Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - BOBBY CANNAVALE Rode a Razor Scooter
Episode Date: July 2, 2024Bobby Cannavale joins Seth and Josh on the pod this week! He tells them all about his mother’s life in Cuba, what fatherhood is like with his boys, what he remembers from a trip to Niagara Falls, an...d more! Family Trips is supported by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much more at airbnb.com/host to learn about hosting. We Love Mcdonald's and we love saving money it's a match made in heaven. Save money everyday with the McDonald's App.  Must opt into rewards. So thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips. Now go find your path, and enjoy the ride along the way.  Learn more at nissanusa.comÂ
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This episode is brought to you by Airbnb.
Here we go.
Hey, Bashe.
Hey, Sufi.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you?
You know, we're Boston Celtics fans.
We are?
I wouldn't say we're the most rabid Boston Celtics fans in the world.
We're not dyed in the wool Celtics fans, but...
I mean, I think you could say Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Steelers,
that's like ride or die forever.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, they're like a top tier team for me.
And so it's a very happy day.
Yeah, I think I've got a lot of, you know,
basketball loving friends and to a man,
they all hate the Celtics.
And I'm sort of like, oh yeah, I get it. I get it.
Oh yeah.
But at the same time, you know, very happy.
Yeah, it's nice.
It was also a very, a very stress-free game five.
It's nice to just have it go your way.
Some other, some other like a good thing,
I feel like that happened in our world.
I got, mom sent me one of her letters,
a classic mom letter,
which just has some newspaper clippings.
Yep.
She compiles a sort of month,
two months worth of notable clippings.
Sometimes it's just one or two.
That's what this one was.
This is a story about the party's over
for Chuck E. Cheese's robot band.
And she writes on it, oh no. Yep. There's a story about the party's over for Chuck E. Cheese's robot band.
And she writes on it, oh no.
Yep.
Oh no with two exclamation points.
Then she sends a follow-up.
After uproar, Chuck E. Cheese says it will keep more animatronic bands and sends this
with good news.
So in this day where we can just email people links
or text them even, Mom cut out two newspaper clippings
weeks apart and then old fashioned US mailed them to you.
Yeah.
Did she do anything that would assure you read it
in the right order with the oh no first?
No, I actually read them in the wrong order
and I was so happy that I saw the oh no afterwards.
Because the good news made me laugh so hard.
And then when I saw the oh no and that there was a previous story,
New York Times, by the way, was running this story,
that the previous story was in color,
running this story, that the previous story was in color
to really get the full experience of the band.
Yeah, so anyhow, good news in all honesty that those animatronic bands are sticking around.
Munch's Make Believe Band.
Our friend Bobby Cannavale, who's on the show.
Yeah. Today.
I don't know if this happened, but, and again,
I'm not trying to put this into your head
because this would not work as a song anyway,
but you know what I think every time I heard his name?
What's that?
Bobby Cannavale.
Oh yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So there was a theme park in Holland.
Still is. Still is. Yeah, so there was a theme park in Holland.
Still is.
Yeah.
Called Efteling.
And you know what?
This is actually, if you're ever in Holland
with your family, it is for my money,
the greatest amusement park I've ever been to.
It's fantastic.
And I think it's a great amusement park
for kids of young ages because the theme is sort of fairies.
Is that a good way to describe it?
Yeah, it's gnomes, dwarves, fairies.
It's fairy tales.
It's fairy tales.
It's fairy tales, yes.
There's also some, you know,
there's some really good roller coasters and whatnot,
but it's not one of these six flags
you're gonna throw up everywhere.
Yeah, but it does, according to our dear friend,
Andrew Moscos, who lives over there,
apparently they win like best amusement park
in Europe all the time.
And it drives Disneyland Paris crazy
because Disneyland Paris has spent so much money
and this one just has like charm.
And they don't have imagineers,
but whoever's imagining the rides over there
has done a bang up job for several years.
I always thought Efteling was just a Dutch word
meaning like elf world, but it's not.
I think it's just like the name of the family farm
that was maybe their first or something.
Yeah, I couldn't answer you that.
But Bobby Canneval, I think what you're getting to
is there's a sort of teacup sort of ride.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was like, yeah, sort of a tilt-a-whirly type thing.
And it used to be called, they changed it.
Yeah, because it was Mr. Canneval, a cannibal.
And it was problematic.
It was, yeah. The depiction of the cannibal was not cool.
And it was one of those things, you know,
was sometimes you have things where you see it,
it's offensive and you go, it was a different time.
The first time we went was 1997 and pretty collectively,
every American who walked in was like, oh, this is bad.
Yeah. And it was not, oh, this is bad. Yeah.
And it was not, they didn't change in like 1998, it went a few more years.
But I was happy to see, I recently read, you know, there was an article about how
they finally changed it.
There was a ride that was created in the time that we were there called the
Panda Drum.
The Panda Dream.
the Panda dream. And the Panda at some point gave the,
I have a dream speech.
I believe the Martin Luther King Jr. sort of family
was like, hey, hey, hey, you just can't just co-op this.
I mean, it was a, I feel like the whole thrust of the ride
and it still exists is like the Panda has a dream
of a cleaner world.
Environment.
Environment.
But they were sort of like,
hey, you can't just like take this without,
because it was verbatim.
It was a verbatim lift.
Yeah.
But was it in English or was it in Dutch?
I forget if that Panda said,
ik heb een droom. Right. Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. I forget if that panda said, Ikebendrome.
Right, yeah, that's a good question.
But he doesn't say it anymore.
No, he doesn't.
So the good news is it was already a great theme park
and now they've combed out a lot of incidental racism.
Yeah, so check it out.
Check it out, really fun, really fun.
But anyway, I did think Bobby Connival every time.
Yeah, that's not the way I feel like I'm going on this one.
No, of course.
Of course not.
Speaking of songs, we've received some criticism.
Sam saw this criticism and you saw this criticism.
But I believe it was only one source, correct?
Yeah, there's only one source.
I can only find like one review at a time for our podcast
and I'll talk to Sam offline about how you see more.
But there's always like one that's featured
and the one that was featured for like a week said,
stop introducing the song.
The Jeff Tweedy song.
Yeah.
Not your song. Right. Yeah, we don't Tweedy song. Yeah. Not your song.
Right.
Yeah.
We don't introduce my song.
Right?
We had a conversation about it too.
Yeah.
Whether or not we'd introduce it.
And I should know Posh said, nah.
Nah.
I just want to roll it out.
People could figure out what it is.
And the person that said, stop introducing the song,
signed it Jeff Tweedy.
Yeah, so his take was that maybe Jeff tweeted
and like that I was like pushing it, sorry.
Or maybe it was Jeff Tweedy.
Maybe Jeff Tweedy is like, hey, just let this happen.
We don't know.
He seems like the kind of non-confrontational dude
who would want to like do it in a comment section
as opposed to to texting directly.
So you know what, we're going to try this out for a bit
and I'm not going to introduce this song anymore.
And then if you're up in arms about that,
find your way to the comment section
where Josh sees one a week.
And hopefully you'll get upvoted
into the most important comment.
Yeah.
I was also going to say, I did now get your wedding invitation.
Oh, good.
And there was a lot of, you know, because I, you were a little upset that I had not
RSVP'd.
Yeah.
But I had not received it.
Okay.
And as I told you yesterday, once I got it, I have forwarded it to my lawyers.
Because I'm not just gonna click yes.
I know too well to do that.
Yeah.
Well, in our tally, you're still a not responded.
How is your response going?
Most people, I'm assuming people are smashing
the yes button pretty hard.
Yeah, we've got some people who are coupled up and have some kids
and only one of them might be able to make it because of dealing with kids.
We're also in that weird little place where we obviously want everyone to be able to make it,
but in a way we're rooting for some people to not be able to make it because we've got more people
that we love and that we would like to invite
and that we would love to have there.
And there's something,
there's something, euphoric's the wrong word,
but there's something that feels so good
about having sent a wedding invite
and then people saying, we can't make it.
And you're like-
Right, cause you get full credit for the invite.
They know how much you love them.
Right.
And yet they've also maybe cracked the door open
for some other people you love.
Yeah.
So.
We, on our 10th anniversary,
Alexi and I did a game of who looking back,
like who would we want, if we got married today,
how many new faces, and then how many people would drop off.
It's an interesting game to play.
I would say the core is about the same
because we had so many people from early in our life.
But it's good to know that there's gonna be some people
10 years from now that you'll be like,
oh, I should have invited them
and some others where you're like, eh.
Yeah, I feel pretty good about who's coming to this wedding.
I feel like we're gonna keep them around.
All right, good, good, good.
Yeah. Well, yeah.
You know, you're not a couple of like, you know,
star-struck kids here.
Yeah, no. You guys, you know, star-struck kids here. Yeah.
No.
You guys, you guys, you guys have lived.
We've lived.
You know what a real, you know what a real friend is.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know what's gonna happen next,
but right after it, we'll have our show.
Enjoy this interview with Bobby Cannavale. Family Chips with the Mice Brothers.
Family Chips with the Mice Brothers.
Here it goes.
Look he is, there he is.
Josh, I haven't met you. I've never met is. Josh, I haven't met you.
I haven't met you.
No, I don't believe so.
Look how different you guys look.
You sound exactly alike.
And you look so different.
You must immediately feel kinship with Josh
based on the fact that your glasses look like
they're from the same place.
Right, right.
The cool place in town.
No, Bobby, the first thing you do was take out a fly swatter.
OK, I've got a lot to tell you.
It's like this is all dealing with anxiety.
I hate that you can see a little of my bed.
Bed. OK.
And I've got like I'm terrible on the on the computer, you guys.
I'm bad. I'm so bad.
Let me turn this up so I can hear you.
And and and it's that time of the year,
there's just bugs everywhere.
And I'm trying not to be such a bitch
about bugs in the house.
It's fine, that's life, it's spring, right?
And I have the AC, but I want fresh air to come through
and I just have to deal with the bugs,
but I'm obsessed with getting them, with the fly's water.
Do you, are you, my wife is pinning it on the boys a lot
for just sort of leaving things open.
Do you feel like your boys are maybe
the gateway to the bugs?
Leaving the door open?
Yeah.
I know, but that's my point is like,
it's impossible to keep them out
unless you wanna live like hermetically sealed.
And I no longer live in an apartment.
I lived in an apartment for 45 years of my life
or whatever, 47 years.
And I have like a little house in Brooklyn.
And I like having the doors open.
So it's me. There you go.
But I'm like, but I'm trying to accept it as normal, right?
If you lived on a farm, you'd have bugs
coming through the house, right?
Flying through.
I like that you being cool with bugs
is weirdly a status symbol now.
Like, hey, I live in a house.
We're cool with bugs.
I mean, I don't know how cool with bugs he is.
He's waving a splash water around.
Well, I'd rather have, I guess what I mean
is the fresh air coming through.
And I can't have everything screened
because like there's like a metal door on the front
with like, you know, metal work
and they could come through there.
I can't drive myself crazy.
So I walk around with a fly swatter.
I have one.
I know.
Do you, have you seen these fly swatters
that are like tennis rackets that are electrified?
Yeah, I don't like that.
I like the kids, the kids, because it's like a game
with the boys, you know, boys are, they don't need a lot.
They're not that smart, right?
So like just put something in their hand
and just hit things.
So I indulge that part of them.
I spent a whole, I want wanna say maybe 90 minutes on Sunday
watching my two boys just step on ants.
And I know Josh, probably this is very hard for you to hear.
Josh. Why?
Cause I'm a vegan?
Yeah, you're a vegan.
So I assume you would be- That you think I'm also like a-
Yeah, I feel like you would be mad
of a people stepping on. A jane Buddhist?
Yeah.
I should make a distinction.
The ones that crawl, I don't kill.
We don't kill those.
My littlest guy, who's six, Rafa,
he's obsessed with bugs.
And he's one of those people that he'll be walking
and he'll go, and he'll stop and go back and go,
what?
And he'll go praying mantis.
And then it'll be a praying mantis, like an odd bug
that he just was, was it preternaturally like gif,
like he knows what they are without having even,
I don't remember him in the book looking at, you know?
And he runs into all these rare bugs all the time.
So we're very careful about keeping them
and then bringing them outside to the yard or whatever,
except for the flying ones.
Seth's kids take a different approach.
Yeah, they're just like, it's us or the bugs.
That's what I taught them.
It's step, step, yeah.
When Rafa's teachers give you the conference,
are they like, he's testing in the top 98th percentile
of bugs?
Yeah, well, they do say that he's the, yeah,
that he is prone to, he's the one that gets upset
if like, if he does see, you know, they go up on the roof, right?
And there was a situation where the kids
were all killing bugs.
And that was like a conversation he wanted to have
with them, with the teacher.
And could they come up with some kind of agreement
if they didn't have to do that?
Could we not do that?
And that was kind of a little, you know.
I hope that wasn't considered a field trip.
We're gonna bring you all up to the roof
and just go on a bug killing spree.
No, it's that New York thing, right?
Like that's where they go, the roof.
The roof of the old building.
I got a kid that goes to a roof.
So, Bobby, I feel like you and I had kids at the same age,
which I like, but you had a first run at it.
Yeah, right, my son's 29, Jake.
Yeah, so you were 25 when Jake was born?
Yeah, he was born two days before my 25th birthday, yeah.
I can't imagine, I mean, obviously you, not just age,
but you're obviously at a very different place
in your life, career-wise, you must feel more settled.
Does it feel like just the most massively
different experience being a parent the second time?
Well, in so many ways, yes.
I mean, to all your points, like, I'm older.
I'm not, you know, I'm not, like, hustling to, like,
I worked in a restaurant when Jake was born.
And I don't work in a restaurant anymore, so I don't have.
But I have other concerns, like, you know, my cartilage.
Like, I don't have that much of it anymore.
And like it hurts when when Rafa throws himself at my neck.
So I'm not as I don't have as much energy, although I do have a lot of energy.
That's just my personality.
Things that, you know, things like I have to get checked out more physically
because my guys are very physical with me.
And and and thankfully, I'm also like in a perfect partnership
with somebody who's just young enough, you know, just just that much younger
than me, like nine years, who has a little bit more of the picks up.
You know, we pick up the slack for each other.
So I forgot that we have that in common as well.
Yeah, I have a very far more energetic partner, which is helpful.
Yeah.
By the way, I feel like you kind of asked for it
by naming your kids Raka and Rafa.
Like you did name them after like henchmen,
like tough guys.
You know, we thought Raka was just sounded cool.
And it was a good name and we liked the name Rocco.
And then Rafa was hard, you know,
cause we didn't know.
And I had these like crazy ideas like Valentino.
And she's like, well, we're not calling him Valentino.
You know, but everybody will call him Val.
And she's like, no, they won't.
They'll call him Valentino and he'll hate you.
So we didn't do that.
And then we decided on Rafa because it kind of was around the time that we went to the Australian Open
and saw Rafa play. So we saw him play a couple of times. We were big fans. That's a cool name.
Yeah, and then I had, and then I had cold feet like very close to the delivery. When I suddenly got worried,
I remembered my friend, Big Ralphie, from when I was a kid.
And then I was like, I don't want anybody calling him Ralph.
Oh, I see.
There was a fear that Ralphie.
I don't want to have a Ralphie.
He's a Rafa.
So I think it's sticking.
I feel like it's very, it fits in the oeuvre
of a Bobby Cannavale that you would have
a Big Ralphie growing up.
Well, you know what? I hadn't really thought of it that way. In fact, I hadn't thought a Big Ralphie growing up. Well, you know what?
I hadn't really thought of it that way.
In fact, I hadn't thought about Big Ralphie
and Amelia, his sister, until right this second.
Yeah.
Hey, we're going to take a quick break
and hear from some of our sponsors.
Family Trips is supported by Airbnb.
Hey, Pashi.
Yeah, Sufi.
You know we have an annual trip.
Yeah, we sure do.
We get a couple of regular trips,
but which trip are you talking about?
I'm talking about the fact that you and I and 10 of our closest college friends get
together every September for our fantasy football draft.
Such a trip.
And very little of the trip is about a fantasy football draft.
Yeah.
I always feel a little nerdy saying that we're going on a fantasy football draft, but we're
going to hang out with our buddies.
Yeah, that's why I say it's a fantasy friendship draft.
Would that make it less nerdy, or is that maybe worse?
No, I think it's charming, it's sweet.
So this year for our fantasy friendship draft,
we have a fantasy location booked,
and it's all thanks to Airbnb.
We found a place that has enough space for all of us,
and enough bedrooms for all of us and enough bedrooms for all of us
and has a lot of outdoor activities.
A fire pit?
There's a fire pit, Pachi.
There's a fire pit.
I want to say there's a volleyball court.
Yeah.
There's a pickleball court.
There's a lot.
It's driving distance to a hospital
that a bunch of 50-year-old guys are going to have to go to
when we blow our ACLs.
Yeah.
But in general, it is so nice that it has all the things
that we could not get with our group at a hotel.
Oh, absolutely not.
Because what you want is you wanna be able
to hang out together for as long as you can,
and then if it's time to go to bed, you go to bed,
but everyone else is sort of in the same place and
One thing that we're sort of focused on on trips like this is no new friends
No new friends. We don't want to meet them. We don't want to make them
We're happy with who we are and maybe you're someone who's thinking you know what?
My home could be a great get-together for old friends who are not looking to meet new people
You've put a lot of time,
effort, and work into your home and someone out there would probably love to experience it while
they're traveling and then they would rave about how it was the highlight of their trip.
Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.
This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by Nissan. Hey Sufi, let's play a quick game.
I'm gonna say a word and we both say the first word it makes us think of at the same time.
Ready?
I am ready poshie.
Alright, first word, cereal.
Killers.
Alright.
Oh, okay.
We thought of different cereals.
Okay.
Yeah, that's gonna happen, but maybe let's try to lock in.
Let's try to mind meld here.
Next word
Museum. The Louvre. Gift shop as one word.
Okay, I said the Louvre. You said gift shop.
I know we can be better at this. Let's try one more. All right. Okay. All right last one.
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Wow.
Oh, wow.
I thought you were going to say me.
For rugged?
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Yeah, flex your ruggedness, Sup.
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That's what it sounds like when you read to your kids.
Yeah, I just want to get to bed.
So you, and this is Union City, New Jersey.
That's where you consider you where you grew up.
Yeah, Union City, New Jersey until until I was about to go into my freshman year of high
school and my mom moved us to Florida, South Florida.
But my I would say that my childhood was spent in Union City, New Jersey.
And that's because your your mom remarried.
It was that was that. Yes, I'm remarried? Was that what precipitated the news?
Yes, mom remarried and we had to move to Miami.
But also, you know, my mom's side, you know, Cubans.
So my grandmother and my aunt and everybody who lived
in our building in Union City had done the move,
made the move to Miami around 1980
when this whole other wave of immigrants came over from Cuba.
Like a lot of families reconnected and there was
a big wave of Cubans from Union City to Miami.
Miami's always been predominantly Cuban for many years,
but they got another huge wave in around 1980,
81 when that Mariel boat lift came,
including much of my family.
But we waited another few years and then went
down and lived north of Miami actually.
So there was, so basically after that,
like sort of a infusion of Cubans,
basically people in Union City were like,
it's too good to pass up now.
Like basically all our families are down there.
I think so, yeah.
And you know, the weather thing was always a pull.
I mean, the thing about coming up to Union City
and New Jersey, it's interesting.
There's many different reasons, but Union City did become, you know, it was a German,
you know, it was always an immigrant neighborhood.
It's right across the river, like it's right across the Lincoln Tunnel, above the Lincoln
Tunnel.
There's a lot of garment factories there.
So it was like an embroidery place, factory workers, it needed factory workers.
So immigrants, you know, it was a big immigrant population, Germans, then Italians, then Cubans.
And the Cubans in many cases, my mother came over on these Peter Pan flights, they would
put these kids, they had a window open where they put, where the new Cuban government,
Fidel Castro and them, made an agreement with the Catholic diocese of New
York in America to take anybody who wanted to send their kids, if you want out of here
so bad, go ahead. The kids got to go first. They sent these kids on these planes and sent
them over to the archdiocese here. Basically, they were wards of the church until their family came to get them in most cases.
And my mom was on that and that was in New York city.
And from New York city, the Cubans were like,
they either stayed, but not a lot of them did.
A lot of them went across the river
because it was like New York city was a little much,
so they went over there.
How much time passed from when your mom came
on a Peter Pan flight, which is a hilarious thing
to call something that scary, until her parents came?
It was a few years.
It was- Really?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
But her brothers came right away.
Her brothers came and her aunt.
Her aunt worked so cool.
Like my mother's aunt, my Aunt Angela,
she always lived like near us. She was like one of those women, like never Angela, she always lived near us.
She was one of those women, never married,
never kids her whole life,
worked as a private secretary for Batista.
When that all went down,
she got out through Spain's or the connections that she had,
and she brought my mother's brothers out.
She couldn't get her sister and my maternal grandfather out right away.
So she was raised by my uncles and they were like,
let's get her out of New York.
We go to Union City and yeah.
And so how old was your mom?
What were the two years she was away from her parents?
How old was she?
It really sucks, man.
You think about it like nine, 10, 11. Ooh. Wow.
Yep.
So by 17, she was married.
She was like her parents.
So she has like, imagine that you got like three years,
three and a half years, no parents,
older brothers who were cool.
Like ones like, they're like Goofus and Gallant, basically.
She's got like awesome brothers.
But for like three and a half years no mom no dad traditional old school and then they get here and and they're like what do you mean you're
American now you know my mom's like I'm American now listen to the rock and roll
and all that shit you know and she ends up dating the guy across the street. They get married at like 16, 17 she has me,
and they're divorced five years later.
But she didn't live with her parents very long.
My mom still talks about the greatest years of her life
being those years before Castro.
I don't know about you guys,
but like my sons are eight and six, the little guys.
And I'm always wondering what their earliest memories
are gonna be.
And I think like tough things you really remember earlier.
I think you can remember those things.
And my mom's whole childhood before she left Cuba
is like crystal clear in her brain.
But in, and also positive, like her memory.
All of it positive.
That's the, you know, you know,
our parents all say crazy things, right?
And one of the things my brother and I make fun of her
is like when she goes back to the bet
with the greatest days of her life.
And we're like, yeah, ma, 70 years ago, you know,
you've got a bunch of grandkids now, you know,
we're doing okay, it's pretty good here, you know?
Not paying the bills.
Has she gone back to Cuba in the last few years?
No, no, I've been a few times.
Oh, I was wondering.
Have you guys been?
No, I was gonna go recently.
I had a wedding in Florida and we just went to,
it was gonna be a real,
you have to jump through so many hoops.
You're gonna have to sign up with like some cultural sort of organization to take you around.
And it just seems like-
By the way, it's worth doing that.
That's how I did it the first time.
And it was gonna be a very quick trip.
Yeah, yeah.
Is it just too hard for your mom to go back?
Is that like, she just emotionally?
Yes, yes.
And now she's married, you know, her, you know,
you know, her husband is like, you know, he's like,
he's so much older, I shouldn't be saying all this,
but he's just like, well, so much more old fashioned
and like, no, no, you know, like,
there's like an older generation that is still,
you know, legitimately feels really, really hurt
by the circumstances that caused them to have to leave
the greatest place on Earth, according to everybody who's still around from that generation.
Right. And you know, I got to say, you go and you get it. Get it. You know, it's like it's not like a small island. It's like a big island country. And it's got enough population to get a general idea of the kind of people that are there, that come
from there, and all the positive things, their incredible ways with conversation, how much
they love to talk and socialize and have a good time.
That's one of the things, but it's so predominant and so pronounced there
that you understand when my mom and her generation said,
you know, that was the greatest place to be.
Yeah.
Did you, when you went, did you go with Rose
or did you just go on your own?
We haven't been yet.
No, I went, I went like in 2002,
shortly after September 11th,
with two friends at the time.
And it was intense, it was amazing.
I went to my mom's old house that she lived in
and the next door neighbors came over
when they saw me in there.
And it was the same people that have lived there
since 19, whatever that was, 50 years.
Yeah.
I feel like that's what like going back,
that's what going back to Pittsburgh was like for us.
Like we could go to our dad's old house
and see the crossing guard at the little elementary school
was still the same woman and the neighbor.
Was it, seriously?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, so check this out.
In my mom's house that she lived in,
the ladies that live there now
have some of the furniture still from then,
including a fan and a bookshelf that my grandfather made in 1949 or whatever,
for his sons, that had scratchings on it and my mom's scratching on it.
When the people from next door came,
the lady who was my mom's age,
so that would have been 25 years ago when my mom was 50, you know, whatever she is.
She's 72 now.
She's mom's pretty young, you know.
Anyway, she came over and she pointed it out to me.
She said, you see, we put that in there together,
and it was there, two names scratched
on the side of the bookcase, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it was so cool.
That's great.
It's a whole other world where major world global panic
ensued.
And, you know, like a pretty historic place.
You obviously, your mom, you know,
it made a major impression on her.
You're half Cuban, but you can't go until after, you know,
2002. Did you feel Cuban? Was that something?
Yes, 100%.
Well, the first time I went and the second time I went,
I made a joke about it.
And the guy made me show him his like more ID.
That was like bad. I made a joke.
I forgot I was in a country that was not our country.
But the first time I went, they thought I was coming back.
And they kept trying to put me in the people coming back
from Europe or wherever they like,
you know, wherever you're, you know, they can travel, just can't travel to America,
right?
So they had, they thought I was coming back and I had showed them the thing and they laughed
that they said, Oh, you look like you belong here, you know, in Spanish, I speak Spanish
fluently.
And then the second time I went, I was like, Oh, you're not going to put me in the line
where the people coming back.
And they were like, come with us to this room, this dark room over here.
Beat me up with a sack of quarters, but they didn't.
And then your dad was Italian heritage, yeah?
Yeah, but I don't know.
I don't have any, I have no, couldn't have no,
my parents divorced when I was so young.
And then did you still, was your dad somebody
you still spent time with as you were older or no?
No, no, like my mom remarried
and she remarried a Trinidadian guy named Tony,
who she met in Puerto Rico.
You're allowed to laugh at that.
I'm sorry, I've never said it out loud.
I don't think I've ever said it out loud.
Like, I haven't talked about this to anybody.
My mom married a Trinidadian guy named Tony
that she met in Puerto Rico.
Yeah, well, that's how it goes.
Hey.
I never, that's my brother's dad.
Rest in peace, he's gone now.
But yeah, gosh, that was something.
So how much younger was your brother?
So you had a half brother?
My little brother's nine years younger than me.
So he's, yeah, 45 now, 46, yeah.
Lives in South Jersey.
And my sister's two years younger than me.
Full sister?
Full sister, a full, I have a full and a half C,
but he's, you know, he's my brother.
Yeah.
And you guys are, you guys sound so much alike,
it's crazy.
I know you've talked about this with other guests,
so I don't, I won't waste tape, but.
I think it's when you see that we're actually
different faces and you hear it, it's very jarring.
Yeah, it is jarring.
Like my guys, everybody says they look the same,
and I guess I see it, but not really,
but people swear that they look the same. Like you guys know, I mean, obviously you know
when who's who, but like, do you know that?
A lot of people, people will see us.
People think that I'm Seth very often.
If you see just one of us, it happens.
Yeah, by sight.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I will say one time I saw you on the street with,
it was a few years ago, but it was probably,
so it was like, Jake was like 25 maybe,
and Rocco was maybe like three or four,
but it did seem like, it was, I was like,
this is definitely like the same person 20 years apart.
Yeah, right.
Like right down the line, the genes were strong.
Yeah, yeah, isn't that, it's true, they say, right,
that that's primal, right?
That's so that we don't eat them.
I don't know if it's so you don't eat them.
I thought it was so you don't leave them.
But I could eat so you don't eat.
I thought if you go even further back, they ate them.
Now, I guess my question would be,
Bobby, when you see my kids,
is your first thought I'd like to eat?
No, I thought that was it.
Do they look delicious to you?
Like if they don't look like, well, animals, right?
If they don't smell right, if they don't smell,
if they don't think they're theirs, they kill them.
Yeah.
Right? That's all I meant.
I don't think humans or-
You might have to ask Rafa about this.
I feel like he's...
Yeah.
So what were your, so basically it feels like
most of your formative years
are then with your mom and Tony from Trinidad.
Yeah.
Do you guys ever take trips?
You know, we took, so they both worked, right?
Like pretty, you know, basic 40 hour jobs
and 40 hour week jobs or whatever, you know.
And we went one place, we went to Wildwood, New Jersey, that was it.
And we went for like four days to Wildwood.
We stayed at one of those like beachfront motels
and that was it.
That, aside from that, the only other trip we ever took
was Montreal and I remember like,
it was always my mother going,
we gotta get out of here, we gotta get out of here,
go somewhere.
And I remember taking this one trip to Montreal, like it was so, it was always my mother going, we gotta get outta here, we gotta get outta here. Go somewhere. And I remember taking this one trip to Montreal,
like, so it was wild wood,
because it was like a certain week
that was cheaper than the other weeks,
and like, they always booked it like years in advance, right?
So we'd bring everything with us.
You know, like, now you go and you're like,
I'll just buy socks when I get there,
like, stupid shit like that.
Like, those luxuries did not exist down to all the food
we would eat for those five days.
Like we'd bring all of the food and the big.
Did you fly or did you drive up there?
No, fly, we drove.
We drove and we had like the big,
like the Styrofoam cooler,
two of those with all the food in it.
And I remember one time we went to Montreal
because my mom was like, let's go somewhere else.
And we went up and drove to Montreal,
which now I know is a six hour drive,
but that one trip sticks in my memory so much
because of how much I got in trouble in a closed car.
Right.
Do you know what I mean?
Like how much, like how much,
like how many times we had a pullover for me
on a six hour drive.
And we did the whole thing.
We drove there, spent the day, and then drove back at night.
And I was expected to sleep and not speak.
And no walk-ins, no nothing, right?
And I just remembered that.
And I just remembered that Tony was quitting smoking.
That we get that.
So he was in a good mood.
He was not in a good mood.
Seth.
Oh, wow.
I just remembered that.
As you were asking me about where the road trip,
all of a sudden the whole theme of the podcast
came back to me and I was like, yeah, right, road trips.
So sorry about that.
What were the things young Bobby was doing,
do you remember, that they'd have to pull over?
Like, can you think back to your misbehavior?
Oh, just like I was the king of the questions, right?
King of the questions and king of complaining.
Yeah.
Like just complain, like how long?
Are we almost there?
The whole thing.
And just, oh, too many questions.
I just asked too many questions
and my mom would just get like, be done with me.
Throw a shoe back at me and you know,
you guys ever get the shoe thrown at you? You ever get the shoe thrown at you? I never got a shoe thrown at know, you guys ever get the shoe thrown at you?
You ever get the shoe thrown at you?
I never got it thrown at me.
You guys never got the shoe thrown at you?
Not once, not once.
Could she no look throw a shoe at you?
Could she get it?
Hell yes!
Like that, over the shoulder.
And there's no car seat.
No car seat.
My brother wasn't here yet, but my sister was good, you know.
My mother still says about my sister, Latin people sister was good, you know? My mother still says about my sister,
Latin people have such great expressions.
She says about, you know, your sister, Mida,
she goes like this, and that means like,
she's slided up her sleeve, sneaky.
She said, but you're always so obvious about everything.
I think it's funny, right?
Cause I'm trying not to do that, like in my work,
but my mother was like, she had no patience for me.
I had way too much energy,
so she was always throwing things at me.
I try to, Pashi, try to remember what you're gonna ask,
because I do wanna ask,
when a parent knows they have a kid with that much energy,
are they then so happy and relieved
when you find an outlet for it,
when you started doing performing?
Did it make total sense to your mom?
Yeah. Great question, Seth.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think so.
You know, like, I was...
My mom didn't let me go anywhere
because we weren't allowed to go anywhere
because they worked until 6 o'clock
and I had to be home and, like, start dinner
and, like, I do the laundry and, like, I had all the shit I had me and my sister I do all the
chores of the house. And the only and my mom was worried someone was going to snatch me
it was like that time. And so I was not allowed to go anywhere except for something to do
with the church because it was Catholic school or the library which was a couple blocks away
and I was always in the library. And I used to read, well, I would, like, look at these Life magazine year,
the year in life, and there were books.
And you would, like, look at pictures from, like, behind the scenes on a set, like, you know,
Lon Chaney getting his make- or, like, Maurice Evans getting his Planet of the Apes
Dr. Zayas mask on, right? And then putting the finishing touches on Roddy McDowell.
So I knew who all these people were.
And then I would like, and this is old school, right?
I would pick up a name and go,
what else did that person do?
Back then, the people I didn't know,
like Roddy McDowell, Maurice Evans,
and I would find them in plays.
I'd go to the plays section
because they would have the year book,
the play, they put these big, thick books out out with like the best plays of the year on Broadway. And I would always read
them, take those out. My mom saw that that shut me up. And she did that did do it. It
wasn't basketball or Little League or like my energy could be completely absorbed by
a book or a play or acting out,
which then became its own issue
of why I wouldn't shut up, right?
Cause then I'm just doing lines from movies and TV shows
that I've seen on television all the time.
As long as they're not questions.
I would happily- They're more entertaining.
It's true.
As long as they're not questions.
It was, my mom would then enjoy my bits, you know?
Yeah, not questions and not complaining.
Yeah, show it off. I got to do it at, you know, dinner and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, not questions and not complaining. Yeah, show it off.
I gotta do it at dinner and stuff.
Yeah, well, I thought when you said you went to Wildwood,
I've actually been to Wildwood as well.
My buddy growing up, Randy Swazzo,
his family had a house down there,
like they'd get a place there
for a couple of weeks every summer
and I went along one year.
That's a real sort of boardwalk, busy beach town.
When you got to a place like that,
were you more cut loose to go off on your own
and run around and?
Yeah, I would say so.
My sister and I, I'm sure as you guys,
well, how many years apart are you guys?
Two. Two years.
Two, yeah, like my sister and I,
we really had each other
and we really played with each other.
And I remember we were allowed to go
on the boardwalk behind us and there were rides.
We couldn't do that by ourselves,
but like we did the thing every day
where there was a certain amount of money budgeted
for us to go on the rides and play a couple of games.
But most of the day was spent on the beach
because my mother loved the beach
and the Trinidadia did too, Tony, you know, he was spent on the beach, because my mother loved the beach. And the Trinidadian did too, Tony.
He loved being on the beach.
So we were just on the beach that whole week,
all day long.
Back in the day, by the way,
where we were laughing about it the other day,
because Rose, she's always covering the kids
in sunscreen, she's Australian.
And we never wore sunscreen.
My mother would put oil, like put us in oil.
It was oil, Hawaiian Tropic or Band of Soleil or whatever.
All over the kids, you know?
And we would just be out there all day.
And yeah, it was awesome.
Did you love the beach?
Were you, to this day, do you love a beach?
To this day, I love a beach.
I do, I love a beach. I do, I love a beach.
But yeah, my guys do too, actually.
Yeah, that was it though.
That was the vacation.
I mean, we would do like day trips to Asbury Park
to also to go on the rides in Sandy Hook Beach
and the Jersey Shore, basically.
But we never went for more than a day.
That's why that Montreal trip, when I think about it,
my mom has photo albums at her house down in Miami,
and there's pictures from that trip,
and I laugh every time, because I'm like,
we didn't stay in a hotel.
We drove all the way to Montreal and back in a day.
Who does that?
Unless you're like dropping a drug shipment off.
Yeah, it does feel that way.
It does feel like that.
But no, that was just to go and do the falls.
That was the big, the goal was to go to the falls
and go under the Niagara Falls with the thing,
which is fun if you haven't done it.
The maid of the mist?
The maid of the mist.
And then you take the picture in the barrel
going over with everybody.
And then you go to the wax museums, you have like a hot dog, get some cotton candy, and
you go back home six and a half hours.
Yeah.
Wow.
That is a lot to ask of kids.
Right?
Yeah.
And I remember on the way back, my mother and Tony saying it was a Datsun 210 hatchback
and they put the seats down.
And I think that was like considered,
like that was a big deal.
Like they used to be able to pull the big seat out
from the back of a station wagon,
but to fold chairs down like that,
I think was rather newish in the seventies.
And we were expected to lay on that rug
with the coolers and some blankets
and not pick our heads up.
And so we just whispered for six hours,
my poor sister answering all my questions.
For six hours.
So, yeah.
We have, it is funny when the older sibling
starts thinking the younger sibling's questions
are irritating, because then you, all of us,
the amount you want to say I told you so to the older one.
Which is like, yeah, it's the worst, right?
And you do it too.
That's so funny you say that.
I did that to Rocco, like he's,
I finally just lost it with him.
I'm just trying my best to acknowledge his feelings
about the fucking thing, right?
He's like, he's like, I just, dad,
I just want him to stop asking me so many questions.
I don't know if you're kids, but my Rocco does this,
this little thing, his voice where he's gonna cry.
Oh yeah, Ash is that 100%.
And I'm like, what, just ask the question.
And he's like, it's just so many questions,
dad, so many questions.
And I did that to him the other day.
I was like, you know what, buddy,
I'm gonna level with you. You did the same thing to me. He's like, it's just so many questions, that's so many questions. And I did that to him the other day. I was like, you know what, buddy, I'm gonna level with you.
You did the same thing to me.
He's like, but you're my dad.
And I was like, I know, but he's,
you're always gonna have him, he's always gonna have you.
Get used to it on some level.
I'm always trying to give them like the real talk.
I know they can't handle it, you know?
But I gotta bleed those things in, you know?
The common sense things. Right, you're stuck with them. It is like that thing of, I know I those things in, you know? The common sense things.
Yeah, right, you're stuck with them.
It is like that thing of, I know I'm your dad,
but the same, you're stuck with him, and that's just.
They now share a bedroom, but in the early days,
they were one, you know, they had a wall between them.
And there was a famous morning where Axel,
at like five in the morning,
just started screaming through the wall like Ash, Ash.
And finally we heard Ash say what.
And he said, how do people make wood?
And that was at five in the morning.
That was the question.
Just standing on the side of his crib just needed to know.
Yeah, yeah, great.
We make fun of it, right?
But it's the best of questions.
The best, the best.
And watching them interact, the best.
Now we're gonna take a quick break
to hear from one of our sponsors.
This episode of Family Trips is brought to you
by McDonald's.
Hey Poshie.
Yes, Sufi.
You know, I've often got a whole family in my car.
Yeah, you got a lot of kids.
Yeah, I also don't have to tell you,
this podcast is about family trips
and one of the key things about a family trip
is keeping them fed.
And sometimes you're on the road and everybody's hungry,
and you just time.
Time is of the essence, my man.
Do you hear me?
Mm-hmm.
Time.
I do.
I hear you.
And what I love about the McDonald's app
is you can order your food in advance.
You can sense that this window is about to close
where you can feed your children
and they will not melt down.
And what I love about the McDonald's app,
amazing deals all the time, Poshie.
Free medium fries or sometimes even a QPC Bogo deal.
Bogo, you know what Bogo is, Posh?
Buy one, get one.
Buy one, get one.
And that's great, because I buy one for one kid, another one gets one, and the third one fends for themselves.
That's how you find out who's the strongest.
Yeah.
Downloading the McDonald's app is a no-brainer,
because you get a new deal every single day.
I would say the most important time for us, like 3.
If it's 3 PM, and we had two earlier breakfasts
before we got on the road,
and then the kids decide because of that early breakfast,
they had to have way too early a lunch, right?
It's like 10.40, they're eating lunch.
And now all of a sudden it's three
and you're just like, we're not gonna make it.
We gotta get some food in those bellies.
And that's when we love McDonald's, we love saving money.
It's a match made in heaven.
Save money every day with the McDonald's app.
Must opt in for rewards.
Here we go.
So your partner, Rose Byrne, is Australian.
Have you guys, how often have you taken the boys there?
A lot, I think like four or five times now.
I mean, I would imagine they're at the age
where they get excited about that trip, despite its length.
Yeah, they love going to Australia.
Everything's about watching movies
because they don't, they're not allowed,
we don't watch TV in the house
except for on Friday and Saturday.
We're the same.
And so travel, they love travel because of that.
They love travel.
And you know what?
I give them the travel
because I know they don't watch anything most of the time.
They don't have iPads yet.
It's all gonna change one day, I know.
Just hasn't happened yet. So flying, they've traveled a lot. It's a long way
away and they're literally limitless. They can do whatever they
want, pretty much, for us to get through the 22-hour flight. And then once we're
there, yeah, like last year when we went, we went for a month and we went so many different places.
We took them to Uluru, which if you don't know
is the beautiful, the credible rock in,
you know, like in the Northern territory in-
Yeah, formerly Ayers Rock or originally Uluru
then Ayers Rock, then Uluru.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, that's the outback.
That's like incredible country out there.
And then we took them to Melbourne
and we went down the coast.
It was incredible.
And they're, you know, they're good.
They're good travelers, those guys,
because they've made that trip so many times.
You know, I never thought I'd make a flight like that.
And now I like it there so much
that the flight's nothing to me now.
As Rose says, it's a day of our life.
Yeah.
Had you ever, so you'd never been to Australia pre-Rose
for work or anything?
I'd never met an Australian really until Rose
and now I know all of them I think.
But yeah, but it's funny
because the guys now that we travel so much,
that made me wanna go on road trips.
I don't know if I can,
if that's okay to like pivot a little bit like that. Yeah, no, we're allowed. But I do have to say. You can talk on road trips. I don't know if I can, if that's okay to like, like pivot a little bit like that.
Yeah, no, we're allowed.
I do have to say.
You can talk about road trips all you want.
Right. It's hit me again. It pinged in my head again. Road trip. You know, I always
wanted to drive cross country. So flying to Australia so much, we did a lot of driving.
Once I got the hang of driving on the other side, I'd mentioned to Rose, I was like,
God, one day I gotta drive across country.
She's like, why don't you just do it when we get back?
I've driven across this country five times
in the last five years now.
Really? Wow.
Yeah, dudes, I'm obsessed with it.
Do you, are you driving solo on these trips?
Okay, first trip was solo, brought the car to LA
cause we were gonna be there for a couple months
for summer, Rose was working.
I was like, let me go get the car.
That's a good excuse.
And I took like forever.
She's like, take your time.
Took like 10 days and I drove across.
And that was what became the appeal was taking my time,
staying wherever I wanna stay,
stopping whenever I wanna stop
and not driving on the freeways at all.
So I'm staying mostly county roads.
It's just an incredible, it's a beautiful country.
It's, it's an astonishing country.
I've met so many people doing this and seen so many different geographical,
uh, uh, you know, marvels, um, that,
so my kids now know that I do this and they're dying to come on one with me.
So we're building to getting them just old enough
to be able to do it together.
And I'm gonna take them just the guys.
Sounds like probably different route every time
to some degree.
Different route every time, yeah.
Wow.
When you say you've met so many people,
where are you meeting people?
Where are you sort of-
You know, like wherever I stop to eat, wherever I stay,
and I wake up in the morning and go to the local coffee shop,
you know, I'm pretty much staying in bed and breakfast
and tying little inns and things.
But the first time I did it, I did it by myself.
And then the last four times,
I went with a good buddy who meets me halfway or goes halfway and then leaves.
So I have half the time with a buddy
and it's incredible, it's incredible.
Do you plan it ahead or you just sort of fly by this
either your pants with the bed and breakfast?
I plan, no, that I just start looking wherever I know.
Like I think in a couple hours, I'm gonna wanna stop
and I start to look ahead.
And I get really good at, I've gotten really good at
base following like nothing more than the,
you know, than the little Southwest or, you know,
the little digital compass.
I'm always like, if I'm going sort of in that direction,
I'm okay.
And then I'll check it and see,
I am going in the right direction.
And then there are a few things
that I do wanna see along the way.
Like I became obsessed with the Grand Canyon.
The first time I did it, I hiked, hiked down.
I didn't go as far as I wanted to.
I came back, I was like,
God, there's so much time left still in the day.
And then the next time I did it,
I went down too close to the bottom, came back pretty exhausted. And then the third time I did it, I brought my buddy and we did
something very dangerous actually, which is we went all the way to the bottom in August,
like bathed in the creek down there, had like eight lemonades and went back up in the middle of the day. And it took us 17 hours.
And we were in the dark, only one headlamp between us.
Like it was not well planned.
I was off by like seven hours.
I thought it was gonna take about 10 hours.
Was there anybody else on the trail at that time?
Or did you plan so badly?
Yeah.
I planned pretty badly, but there's only one way out
and you come out of the Grand Canyon National Park anyway.
So I just thought if we just keep going up, there's nowhere else to go.
And so but we did.
We did have a couple of people come through who are like exercise people or whatever.
And I'd read like I'd read enough little stories on all trails of people who have done it,
mostly people in really good shape.
But I thought I'm in really good shape for my age.
Yeah, yeah.
But I'm still was off by seven hours.
I was gonna say that.
These guys were like running with the thing
that you put across the chest, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
It measures something, you know?
And like no shirt.
And they were, those guys were running past me.
The Canyon cares not about the for your age part of it.
You know, the Canyon.
No, it doesn't.
But I tell you what guys, have you done it?
No, so this is gonna be something
we could ask you about.
Take the kids, it's an incredible,
I mean, I know it's just a big thing, you know,
but you will, some part of you will look at that thing and go, what happened here?
Like, yeah, what the fuck happened?
And I mean, you know, and then some like genius will tell you,
actually, it's not that big of deal with a place in the thing.
But you're like, I don't give a shit, bro.
I've driven across this country and I have never seen anything like it.
That's how I felt when I saw Uluru.
So you should see it.
Yeah.
It's beautiful, hiking in it.
Not to put you on the spot,
but is there like a town you stopped
during one of your five cross-country trips
that you had no expectation of that outdid itself?
I like Natchez, Mississippi.
Oh, Marfa. I was gonna say Marfa. My guess was gonna be Mar Mississippi. Oh, Marfa. I was going to say Marfa.
My guess is going to be Marfa.
Yeah, Marfa.
And Marfa, like, I kind of knew about it because I watched that show with Kevin Bacon and,
you know, Griffin Dutt was, I love Dick, you know, and that was like the first time I'd
ever heard of it.
But I wasn't really after it.
What I really wanted to do was drive along the border, the Texas Mexican border for a long time,
and just check out those border towns, which I did.
And then I found myself getting close to Marfa,
and I was like, oh yeah, Marfa.
And it's really a special place for sure.
You know, like it's an artist commune, you know?
And I like that anyway.
I live in New York City.
I live in Brooklyn. I like being around artists.
That thing was founded by a great artist.
I shouldn't say it was founded by a great artist,
but that artist community and the atmosphere of art that is there,
very heavily present there, is on purpose.
And it's something, you feel it there.
And it's the people are lovely and they're, you know.
So I will usually stay there.
There's a great place there called El Cosmico,
which I know you've probably heard of.
And you know, you can rent, you can stay in a tent
or a yurt or like a decked out camper, you know, like a Airstream.
I've done all of those things driving through there.
I have gone through there a couple of times.
Yeah.
It's a really fun time. I will say,
I think we both love our wives and our children very much,
but I also love the idea of taking the long way
across the country without them.
Oh. I them. Oh.
I mean.
Yeah.
Well, I've gotten to do it, you know?
Yeah.
Now I've done it enough times that Rocco keeps asking me,
dad, it's really cute too.
So now every time we go anywhere and they start to complain,
I go, you see, you're not ready yet.
You're still not ready.
It's like-
Well, that's a wonderful cudgel to beat them with.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
It's like the right stuff.
They're like those guys.
They gotta have what it takes
to drive across the country with me.
Do you collect any kind of like memorabilia
as you're crossing the country?
Do you get little stickers and magnets or?
That's funny.
Hats too. I don't.
Yeah.
Josh, I mean, I've got like little,
yeah, I've picked up a couple of,
like barbecue joint hats and things like that.
But I don't know about you guys,
but then what do you do with them?
You just, right?
I will say though, cause I collected stuff as a kid.
Josh didn't, but I was, you know,
sort of baseball cards and comic books.
And I just took Axel to fleet week.
We went on an aircraft carrier
and there were guys sitting outside.
We were on the flight deck. There were guys sitting outside, we were on the flight deck,
there were guys sitting outside their helicopters,
and they would explain to the kids and the adults
what the helicopters did,
and some of them were selling patches of their,
this is the flight patch,
and Axe was like, I want that,
and I was like, all right, I'll get you that one,
and then the next helicopter had one that was different,
and I felt like I was the one who said,
yeah, I feel like you should get this one too.
Like, my collector brain,
which is a useless part of my brain,
but it wasn't me like, yeah, you want,
we're gonna get all the patches.
Yeah.
I mean, the nice thing about going across
a country like that though,
is you do seek out whatever people are doing in that town.
So like, I wanna eat where they're eating
or, you know, like going down the Mississippi Delta, going, eat where they're eating or you know like going down
the Mississippi Delta going like it took highway 61 you know from Tennessee down to you know
almost almost New Orleans really and you know I wanted hot tamales in Mississippi and they
do taste good there. There's something about that you, I had elk in Utah or was it Utah?
Yeah, but anyway, you know, the national parks,
the, you know, the painted desert, forget it.
You're driving and it's just the road.
I mean, I grew up in very urban environment in Union City
and I still live in an urban environment.
It's the best.
I love it.
I have to live in a big city,
but there is something to seeing like the ribbon
of the highway and just, you know,
a John Ford movie all around you, you know, those colors.
When you don't have a buddy with you,
are you listening to music?
Both music and podcasts, yeah.
Okay, okay.
But I do listen to a lot of music.
I'm like a singer in the car.
I got to sing in the car. I got to sing in the car.
I like to sing in the car.
Do you sing full throat?
Do you-
You know, it's funny, podcast,
not that I, not that like this part,
you can, I guess, cut out,
but podcasts kind of fucked with my music listening life.
Yeah, that's fine.
I used to listen to so much music,
and now I already don't have any time,
and I gotta listen to some,
I gotta listen to Michael Barbaro every day.
I gotta listen to my friends.
I know, it's that thing.
Well now, you didn't feel like
when you listened to music in the past
that you were procrastinating, you know?
And now I feel like because you are like, oh.
You know it exists and you're missing something, right?
This is, I should be, you know,
I should be educating myself to a degree.
Yeah, how many times can I listen to rumors?
Right, but then you know what the answer is?
A thousand times.
Infinite, an infinite amount of times,
because then, yeah, now I feel like,
and this is the sad state of affairs,
I'll be at a restaurant.
That's maybe the only time I hear rumors now, right?
And then when I hear it, I'm like, you know,
I also have the power to listen to rumors.
Yeah, so it's another reason a road trip is fun, rumors now, right? And then when I hear it, I'm like, you know, I also have the power to listen to rumors. Yeah.
So it's another reason a road trip is fun,
especially when you're by yourself,
because I will listen to it.
If you had the boys,
let's say it was next year, you do it with the boys,
what's the longest stretch
you think they could actually do in the car?
It wouldn't be anywhere near what I can do, right?
So I've thought about that.
That's why I gotta work them, I gotta like work them. We got to take a couple, three hours. It's
like a marathon so that we can do six. Yeah. You know, maybe three hours break, another
three hours motel, movie, bed, up coffee, whatever, whatever bun, whatever muffin I
can get, you know, on the road and just keep doing that. And then, you know, whatever muffin I can get on the road
and just keep doing that.
And then find a couple of cool places,
what I always do, right?
Some places I just blast through and other places,
I stay for a little bit, I stay for a night or two.
We would do that.
But that would be, I am looking forward to doing that.
I wanna do that with them.
And I just love that they wanna do it. So that, because I feel like the sense of going,
that's the other thing is going off of the highway.
I think for kids, that's boring.
I think it is more exciting to drive through like farmland
or, but like in the back roads and go, look at that one.
Look at this.
Oh, well, that's cool.
You know, there's so many surprises along the way.
I feel like Dr. Seuss, but it really is.
This country really is like that.
Yeah.
The whole thing.
Have you had any notable sort of great trips
with your boys that aren't, that are more stateside?
Do you go off on little family vacations
or quick excursions?
You know, summertime we've done that,
but you know, that's just to get somewhere, really, right?
To get out to the beach for a week,
or we like it up in the Hudson Valley.
But not so much.
Although, you know what, I'm going to Ireland.
I'm gonna make a movie in Ireland this summer,
and I'm gonna bring them out for a couple of weeks,
so I think we will go for some good drives in Ireland.
The one time I went there, we did a lot of that.
Any, don't name names.
Are there any other people I know that are working in Ireland?
Cause I feel like multiple people have told me.
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
Mutual people we know are working in.
There's a lot going on in Ireland right now, I agree.
There's a lot of things.
So that makes it all the better, right?
When you get to go out and see friends you know,
from Brooklyn.
Yeah, it's true.
That's great.
Yeah. That's the problem of, you know, when you do these late night shows see friends you know, from Brooklyn. Yeah, it's true. That's great. Yeah.
That's the problem of, you know,
when you do these late night shows,
they're just all home games.
You never get to see the world.
Just working in the same building for 22 years.
I haven't seen anything.
Painted Highway, what is this?
I was listening to one, I was listening,
painted highway.
No, that's not it.
I listened to a lot of Gordon Lightfoot in the car too.
There you go, yeah.
How about the songs that come on, like when you're in the car too. There you go, yeah. How about the songs that come on like that?
When you're in the car for a really long time,
you actively try to remember the songs
that you know you knew the words to,
to see if you still know the words.
And that's a day, that's like a day.
I can do that for a day,
seeing if I remember the words to the Rain King, you know?
Or, you know, hold my hand or, you know.
That's great.
Whatever.
But yeah.
Sorry, I don't know what we got off.
That's fine.
We rarely know all the words to any song, so.
Oh, that's what I remember.
You guys were talking about hearing your,
you were listening on one of your podcasts,
you were talking about listening back to things. And I think Josh listens to speed or something, which is too fast for
some things. And it made me laugh because it got me thinking about this thing about hearing our
voices. Like imagine like people never, people never heard themselves. Like what, like what,
like in the days when people didn't hear themselves,
did people have like the craziest laughs? Like were there were there people who just fucking
they didn't because nobody cared right and nobody said anything and you couldn't hear your own.
Whenever I hear my laugh it's it's so horrible. It's it's it's a cackle that I hear when I'm really
laughing and I can't control myself that even if I try in the moment
because I'm an actor, so I try to like sometimes cap
like be outside of what's happening to so I can see it
and I can't control my laugh.
It's horrible.
But back in the day, people didn't care at all.
And now, yeah, I think now we just,
without realizing it, we're critical of everything
because we can hear it and see it.
It's funny, there should be in those,
for example, like there was like,
Boardwalk Empire, right?
There would be like vaudeville scenes
where guys would be telling jokes.
They should have had the people in the audience
just like crazy laughs.
They totally should have.
You're right, you're right.
Maybe we could.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was good buddies with Paul Rubens
who always would talk about the first people that danced.
Like you see those people in like the twenties
and he's like, they don't know what they're doing.
They're just like smiling too big.
And it's like, yeah, there's no reflection of like,
how do I look right now?
Yeah, I think about that often actually.
Sometimes I, I mean, anybody who knows me will tell you
that like, I, you know, I'm just,
I'm like a six year old sometimes
with like the wonders of life still.
Today, you mentioned Paul Rubens.
I thought about him today, Josh.
You know, I was coming.
I dropped the kids off at school.
Rafa Rocco's wants to bounce a basketball now to school every day.
So I have to take that home.
And then the other one wants to get on the scooter with the helmet
and there's nowhere to put it.
So I am stuck with all this shit.
And I know I got to go to the bakery.
It's like six blocks away.
I'll try to be brief.
But I go up there. I'm carrying the thing, everybody's taking their kids,
I'm pissed off.
And I go and I stand in line, I get the bread.
And then I get on this tiny little scooter,
a Razor two-wheeler, and I go down Henry Street
in Brooklyn here, which is all downhill.
And I'm not kidding you guys,
I made it from Montague and Henry to about two blocks from my house because I caught all the lights and like like garbage truck holding up traffic garbage guys waving to be saying good morning Atlantic Avenue accident and traffic jam, so I didn't have to stop. I kept going. I made it almost all, two blocks from my house
on like two kicks of this child's thing.
And I felt like Paul Rubin's.
I thought about him.
I was like, I feel like Pee Wee Harmon right now.
Like I'm seeing the whole world through another lens
and it's all working for me right now.
So anyway, Paul Rubin's thing.
The opening credit sequence to Bobby.
Yeah, Bobby and Brooklyn.
I had a different, so my boys, like last year,
they had their scooters and then I would razor scooter
with them. I had one for me.
You had a big one.
Yeah.
For your size.
And so the three of us would go to school
and I think it looked like the cutest thing in the world.
Then though I would drop them off
and then it would just be me on a razor scooter home.
And the amount I felt people being like,
recognizing me and being like, what's gone wrong for him?
What?
Yeah, right?
I definitely see that, but I don't care.
Like by the time they've figured it out,
I'm gone, by the way.
Right, well you're catching all the lights.
You just gotta not, you're catching all the lights.
And you gotta be like really, like I'm so hyper careful.
I look down at all, you know,
because I don't wanna take a header, you know,
while I'm being watched, certainly.
Yeah.
Yeah, you don't wanna,
but when you're at the stoplights for those,
that's the bad part.
When you're just like being stationary on a Razor scooter.
And you know what?
It's not even, it's not cool to like reach in
and look at your phone,
cause you're still, you're on the scooter.
No, you have to keep one hand on the thing,
on the stupid thing.
And it's really low, this one.
So Ezra, you're in Ezra with Rose.
This is how many times have you guys worked together?
Oh, we were talking about the other night, nine.
Nine?
Yeah, nine.
That's pretty good.
You met on set.
Is that right? No, we met, T pretty good. Wow, you met on set. Is that right?
No, we didn't.
No, no, we met.
Tate Donovan's an old friend of mine.
He was doing damages with Rose
and their first season.
And I met her then and we were, you know,
in totally different times in our lives.
So socially, we'd, whenever like,
I'd get together with Tate and his cast, you know,
we'd see each other.
And so we were sort of friendly before that.
And then a few years later, after that,
12 years ago this year, we re-met at a play.
We were both in the audience of a play
and we went on a date a week later.
And then we worked together six months after that
was the first time.
And then consequently, eight more times.
Two things, Tate Donovan, I was just thinking about
because my boys just watched Hercules for the first time.
He's the voice of Hercules, which is fantastic.
He's great.
Now you work together-
Do your kids ask you if you know all the people
that they like?
No.
They don't?
And they've met a few,
but they haven't quite put together
that I would know them yet.
And a few times I've said, oh, you know,
that person who does have voices on my show.
But then when I showed them a clip,
they're disappointed that it doesn't look like,
if I showed them a picture of Tate Donovan,
they would be very disappointed
had they looked less like Hercules.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, yeah.
I do avoid, I did a voice in an animated series
that Seth created and his eldest now is like, you were perfect man?
And I'm like, yeah, and I do it and he's like,
you sound like him and I'm like, yeah,
cause that I was him.
Yes, that's really cute.
How many times do you guys think you would have worked?
I mean, like it seems like you were probably trying to,
I don't know, shape it so that you work together, yes?
Not really, to be honest.
I think just that, I just think that people,
let's be honest, like the people who like, you know,
paying the checks, they're not like that creative, right?
So you see something once, you go, hey, let's do that again.
So Rose and I actually say no to a lot of those things.
But the bonus is that we like working together
and our schedules match up.
Like our life is just our schedule
and it's not our schedule really, it's the kids' schedules.
So like everything sort of revolves around that
until it can't and then we have to figure that out.
But we try to schedule everything around the kids.
And so when we get asked to work together,
that's usually a good thing for our schedule with the kids.
I would imagine.
Yeah, and most of the things that we've done together
have been here.
Right, so this was mostly,
cause I know there's a road trip element here,
but mostly you were shooting this one in New York?
All here in New Jersey and New York, yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
Hey guys, I mean, you'd think I'd be more on the ball here.
I just got that the movie is a road trip movie
and it connects to this podcast.
I'm not even joking that it just hit me.
I'm so bad, I have no media training.
So like,
No, no.
Like, so like, can you imagine,
can you imagine if this was really only like
an eight minute show,
and you guys are like, what the fuck are we gonna do?
I don't even know how to, I don't know how to make this work.
Media training 101, show up with a fly swatter.
Yeah.
I'll tell you what, I haven't seen him. Yeah, I think with a fly swatter. Yeah. Say what?
I haven't seen him.
Yeah, I think you scared him away early.
Yeah, that was like show up with a big stick.
It's just the big ones I don't like.
The flies, what's the flies about?
Yeah, big old fly.
Yeah, but then again, I think again about the farm.
Not that I know I'm not living in a farm,
but there would be flies, right?
There would be flies.
More flies than you have.
A fly swatter, they probably don't even have fly swatters
on the farm because it's fruitless.
They're like, we can't stop this wave
no matter what we do.
Yeah, yeah.
The ones I don't like are the ones that grow
out of the fruit from nowhere.
Yeah, no thanks.
That one I'm like, oh, please.
Yeah.
All right, Bobby, you, media training or not,
I could tell you one of my favorite guests
we've ever had on this podcast.
Really?
You've been absolutely fantastic.
Fantastic.
Oh, you're kidding.
You're a hit.
No, you're a hit.
We always, Josh and I do try to see this
through the lens of what will our parents say
and that you're gonna be a real hit with Hillary and Larry.
Yeah, thanks guys, this was really easy.
I do get really nervous.
Like, I brought a hat, and I brought, you know,
I brought Jake Tapper's book.
You know, I just like-
I have that book.
He sent me that book.
Let's be honest.
Yeah, so-
Josh is gonna, before you go,
Josh is gonna ask you some questions real quick.
Some quick questions.
You can only pick one of these.
Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous,
or educational?
Adventurous.
What is your favorite means of transportation?
Train, plane, automobile, boat, bike, walking?
Something else?
Walking, what do you mean in the city?
Or you mean in general?
Just means transportation.
In the city, walking everywhere, biking everywhere,
city biking everywhere, and in general, car.
Okay, this one's a little trickier.
If you could take a family vacation with any family,
alive or dead, real or fictional,
other than your own family,
what family would you like to take a vacation with?
Holy shit, that's a great question.
Fuck. I mean, like maybe like the Jackson's in 1968.
Great answer. Great answer.
Love it. I'd love to be with those guys.
See what's happening.
By the way, if you think if you think, nevermind, I won't even say.
If you had to be stranded on a desert island
with one member of your family, who would it be?
If I had to be?
You had to be.
Not counting my wife and kids,
because of course I want them, you mean?
But you have to pick one.
Oh, it's only one.
Only one.
Oh, Jesus.
Well, you know, the kids I love all the same,
so I guess I'm not gonna screw that one up.
Um, I guess Rose for sure.
Actually, Rose, just over.
If Rocco and Rafa are only listening to this,
your dad did giant quote fingers
for loving you all the same.
The little one's been asking me that a lot lately.
It says like new way to nudge me.
Dad, who do you like the most?
That one.
My wife said to our middle son Axel,
you know you're my least favorite
and he just, he cannot be rattled.
And he was just like, he was looking out the window
and he goes, yeah, but I'm also your favorite.
And she was like, yeah, that's about right.
He kind of, he kind of occupies the polls.
I like to tell them who's like, who's smarter this week.
You know what I mean?
Like your brother, you were much smarter last week,
you know, I find that helps.
That's good.
Yeah. The drive, something to strive for. Yeah. Brother, you were much smarter last week, you know. I find that helps. That's gonna get you.
The drive, something to strive for.
Yeah.
So you would say you're from Union City, New Jersey?
Yes.
This hometown.
Would you recommend Union City as a vacation destination?
You know what?
I would tell people if they wanted to go for the best drive,
go across the Lincoln Tunnel, bear right,
go up Boulevard East.
And all of that, Boulevard East,
which is also part of that is Hamilton Terrace,
where Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr.
It's still there, Hamilton Terrace.
And drive your car there, and all along the water there,
it's a cliff, it's the top of a cliff.
And I grew up with the best views of New York City.
It is the greatest view of New York City,
and there's parks along, basketball, bring a basketball.
It's beautiful and it ends in a beautiful county park
called Hudson County Park.
We called it the 80th Street Park.
But so yeah, that's a great day trip actually.
That's a very good specific instruction
because I will say when we drive into the city
coming down Hudson, you know,
and you look across, it does look like a beautiful, I mean,
exactly what you said, like a cliff
that looks over New York City.
I grew up on 19th Street,
and it's right across from 19th Street.
And Union City, you know,
is a little further back from the cliff.
Like, I could see the Empire State Building
from our kitchen, from our apartment window,
but I couldn't see everything
because it's like eight, 10
blocks to the cliffside. And that old cliffside is called West New York. So West New York,
all the streets match up with the street numbers on this side.
Wow. So, so like, you know, where I was baptized
and at my first communion and all that stuff is like these three domes that if you look
across from like 20th street and Chelsea ish,
you can see those three domes. That's 20th street. That's my St. Michael's, the monastery that they
never knocked down. So I kind of see Union City every day. It's pretty wild, but that's, I would
recommend that as a day trip for sure and pick up some good Cuban food while you're there.
Excellent. And Seth has our last questions, which we've kind of answered.
You've answered it. The question was going last questions, which we've kind of answered.
You've answered it.
The question was gonna be,
have you been to the Grand Canyon and was it worth it?
But I feel like hardcore yeses on both.
I have a feeling like that might be Grand Canyon,
maybe might be in the title of the show.
Grand Canyon, yes.
He's gonna call it.
He's gonna call it right now.
I think the title of the show is gonna be like,
it's gonna be like, find out more about Trinidad Tony. I think the title of the show is gonna be like, it's gonna be like,
find out more about Trinidad Tony.
I think that might be right.
God.
I've never said that out loud.
Certainly not publicly,
but like, nobody's asked me about my stepfather
or anything like that.
So, and he's Tony from Trinidad, yeah.
I'm glad he finally got his due. Um, Bobby
I hope I see you in person again soon. Love to you and your whole family and your family as well Josh
Great to meet you. Great to meet you too. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. All right. All right. Bye Bobby Who is the boy?
Who is the boy who was the king of questions?
Hit with a shoe driving to Montreal Laid flat in the back while making the return
trip His sister whispered answers to them all
He's Bobby Cannavale
He's Bobby Cannavale Who is the man? Who is the man who rides a razor scooter?
Smiles and waves from all the local shops.
He's the neighborhood's cutest commuter.
At the intersection's traffic stops.
It's Bobby Cannavale He's Bobby Cannavale Thanks again, Nissan for sponsoring this episode.
Learn more at NissanUSA.com.