Get Off My Lawn Podcast #73 | You ever been shot with a super soaker while reading the newspaper?
What was supposed to be a funny episode about all the cute things my five-year-old does, quickly spirals out of control and becomes an angry old man rant about water, elaborate drinks, and the fact that 100% of kids in America are addicted to staring at various screens. If they’re not playing a video game they’re watching a video of someone else playing a video game and this constant over stimulation is leaving them with no creativity and unable to play like normal kids. It’s an epidemic and it’s destroying an entire generation’s childhood.
You ever been shot with a super soaker when you're reading the paper?
It's really loud.
You wouldn't think it's as loud as it is, but it is as loud as it is.
I was reading the New York Times, which I don't really do anymore.
This story is kind of old.
My wife would always get the Sunday Times and I would hate read it just to drive myself crazy.
It's so, it's, this liberal media, they don't even, they're not even aware of how biased they are.
Like, I just saw a news piece about the Patriot Prayer Rally, and clearly the guy doing the story was on the side of the alt-left, and one of his questions to Joy Gibson was, aren't you just provoking them by going over there and trying to get beat up?
Nice question.
And then when he talked to the lefties, he said, um, he said, uh, shouldn't we just stay home?
We.
He used the word we.
Anyway, I'm not trying to get into that, so I'm just explaining why I had such a huge newspaper.
I usually read the New York Post.
By the way, Even the shape of the New York Times is irritating.
And when you're on the train and someone unfurls this giant tarp of a newspaper that they've got to hold up like they're holding up a giant protest placard, it's massive.
And inevitably, if you're on the train, unless you're an origami expert and you can fold it into a shape where you can see, unless you're that good at folding, you're holding it into someone's face.
So it's, it's lib-spreading, no matter how you slice it.
The New York Post just sits in your hands.
Minds its own business.
You can read it.
It's got silly little salacious local stuff at the beginning and gossip, then there's the heavier pieces towards the end of the first half, and then it's all sports.
Perfect paper.
A little too much sports for my liking, but whatever.
Anyway, so I'm reading The Times, and uh, I just hear... Because it's surrounding your face.
So when someone blasts you with a super soaker, the drops each sound like... So there's... And then the sound sort of reverberates around your head.
So it's... I'm very high strung.
I'm one of these guys.
If you say boo or jump out, I scream and start punching.
My dad was the same way.
I used to scare him a lot as a kid.
I'm actually a scare expert now.
I've even worked volunteer... I've even volunteered at a haunted house.
And here's the key to scaring people.
You don't go BOO!
That's... that's for amateurs.
What you do is you walk at them, right?
And you talk.
Like, are we gonna be going over there on Friday?
Because they don't have a file for that in their brains.
And that's the best scare.
The worst thing you can do is give them context and explanation.
And boo comes with a whole con... Oh, that's someone scaring me.
I get it.
Yeah.
Someone walking at you and explaining something and moving towards you, now you're sort of falling backwards and you don't understand what the hell this person's doing.
Now, when I was working, this was in Brooklyn, my friend Jeff Jensen's house, his local park was converted into a haunted pathway.
By the way, all these Mexicans and Puerto Ricans were bringing their toddlers to this super, like we had a chainsaw, we had really spooky ghosts, like it was a scary, scary place.
It's for adults to scare them, like guys with an axe and everything.
And then these Hispanics were bringing their toddlers.
I'm like, okay, I have to scare your child.
The kids are bawling their eyes out.
But my costume for that was just a tuxedo with dishwashing gloves turned inside out, so these big bulky white gloves.
And then I made my whole face completely white, eyebrows and everything, but my mustache black.
I know that doesn't sound very scary, but trust me, it looks really weird.
And then when you walk at people going, hey man, are we going to be going?
And you just have this like, are we going to be going there on Friday?
Or what day is it?
And you walk at people like that.
They jump through bushes.
I mean, they poop their pants.
And I learned that skill from scaring my dad.
I would wait in his closet.
And he had a closet with doors that opened up instead of slide to the right and the left.
And as I saw the door opening, I would come out and go, Hi, there!
Are we gonna be going?
And I would just start walking at him, talking really fast.
And there's no file there.
It's not like Boo.
There's no file in their brain for person who is busy and is coming at me, I don't know, from my shirts.
So anyway, um, my boy does that.
And, uh, I pulled the paper down, and he's standing there.
He has no pants on.
This is last year, so he would be four.
And I was outside on the balcony.
This is at our old apartment.
So wait a minute.
He must have been three.
That must have been two years ago.
And he's got his super soaker, which is the same size as him.
He's got a t-shirt on, so his little penis is hanging down.
His legs are spread.
He's got the gun in his hand that it's as big.
It would be like if you were carrying an ironing board.
Like that's how big it looks on him.
And then he also has what appears to be blood all over his face.
And... So now I'm also freaking out.
So first there's the scare of the loud sound.
Then I look down and my son is bloodied.
And...
I think, wait a minute, as I'm slowly realizing it might be lipstick that he rubbed all over, not just his lips, but the entire bottom half of his face, like the Joker.
And I go, what happened?
And then he just goes, he pronounced the word all L's with a Y for a while, so he just says, yips, meaning lips.
And he just goes, yips, and then gives it another pump, and I get blasted again.
This was all in the space of, of like five seconds.
So... What happened to your... Yeah!
And then I'm blasted right in my face.
The other two aren't like that.
I have a 11 year old, a 10 year old, and a 5 year old.
But they, they don't attack me.
But Johnny, little Johnny Buffalo, he'll punch me in the face if I fall asleep on the couch or something.
He fights me all the time and his punches are good.
He's the one I did the How to Fight a Baby video that got, uh, 11 million, 13 million views.
He's not a baby anymore.
Now he's a little guy.
Now, it's an unfortunate thing with five-year-olds.
They start learning words.
Like, he, he thought the word termites was turd bites.
Uh, and he says when you spin around a lot, you get busy.
And, uh, there's a bunch like that.
And then they start saying them correctly.
Ugh.
I think actually I said to him, hey Johnny, what's it called when you spin around a bunch of times?
And I think he said, you get nauseous.
It's heartbreaking when they start to learn the English language correctly, really.
It's painful.
Painfully sad.
But, uh... I just... I was lying in bed the other night and my wife was out of town with the kids.
She took them to her mother's.
And I was just laughing, thinking about all the things he does.
How obstinate he is.
And how he'll just say no, or... If I say something to the kids, like, no more video games!
They'll cry.
If I punish them, they'll cry.
He doesn't cry when I get mad at him.
He just scowls.
This includes timeouts or everything.
I think I've even, like, slapped his hand if he, you know, punched his daughter.
Punched his sister in the face or something terrible.
I think it's okay to hit your kid, like, for the doozies, like running out onto traffic.
You want to save a spanking for that.
Not just, you know, they didn't finish their dinner.
But anyway, other kids would cry if I punished them.
But he just scowls, and then if I really push it, he won't get sadder, he'll get madder, and he'll say something like, you're shit.
Or, you're asshole.
Because I guess he's noticed that when I'm super mad, I swear.
So he goes, swearing is what you do when you're pissed.
I'm pissed.
You're shit.
That was cracking me up.
Or another thing that cracked me up is he had strep throat.
And I found that out the next day when I took him to the doctors.
But in the middle of the night he was just breathing weird and it sounded so phlegmy.
So I slept.
I stayed up next to him monitoring his breathing because I was worried his whole throat was going to close.
Didn't sleep and I at one point.
I sort of I thought if he could just cough now.
I was wrong by the way It wasn't phlegm it was swollen tonsils this so there was no coughing isn't gonna help you It's not like you have a loogie in your throat you have swollen things in your esophagus But I sort of sat him up, and I and so he's asleep, and I go Johnny Johnny wake up Wake up.
I need you to cough.
Cough.
And I finally got him sort of awake and he just shakes his head no and goes back to sleep.
I don't know why that cracked me up so much.
But I find it hilarious.
I find it hilarious that you're a grown up is trying to help you like take your medicine and all kids listen.
That's why you say don't talk to strangers because they they instinctually trust old people especially their parents.
Not this guy.
I need you to cough.
No, I'm not coughing.
I'm going back to bed.
Fuck you.
Okay.
I'm telling you though, as a parent, this Fortnite thing is getting to crack levels.
Epidemic, serious, bad stuff.
It's getting, and it's got to the point now where you'll be at a bar with another dad and inevitably it gets to, so what are you doing about Fortnite?
Oh, well, we... I can tell you what I'm doing at Gavin McInnes.
I built a lockbox, and I put it all in there, and they get an hour and 15 minutes on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then nothing for the rest of the week.
But even that is crippling them.
Like, I took the kids to the beach on the weekend, and they just didn't know what to do with themselves.
I said to my daughter, I go, did your best friend drown this morning?
What the hell's the matter with you?
They're just moping.
And I honestly believe that it screens.
It kind of reminds me of Amy Winehouse where she was winning some award and she'd quit heroin and she, as she was growing up to get the award, she whispered to her friend, this is so boring without drugs.
So heroin had provided all her joy, and then anything without heroin sucked after that.
And it's getting this way with these kids and screens.
Now, my kids don't play lacrosse.
I don't really... I don't really get the appeal, but in the suburbs, everyone's into lacrosse, and every lawn has a lacrosse training thing where you whip the ball into the thing.
What are we, Apaches 200 years ago?
But, uh, I was talking to another dad, and he coaches lacrosse, and he said, I've been doing this for 24 years.
Every year, my team starts out okay, and then they slowly get better, and by the end, they're really good.
And part of that is those nets I just told you about, and practicing, and working on their own, and working on throwing and catching in the park with their friends, and practicing and practicing.
Obviously, the games aren't that much lacrosse, you know?
Even if you probably play every three days or something, that's not getting better.
And he said, for the first time ever, My team didn't improve and he goes it's because they're playing fortnight It's and it's a game where you're shooting people so you have little kids running around with various guns Shooting people and you also build stuff and it's like Minecraft meets Call of Duty meets You know some other stupid.
I don't like video games.
I think they're a fucking waste of time I can't believe people play them We had them when we were little kids, and then we started liking girls.
And so, we would only play video games at the arcade where girls are, and then we would go hang out where girls are and not play the video games and try to get in their pants.
Now you have 34 year olds going, I'm Superman!
I'm flying through the sky!
Look at- Ooh, now I'm Spider-Man!
Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun!
Spider-Man!
Spider-Man!
I'm a 34-year-old Spider-Man!
I'm shooting bad guys with my webs!
I'm a pretend guy!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Fuckin' Call of Duty.
I'm in the military!
I'm a soldier!
I'm fight- It's the same with pornography.
I hate pornography.
I'm that guy.
Oh yeah, I'm pretending that I'm a guy.
Fuckin' a hot chick.
That would be cool if that was the case.
Well then go make it the case.
Why are you watching someone else have sex?
And in both cases, by the way, your brain goes, wow, uh, you are laying a lot of tens.
You had, like, five tens today.
I'm going to reward you with endorphins when you do that, and then I'm going to deny you them when you're walking down the street and doing other stuff.
So I stole most of this from this brilliant documentary called Your Brain on Porn.
It's why I quit porn.
We started as a dare with this comedian Dante Nero and then we were corresponding with each other going, have you noticed that you sort of hum when you walk down the street now?
And he's like, dude, I have superpowers and I've never been so laid.
And I noticed my marriage improved when I quit too, because I only have one source.
For the Humana Humana and the Hound Dog.
And if that tap's cut off, I die of thirst.
Hundreds of thousands of marriages are destroyed by porn, by the way.
So the way porn thinks... Your brain just assumes you're Genghis Khan, and you're traveling from city to city, inseminating all these tens.
So it says, go Genghis, go.
But that's not happening.
So when the reality, when your brain finds out you were lying to it, it punishes you.
And it's the same with video games.
Your brain goes, well, you're kind of a badass.
You just shot 10 bad guys and you rescued your friends from getting shot.
You carried your fellow Marines on your shoulders.
I'm going to reward you with endorphins and make everything else crappy because I want to reward that behavior.
Evolution has taught us that heroes need to be rewarded with endorphins and you get more heroes and they breed more.
So your brain is just, you're rewiring your brain, literally.
And by the way, guys, you can join the military.
Like, there's so many attainable fantasies.
It kind of annoys me, kind of annoys me with these thrill seekers too.
I've talked to Terry Shepard about this.
When I see you in those flying squirrel suits, jumping off a cliff and stuff, I go, can't you just be in the army saving lives?
Like, can't you be fighting for us, shooting bad guys?
Why are you fantasizing about such an attainable goal?
Not when I play Superman, though.
Okay, I admit that being Superman is not attainable.
I guess I understand your logic there.
But you realize what Superman and Spider-Man were created for, right?
Seven-year-olds who are getting bullied at school and need a release.
So we provide these poor, sad, wimp children with a fantasy.
So they can feel better about themselves.
It's not true.
They're not really Spider-Man.
And the amount of grown men I see wearing Wolverine shirts breaks my heart.
It's up there with sandals, flip-flops, and cargo shorts.
It's up there with water while we're at it.
What is going on with this fucking water everywhere?
You're all brainwashed.
First of all, you don't need much water.
And if you do, grab a cup and take it from the tap.
I see people at the beach and stuff, and my son goes to a batting cage, and they're like, can I get a water, please?
And they'll get a water in a plastic thing.
You know that you can say to the same salesperson, can you just get me a cup and pour some water in it with some ice?
That's free.
The latter's free.
The former's $3.75.
They're both from the tap.
Poland Spring is from the tap.
They don't ship it here from a Polish spring.
You're just drinking tap water that's in a different shaped container.
And then they go, actually, I have a steel thermos, so I'm not hurting the environment.
A, I don't care about landfills.
We're doing fine for landfills.
So the idea that there's excess garbage is a myth.
And I know you're worried about turtles and plastic bags in the river.
Those rivers, there's like two of them that have the 90% of the world's trash, and they're both in China.
But, I am a little annoyed that you're buying all this stupid plastic.
But you, with the steel water bottle, what are we, in Nevada?
Are we in the fucking desert?
Why are you so concerned about dehydration?
At my boxing gym there's a sign, you know what it says?
It says, good fighters don't need water, bad fighters don't deserve it.
Drinking water at a boxing gym is a sin.
It's like, uh...
Cheating.
It's just people look at you and go, oh, I guess you're not serious.
Kind of disappointing.
You're pussying out, eh?
But I see people going on walks in the suburb.
A walk.
W-A-L-K.
A walk.
On a semi-cloudy day.
Not 90 degrees.
Like 76 degrees, and it's a husband and wife getting their little mile walk in.
By the way, mom and dad, that does absolutely nothing for you.
Walking a mile is totally irrelevant.
It's the same as sitting on your ass.
If you're not breaking a sweat, you're wasting your time.
But no, no, we got to get out.
I'm not talking about 90-year-olds.
I'm talking about my age, middle-aged people.
And both of them are carrying a steel water bottle, just in case somewhere along the mile walk One of them becomes dehydrated and dies.
I think I've found out there was one case of dehydration in all of America, and it was someone at a rave who was on MDMA and danced for 30 hours and didn't drink anything.
That's the only time it's happened.
These women, they've had to change the size of purses now.
Women carry these giant leather tote bags because they need five liters of water.
A giant thing of water in there.
I gotta stay hydrated.
Why?
And this is what really drives me nuts.
You go to a restaurant and before anything, all five of us, my three kids, me and my wife, we all are given these huge waters that are a foot tall, full of ice.
Kids get smaller ones with straws and then a big, big, huge pitcher of water.
We're about to order beverages.
Why are you giving us two beverages?
Now I order my beer and I have a giant thing of water and a beer.
How annoying is that?
And my wife doesn't have my back.
So the last time we went out for dinner, I go, no, no, no, we're not doing water.
We're not, no, no, no, no.
We're about to, the kids are about to order Sprites.
They don't need another water.
And my wife goes, no, no, no, we'll take it.
We'll take it.
And then she has three little waters before she orders her wine.
That's another thing that drives me nuts.
And my wife does it all the time.
I'll get a wine and a water, please.
And a water?
Ryan tried to do this the other day, my engineer.
Ryan Katsu Rivera.
We go to the bar, and he's like, Yeah, I'm just gonna go to water, thanks.
No, you're not.
Get out of the bar, then.
Oh my god, I was in D.C.
at the hotel, and there was this fucking irritating group.
Really, I don't know what happened to bullying, but it is making nerds and losers really proud of themselves.
And they go to bars and they talk loudly like no one's gonna wedgie them, because no one is.
And it's, I think it's one of the worst things we've ever done, is outlawing bullying.
I don't think there's an in crowd in high school anymore.
I think the fat ugly people don't get teased, they're fine.
They could be the prom king.
The whole hierarchy's shattered.
Now everyone's the same in high school.
I've even noticed loud annoying people at bars.
Like I was at this bar the other day and me and the bartender were talking about bar rescue and this 22 year old keeps getting into our conversation going, yeah I saw a show, well not like that, but it was Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
I'm looking at him going, dude you need to shut up.
We're both three times your age.
Show some respect.
Like, I go to the Knights of Columbus where I'm the baby.
Everyone there is 70, and I shut my mouth.
If I have the most insanely hilarious joke, and it's quick, and it's a little quip, I can't resist peppering the conversation with a zinger, but it'll be like a laugh-out-loud zinger.
If I have anything less than a neutron bomb to deliver, I shut my mouth.
I haven't earned it yet.
Not the kids today.
Anyway, I'm at the bar and this ugly, fat, I assumed was a lesbian, but no, just an ugly housewife who cut her hair like a weird boy because it's more comfortable that way, and she has no intention of being remotely attractive.
Big, fat, ugly, androgynous-looking wife.
Poor, poor husband.
And she comes up and she goes, yeah, I'm going to order something that's a giant pain in the ass because women aren't meant to drink alcohol, so they have to trick their bodies with some elaborate, Fruity punch that takes the bartender about five minutes to make and we're all waiting for our normal drinks like Budweiser's and Maker's Mark on the rocks and she's there shaking and stirring and got the fruit juice and the blue crap and the little olive and then she says this, oh and then just like uh and then I'll just have five waters for the table.
So wait a minute, you are hanging out with five lame people?
I mean, it's annoying when one person orders a water, but there's five people that are all annoying, and they're all together.
Five people that don't get how irritating it is to order a water.
I told you about the guy, I'm sure I told you about the Blackberry Margarita incident, right?
Me and my buddy Sebastian, when we ran an ad agency, which was shut down for my- because they- no one likes my views on trans people.
I wrote an article that basically said trans people are just mentally ill gays, they're not women.
And huge backlash, shut down the ad agency, 15 people out of a job.
Now, we had just sold it to a bigger company called Havas, so we made millions.
So we were fine.
But all the young people lost a job.
Because of my views that I wrote somewhere else.
Had nothing to do with the ad agency, but they found out where I worked.
Anyway, so Sebastian and I had this great technique where you don't buy first class, you buy coach, but you get shit faced and you get the latest flight you can to LA and you wake up six hours sleep and the flight is instantaneous.
Like you sit down, And then, as you're putting on your seatbelt, the stewardess grabs your shoulder and goes, sir, we're in LA.
And you go, oh, did you separate my molecules?
Is this the TARDIS?
Are we on Star Trek?
No, sir, it was a six and a half hour flight.
You must have conked out the second you sat down.
So that's what you do.
It has backfired once.
One time I was by myself, and I got so blind drunk that I managed to make it to the gate.
And then they go, uh, sir, the flight's been delayed 30 minutes.
And I go, uh-oh, that wasn't part of the formula.
I'm a bomb.
I'm about to go off.
And then I woke up, still at the gate, and it was one in the morning.
And that sucks.
There's the black guy with the buffing machine.
The thing that buffs the marble floors or whatever?
He's the only guy there.
And your brain doesn't want you to know the bad news.
So your brain lies.
Because it knows you can't handle the truth.
And your brain goes, don't worry about it, Gav.
Just go down and get the next flight.
There's probably a flight.
The airport's not closed.
You're fine.
It's just not very populated right now.
It's late.
But there's a 1am.
There's a 2am.
There's a 3am.
There's tons of flights.
And then you get to the gate, the actual ticket counter, and you see this steel cage slammed down, and you go, you're a stupid idiot, sir.
You have to take a cab back into the city, sleep for two hours at your friend's house, and then get to 5 a.m.
But, so we're rushing in the airport, and please forgive me if you've already heard this story, but we get there and vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv And she's where she don't belong.
They don't belong on pirate ships.
They don't belong in barber shops.
They don't belong in bars.
And this stupid bitch has ordered a blackberry margarita.
And so Sebastian is doing that thing with his brain, where his brain won't let him accept the fact that we might not get wasted before a flight, because we were late for the flight.
So I think they were boarding.
And it's possible we won't get one drink in.
Before the flight.
My brain is handling that.
He goes, can we get a, can we get, and the guy's ignoring him, shaking, and he's got a blender out with blackberries in it.
And Sebastian's like, can we, excuse me, excuse me, can we get, and the guy eventually goes, sir, I will get to you shortly.
And I look at Sebastian and I go, dude, let's find this bitch and kill her.
He ends up making two blackberry margaritas, which are just as tall as the things, the waters that I told you about earlier.
And then, to make matters worse, they order a water.
And to make matters worser, it was two guys.
And to make matters worst, they weren't gay.
So, I want to- I want them to die.
Oh, and then to make matters worse-es-y worse-es-est, there's a woman next to them.
Guess what she's drinking?
A fucking beer.
You know, that thing that takes five seconds and doesn't waste anyone's time?
And I think here I am being sexist, and men are way worse than women.
This isn't a dyke.
This is like a nice lady with a skirt and a fucking Stella Artois.
So Sebastian's like, can you believe these cocksuckers?
And I go, no, I don't think we're going to get this fight because I think I'm going to get arrested.
I'm going to fight them.
So we order our makers to order doubles, which is insanely expensive at an airport.
It's like thirty-five dollars.
Slam those.
Two doubles.
We managed to get four drinks in us.
Spend like a hundred bucks.
It'd be cheaper to upgrade.
Wait, have I already talked about this?
And uh...
And then I think I have to attack them.
Now I could just go the normal route and say, what the fuck are you guys doing?
What are those?
But I invented this thing you can do when someone annoys you.
Pretend to be a tourist.
So, like, say there was black guys dancing in the poles in the subway.
You know, and they're like, hey man, we're called the Floor Freaks, and if you could help donate.
And they put down a boombox and they start spinning around the poles.
And you want to go up to them and risk your life by saying, what the hell are you guys doing dancing around?
If you hit me, or you even come close to, I'm going to murder all of you.
Grow up, by the way.
What are you, dancing?
Does your father know?
Oh, you don't know your father?
Good.
Because if you knew him, he'd be ashamed that you're a professional subway dancer.
And you obviously can't do that.
But what you could do is you could pretend to be really enthusiastic.
And you could say, Hello, excuse me, I'm from Poland.
Um, this is a very interesting dance that you go on the pole.
Oh, yeah, thanks, man.
It's called fucking Subway Floor Freaks.
And then you go, Oh, this is like stripper.
Strippers also dance on poles, do they not?
And now you managed to sneak an insult in, but you don't get killed because you're pretending you're just a dumb Polish guy who doesn't understand the culture.
I've also, uh, I've done that with cabbies, too.
You know how they talk and talk and talk?
And one thing I like to do to torment them is, uh... Uh, I'm sorry, are you talking to me?
Oh, no.
I am talking to my friend.
My friend is on phone.
Oh!
Oh, that's... Are you gay?
Not!
What did you say to me?
I'm really sorry, it's just that in my culture, it's usually gays and 13-year-old girls who talk on the phone that much.
So I know you're not a 13-year-old girl, so I was confused.
No, not gay!
Okay, I apologize.
Jeez, I'm just trying to get to know you.
Anyway, with these guys, I had a tartan jacket.
And I said, uh, hey gentlemen, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Yes, you know, I'm just a bit curious.
I couldn't help but notice those drinks.
What are those?
And they go, oh, there are blackberry margaritas.
It's kind of a tradition with him and I when we come here.
Imagine having a blackberry margarita tradition with your fucking friend.
Hey Gary, it's blackberry margarita day.
Oh, we'll go to JFK and we'll have our classic blackberry margaritas that waste everyone's time.
And I go, um, and I go, that's curious.
And then you also got a water.
Water's hard to say with a Scottish accent.
And they go, yeah.
And then I go, I also couldn't help but notice that the woman next to you is drinking a beer.
And they go, they start laughing.
And they go, I know, right?
And then one of them goes, not normal.
Now I'm mad.
It didn't work.
I'm trying to just antagonize them a little bit like the floor freaks on the subway without getting stabbed or sent to jail.
But these guys are having a great time.
And they think it's funny that they're not normal.
Now I'm fu- the not normal really just set me off and I broke character, but I kept it Scottish.
And I said, uh, GET A FUCKING SPRAY TAN TOO!
And then stormed away.
But the moral of that story is, um, We're forgetting how to be human beings, and it's especially bad with kids.
They are forgetting how to play.
Going to the beach for my kids is torture.
The five-year-old, he doesn't mind.
He's cool.
He's so fucking funny, too.
I've been tweeting some of the things he said.
Like yesterday, we're watching a... we're watching a...
Strange Brew, Bob and Doug McKenzie, and we have these gigantic pillows.
Like, they're really long and about 8 feet by 4 feet.
These long tube pillows that you can make into a couch or anything.
And everyone's sitting on those and he jumps from the real couch over all the fake couch pillows and lands upside down and sort of bends his back all weird.
And then he's lying there and we're, my wife and I are concerned he broke his back because it was a huge jump and he's totally fearless.
And so my wife goes, Johnny, Johnny, are you okay?
And he's not moving for a second.
I go, Oh great.
He just killed himself.
And then he gets up and he goes, that was a whoopsie daisy.
And then goes back to the original couch to do it again.
Maybe he's right.
Maybe I am shit.
So he can appreciate the beach and he'll go catch crabs or something, but the other two are just like, this sucks, man.
My friends aren't here.
There's no screens.
So not Fortnite.
The beach.
You can make a sandcastle.
You can go get ice cream.
You can go swimming.
You can have a race.
You can go off the dock.
You can do a cannonball.
Go meet a kid.
They even ran into kids.
They knew him.
They're like, hey, see you later.
What the heck is going on?
You know what some parents do?
There's this thing called Unglue.
This is for your kids on phones, but they're developing it for Xbox too.
It costs a lot of money.
It's like 100 bucks a year, because it stores all this data.
But what it does is, it monitors a series of phones.
So say, it's for kids that are older, like say 10 to 14 or so.
And all these kids have their phones, and they're on them incessantly.
So, it monitors their phones, and you see how long they've been on, and you give them times they can be on the internet, and then you pull them off the internet.
And you can look at them and go, oh, you played 62 hours of that game, that game shut off, you can't access it now.
Now, it's always available as a phone.
So you can call, sometimes I'll see this mom, this mom that told me about it, she gets a call, And it's her son saying, can I just have ten more minutes?
We're stuck in traffic here on the school bus.
She'll go, okay.
She'll open up his internet for ten more minutes, and then shut it down again.
And then when they're like, I barely ever got to d-d-d!
You go, um... No, I can see here that you played 450 hours of Fortnite.
That's, uh, a lot.
And that's what it's come down to.
Monitoring these kids, trying to get them just to fucking play.
That's the biggest job as a parent, is to get kids away from screens and outside playing like we used to.
And I think the best ingredient for that is boredom.
I think the best thing you can do for a kid now is make them bored.
They're too amused and it kills their creativity, kills their ingenuity.
My son, now granted he put all his eggs in the baseball basket, but my middle son, you wouldn't have believed the stuff he made.
He made about 10 Slimers.
The last one looked exactly like Slimer.
He made a whole Robocop costume out of cardboard.
He would just build stuff all day.
Really cool things.
Guns.
He made this hand that had... It was like a prosthetic hand.
It was with straws and thread and if you pulled the cords on the bottom the hand would make a fist like it would contract.
All made of cardboard, straws, glue and thread.
And then he would draw, he'd do comic books, like 15-page comic books that had a plot.
A lot of them were pretty, uh, hurtful to me.
There was this entire series called Fat Dad, where I was not depicted with a very good body, and there was quite a few pratfalls that this character went through, including a lot of falling off buildings.
But anyway, that was fun and creative.
He even would copy them and sell them to his friends.
Now that's all gone.
None of that.
The daughter, Just reads books if I take away screens from her.
But, like, we moved to the suburbs because I was trying to recreate the 70s where kids just hop on their bikes and go get up to trouble.
I want the cops to come by.
I want the cops to be holding my son's arm going, is this your kid?
Why you...
I always had this fantasy of being a dad of seven boys and we're in a big house and they're all in like leather jackets and stuff and they're all with their heads bowed along one edge of a long dining room table where we all eat and I'm pacing back and forth and they're in big trouble because they stole a tractor and they drove it into a swamp and I had to pay the farmer and I'm coming up with their punishment.
It'll be harsh but I'm secretly kind of proud that they did something so bad.
They got up to such a high level of mischief.
Like I wanted to have a gang and obviously you're not gonna have a gang with a boy and a girl and a little five-year-old but where's the mischief?
Where's the trouble?
You know we would throw snowballs at cars.
We'd get in trouble all the time and we'd be in trees and yell at people and they didn't know where it was coming from and we'd steal from the local store and they'd call the cops and we'd go running.
The guy that I bought my house from told me that when he was a boy they would go to the park and they would call the cops on themselves.
And then with walkie-talkies, they would deke out the cops.
So they go, yes, hello, officer?
Uh, yeah, there's some, uh, bad kids.
Some of these wild youths running around, uh, State Park.
Uh, I'm gonna need you to go in there and clean it up.
Handle it.
They could be doing drugs.
And then they go, yeah, he's coming in.
Yeah, he's coming in.
You're just south of you now.
Yep, get down, get down.
That sounds awesome.
What a fun, stupid game.
We used to do that as kids.
We'd call, in junior high, we'd call the school as our moms, because a little boy sounds like a mom.
Hi.
Hello?
Hello?
Hi, yeah.
I'm Mrs. McInnes, and I'm really sorry, but Gavin is, he's sick, and I don't want him spreading whatever, I think it's measles.
So he's not going to be in today.
Okay, ma'am, no problem.
Now we just watch TV, eat ice cream, play with our neighbor's dad's guns, almost kill each other.
And when you finally get these kids, I'm talking about all kids in general now, all 11 year olds, when they're alone and they're in, say, the back of my car and I'm driving them to some baseball game, they're talking about Fortnite.
If you're not a parent or you're not a fucking loser who plays Fortnite, You probably don't know this, but it is like crack in the West Village in the 80s.
It's destroying lives.
It's destroying childhoods.
Now, I'm not one of these dummies that wants things outlawed.
I know they said the same thing about video games.
I've had some dads, by the way, who say, dude, what are you doing?
Stop fighting it.
They're living in a world of screens.
Let them look at their tablets and their iPads.
No, I'm not going softly into this good night.
I'm gonna rage, rage against the dying of the night.
Uh, because they talk about Fortnite incessantly, or even the youngest one, he'll say, he'll ask about his iPad.
He'll be like, hey dad.
Oh good, my son's talking to me.
He wants to ask me about birds or something, or what's the fastest animal?
I think it's the cheetah.
Dad, if I finish my whole dinner, can I get the white iPad?
Oh, for fuck, I'll just lose it.
I'm sick and tired about this iPad!
I'm sick of these goddamn screens, and I've built that lockbox.
The lock on it has been broken twice.
Now, I don't think it's them, because it's steel.
I think it's just cheap aluminum.
But still, the fact that I have to keep working on this thing, and I know you'd say, well, if you were a good parent and you were good at discipline, they'd just tell them not to touch it, and that would be enough.
Yes, that's true of most things.
True, they know not to touch my guns.
But screens are crack cocaine and they literally can't help themselves.
I live with junkies, and I have the key to the heroin.
Sorry to be so serious, this podcast.
but I want to, you know, it's important to me that we talk about parenting sometimes on this show, and this is, and I don't want the government to do anything.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying, it's also hard when other parents don't discipline their kids.
So you do a good job, or you punish them, and they're not allowed to have a screen, and then you find out they're at their friend's house playing for 15 hours straight, and they're up till 2 in the morning, and it's going to be a good job.
Sometimes they'll be up to 4 in the morning, these kids, at someone else's house.
Oh well.
You know, one time, they were at their...
Grammy and Grandpa's house.
And I know Grammy and Grandpa don't have rules, and I'm fine with that.
It should be fun to be there.
Eat candy for breakfast, whatever you want.
But my, the rule is when we get back, you have to go five complete days with no screens.
Actually, that's become the normal law, right?
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Now they go four.
But back before I had these parameters, I would make them go like a week with no screens after they visited Grammy and Grandpa.
And they were better people during those five days.
More creative, more talkative, lighter.
You know, less morose, less mopey than they are with these goddamn motherfucking screens.
You know, sometimes this kind of stuff can stress you out and you might have a rough night's sleep.
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Why not just keep doing that?
Maybe they catch on after you've done it ten times.
I would just... I usually wet the bed within a hundred days.
So I would just send them the piss-drenched mattress and say, sorry, I don't like it.
Oh, no, I do like it!
And then get a new one.
It's backed by a ten-year warranty.
Don't do that.
Don't wet it.
I was kidding.
Free shipping and returns, free in-home setup, and they'll get rid of your old mattress.
It'll probably feel better than anything you've ever experienced because this brand new material that was developed by an actual rocket science is not like any memory foam you're used to.
And, uh, it's founded by two brothers who were developing cushion technology for 30 years.
God, it must be so competitive to start something like that.
Like that MyPillow guy who revolutionized pillows.
Imagine how hard it is to break into that business.
It must be murder.
Like, I've never understood people who sell t-shirts.
How the hell do you compete with China and Walmart with t-shirts and start your own t-shirt company?
It must be brutal.
I bet it's like fi- I bet Purple- I don't know the company's history, but, uh, I bet they went a good five years without making a red cent.
But now it's everywhere.
And it is a fantastic mattress that I officially endorse.
So I don't know what to do about the kids, guys.
And isn't it funny how hard it is to just have kids that play and are not staring at screens?
That's... If I could magically make that happen.
If I could erase screens from their world.
Yes, you can.
No, I can't, asshole.
I also have my daughters, all their friends, communicate with Snapchat and stuff.
And all these, and emails, and texting, and Instagram.
So I take that away, now I just took away her social life.
Oh, Laura had a party, we couldn't invite you.
Your dad doesn't let you communicate with us.
So you have to, so that balance gets weird where you go, all right, what do I do?
I confiscate your phone and then I let you check it every hour to see if any of your friends contact you?
I let you use it once an hour for two minutes?
I'm telling you, man, the greatest childhood was post-war up until feminism ruined housewife-- housewifing in the '80s, '70s, and '80s.
So from 1955 to 1980 was the best childhoods ever in history, and maybe ever will be.
And I think the epicenter of that, the peak place, would be South Brooklyn, Italian neighborhood, what's now called Red Hook.
This was before Robert Moses started building highways all over New York and destroying neighborhoods.
I mean, even the Bronx used to be a beautiful neighborhood before he turned it into Iraq by building a superhighway right through the middle of it.
It's still not recovered.
The Bronx is mental these days, man.
People are dying all over the place.
It used to be East New York.
The Bronx is a madhouse.
Anyway, um... Yeah, those days, those kids, they didn't have anything.
They played stickball, and there was a real sense of community.
So if some eight-year-old slapped a six-year-old girl in the face, some mom would just come out and discipline him.
What the hell are you doing?
Don't you dare hit her.
Smash, smack her.
Smack the kid.
I talked to the old dudes in Hell's Kitchen, which, you know, there was the Westies running that place.
People were getting murdered.
But it was still a better childhood than my rich kids.
He would tell me that if a cop pulled up to your house and escorted you home, and all the dads would be on the stoop drinking beer, By the way, that sounds like what heaven is.
You just embarrassed your dad in front of the other dads, and he would go in there and tan your hide.
And it was so intense, the ass-whooping you got, that the cop would sometimes be apologizing to you as he walked you to the stoop, going, Sorry, buddy.
Sorry, I gotta do this.
Now, they don't even have dads.
There are no dads anymore.
Even the rich people, the dads are at work.
Till 8pm, working in finance.
They can get more money so they can buy more crap.
So now they're getting raised by an au pair and a nanny.
Rich and poor are worse off, as far as childhood goes.
I think my dad's childhood was the best.
And he didn't have fucking shoes.
My kids have so many shoes that I have to take them out in garbage bags.
They get a toy every single day.
And I love my kids, obviously.
That's why I'm so reclamped about all this.
Because I'm trying to get back to the 60s with the stickball.
Where they just go outside.
We used to just... I would shovel cereal into my face.
Because I couldn't wait to get out the front door.
And then I would be gone until I heard my mom screaming my name because I was late for dinner.
We would curse the streetlights when they came on because that meant we had to go home.
Fuck!
Now, I've had times with my kids upstate, granted it was in the middle of nowhere, we're in the country, where I'd have to lock the door.
And I'd assume they'd go build an igloo or something, a big cave in the snow, and then I'd come back later and they were still on the porch just sitting there.
Fuck.
Now, when their friends are over, that's great, but this is, I'm not, it's not like, um, I'm getting a lot of help here.
Oh my god, if this is someone asking me about video games or a screen, I'm going to pop a gasket.
Yes?
Who's there?
Who's there?
If it's about video games, the answer's no!
I think I hear crying.
Can you believe that shit?
Yes, I do.
I hear crying.
Oh my god, it's making me go bald.
This war we're having.
Oh, and that's what I meant to say about the kids.
In my kid's defense, there's no more kids.
All these parents, they send them away to camp.
The day after summer break.
Like, the last day of school is Friday.
Saturday morning, you're off on the bus.
Some of these kids are gone for two months.
Or they go to a country club.
I live in a nice neighborhood.
They go to the country club, so I gotta become a member of that.
So now I'm paying 40 to 60 grand to join these stupid clubs.
Uh, just so my kids can have someone to play with.
And again, I don't like that shit.
I don't like monitored play.
How are they going to steal a tractor and drive it into a swamp?
How are they going to get up to mischief when there's a lifeguard there monitoring you in the pool?
And then you're allowed in this area and you can go to the grass where your mom can see you.
And if someone gets punched, then we come over and there's a big hullabaloo.
So.
Oh, my God, he's still crying.
That's Johnny crying.
Because of that, what I said about the video games.
Why aren't you outside?
We've got all kinds of toys and we make, get into some, throw water balloons at people and then run away giggling.
He's crying like someone's trying to kill him down there.
It's the middle of the day!
Anyway, go to CRTV.com, check out Get Off My Lawn, that's on a lot.
CRTV Tonight is always fun too.
And there's After Hours, we've got Dinesh D'Souza on there.
And there's this podcast.
I wanted this particular episode to be super funny, as I joked about how cute my son is and how much I love my kids, which I do.
Then I got myself off on this tangent about screens and how frustrating it is to be a parent, and live on the show, you heard me get asked for video games, and then you heard- well, you didn't hear, but I'm telling you there's tears when they got told no.
