April 9, 2024 • 34 mins
Happy Spring Break, which is a different week of no school for every parent on our team! So...we're bringing a favorite episode with the wry and hilarious comedian and mom to twins, Tig Notaro. And don't miss her new comedy special, "Hello Again."
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, listeners, this is parenting is a joke. You're listening
to the voice of Olfira Eisenberg. That's me. How's everyone doing?
It's April. Yeah, I gotta say, I feel like there's
a widespread just lift of everyone's spirits because now the
daylight lasts till six point thirty. What to do with
that extra light? I don't know. A few days after Easter,
(00:24):
my son asked, so, what does this holiday actually mean? Mom?
Like what happened? And when I explained the belief that
Jesus rose from the dead, he immediately just went gross. Ah,
like a zombie? Was he naked? If that doesn't sum
up the mindset of an eight year old boy, I
don't know what does. So here April, for the parenting
(00:47):
is a joke. Team is quite a juggle because we're
all working moms and we all have four different weeks
of April vacation. Yeah, schools clearly did not know how
to handle early Easter, late Passover ead, and then just
Spring vacations. So we're all over the place. Logistics Department
(01:10):
of Education so fun. So we're revisiting our chat with
the wonderful comedian Tig Nataro. She has a brand new
comedy special out called Happy to Be Here. It's on
Amazon and Enjoy. Right now my interview with Tig Nataro.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I'm very excited for my guest today. She's been nominated
for a Grammy. She's got comedy specials, television shows, a documentary,
has been in many movies. You all know her, and
she has a podcast called Don't Ask Tig. Please welcome
to my zoom screen, Tig Nataro.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hello, Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So Tig start things off, because you know, welcome to parenting.
As a joke. What are the ages and names of
your kids?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Max and Finn? They will be seven in June. They
are fraternal twins, so I.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Have a seven year old, so I have I feel
like I have a little bit of an idea maybe
of what their life is like. Although I saw through
the social medias you guys are really into Little League baseball.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I mean that's one thing. They're on the basketball team,
they're on the swim team, they're on Little League, they
are into soccer, hockey. It's just it's endless. There's new
interest now in golf. One is training for the Olympics,
you know, running around the yard. So yeah, super sporty,
(02:42):
very active kids. But I mean they're also into the
typical legos and Pokemon and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
How do you feel about the Pokemon?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I feel good. I'm fine with it. You know. I
think it hasn't like impacted my life in a negative way. Yeah,
I feel like they're talking a completely different language.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It's wild, right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah. It's interesting when people in our lives that our
adults are young enough to know Pokemon. Like when we
went to Mississippi to see my family recently, my cousins
that are like thirty knew all about Pokemon and sat
and talked with our sons forever about it, and Stephanie
(03:28):
and I were like, wow, no clue what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh no, my son knows all the names. And then
he sort of lightly quizzes me about them, and I like,
not even do I not know? I'm not retaining it.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, none of it. None of it.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Which might be the name of a Pokemon.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Okay, And to be fair, I'm not even that great
with sports. My wife is way more in the sports
world than I am. We were going to be in
Toronto together and she said, oh my gosh, I was
able to secure some maple leaf tickets.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yes, it was the playoffs. Yeah, whatever it's called. And
I was like, I was like, oh my gosh. And
she said they're a little pricey. Should I get them?
I said, yeah, great, get them? And then she was
like whoao. And then my follow up text was what
sport is that. She's like, oh my god. It's like,
(04:29):
I don't know. It sounded like it sounded exciting and
like we had really secured something cool. And I was like, yeah,
let's go. But I honestly I thought it was baseball.
I had no idea. But I do enjoy hockey. I
think to watch more than most sports because it's so
fast and and just and.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It was slamming up against the boards and then the
puck is back in action, like it is, Yeah, dance watch.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Slamming against the boards is the whole reason my son
Max is there. That's why he got his ticket.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah. So I live in New York. I have a
kid in this city, and I'm constantly reevaluating whether this
is where I want to raise a kid, you know,
city kid. I didn't exactly have that, you know, I
know that you grew up in a more rural setting
in Mississippi, but you live in LA How do you
find having little kids in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know, I was really into Los Angeles and I
don't really have any complaints. Getting married and then having kids,
it did kind of change my perspective where I felt like,
what am I doing here? You know, it just feels
a little odd. And then my wife is fifteen years
(05:45):
younger than me, and her careers, I feel is taking
off way more lately, and so we're just trying to
figure out does it make sense? Do we have to
be here right? We both feel like maybe there could
be a different place to go. But we have a
(06:07):
tremendous life. We have great friends, and you know, like
I said, our kids are on all these teams and
we go to the games, and their grandfather lives right
near us and he's part of the whole little league,
works in the dugout and keeps that clean and you know,
manages the dugout. But you are in Hollywood. You know,
(06:29):
it's really something, and it's crazy because we just were,
like I said, in Mississippi and just the open spaces
I know, and my kids would just dart off and
run in like huge lots of land, just squealing. They
(06:50):
can't do that Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The grass is always a little greener.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I know I had the exact same experience, but it
was just upstate New York that we were like parking
somewhere and there was just a huge field and my
son just running around being like wild with the idea
of a horizon that seemed far away.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And I know if we left Los Angeles we would
miss it. There's certainly restaurants and a social life that
that we would for sure miss.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The convenience too, There's just everything's inconvenience. There's a lot
of inconvenience, the traffic and the parking and the and
the what is this person doing on our Street's what's
happening right now?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
What are those helicopters when I'm trying to sleep or
throw the ball in the backyard? It's not convenient now, No,
I hear you in that.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
It's true. Anytime I take my kid too on the
subway in New York, I'm like, this is wildly problematic,
just because it doesn't run well. And you know, kids
are so good, you know, they have no filter, especially
that age. They will just exactly tell you their criticism
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, of people within earshot that don't ever need to hear,
ever need to hear what you just witnessed and decided
to share with everyone.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When we were at a walk yesterday, there was a
whole group of older people and my son very loudly said,
is that an elderly group?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I was like, Locus, I don't know if I am
too worried about our kids saying that just because I'm
fifty two and so I am the elderly group that
they're used to looking at. Actually, one of my sons
asked me the other night, Actually it wasn't the other night.
(08:47):
That's not true. You caught me. But when they were five,
it was bedtime story time. They call me a mayor,
which is French for mother, and Finn said, Mayor, are
you a boy or a girl? And I said what
do you think I am? And he said I think
you're a boy and I said no, I'm a girl.
(09:12):
And he said yeah, but you look like a boy, right,
and I said yeah, probably, and then we began story time.
So it's like a right, five years of five years
of living together, and it finally came up if his
mother was a boy or girl?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And I love that. It was like a five sentence
conversation and then yeah, you're good, You're good, all right now.
I've asked us to comics on the show before if
they've wanted kids their whole life, and I will tell
you pretty much mixed bag. But I know from reading
(09:53):
and listening to you that for you, the answer is yes, yeah,
did you feel like that way as an adult or
was it like, did you babysit as a teenager and
just think of it even when you were younger.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I did babysit as a teenager, and I actually even
worked at a daycare center for years. I had dropped
out of high school and I needed a job and
it is so not the job that you just pick
up because you need a job. Oh my god, I
was My mind was blown. I was never the most
affectionate person, and it was It was actually really good
(10:28):
for me because I walk in and all these kids
just want to hug you, and I have long hair
at the time, they were wanting to braid my hair,
and I was like, whoa, whoa, hold on, what's happening?
And you know, wanting to sit on my lap and
and but I don't know. I think it was really
good for me. And I had always thought maybe I
(10:53):
would have kids, and I think working with children really
opened me up even more. And and as a young adult,
I think in my late teens early twenties, I started
to just kind of imagine, well, I'll probably just have
a kid. I always pictured myself just me and this
(11:13):
little baby. I don't know where it was going to
come from, but it was just gonna be me and
this kid. And yeah, I had no idea what was
to come.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
But then when you're doing stand up, you're on the road,
did you go, well, that's the end of that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, Honestly, I had a terrible Well. Stephanie thinks was
a terrible plan. She's very and of course I want
everyone to be safe, but she is all about safety
and that you do things this way. And I was
a little more loosey goosey. I think my mother was
very loosey goosey and lucy goosey in certain ways. I'm
(11:51):
by the book in other ways. But I had it
in my mind that Okay, i'll have this kid, I'll
go on tour, I'll have an open and my opener
will watch my kid backstage for thirty minutes. I'll pay
them for their show. So that was my plan. I'm
(12:12):
not saying it's good, that's terrible, okay, but that was
my plan. And I feel like there are plenty of
comedians it would have been like I would do that.
I'd hang out with your baby for whatever amount of time.
I would have done that to get on the road,
and like if I liked kids, which I did, I
would have been like I had no problem.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay. So then obviously that was the plan. You did
want to become a parent, and you started IVF. You
started it after you had, you know, gone through dulmus
ectomy and to an extent, finished with breast cancer. Not
to trauma bond, but just to relate after I went
(12:55):
through breast cancer treatment myself, I really wanted to have
a kid, and I am just wondering with the timeline.
Is that a similar story to yours at all?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I was on a path. You know how when
you're younger, you have this idea of like, I'm going
to do this until I'm twenty five, and then I'm
going to have my ideal job when I'm this age,
and then I'm going to work this amount of years
save my money, and then I'll be married, and then
I'll you know, you have things plotted out sometimes and
(13:26):
then oops, you're gay and you have cancer and you're
a comedian and none of that at all lines up.
But I was still dragging along whatever semblance of this
timeline with me in life. And part of it was
that when I'm forty, I'm going to have a kid.
(13:48):
And I felt like that was a reasonable amount of
time from when I started stand up to where I
would hopefully be and how much money I had saved,
and you know, i'd have my opener place that could
ready sit my kid on the road. You know. I
had all of those things and I had done Are
you familiar with NAKA conventions?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Oh yeah, so yeah. But for people who don't know,
that was for colleges.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, you perform stand up and all of the buyers
from the different colleges come out. They see you perform,
and if they like what they see, they'll bid on
you to come to their college. And I had an
like a crazy successful NAKA one year where I was like,
oh my god, like I was just sweeping it up
(14:36):
there and so I did this insane amount of colleges
and making at the time an insane amount of money,
where I was thinking, this is really putting me on
track perfectly, because once I finished this college tour, I'm
going to have so much money in the bank. I
am going to be so ready to become a parent.
(15:00):
And then I started to get sick right after the tour,
and then I got sicker and sicker and everything fell apart.
But I had money in the bank, but I didn't
have my health, and I was ready to have a kid.
So life just didn't line up with my schedule that
(15:24):
I had put each other. Yeah, I was so teed up,
so teed up.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
I mean some people might go, you know what, I'm
done with medical intervention of any kind. I am definitely
not going to do something like IVF. It's yeah, you
have to do a lot of appointments.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And you have to pull over while you're driving into
some seed parking lot and inject yourself in the thigh
or stomach. You also have to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's right, exactly. And your wife stuff. Was she someone
who wanted to have kids her whole life?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah? I actually hid it from her in the beginning
that I was trying to have a baby because I
had just started dating her and she was, as I said,
fifteen years younger than me. She had never dated a woman.
I was like, oh my god, this is going to
be the biggest turn off that this sickly older lesbian
(16:23):
is trying to have the last shot at having a child.
And so I was, you know, privately, like I said,
pulling over behind dumpsters to like shoot up my thigh
and stomach to have a child. And then so I
just didn't tell Stephanie. And then when I realized that
this was a crazy secret to keep it because we
(16:45):
were clearly in love and there was no way because
in my mind, I was thinking, oh, well, I'll just
you know, we can fall in love and get further
along in our relationship and I can just have this
be cooking, you know somewhere and just reveal it and
have to deal. Yeah. Well, no, I knew i'd have
(17:07):
to reveal it sooner. But I figured if it was
with a surrogate, I could keep it kind of out
of our relationship. We could still be going on dates.
And then I was like, this is insane. So I
told her and she was just amazing and said, I
don't want you going to these doctor's appointments by yourself.
I want to be a part of this. And she
(17:29):
said I want children. I mean, this is months into dating.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And I was like, this doesn't freak you out, and
she's like, no, no, I want to be a part
of it. She said, I actually want five kids. And
I was I thought, well, I only imagine one. But
but now that you're talking, well truly I thought. I
(17:55):
enjoyed her so much that I thought, well, sure I'd
have five kids with you. I do anything with you,
you know, And so I was just all in and
the way she was all in, and then we ended up,
you know, having twins, meeting halfway, I guess almost halfway.
(18:15):
And once we had twins, she said, I think I'm
finished with the five pid dream.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Let's revisit the large family like a couple little kids.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, she said. Whenever she would see movies where there's
a lot of chaos and kids like coming in and
out of the house and grabbing a football and eating
cereal at the table, she was like, I just love
that busy, chaos vibe. And even though I feel like
we're good with two, if Stephanie said, I want to
have another kid, or let's do this. I would absolutely
(18:50):
do it. I guess I just trust our situation.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, you're open to inviting more in.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
We're not going to have more I know that for sure.
But we have this conversation all the time. I just
feel open, but I know for a.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Fact we're not having What kind of teenager were you?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
By the way, I was certainly rebellious. I failed three grades,
I dropped out of high school. I smoked cigarettes, listen
to rock and roll. Oh boy, yeah, I would say we,
me and my friends were some of the biggest problems.
But in today's standards, it's nothing. And of course you could.
(19:29):
You could go off the rails. And I had friends
that went way off the rails and that ended up
drug addicts or they are not alive anymore. And I
am so on the straight and narrow. It is ridiculous.
It is very ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Like you got it all out of the way.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Oh my god, it's so far out of the way.
I just I just don't feel like I'm up to anything. Ever.
I'm like, you wanna you want to you want to
go through my stuff? You want to eavesdrop on my call.
You want to like, okay, I'm always like when people
are like, oh my god, the government's listening to our call,
(20:10):
I'm like, listen away if you find anything interesting. I
don't know what anybody would find that's funny.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Someone asked you use my phone and they were like,
is there anything on here? And I was like, what, No.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I know. I was sitting at our office the other
night and the curtains were open and it was completely
pitch dark out, and I thought, I guess I should
close the curtains just because I can't see out and
other people can see ind. But that's when it hit
me that I'm really up to nothing. Like I'm not.
(20:49):
I'm not like away at the office up to anything.
I am just sitting here working and the curtains are open,
just trying. I'm just going to close it, you know.
But I used to be.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
What do you think about schooling education for your kids?
Do you feel a little bit like more open to whatever?
Or do you you know? Are you like, no, it's
could be Montessori or I don't know, whatever kind of
learning we're going to set them up.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, we're both actively searching out what school doesn't give homework,
you know what you know. And my stepfather actually he
was the one that really pushed me and my brother.
And before he died, he asked me if he could
put aside money for their education and I said sure,
(21:46):
and he said, but I want you to know. And
this was big for him because he was very much
a certain way and this is how you do it.
You go to college, you go to business school, you
do this and that, and there's one half for me. Yeah,
and he was acknowledging that there's different ways for everyone.
And he said, if I put this money aside, I
(22:07):
want you to know that Max and Finn don't have
to go to college. They could go to an art school.
They could go and learn masonry and whatever it is
that they want to do. And that was a very
big moment to see him come around in that way.
It was very touching, right because I told him, I said,
if my kids want to be a car mechanic and
(22:27):
they're the happiest people in the world, if they truly
want to, you know, ride the back of a garbage
truck and they are smiling every day of their life,
I am one million percent on board with that. If
they want to be an attorney and they're happy whatever
they want to do. I really really want them to
(22:48):
be happy people. Yeah, and Stephanie feels the same way.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
How do you describe your parenting style? Are they feral?
That's what they p park Slope say all the time? Fair?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
No, I don't ever yell. I get very stern. Our
biggest punishment in our house is that they have to
go sit by the front door. And they for seven
years now don't realize it's not that big of a deal,
and so but they avoid it like the plague. And
it's truly there's a moment where I'm like, if this
(23:19):
continues to happen, you will go sit by the front door.
And when again, when we were just in Mississippi and
not to paint my family like a bunch of cartoon characters,
that my cousin was like, are you serious.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You don't yell at your kids.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
They just listen to you, you know, just like baffled
because my cousins screaming her head off, chasing her kids
around and Max and then just you know, will turn
to them and say, look at me, you cannot do that,
And my cousin's like, oh my god, Are you kidding me?
(24:00):
You don't scream at them ever?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Nope, I'll have to say his front door.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But I mean it's not to say that they don't
misbehave or they you know, when they turned six, we
allowed them to have they call them iPads. They're not iPads.
They don't know that they're not iPads or these little tablets.
But you know, in public they call them their iPads.
But we'll tell them that their iPad will go away
(24:28):
for an entire day if they act a certain way.
That's another consequence.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Sure, In general they're oddly they're oddly well behaved, and
mainly they're little spats between the two of them, I
would say, is where it pops up the most.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Are they competitive?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Well, our son Finn is extraordinarily competitive, and our son
Max was born sixty years old, and he's like Finn's
Finn's trying to beat me at this, And you know
that's they're very different.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's a funny dynamic.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And if you try and get in there and reprimand
one for treating the other one poorly, then the one
you're trying to protect will snap at you for talking
to his brother that way.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Oh, they'll protect each other in.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
The discipline view. Yeah, and you're like, I'm trying, I'm
trying to help you. He just bopped you on the
head with his elephant. Don't talk to my brother like that.
And you're like, Okay, well, you guys got to deal
with this.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I had nothing to do with any of this proceed.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I'm sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Uh okay. This is a deeply I feel psychological question,
but I wanted to talk to you about it. I
grapple with this. I know your story. I know you've
been through a lot of tragedy and trauma, you know,
And I think when that happens, you end up seeing
the world in a couple different ways. And it's either
a safe place you're like, I can cope with things,
or you see it's a very danger place because you
(26:01):
know what the worst of it can look like. And
that's one thing when you travel around as an adult,
but it's a whole other thing when you bring kids
into your life. I sometimes just grapple with this idea
of like, what can I protect you from? How can
I protect you? I know I can't protect you. It's
very fraught. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, first of all. I love my life and my
family and my kids, and I wouldn't change a thing.
And simultaneously I think, oh my god, what have I done?
What have I done? Having children? Why would I do this?
Why would I bring people into a world that is
(26:45):
so terrifying?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You know? I try to find that happy medium between
the way my mother raised me, which was I was
certainly not feral, but I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
What Stephanie and I can come to is the idea
that you set up a fence around the yard and
that is the safety, and then you run free and
the safety fence is that's the boundary there.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That's what we got.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
You know. The terrifying part is when you talk to
people with older kids and they say, oh, the worries
get worse and worse, and wait till they drive, and
wait till they go off to college, wait till they
move out of the house, wait till they start dating,
and wait till the You're like, oh, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
But at least now we can put trackers on them
and they're called iPhones trackers with your schedule right now?
You know, we just always talk about, well, basically, how
working in entertainment is a terrible career choice for having kids,
just because of the hours. And so I know, you
(28:01):
know roughly from looking at what you've been up to.
In addition to being on set for television or in film,
you host two podcasts. You would something like seventy dates
last year theater dates, I think. So, yeah, So do
you bring the family with you at all or do
(28:23):
a is it a FaceTime routine?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
FaceTime is so unsuccessful. It's just like, you know, somebody's
nostrils and then someone else grabs the phone and takes
me off to the bathroom, and I'm just like, I
don't I miss everyone, but I don't need this. And
we're at times together, but rarely when I'm on tour,
(28:48):
because you know, I'm going city to city that's exhausting. Yeah,
there's times when my family comes, but mainly it's best
if they're just home and in their routine and going
to their games and seeing their grandparents. And then when
I'm home, I try really hard to just be home. Yeah,
(29:09):
you know, it's all they've ever known. And I would
say we're a very close family. It's really it's really
good and mixed in with tough stuff. That's the other
thing is it's like people will write to me or
tag me online and be like, oh, relationship goals, and
it's flattering. But I also Stephanie and I have got
(29:34):
our issues. And I said to her one time, I
was like, man, ninety nine percent of the time, you
are the greatest thing that's ever happened to be. But
that one percent, I cannot stand you. And she's like, same, same,
that one percent it's like the dregs of the earth.
(29:58):
You just ah repugnant. But ninety nine percent I laughed
so hard with her. I appreciate her. She is the
greatest partner. But one percent it's weird because being a
public figure, they see you on a TV show, they
see you in a movie, they hear you on the podcast,
(30:19):
and it's like, why on earth would I be recording
my hospital stay or the fight I'm having with my
wife or when my kids are fighting.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
You know, Yeah, that's your reality series that's coming up.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, yeah, which I would never do in a million years.
But just know that all of that is happening.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
That is so good to point out. Thank you so much,
tig It was such a pleasure. Of course, that's our show.
Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast,
pass it along to anyone you think might enjoy it.
Hey leave us a review. Five stars would be so
fantastic and we'd love to hear what you think. Follow
(31:02):
us on the socials, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook at Parenting is
a joke. On Twitter, we are parenting joke. We also
have a monthly newsletter with updates, tips, tricks, games. You
can go to Parenting is a joke pod deck to
sign up. But also we started a substack. What are
we crazy? How do we have the time? Excellent question
(31:25):
we'll find out. But yes, we have a new substack.
You can search for parenting as a joke, but we'll
also throw it out on our socials and all over
the place, so make sure you'd give it a read.
Our episode is produced by me and Julie Smith Klem.
Our editor is Nina Porzuki. Our sound designer is Tino
Toby Mack. Our game writer is Emily Winter. Our theme
song and music is by a dear Amram and the
(31:46):
experience thanks to all of the engineers at Citybox. And
here's a little extract comedic content from tig Natara y
am I writing think just as a little back as
you were doing stand up and just kind of figure out,
you know, how to make money from it. That you
also babysat for Lucy Lowless's children.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Well, I didn't babysit for them, but I worked for
her husband's production company that produced Xena and Hercules and
all these shows. And when Lucy would come in to town,
she would have me leave the office and go hang
out with her daughter, Daisy, and I would take her
to amusement parks and out to lunch and just hang
(32:32):
out with her. And it was really kind of ridiculous.
Lucy and Daisy are hugely into roller coasters, and I'm
terrified of them. I would wait in line with Daisy
until it was her turn to go. I wouldn't even
go on the ride with her. I just walked her
up to the front, got her on the thing. She
(32:54):
went zipping around and whipping around, and then I'd meet
her at the exit and then we'd go on to
the next one. I remember one time I wrote a
very small, manageable roller coaster. I was on that eating
cotton candy next to Daisy, and I remember my cell
phone rang, and it was my childhood friend Megan, and
(33:18):
she said, what are you doing, And truly, in the
background she could hear the of the roller coaster going up,
and I said, oh, I'm I'm at work. I'm on
a roller coaster with Zena's daughter and having cotton candy.
And she was like, oh, my God, of course you
(33:40):
are my friends who all made good grades, went to college,
got married, had kids, lived in the suburbs, and then
I'm off in Hollywood on a roller coaster, eating cotton
candy and doing the war. Yeah, doing perfectly fine. Yeah.
I found a few loopholes in life. And my friends
are always like, oh God, of course, of course, of course,
(34:01):
of course,
Hello, listeners, this is parenting is a joke. You're listening
to the voice of Olfira Eisenberg. That's me. How's everyone doing?
It's April. Yeah, I gotta say, I feel like there's
a widespread just lift of everyone's spirits because now the
daylight lasts till six point thirty. What to do with
that extra light? I don't know. A few days after Easter,
(00:24):
my son asked, so, what does this holiday actually mean? Mom?
Like what happened? And when I explained the belief that
Jesus rose from the dead, he immediately just went gross. Ah,
like a zombie? Was he naked? If that doesn't sum
up the mindset of an eight year old boy, I
don't know what does. So here April, for the parenting
(00:47):
is a joke. Team is quite a juggle because we're
all working moms and we all have four different weeks
of April vacation. Yeah, schools clearly did not know how
to handle early Easter, late Passover ead, and then just
Spring vacations. So we're all over the place. Logistics Department
(01:10):
of Education so fun. So we're revisiting our chat with
the wonderful comedian Tig Nataro. She has a brand new
comedy special out called Happy to Be Here. It's on
Amazon and Enjoy. Right now my interview with Tig Nataro.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I'm very excited for my guest today. She's been nominated
for a Grammy. She's got comedy specials, television shows, a documentary,
has been in many movies. You all know her, and
she has a podcast called Don't Ask Tig. Please welcome
to my zoom screen, Tig Nataro.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hello, Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So Tig start things off, because you know, welcome to parenting.
As a joke. What are the ages and names of
your kids?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Max and Finn? They will be seven in June. They
are fraternal twins, so I.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Have a seven year old, so I have I feel
like I have a little bit of an idea maybe
of what their life is like. Although I saw through
the social medias you guys are really into Little League baseball.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I mean that's one thing. They're on the basketball team,
they're on the swim team, they're on Little League, they
are into soccer, hockey. It's just it's endless. There's new
interest now in golf. One is training for the Olympics,
you know, running around the yard. So yeah, super sporty,
(02:42):
very active kids. But I mean they're also into the
typical legos and Pokemon and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
How do you feel about the Pokemon?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I feel good. I'm fine with it. You know. I
think it hasn't like impacted my life in a negative way. Yeah,
I feel like they're talking a completely different language.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It's wild, right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah. It's interesting when people in our lives that our
adults are young enough to know Pokemon. Like when we
went to Mississippi to see my family recently, my cousins
that are like thirty knew all about Pokemon and sat
and talked with our sons forever about it, and Stephanie
(03:28):
and I were like, wow, no clue what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh no, my son knows all the names. And then
he sort of lightly quizzes me about them, and I like,
not even do I not know? I'm not retaining it.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, none of it. None of it.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Which might be the name of a Pokemon.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Okay, And to be fair, I'm not even that great
with sports. My wife is way more in the sports
world than I am. We were going to be in
Toronto together and she said, oh my gosh, I was
able to secure some maple leaf tickets.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yes, it was the playoffs. Yeah, whatever it's called. And
I was like, I was like, oh my gosh. And
she said they're a little pricey. Should I get them?
I said, yeah, great, get them? And then she was
like whoao. And then my follow up text was what
sport is that. She's like, oh my god. It's like,
(04:29):
I don't know. It sounded like it sounded exciting and
like we had really secured something cool. And I was like, yeah,
let's go. But I honestly I thought it was baseball.
I had no idea. But I do enjoy hockey. I
think to watch more than most sports because it's so
fast and and just and.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It was slamming up against the boards and then the
puck is back in action, like it is, Yeah, dance watch.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Slamming against the boards is the whole reason my son
Max is there. That's why he got his ticket.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah. So I live in New York. I have a
kid in this city, and I'm constantly reevaluating whether this
is where I want to raise a kid, you know,
city kid. I didn't exactly have that, you know, I
know that you grew up in a more rural setting
in Mississippi, but you live in LA How do you
find having little kids in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know, I was really into Los Angeles and I
don't really have any complaints. Getting married and then having kids,
it did kind of change my perspective where I felt like,
what am I doing here? You know, it just feels
a little odd. And then my wife is fifteen years
(05:45):
younger than me, and her careers, I feel is taking
off way more lately, and so we're just trying to
figure out does it make sense? Do we have to
be here right? We both feel like maybe there could
be a different place to go. But we have a
(06:07):
tremendous life. We have great friends, and you know, like
I said, our kids are on all these teams and
we go to the games, and their grandfather lives right
near us and he's part of the whole little league,
works in the dugout and keeps that clean and you know,
manages the dugout. But you are in Hollywood. You know,
(06:29):
it's really something, and it's crazy because we just were,
like I said, in Mississippi and just the open spaces
I know, and my kids would just dart off and
run in like huge lots of land, just squealing. They
(06:50):
can't do that Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The grass is always a little greener.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I know I had the exact same experience, but it
was just upstate New York that we were like parking
somewhere and there was just a huge field and my
son just running around being like wild with the idea
of a horizon that seemed far away.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And I know if we left Los Angeles we would
miss it. There's certainly restaurants and a social life that
that we would for sure miss.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The convenience too, There's just everything's inconvenience. There's a lot
of inconvenience, the traffic and the parking and the and
the what is this person doing on our Street's what's
happening right now?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
What are those helicopters when I'm trying to sleep or
throw the ball in the backyard? It's not convenient now, No,
I hear you in that.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
It's true. Anytime I take my kid too on the
subway in New York, I'm like, this is wildly problematic,
just because it doesn't run well. And you know, kids
are so good, you know, they have no filter, especially
that age. They will just exactly tell you their criticism
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, of people within earshot that don't ever need to hear,
ever need to hear what you just witnessed and decided
to share with everyone.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When we were at a walk yesterday, there was a
whole group of older people and my son very loudly said,
is that an elderly group?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I was like, Locus, I don't know if I am
too worried about our kids saying that just because I'm
fifty two and so I am the elderly group that
they're used to looking at. Actually, one of my sons
asked me the other night, Actually it wasn't the other night.
(08:47):
That's not true. You caught me. But when they were five,
it was bedtime story time. They call me a mayor,
which is French for mother, and Finn said, Mayor, are
you a boy or a girl? And I said what
do you think I am? And he said I think
you're a boy and I said no, I'm a girl.
(09:12):
And he said yeah, but you look like a boy, right,
and I said yeah, probably, and then we began story time.
So it's like a right, five years of five years
of living together, and it finally came up if his
mother was a boy or girl?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And I love that. It was like a five sentence
conversation and then yeah, you're good, You're good, all right now.
I've asked us to comics on the show before if
they've wanted kids their whole life, and I will tell
you pretty much mixed bag. But I know from reading
(09:53):
and listening to you that for you, the answer is yes, yeah,
did you feel like that way as an adult or
was it like, did you babysit as a teenager and
just think of it even when you were younger.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I did babysit as a teenager, and I actually even
worked at a daycare center for years. I had dropped
out of high school and I needed a job and
it is so not the job that you just pick
up because you need a job. Oh my god, I
was My mind was blown. I was never the most
affectionate person, and it was It was actually really good
(10:28):
for me because I walk in and all these kids
just want to hug you, and I have long hair
at the time, they were wanting to braid my hair,
and I was like, whoa, whoa, hold on, what's happening?
And you know, wanting to sit on my lap and
and but I don't know. I think it was really
good for me. And I had always thought maybe I
(10:53):
would have kids, and I think working with children really
opened me up even more. And and as a young adult,
I think in my late teens early twenties, I started
to just kind of imagine, well, I'll probably just have
a kid. I always pictured myself just me and this
(11:13):
little baby. I don't know where it was going to
come from, but it was just gonna be me and
this kid. And yeah, I had no idea what was
to come.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
But then when you're doing stand up, you're on the road,
did you go, well, that's the end of that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, Honestly, I had a terrible Well. Stephanie thinks was
a terrible plan. She's very and of course I want
everyone to be safe, but she is all about safety
and that you do things this way. And I was
a little more loosey goosey. I think my mother was
very loosey goosey and lucy goosey in certain ways. I'm
(11:51):
by the book in other ways. But I had it
in my mind that Okay, i'll have this kid, I'll
go on tour, I'll have an open and my opener
will watch my kid backstage for thirty minutes. I'll pay
them for their show. So that was my plan. I'm
(12:12):
not saying it's good, that's terrible, okay, but that was
my plan. And I feel like there are plenty of
comedians it would have been like I would do that.
I'd hang out with your baby for whatever amount of time.
I would have done that to get on the road,
and like if I liked kids, which I did, I
would have been like I had no problem.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay. So then obviously that was the plan. You did
want to become a parent, and you started IVF. You
started it after you had, you know, gone through dulmus
ectomy and to an extent, finished with breast cancer. Not
to trauma bond, but just to relate after I went
(12:55):
through breast cancer treatment myself, I really wanted to have
a kid, and I am just wondering with the timeline.
Is that a similar story to yours at all?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I was on a path. You know how when
you're younger, you have this idea of like, I'm going
to do this until I'm twenty five, and then I'm
going to have my ideal job when I'm this age,
and then I'm going to work this amount of years
save my money, and then I'll be married, and then
I'll you know, you have things plotted out sometimes and
(13:26):
then oops, you're gay and you have cancer and you're
a comedian and none of that at all lines up.
But I was still dragging along whatever semblance of this
timeline with me in life. And part of it was
that when I'm forty, I'm going to have a kid.
(13:48):
And I felt like that was a reasonable amount of
time from when I started stand up to where I
would hopefully be and how much money I had saved,
and you know, i'd have my opener place that could
ready sit my kid on the road. You know. I
had all of those things and I had done Are
you familiar with NAKA conventions?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Oh yeah, so yeah. But for people who don't know,
that was for colleges.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, you perform stand up and all of the buyers
from the different colleges come out. They see you perform,
and if they like what they see, they'll bid on
you to come to their college. And I had an
like a crazy successful NAKA one year where I was like,
oh my god, like I was just sweeping it up
(14:36):
there and so I did this insane amount of colleges
and making at the time an insane amount of money,
where I was thinking, this is really putting me on
track perfectly, because once I finished this college tour, I'm
going to have so much money in the bank. I
am going to be so ready to become a parent.
(15:00):
And then I started to get sick right after the tour,
and then I got sicker and sicker and everything fell apart.
But I had money in the bank, but I didn't
have my health, and I was ready to have a kid.
So life just didn't line up with my schedule that
(15:24):
I had put each other. Yeah, I was so teed up,
so teed up.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
I mean some people might go, you know what, I'm
done with medical intervention of any kind. I am definitely
not going to do something like IVF. It's yeah, you
have to do a lot of appointments.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And you have to pull over while you're driving into
some seed parking lot and inject yourself in the thigh
or stomach. You also have to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's right, exactly. And your wife stuff. Was she someone
who wanted to have kids her whole life?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah? I actually hid it from her in the beginning
that I was trying to have a baby because I
had just started dating her and she was, as I said,
fifteen years younger than me. She had never dated a woman.
I was like, oh my god, this is going to
be the biggest turn off that this sickly older lesbian
(16:23):
is trying to have the last shot at having a child.
And so I was, you know, privately, like I said,
pulling over behind dumpsters to like shoot up my thigh
and stomach to have a child. And then so I
just didn't tell Stephanie. And then when I realized that
this was a crazy secret to keep it because we
(16:45):
were clearly in love and there was no way because
in my mind, I was thinking, oh, well, I'll just
you know, we can fall in love and get further
along in our relationship and I can just have this
be cooking, you know somewhere and just reveal it and
have to deal. Yeah. Well, no, I knew i'd have
(17:07):
to reveal it sooner. But I figured if it was
with a surrogate, I could keep it kind of out
of our relationship. We could still be going on dates.
And then I was like, this is insane. So I
told her and she was just amazing and said, I
don't want you going to these doctor's appointments by yourself.
I want to be a part of this. And she
(17:29):
said I want children. I mean, this is months into dating.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And I was like, this doesn't freak you out, and
she's like, no, no, I want to be a part
of it. She said, I actually want five kids. And
I was I thought, well, I only imagine one. But
but now that you're talking, well truly I thought. I
(17:55):
enjoyed her so much that I thought, well, sure I'd
have five kids with you. I do anything with you,
you know, And so I was just all in and
the way she was all in, and then we ended up,
you know, having twins, meeting halfway, I guess almost halfway.
(18:15):
And once we had twins, she said, I think I'm
finished with the five pid dream.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Let's revisit the large family like a couple little kids.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, she said. Whenever she would see movies where there's
a lot of chaos and kids like coming in and
out of the house and grabbing a football and eating
cereal at the table, she was like, I just love
that busy, chaos vibe. And even though I feel like
we're good with two, if Stephanie said, I want to
have another kid, or let's do this. I would absolutely
(18:50):
do it. I guess I just trust our situation.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, you're open to inviting more in.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
We're not going to have more I know that for sure.
But we have this conversation all the time. I just
feel open, but I know for a.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Fact we're not having What kind of teenager were you?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
By the way, I was certainly rebellious. I failed three grades,
I dropped out of high school. I smoked cigarettes, listen
to rock and roll. Oh boy, yeah, I would say we,
me and my friends were some of the biggest problems.
But in today's standards, it's nothing. And of course you could.
(19:29):
You could go off the rails. And I had friends
that went way off the rails and that ended up
drug addicts or they are not alive anymore. And I
am so on the straight and narrow. It is ridiculous.
It is very ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Like you got it all out of the way.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Oh my god, it's so far out of the way.
I just I just don't feel like I'm up to anything. Ever.
I'm like, you wanna you want to you want to
go through my stuff? You want to eavesdrop on my call.
You want to like, okay, I'm always like when people
are like, oh my god, the government's listening to our call,
(20:10):
I'm like, listen away if you find anything interesting. I
don't know what anybody would find that's funny.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Someone asked you use my phone and they were like,
is there anything on here? And I was like, what, No.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I know. I was sitting at our office the other
night and the curtains were open and it was completely
pitch dark out, and I thought, I guess I should
close the curtains just because I can't see out and
other people can see ind. But that's when it hit
me that I'm really up to nothing. Like I'm not.
(20:49):
I'm not like away at the office up to anything.
I am just sitting here working and the curtains are open,
just trying. I'm just going to close it, you know.
But I used to be.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
What do you think about schooling education for your kids?
Do you feel a little bit like more open to whatever?
Or do you you know? Are you like, no, it's
could be Montessori or I don't know, whatever kind of
learning we're going to set them up.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, we're both actively searching out what school doesn't give homework,
you know what you know. And my stepfather actually he
was the one that really pushed me and my brother.
And before he died, he asked me if he could
put aside money for their education and I said sure,
(21:46):
and he said, but I want you to know. And
this was big for him because he was very much
a certain way and this is how you do it.
You go to college, you go to business school, you
do this and that, and there's one half for me. Yeah,
and he was acknowledging that there's different ways for everyone.
And he said, if I put this money aside, I
(22:07):
want you to know that Max and Finn don't have
to go to college. They could go to an art school.
They could go and learn masonry and whatever it is
that they want to do. And that was a very
big moment to see him come around in that way.
It was very touching, right because I told him, I said,
if my kids want to be a car mechanic and
(22:27):
they're the happiest people in the world, if they truly
want to, you know, ride the back of a garbage
truck and they are smiling every day of their life,
I am one million percent on board with that. If
they want to be an attorney and they're happy whatever
they want to do. I really really want them to
(22:48):
be happy people. Yeah, and Stephanie feels the same way.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
How do you describe your parenting style? Are they feral?
That's what they p park Slope say all the time? Fair?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
No, I don't ever yell. I get very stern. Our
biggest punishment in our house is that they have to
go sit by the front door. And they for seven
years now don't realize it's not that big of a deal,
and so but they avoid it like the plague. And
it's truly there's a moment where I'm like, if this
(23:19):
continues to happen, you will go sit by the front door.
And when again, when we were just in Mississippi and
not to paint my family like a bunch of cartoon characters,
that my cousin was like, are you serious.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You don't yell at your kids.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
They just listen to you, you know, just like baffled
because my cousins screaming her head off, chasing her kids
around and Max and then just you know, will turn
to them and say, look at me, you cannot do that,
And my cousin's like, oh my god, Are you kidding me?
(24:00):
You don't scream at them ever?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Nope, I'll have to say his front door.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But I mean it's not to say that they don't
misbehave or they you know, when they turned six, we
allowed them to have they call them iPads. They're not iPads.
They don't know that they're not iPads or these little tablets.
But you know, in public they call them their iPads.
But we'll tell them that their iPad will go away
(24:28):
for an entire day if they act a certain way.
That's another consequence.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Sure, In general they're oddly they're oddly well behaved, and
mainly they're little spats between the two of them, I
would say, is where it pops up the most.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Are they competitive?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Well, our son Finn is extraordinarily competitive, and our son
Max was born sixty years old, and he's like Finn's
Finn's trying to beat me at this, And you know
that's they're very different.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's a funny dynamic.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And if you try and get in there and reprimand
one for treating the other one poorly, then the one
you're trying to protect will snap at you for talking
to his brother that way.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Oh, they'll protect each other in.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
The discipline view. Yeah, and you're like, I'm trying, I'm
trying to help you. He just bopped you on the
head with his elephant. Don't talk to my brother like that.
And you're like, Okay, well, you guys got to deal
with this.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I had nothing to do with any of this proceed.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I'm sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Uh okay. This is a deeply I feel psychological question,
but I wanted to talk to you about it. I
grapple with this. I know your story. I know you've
been through a lot of tragedy and trauma, you know,
And I think when that happens, you end up seeing
the world in a couple different ways. And it's either
a safe place you're like, I can cope with things,
or you see it's a very danger place because you
(26:01):
know what the worst of it can look like. And
that's one thing when you travel around as an adult,
but it's a whole other thing when you bring kids
into your life. I sometimes just grapple with this idea
of like, what can I protect you from? How can
I protect you? I know I can't protect you. It's
very fraught. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, first of all. I love my life and my
family and my kids, and I wouldn't change a thing.
And simultaneously I think, oh my god, what have I done?
What have I done? Having children? Why would I do this?
Why would I bring people into a world that is
(26:45):
so terrifying?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You know? I try to find that happy medium between
the way my mother raised me, which was I was
certainly not feral, but I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
What Stephanie and I can come to is the idea
that you set up a fence around the yard and
that is the safety, and then you run free and
the safety fence is that's the boundary there.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That's what we got.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
You know. The terrifying part is when you talk to
people with older kids and they say, oh, the worries
get worse and worse, and wait till they drive, and
wait till they go off to college, wait till they
move out of the house, wait till they start dating,
and wait till the You're like, oh, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
But at least now we can put trackers on them
and they're called iPhones trackers with your schedule right now?
You know, we just always talk about, well, basically, how
working in entertainment is a terrible career choice for having kids,
just because of the hours. And so I know, you
(28:01):
know roughly from looking at what you've been up to.
In addition to being on set for television or in film,
you host two podcasts. You would something like seventy dates
last year theater dates, I think. So, yeah, So do
you bring the family with you at all or do
(28:23):
a is it a FaceTime routine?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
FaceTime is so unsuccessful. It's just like, you know, somebody's
nostrils and then someone else grabs the phone and takes
me off to the bathroom, and I'm just like, I
don't I miss everyone, but I don't need this. And
we're at times together, but rarely when I'm on tour,
(28:48):
because you know, I'm going city to city that's exhausting. Yeah,
there's times when my family comes, but mainly it's best
if they're just home and in their routine and going
to their games and seeing their grandparents. And then when
I'm home, I try really hard to just be home. Yeah,
(29:09):
you know, it's all they've ever known. And I would
say we're a very close family. It's really it's really
good and mixed in with tough stuff. That's the other
thing is it's like people will write to me or
tag me online and be like, oh, relationship goals, and
it's flattering. But I also Stephanie and I have got
(29:34):
our issues. And I said to her one time, I
was like, man, ninety nine percent of the time, you
are the greatest thing that's ever happened to be. But
that one percent, I cannot stand you. And she's like, same, same,
that one percent it's like the dregs of the earth.
(29:58):
You just ah repugnant. But ninety nine percent I laughed
so hard with her. I appreciate her. She is the
greatest partner. But one percent it's weird because being a
public figure, they see you on a TV show, they
see you in a movie, they hear you on the podcast,
(30:19):
and it's like, why on earth would I be recording
my hospital stay or the fight I'm having with my
wife or when my kids are fighting.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
You know, Yeah, that's your reality series that's coming up.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, yeah, which I would never do in a million years.
But just know that all of that is happening.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
That is so good to point out. Thank you so much,
tig It was such a pleasure. Of course, that's our show.
Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast,
pass it along to anyone you think might enjoy it.
Hey leave us a review. Five stars would be so
fantastic and we'd love to hear what you think. Follow
(31:02):
us on the socials, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook at Parenting is
a joke. On Twitter, we are parenting joke. We also
have a monthly newsletter with updates, tips, tricks, games. You
can go to Parenting is a joke pod deck to
sign up. But also we started a substack. What are
we crazy? How do we have the time? Excellent question
(31:25):
we'll find out. But yes, we have a new substack.
You can search for parenting as a joke, but we'll
also throw it out on our socials and all over
the place, so make sure you'd give it a read.
Our episode is produced by me and Julie Smith Klem.
Our editor is Nina Porzuki. Our sound designer is Tino
Toby Mack. Our game writer is Emily Winter. Our theme
song and music is by a dear Amram and the
(31:46):
experience thanks to all of the engineers at Citybox. And
here's a little extract comedic content from tig Natara y
am I writing think just as a little back as
you were doing stand up and just kind of figure out,
you know, how to make money from it. That you
also babysat for Lucy Lowless's children.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Well, I didn't babysit for them, but I worked for
her husband's production company that produced Xena and Hercules and
all these shows. And when Lucy would come in to town,
she would have me leave the office and go hang
out with her daughter, Daisy, and I would take her
to amusement parks and out to lunch and just hang
(32:32):
out with her. And it was really kind of ridiculous.
Lucy and Daisy are hugely into roller coasters, and I'm
terrified of them. I would wait in line with Daisy
until it was her turn to go. I wouldn't even
go on the ride with her. I just walked her
up to the front, got her on the thing. She
(32:54):
went zipping around and whipping around, and then I'd meet
her at the exit and then we'd go on to
the next one. I remember one time I wrote a
very small, manageable roller coaster. I was on that eating
cotton candy next to Daisy, and I remember my cell
phone rang, and it was my childhood friend Megan, and
(33:18):
she said, what are you doing, And truly, in the
background she could hear the of the roller coaster going up,
and I said, oh, I'm I'm at work. I'm on
a roller coaster with Zena's daughter and having cotton candy.
And she was like, oh, my God, of course you
(33:40):
are my friends who all made good grades, went to college,
got married, had kids, lived in the suburbs, and then
I'm off in Hollywood on a roller coaster, eating cotton
candy and doing the war. Yeah, doing perfectly fine. Yeah.
I found a few loopholes in life. And my friends
are always like, oh God, of course, of course, of course,
(34:01):
of course,
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