to sleep on the couch and which is fine it wasn't't a big deal. I was a, you know, again, I wasn't, you know, tall or wide.

But, and he had no job. And we were basically in this motel. And here's a little trivia. The woman's, the landlord's wife, her name was Ms. Santiso. And she was one of these very, very much like the, I'm spacing on her name. What's the, she's awesome in White Lotus. She's the only one who's all jennifer cool jennifer cool it's very much a jennifer coolidge type character with um you know bottle blonde kind of beehivey type big hair moo moos uh drinking always drinking always

always drinking and um it wasn't until later i realized my dad was fucking her, and he would send me to the, I think the Safeway, I want to say. The Safeway was about a mile down the road with a note to get cigarettes. You had permission. Yeah, so I had permission to get cigarettes. For real. So he could get pussy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is unbelievable.

But the only reason he did it was to not pay rent. And then we left. Listen to this. It gets better. It gets better. So when we left, prior to leaving, he spent a couple of days convincing me that i was really sad i wasn't happy there and that i really wanted to go back to i missed my family i missed my mom my sisters and i and i should also say that my my childhood in georgia was pretty miserable until I was 17. But really, and I was a pretty happy kid up until we moved

down there. And pretty much from, I'd say, fifth grade through, fifth through ninth was just like really, really bad, really miserable. And he had convinced me that I wanted to go back there. And at first I didn't. Things weren't great, certainly in retrospect as I tell this, but in the moment, I'm still hanging with my dad. It's my dad. This is great. I haven't seen him in years. This is so cool. And I get to play pinball at the, you know, and, you know, who needs food? You don't need that much food, you know?

You just need a little bit of food, and then, you know, it's okay. And so he had convinced me that we should go back. And I was like, yeah, sure. You know, we're going to go back. So he gets a drive-away truck, a pickup truck, corrugated metal back in the back. No bedding or anything like that. And he, I don't remember how he told me or what he said, I should say to, so that we, it was going to be a surprise and, um surprise and nobody could know or something, but we had to load up the pickup truck at a certain time. It had to be like 10 in the morning, and we couldn't make any noise. And I kind of knew in the back of my head just putting all the stuff together, what was happening, but I didn't really allow myself to realize it.

But we were clearly skipping out. Again, he had not paid any rent, zero. And the guy had just, whatever his wife had done to convince him to let us stay an extra week or month or whatever it was. And that kept, you know, one week became two, became four, became six. The guy was like, no, you know, he's out of here. And so we quietly, very quickly loaded up. And there was nothing. There was, I mean, I came out there, I had gotten a guitar and I had a, I think that's the only kind of big thing that I had. I don't even know where I got the guitar that I brought out there with me.

And I didn't even know how to play guitar and, you know, whatever, suitcase with clothes and stuff. And I also, for part of the story in a minute, I had a jade star of David. No, a jade chai, a necklace that I had gotten my bar mitzvah. And so we load up the pickup truck and then, you know, we like peel out of there, get out of there. We stop at a pawn shop. He grabs the guitar. No. Yes, yes, yes.

No. Yeah. And then he goes, he goes, and he told me, you know, I don't have the money or whatever it was. He told me basically, he didn't, he wasn't that shitty where he just took it, pawned it, and with no explanation. He said, we need this for the gas money to get us to Georgia. You know, I calculated it. It's a long thing.

And then he asked for my necklace, and I gave it to him. And there were a handful of other things. And he was like, you know, I'm going to – I don't know what he had, but like, you know, my golf clubs, I'm going to pawn my golf club, whatever this stuff was. And he pawned it. He got money. This is on our way out.

And then we took off for Georgia, and we got back with a nickel. Nuh-uh. This sounds like I'm making this shit up, but we literally had a nickel. We would have- Coasted into Georgia with a nickel. Yeah, and also, I forgot about this part. So part of the secret, right, is don't tell your mom. It'll be a surprise. Won't it be so cool when you show up? Don't tell him we're coming out. And that was not about me. That was about him.

That was about don't tell your mom. That one I didn't figure out until later. But the whole thing was like, it's a secret. We're going to surprise your mom and your sisters. They're going to be so happy that you're home. Oh, my God, David, it's going to be great. The whole thing was because he had run out of options, clearly, had made more enemies than friends out there. And owed a bunch of money. And his idea, which he ended up doing, was he crashed on our couch for i don't know how long i'll have to ask my mom but like you know a month until he somehow bullshitted his way into another situation

um but we were all so thrilled to have our dad back in atlanta you know that my mom had to bite her tongue and uh you know and he came in and he he's really good at reading the room you know and going and just charming you know like hey people he did not give a fuck about never called would forget birthdays and all of a sudden he's back and going, Julie, Wendy, give me a hug. You know, I've missed you so much. I'm going to stay here and I'm going to, you know. And my mom's an adult. She's sussed the whole thing out.

And I probably was, you know, in denial about a lot of it. And I don't think Wendy and Julie had any clue. And yeah, then he was in Atlanta until he wasn't again how long do you remember yeah he was and is he living with your mom no we're in an apartment

she wasn't letting that happen he was on the couch this is not a house this is an apartment and eventually he got a place downtown um and he was a waiter at a place and then he became he was a waiter for a for a while and he lived with another waiter. And then he ended up doing food and beverage service stuff for a hotel, one of the hotels downtown. And then he moved to Florida when I was, gosh, I don't know.

So he was there for a couple of years, like three years I want to say. No now I ask everybody to send stuff that they want to talk and there's so much you're gonna have to come back and do another episode because here's what I want to ask you now now you're a dad yes okay but you I was also I was a older dad I didn't have a I mean my daughter, when she was born, I was 41. She's eight now. And your daughter's how old? She literally just turned six last week. All right, six. So you, 52, were roughly when you had a baby? Mm-hmm.

Does, and I ask this to especially people that were like, does the fact that your father was the way he was, does it scare the fuck out of you that you could have that in you? You don't even have to finish. You don't have to finish. You don't have to finish your question. It was at the forefront of decision making. It was a fear that I had way before I even had a kid.

I knew I wanted to have a family, but it was something I thought about even before I met my wife was, is this a genetic thing? Is this a thing in the brain that I'm not – I can look at it right now logically with either dispassionate or emotionally with passion and go, this is terrible. This is – I want – I'm going to take care of my kids. I'm going to be a responsible dad, especially because of what I went through. Absolutely. But is there a switch that this thing happens that allows you to turn all that off, justify, you know, irresponsible, selfish behavior? you know, irresponsible, selfish behavior. Not that I demonstrated that before, but that was like, you know, like a genetic thing, like, oh, maybe I have Tay-Sachs, maybe something's in there. I don't know. How the fuck do I know? And I, it was something that was with me for a long time. And as my wife and I discussed, you know, having a family, like, let's have some kids. And it was always, it's something I brought up to her too, of course. And I didn't think it was going to be the case, but how would you know? And then if it happened, there's this thing that allows you to but how would you know and then if it happened there's this thing

that allows you to justify that you know somehow and um i was always uh really afraid of that um and because here's the thing and you know i say this as if it couldn't happen, but I'm saying this to you right now in this – with a logic and a heart that says there's no way. I mean, I haven't demonstrated that at all. I've done the exact opposite almost to a, you know, egregious degree. But who knows? Maybe it happens. Maybe I find myself at a bar sometime going like, yeah. Because here's what I imagine my dad doing is,

not that he sat down with a pen and paper and went, oh, here's a pro list of, you know, being a good dad. And here's a con list, you know, let's weigh out the pros and cons. I just think he's the kind of person that didn't even take that into account or or that wasn't part of his mindset i think he just kind of woke up one day and the nagging feeling that was there he had to address which was yeah i thought i'd be into it but i'm'm kind of not. So I'm going to take off.

Yeah, I'm out, guys. And which is what he did. He's like, I need to, you know, whatever bullshit he told my mom, you know, I need to get my head together in order to, you know, be a better person and whatever. But that was clearly not his. He never intended to at all. He was never coming back. When he left, even though he kind of intimated that, you know,

this is for the best for me and I'll, you know, get my shit together and, you know, whatever, I'll be the greatest dad and husband ever. That, it was just an excuse to get far, far away. And so, you know, I just, it's that fear that like, am I going to go, you know what? I'm not into being married or being a dad. I don't like this. I think I just made a mistake. Whoopsie doodle. And so, yes, I thought about that quite a bit, especially as my daughter was coming to fruition. And then – I'm with you on this.

I don't – parenting is a long game. And I don't ever see me not talking to my daughter or anything. But what if there's a boyfriend and I know he's not a good dude and I'm like, look, I'm not crazy about that guy. And that's enough for her to say that I'm not talking to you or whatever. Then who knows? You have to figure out how to work that out, right? Let down the line. But do you find yourself – here's my next question is, do you also find yourself overcorrecting

because of that fear? Yes. that fear yes and i i i have learned uh like if we had another kid i would not uh go about it the same way and i know uh parents have that uh relationship with you know uh first second third fourth yes of course and you know you learn uh i know that that's as old as time but i heard this saying the other day that you raise your kids so you can spoil your grandkids because if you spoil your kids you're going to be raising your grandkids and i was like god that's fucking that's a good one we powerful but so then i worry because i was the same way my mom was this kid is spoiled abusive and left the fucking family so i also was like fuck is that a gene in me i had the same fear that's why i asked and then there are times where i do find myself overdoing and i'm like you got

two of almost what people say what is what is your daughter want for i'm like my daughter doesn't need a thing my daughter genuinely like i know we're all doing a good job as parents because there's not a thing. My daughter, she wants things, but there's nothing she needs. We have an abundance. And I always teach her too, like if you want new stuff,

then we donate old stuff to kids who are not like you. There are kids out there, I tell her that don't even have parents and that blows her mind. Like what? I'm like, yeah, that happens. So let's help other kids too. Well, yeah. I can't say that I've been wildly successful at that. Again, she just turned six,

so maybe that'll hopefully come in the next few years. But that's been literally that exact conversation numerous times. But she also goes to – we're in Brooklyn and she goes to public school. So there are kids that are not even remotely as well off or, you know, like there are kids who, you know, have, eat breakfast at school because they, that's part of, that's a program. And the parents can't necessarily afford, and they've got to work longer hours so they can't even be there you know they're working 13 hours a day yeah i was a free lunch kid i was oh i i was too but ticket i had to show the ticket in front of everybody like a loser we felt like a loser for that. I got to say, a lot of the – it wasn't until later that there were affluent kids in the schools I went to, at least in Georgia. So it wasn't that uncommon, the free lunch and free breakfast.

But yeah, this kid is, I mean, maybe spoiled. I don't know. We'll have a better idea fairly shortly, and we won't really know until she's 16, 17, 18. We'll see. But you said if you had another kid, you would do it differently. What would you do differently? Well, yes, I felt such guilt about not being there for her constantly, which is absurd. Um, if I went to, you know, like if, uh, daycare was something, you know, if I was like, oh, can you stay an extra hour or whatever?

And I go to the pub, uh, and have a beer, have a pint or two. I think I come, I'm not there with her when I should be. And I did something really, again, in hindsight, being 2020. I went on a tour. And she was with me. She and my wife. I had a tour bus. This is a big, big tour. And I can't tour this way anymore because she's in school now.

And I can't tour this way anymore because she's in school now. But so now I kind of, you know, do like four or five dates, come back for, you know, the weekdays and then go out for the weekends. But before she was in school, like I, you know, I'd have like a four month long tour. And for most of that, we had a pack and play installed in the room in the back. and play installed in the room in the back and um it was my wife my my wife is uh uh an author and had put a book out in the last two tours it had simultaneously uh had a book release so she would go and do bookstores um and i would go do a show and then oh yeah yeah yeah it was great. And our daughter would be in the – with us. And when I went to Europe, I always do a European leg and, you know, normally I'd be – if I'm doing Europe, I'm there for minimum three weeks, giving myself some breaks, enjoying myself, going, oh, I've got a free day in Antwerp, you know, whatever. Although people are kind of douchey in Antwerp. They kind of are. They're not that pleasant.

Anyway, so I would, you know, normally, and my wife would be with me for a chunk and, you know, but I really enjoy being in Europe. And so, the last tour I did, I stupidly shaved off every possible moment so that I wouldn't miss an hour with my daughter, God forbid, who at this point is like, what, three? You know, I mean, they're not even awesome yet. You're right. They're not even right. They're not. So I go. I literally did the itinerary where I'm working every single night.

And I'm in Dublin. And then I'm in, you know, Leeds. And then I'm in, you know, whatever, Oslo. And then I'm in you know uh Leeds and then I'm in uh you know whatever uh uh Oslo and then I'm in Stockholm and I'm just not I just I only gave myself a couple extra days in London and uh and I flew in day of show for to Manchester was my first show and I was fucking bonkers I mean jet lag and trying to uh remember my stuff I had my notes on a table and I was fucking bonkers. I mean, jet lag and trying to remember my stuff. I had my notes on a table and I was telling them like, guys, I feel like I'm on drugs,

but I'm also being waterboarded, but I'm also covered in gummy bears. Like it was, and they were great. The audience is very forgiving and it wasn't that bad, but man, I was, my brain was scrambling to fucking do it. And I'd been up for, I was just a zombie. Went, although I did a show, the last show I did in Europe was in Amsterdam.

The next morning got on a, had to make a connection. Went Amsterdam to Manchester, back to new york uh also i could only be gone for whatever 12 13 days tops no no you know just traveling everything you know and um doing the show in amsterdam and then getting up at 4 30 in the morning to get to the airport, to get to Manchester, to get to New York. I walk home. I got my suitcase, and she's on the couch. The TV, her back is to me on the couch watching cartoon. And, you know, I come in with my bags,

and my wife's like, guess who's home? A very special somebody who misses you, whatever. And I'm sorry if you're only listening to this, but imagine the back of my head is to you, and like, look who it is. And this is what my daughter does. Visually, this is what my daughter did. Cartoons over here, she goes like that. She goes.

That's all you got that was all i got and i was like i am never doing this again you have no kid you have no fucking idea what i just went through not even a hello not even a hi daddy not even hello you don't have to run up and hug me you don't have to just a yes acknowledgement a smile i will never fucking do that again so good dude so stupid that's always um all right also that's our trauma right where i want to make sure i get i was the same way like i want every moment i want all this so you had emailed into about your anxiety where does your anxiety come from what do you have anxiety about i i don't know where it comes from and i i i've had it since i was a kid i didn't know it was anxiety till much much later

me too i was like oh i never thought i had anxiety and i was a kid. I didn't know it was anxiety until much, much later. Me too. I was like, oh, I never thought I had anxiety. And I was like, wait, that's what, but I had, uh, two little freak outs or I, you know, tore shit up and I put my hand through a window and it cut my, you know, I did all this stuff and I, um, you know, freaked out my, my mom and my family, of course. And I had two of those. Well, one, when I was like, oh gosh, uh, Oh, gosh. You know, probably, let's say, 12, 13, and then another a little later when I was about 16, where I, you know, just snapped and I, you know, never saw it as anxiety. I always thought it was just depression in the simplistic umbrella term, because I was depressed and things were depressing. I thought that's what it was. And then many, many, many years later, ended up going to a therapist, getting talked into it. I didn't want to do it. I kind of went in reluctantly, ignorantly. I look back on that as just one of the dumbest, ignorant, prideful,

stupid things. I mean, so even still when I'm in therapy, the therapists tell me that we're among, it's not many men that go. Yeah. You know, it's a small percentage, unfortunately. And I'm not like, it wasn't like a machismo thing. It was more like, I mean, I'll tell you what it was. It was, and this is probably true for most people, it was really going, you know, acknowledging my weakness and a thing that I always thought I can handle this, I can deal with this, it's fine. And I was raised, I was, you know, when my dad left, when I was, you know, when I was 10, my mom, I remember my mom saying, we were driving the car, and she's like, well, it's, you know, you're going to have to be the man of the family now. And I didn't want, I was just turned 10, a little early.

I mean, listen, no offense, but the bar is set low, man. You didn't have to do too much, Dave. I wish I had thought of that. You didn't have to do too much. You'd be like, I can leave too whenever I want. Oh, so I don't have to contribute a thing? Okay. I can emotionally manipulate you? Alright. Great. That's a lot, man. Oh, if I'd only had the foresight. So yeah, so I started seeing this therapist who was great. I mean, just a

lifesaver, amazing, amazing lady. And she said, I think you need to see a psychiatrist because I think we should talk about some medication. And she's like, here's this guy that I work with, he's great. And then when I went to this new guy who was – it's so funny. I don't know if you've had this experience, but I – so the therapist I went to was very warm and, you know, empathetic, as a therapist should be, I suppose. And, uh, but the psychiatrist, you know, who's the one with a different, uh, different training, different set of degrees, who's, you see a psychiatrist cause they can prescribe you medication. And that's why she sent me to him. And the therapist is trained to, uh, you know, help you work out your, come to understandings, work out your, your issues. And, uh and uh and they this guy was like you know

scientist uh uh and they could not have been he was just yes don't mean and just writing and just nothing no no work nothing here here's a prescription um i'm not knocking it i'm just saying they're two wildly different things but so I went and saw him for a little while. And he gave me this prescription. And he's the one who said, all right, this is for anxiety. You have anxiety. And I was like, I don't think I have anxiety. I don't think that's the issue. He's like, no, it's exactly you have anxiety.

That's what this is going to help treat. And it was a real eye-opening experience because again he wasn't sugarcoating anything he's just as a psychiatrist saying clinically this is what you have and depression can come under you know can be a manifest itself in many different ways and and it wasn't until like that was late in life. I was like, oh, and then of course everything made sense. Everything, yes. The way that I am when my wife and I, before I met her, I had a house, a tiny little house built in upstate in the woods in New York. And then the way once we got together and when we'd go up there for six days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever, and then when we were leaving, I just turned into an asshole. And it

was like, not an asshole, like mean or anything, but just like, okay, unpleasant to be with. Like, okay, we got to be out here. I don't want to hit traffic and da-da just like, okay, unpleasant to be with. Like, okay, we gotta be out here. I don't wanna hit traffic and da-da-da. And this has to look like this. And those aren't things that I, I'm not like that. I'm not anal like that. I'm not a neat freak. I'm not, but if things aren't kind of this way

and they need to be this way. And it started getting worse and worse after having, because the thing is, I had gone off my medication because I told my wife when we were going to get married, I was like, you know, I've been on this stuff, as she knew. And I think you should know who I am without it, you know? I think that's just fair, you know? It's not a Jekyll and Hyde thing. They're just differences. It takes the edge off. It does these things. And, um, and so I went off of the medication, which I wanted to do anyway. Um, and then it was manageable. Uh, and then once my daughter started going to school,

uh, which is relatively recently, uh, it got bad again. And it's bad to the point where, I mean, I'm going to see another psychiatrist and I'm going to get the meds back because I'm... Yeah, what are you struggling with? I'm just unpleasant. I'm like... And not as a roommate or a husband or a partner, but as a dad where like getting her to school and I can hear it and I tell, and I say in my head like, chill out. It's okay.

You can be three minutes late. It's okay if she doesn't have her shoes on at 8.12. You know, we're going to be fine. And I'm saying this to myself, but I'm still like, that's not what we do it. No, okay. Well, and I'm acting in way,

you're like, I'm putting guilt on her and all this shit. And it's like, fucking chill out. We can't be late. That's the thing. At this school, if you're a minute late,

they write that shit down and they call you and tell you like, hey, I'm like, fuck, so now we got down. You're giving me anxiety. Right, right, right. Right, I would... Okay, I would say to you,

what I would say to me is like, who cares if the school calls you because you're two minutes late? Fuck you. We're two minutes late. We're in LA. I've got a kid. There are a million mitigating factors.

And yes, I will try to do better, but I'm not gonna. I've got a kid. There are a million mitigating factors. And yes, I will try to do better, but I'm not going to take that out on my kid. I'm not going to yell at a five-year-old, you know, well, figure out how your skirt goes on. You put it on the wrong way. Yeah, right. And now that's why it's itchy. Now take, I mean, that is not cool. Yeah, it's not okay. I don't want to do that. And I can it's gotten worse once you got to school started. And it really, I knew that I'm like, okay, I got to take care of this shit because we were playing a video game.

So there's this, I recommend this to parents if you're looking for a game. There's, I just looked up E, you know, an E-rated game to play with my daughter. And there's a game called Rainbow Billy – I don't know the rest of it. Rainbow Billy and the World of Imagination or something like that. It's really good. It teaches your kids. I didn't know that. I just saw that it was, you know, E for everybody and it's this very cartoony thing.

And you're trying to bring color back to the world of imagination all right it seems simplistic enough but um uh anyway she's playing this game that's designed for children little children and and i'm like sitting next to her and this is also part of like daddy daughter time you know we it's you know my wife doesn't play with her nobody else plays with her we play and we have a good time but I'll find myself talking to a five well she's six now but five year old

going like no okay you're gonna fall off the thing alright well you just fell off okay well now we have to start over what is wrong with me it's a kid I'm sucking the joy I'm sucking the joy. I'm competitive, okay?

I'm sucking the joy out of this experience because of my fucking dumb, useless. You know what else sucks, too, is our parents were never part of a video game generation, so they could never come up and sit and do that. You have played. You'd be like, God damn it. I told you to jump. Well, shit. It's not okay.

Marla, can you just give me the controller? Can I just get us to the magic mushroom? Because we can't jump to the other platform where the coins are unless we have a magic... Okay, well, then that's fine. You do it yourself then. You know, just shitty, awful, not a good way to be with your kid.

And I know it. And I know it. And I tell myself and I try to do better. But I'm telling you, it's just, it's really come back in a noticeable way. I could always kind of, you know, manage it. And also I know what I'm doing. And I'd say, you know, before before Marlo was born I'd say to my wife like I'm sorry okay you're right

alright you didn't say anything but I know you're right whatever you think is right I gotta okay we're gonna be okay it's fine and and then you know again once she once she got into school

it just really came roaring back, and I got to deal with it. So I'm going to have to deal with it. Listen, this has been an awesome episode. I know there was other things. I think the internet will be the judge of that, Ryan. They will. They will. But I want to say this.

Look, I was so stoked to hear you wanted to be on here and have you on. I'm a huge fucking fan i mean i also love all of your choices you've have such a range i mean obviously i'm you go all the way back to mr show but tobias is a fucking yeah one of my faves i got lucky on that one man still one of my faves and then kirsten reminded me i think she said it was a scary movie too you're in a wheelchairchair. Yeah. But there's so many fucking things. And I love you and I love your choices.

And I really appreciate you coming on and doing this show. Absolutely. My pleasure. This is fucking awesome. We were having this conversation before we started rolling about the positive things about podcasts. the positive things about podcasts and how – and this is a great example of, you know, came out here, want to promote the tour. You know, here's a bunch of stuff and there's – everything's changed and it's – and these are literally the most enjoyable way to do that thing that you have to do as opposed to a junket or the tonight show or the serious radio tours or the, you know, 20 conversations with local

newspapers for 12 minutes where they're asking you the same questions. This, we had a real conversation. I got to know you. Your audience gets to know me, you know, and we're talking about real things. And it was a pleasure. Thank you, man. No, know you. Your audience gets to know me. And we're talking about real things, and it was a pleasure. Thank you, man. No, thank you. The other thing, too, about podcasting that I love is they're getting to know David Cross versus, again, I'll go back, Tobias.

They come to see you because they love that character. People that love podcasting and listen to podcasts come out to see you because they love David Cross when you get your show going. They really get to know you every week. You know what I mean? They really know who you are. You get less walkouts that way. Yeah, you do. Like, I thought this guy was going to do it. Oh, you know, I don't know what a show would be like if i didn't have somebody walking out going what the fuck what in the um something i ask every guest first time here after everything

we've talked about now advice you would give to your 16 year old self uh 16 was a particularly bad year. It seems to be that for a lot of people. It seems to be the right age for a lot of people. Throughout history. Yeah, I know. I'm saying that like I'm some sort of unicorn that only I feel like I've experienced. I would I mean I'm gonna think about the answer

to that question knowing that I'm talking to the kind of person I'm talking to who might not be receptive to and probably wouldn't be receptive to a 58 year old person saying hey here's what you need to do

kid probably wouldn't be receptive to a 58 year old person saying hey here's what you need to do kid so I would say you know I guess probably I was just starting to become a little bit more understanding about patience and the long game so I try to appeal to that and say, assuming in this crazy scenario that the person doesn't know that I'm really the 58-year-old version of himself, because otherwise that would blow his mind. And I wouldn't believe it. I just wouldn't believe it. Why would I? So it's just a random guy who happens to look like the aged version of the 16-year-old.

I'm going, look, you're going to make a lot of bad choices. You're going to overcompensate for your insecurities by drinking a lot and doing drugs, and that's okay. It is actually okay. Just be careful. I know you will be, because I know. But be careful. But this is easier said than done, but be patient. Pick your battles, and your choices are going to be okay, and you're always going to, you just have to be honest with yourself, because you won't make good choices if you're not honest with yourself.

And it's okay to make bad choices. It's okay to make mistakes. Be honest with yourself. And that will lead you to getting through some of the bad choices. And also, believe in yourself a little less than you do right now because you're a bit cocky for my taste. You've got nothing to show for it. Hey, asshole, you've got nothing. Where's the arrogance coming from?

You've got nothing to show for it. You will, but you don't right now. That resonates hard. That's great, man. Again, promote everything one more time please the tour starts on March 2nd and it's called the worst

daddy in the world tour you can find all the places I'm playing and where to get tickets at my website official davidcross.com there I think there are about 40 dates right now don't worry I promise there are going 40 dates right now. Don't worry.

I promise there are going to be others. We're working on them now. We're going to do this in two different legs, maybe even three. So if your town isn't up there right now, it probably will be in the future. And it'll start March 2nd. It's going to run through October. All right. Thank you again, man.

This has been awesome. Absolutely, my pleasure. Yeah. As always, ryansickler.com, Ryan Sickler on all social media. We'll talk to you all next week. Thank you.