Latest / The Chris and Mike Show / #10 - Welcome to 2024!!

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#10 - Welcome to 2024!! · The Chris and Mike Show

0:06
I like that. And we're live.
0:10
I like that too. I keep wanting to not like it,
0:14
but I like it. I want to not like everything I
0:18
do. Hey, we made it to double
0:25
digits, man. This is episode #10, the longest
0:30
I've done anything except going to work in a long.
0:35
Time really. Playing guitar doesn't count.
0:39
I've done that every day for 40 years, so that's just a given.
0:44
I have to play guitar. I would go crazy.
0:46
That's part of the reason I stay sane, the Rock'n'roll Keep.
0:52
Sanity is underrated. Rock'n'roll.
0:57
Oh oh. I turned on my red light.
0:59
Hey, I like the red light. I turned on my red light.
1:01
Look at that, it's kind of oh now it's it's multi colouring.
1:04
Now it's turning green. That's kind of cool.
1:06
Now it's check out my new mood lighting.
1:08
Oh, and I turned it off. I have an addition to the studio
1:13
back there. It's a official lava lamp.
1:17
It's not a studio until you have a lava lamp, just so you know.
1:20
Oh, this? OK, I don't have a lava lamp.
1:24
I'll have to work on that. I got.
1:26
That's kind of. 35% off at the Amazon.com.
1:31
If they want to sponsor the podcast, that would be great,
1:35
yeah. Pretty cool.
1:36
We'll be fine with that. Little mood lighting.
1:39
Help me write a couple new tunes.
1:40
Little mood lighting. I'm blue.
1:43
I'm Mood. Lighting, Don't be blue, don't
1:45
be blue. Be happy, man.
1:47
Don't be blue, Just the lights blue.
1:49
It's you know I can't do the red light district because that's
1:51
not my nature. Blue lights.
1:55
Blue lights. So it it.
1:58
No. So it is it is it is the new
2:02
year. We haven't talked since last
2:04
year or podcast. What did you how was your how
2:06
was happy new Year to you as well my friend.
2:08
How was your New Year's Eve? It was awesome.
2:11
Happy New Year to the listeners out there that are multiplying I
2:16
for the first time. Like rabbits.
2:18
Well, not like rabbits. We hope like rabbits, that would
2:22
be great. Well, we want them like we want
2:25
them to multiply like rabbits, but you know, Yeah, yeah, good.
2:29
Yes, right on nothing. I literally had a nice relaxing
2:32
night at home and watch movies and that was it.
2:38
Nice. What did you?
2:39
Watch. I watched oh, what the hell is
2:46
the name of that movie? Revenge of the Nerds.
2:53
No, it was on Amazon Prime. That's all I know to be honest
2:59
with you. Wow.
3:03
Which sounds like a very captivating movie that held your
3:06
attention and and made a mark on your life.
3:08
And definitely it was. Actually, funnier than hell, but
3:11
I might have had a few, you know, pregame party favors
3:14
before I watched that movie and laughed my ass off and.
3:20
Yeah. Yeah, I didn't have any plans.
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Was it a recent release on Amazon Prime?
3:26
I'll find it. Was it a recent Amazon release?
3:30
OK. I'll find it.
3:31
You tell me what you did while I.
3:32
Find it. We will.
3:35
We we. Nikki and I and George.
3:37
Her dad's in town. So we we we what did we do?
3:42
We went, we we did stuff around like we're building things like
3:45
we we had to. My buddy Jake Perkins came over
3:49
and and move some dirt in the playground area.
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We created for little man and trip my grandkids.
3:57
Anthony's having his birthday party Saturday, his birthday was
4:02
the 31st, so we're having his birthday party on the 6th.
4:05
So we're, you know like today I was out, I was out.
4:09
We're making a horseshoe pet for the grown-ups at the party
4:11
because everything's on that side of the the yard 'cause we
4:14
have an acre. So it's all on that side, the
4:16
pasture side to where the gardens can play horseshoe,
4:20
where the kids either have the the swing set, the the little
4:23
tikes, climbing rock, the wooden Fort and the trampoline.
4:29
Then we're getting a bouncy house.
4:30
So they have these four little things they can engage in while
4:34
the parents hang out in chairs or play horseshoes and you know,
4:37
that kind of thing, which which will be fun.
4:40
They're creating a so. That's what I was doing today.
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Well we've we we the nice thing is the way we're set up we have
4:50
the acre so we have 209 feet frontage and the sides are two
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11212 and the back is 209. So the way we ended up setting
4:58
up when the first person that built this house in 96, they
5:03
kind of put it on the northeastern side of the yard
5:11
where I probably have, I've got 22 car back-to-back length
5:16
driveway. So that's the depth of my front
5:18
yard. So it's kind of in the the the
5:21
northeast quadrant of that acre, right.
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So then behind us we have the other like quarter acre and then
5:27
it goes behind the house there's you know long it's like like we
5:32
have a square. So right here's the house, this
5:35
is the the side of that, the backyard and this is all acreage
5:41
and it's all grass over here. We have a little paddock area
5:46
with Nikki's got chickens in there now that's where I put the
5:49
the tools. I have a lawn tractor.
5:53
This part over here is just grass and this part over here is
5:56
just grass. But we took the the edge of it
5:59
and built it up on this corner so the irrigation doesn't hit
6:04
it. So it's about this far up off
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the ground and then it kind of dips in a little bit.
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So there's a little bit of a a berm and so the playground's all
6:12
up in here. And then this is where the
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horseshoe pit is just along that side of the pasture fence.
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I'll send you a picture at some point in time.
6:20
And you know, it would be nice if I could get up there and do
6:22
an aerial shot and just kind of go over and go click.
6:26
But you know it's. Not you need a drone, man.
6:28
Drones are fun. So yeah, we, I know I, I I have
6:32
a drone. But I just, I don't.
6:34
I don't. I'm not good at it, man.
6:36
I'm just not good at it. Nikki got me one a few couple
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years ago. I'm just.
6:41
Spend 10 minutes a day. Next thing you know, you'll be
6:45
great. Yeah.
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Just like learning an instrument, that's all you
6:49
really need is like 15 minutes, literally 15 minutes or 1/2 hour
6:53
a day in six months, you'll be amazed at your improvement.
6:59
I got a guy. I got a guy that's actually
7:01
just. Spanish on Duolingo Duolingo.
7:04
How you doing with it? You know, 5 minutes a day.
7:09
Hola ma'am. Or crystal ball?
7:10
Don't they esta El Puerto? Don't they esta bano?
7:14
Don't they esta la chica? Don't they esta burrito, You
7:19
know? Mucho gusto, you know?
7:25
I think I picked up bathroom to me that.
7:27
El. Pollo Burrito.
7:29
Yeah, bathroom. Yeah, there's more to it.
7:32
But you know, you got a guy. You got a guy, what, playing
7:35
guitar 15 minutes a day? Well, he wants to start taking
7:38
lessons and that's what I told him.
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I said, you know, you know, but the listeners don't know.
7:43
I gave lessons for a long time when I lived in Arizona to
7:46
supplement my income. I had quite a few students.
7:48
So I am an accomplished guitar teacher and it literally if you
7:54
would put 1/2 hour into it a day.
7:56
He was amazed that it was that little amount of time.
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You know, you don't have to be a freak like I was and spend 8 or
8:02
10 hours a day and become obsessed and your mom gets
8:05
worried about you and makes you go play outside and stuff like
8:07
that, you know? That's where I was.
8:09
I was obsessed. Right.
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I was just waiting to grow up so I could keep playing guitar 10
8:16
hours a day. Yeah, yeah.
8:26
That's good. So just you know and YouTube now
8:28
right. You can go on YouTube and type
8:30
in you know guitar chords and like I, I, I had we had a
8:33
problem with our our washing machine years ago.
8:37
So I just went on YouTube and typed in what problem we were
8:39
having and and Jake and I took the washing machine apart fixed
8:43
it you know now I'll be it. We had when we were all said and
8:47
done, we had three leftover screws that.
8:50
Happens sometimes. But it still worked.
8:51
No problem. Yeah, that worked.
8:54
Those three. Those 3 screws weren't really
8:55
needed obviously, because it didn't.
8:57
It didn't break and it functioned properly.
9:00
So. So bringing bringing that point
9:03
right back around to music, Eddie Van Halen said it best.
9:06
Years ago, rules were made to be broken and really there are no
9:11
rules. If it sounds good, it is good.
9:13
So if you got 3 screws left over when you're done and the thing
9:16
works, it works. That's all that's important,
9:19
right? At the end of the day, it just
9:20
needs to work. I used to get knocked down,
9:23
dragged out argument with other musicians that would say
9:28
something was wrong. Like it's not wrong, it may not
9:32
be the way that you would do it, or we're taught to do it.
9:35
Or if you're following some silly set of rules, yeah, then
9:39
maybe it's wrong. But the first person that I
9:42
encountered, I told you before was Scott.
9:44
That said, just keep playing it the way you're playing it and
9:48
I'll figure it out. It's a weird time signature.
9:50
That's all I can tell you. You know, it's not wrong.
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He liked it because it was cool and that was motivation for me
9:57
to just keep playing the way I was playing.
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So there are no rules, man. And back on that, too.
10:04
The other cool thing about about when we were in our nemesis
10:07
heyday, like you guys never told me how to sing, but I never told
10:12
you how to play Give the char. Never told Rick how to play
10:14
bass, never told Scott how to drum.
10:17
We just knew what we could do as individuals, which I think was a
10:24
lot of the reason why we didn't have that internal struggle and
10:28
strife, because we never, we never put each other down.
10:33
You know what I mean? It's like I may not have liked
10:35
how you would come to the you would come to table with riffs
10:39
and I'd be like, well, if this is the verse and this is the
10:42
chorus in your head, it was the other way around.
10:44
But with my lyrics and the way I was structuring a melody, it
10:48
worked. It worked the way I was hearing
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it. So it wasn't.
10:51
It wasn't a fuck you. That's not how I wrote it.
10:54
It was, oh, OK well, let's try it that way.
10:56
And then that just enabled us to kind of have a free form when it
11:00
came to writing instruction or songs because nobody was like,
11:03
it's got to be like this, you know, There's no 4-4 boring
11:08
timing. There was, Yeah.
11:10
I'll tell you, The funny thing about that is I never really
11:13
thought about it in that context because you would think that
11:17
would be something that we sat down and talked about from the
11:19
get go. You know, like we're not going
11:21
to bring emotion into this. We're going to just write for
11:24
the song. It just happened organically,
11:26
man. We never talked about it.
11:27
That's just the way it happened, you know, Our personalities just
11:31
blended. Perfectly.
11:32
I don't think. Yeah.
11:35
Yep, I don't. Think it was, It's no different.
11:36
About how to write a song, it was.
11:38
We we didn't. It never happened.
11:41
None of that shit ever happened. It's no different than Jake
11:43
finding the podcast on his own organically.
11:45
It just happened. That was that cracked me up.
11:49
See, when you told me the story, I was like, I thought that when
11:54
you told me he listened to it, I just assumed that you guys
11:57
talked and he knew. We did the podcast and it was an
12:00
accident that I had asked him the question about how he liked
12:03
it and I said, Oh well, you know, did you find it through
12:05
your dad? And he's like, no, I just was on
12:07
Spotify one day and it popped up the Chris and Mike Show and I
12:10
don't remember why he said he watched it, but he's like all of
12:13
a sudden there's my dad. I thought that was crazy.
12:20
I thought the whole thing was pre planned, you know, like you
12:22
told him we were doing it. I may have.
12:28
I I don't know. I don't.
12:29
I don't because because he when he's in Japan it's it's it's
12:34
such a limited time that we'll converse him 99% of the time.
12:38
Be honest with you he'll he'll FaceTime Nikki and I'm not
12:41
around or or I'm I'm around but he's he's you know it's it's the
12:45
mother son relationship. You know what I mean?
12:47
I don't know. I get it love my son to death.
12:50
I I miss him when he's gone. But it's that it's that thing
12:54
that I'm not jonesing to talk to him every single day because I
12:59
didn't carry him for nine months.
13:01
You know, I mean I don't have, I don't have that kind of
13:03
connection because I'm not the mother and I think only mothers
13:06
had that connection with their kids.
13:09
Dads are a significant part of their lives and their upbringing
13:13
and you know, their character building, you know and life
13:17
lessons and things like that. But you know, I didn't, I
13:21
didn't, he didn't come out of me, you know.
13:23
So I don't have even even with Sky, just I don't have that that
13:28
mother, daughter, mother son relationship wig and my
13:31
relationship with my parents is absolutely non existent and it's
13:35
never been I've never had a relationship with the with the
13:38
father in my life. So I didn't know how to be a
13:41
father. So along the way with Jake and
13:44
Skye and I'd mess up and like hey you know first time I don't
13:48
know I never had a son before. I didn't have somebody teach me
13:51
how to be a father to a son and have somebody to teach me how to
13:54
be a father to a daughter. This is all new to me.
13:57
You know I had I had examples but they weren't 24/7 live with
14:01
me examples. So there's no way to know that.
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So I don't. I miss him, but I don't have
14:06
that. Oh, shit.
14:07
If I don't talk to Jake today or it's been 3 days or six days or
14:10
a week, it's I'm not. I'm not.
14:12
Oh, freaking out and sad. Where Nikki being the mom, you
14:16
know, her son's halfway across the world.
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She feels that and it's emotional and I'm just like, you
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know, you're doing good. Yeah, OK.
14:23
Right on, man. You know.
14:26
I think that's. A Super.
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We have the 5-10 minutes I think.
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That's a super typical dad. You know there's there's
14:35
exceptions to the rule. I honestly, I didn't talk to my
14:41
dad as much as I do now until we started.
14:46
We finally, you know, hit upon a common common ground.
14:51
You know, we both like betting on sports.
14:52
So it's almost every day now that we have and I love it.
14:56
You know, I look forward to it. He'll be like hey, you got any
14:58
bets lined up who do you like today?
15:00
You know, it's just something that we both we're going to
15:02
watch the game or whatever. And it's just funny.
15:05
We had the same relationship that you and Jake did for the
15:09
1st 30 years of my adult life. And then all of a sudden sports
15:12
betting came along. And every Saturday I'll go over
15:15
there for coffee and my mom will make, you know, cinnamon rolls
15:18
or whatever for breakfast and we'll sit there and talk about
15:21
the previous week and what's coming up the next week.
15:24
And I totally look forward to that now, man.
15:26
And it's just something that you got to, I guess, you got to find
15:29
that common ground, you know? Yeah.
15:34
And Jake and I have that common ground and it's like when he
15:37
texts me we'll have a a text conversation 1520 minutes.
15:41
But it's not it's not that our you know what I don't know how
15:43
long him and Nikki FaceTime. But it's it's we don't have to
15:47
FaceTime. He and I can talk via text and
15:49
cool with that where Nikki wants to sing because that's her son.
15:52
That's your boy. I told again.
15:54
Whereas I'm just. I mean you know he'll yeah,
15:56
he'll shoot me a text and hey, can I ask you a question.
15:58
Yeah. You know, and then whatever the
16:00
question is then we go off on that tangent for 1015 minutes
16:02
and the the biggest thing for us is the time difference.
16:06
So if it's 11:00 my time, he's getting up and I'm you know, and
16:10
he knows I'm not staying up that much later, you know, but.
16:15
Right. Because I get up every day at
16:16
six and I got little man. But so it's he and both my kids
16:20
and I have a good relationship. Scott, Scott and I butt heads a
16:23
lot because we're both stubborn. We're both born of the same
16:25
cloth and you know we both have to have the last say in things.
16:29
We're both. We're always right, you know?
16:33
Oh yeah, Neither one of us are wrong.
16:34
You. Know we we have a couple of
16:36
those. We have a couple of those kind
16:39
of relationships in our family too, where two people are just a
16:42
little bit too much alike, you know?
16:45
Yeah, right. I just want to.
16:47
So. Actually, the apple doesn't fall
16:48
far from the tree. So OK, that kind of segues into
16:52
what I wanted to talk about actually very nicely.
16:56
So one thing that I've noticed, and you're welcome and maybe you
17:03
can chime in on how you deal with this and your relationship,
17:07
but I noticed that there's. I guess I'll start it off by
17:13
making a statement. I don't think that any it
17:15
doesn't even have to be a relationship.
17:17
I don't think that anyone adult should tell any other adult what
17:21
to do with no limitations, as long as that person is not
17:28
hurting someone else. You know, like you got
17:31
relationships where people say I would like to do that, but my
17:37
husband's going to get mad, or I would like to go do that, or I
17:41
would like to be involved in such and such, like whatever.
17:45
Just name your topic. But I can't do that because it's
17:49
going to make that other person mad.
17:51
You, these people realize that they only have one life, right?
17:55
It's your life. I know that you're sharing it
17:57
with somebody else and and I'm going to, I'm going to go out on
18:00
a limb right here and say this is probably why I'm still single
18:03
and not married. But I'm I'm looking for it like
18:09
to be a team man. And if I'm not a team I'm not
18:12
interested in being in it. I don't need anybody to tell me
18:15
what I can and can't do. I'm a fucking adult man, you
18:18
know. And that other person isn't an
18:20
adult woman. They they should be able to live
18:23
their life the way they want. I should be able to live the
18:25
light life I want as long as I'm not hurting that person.
18:29
You know what I'm saying? I think, I think, and Nick and
18:34
I've been together almost 30 years, you know, that's why I'm
18:38
kind of bringing this dating in. Because somehow you made it
18:40
through. Right.
18:43
Well, here's there's, there's, there's secrets to to longevity
18:46
in a marriage. Number one, you have separate
18:48
comforters. You don't sleep with the same
18:50
blanket. You don't share a blanket that
18:51
doesn't work. Don't care who you are.
18:54
I don't care what your your reasoning for having one
18:57
comforter is. You're wrong.
18:59
So you have two comforters for two people.
19:02
OK, Second thing is whoever makes dinner, the other one
19:05
cleans it up. So if I make dinner with that up
19:07
and vice versa, 2 for two, that's OK.
19:10
So exactly now and now breakfast is different because she's up
19:13
before I am. You know what I mean?
19:15
Breakfast doesn't count. So it's just dinner.
19:17
It's just the dinner, right? Breakfast.
19:19
Lunch don't count. So then it's a dinner thing
19:20
Separate. We did not talk about this pre
19:22
podcast either, just so everybody knows.
19:24
I agree with the 1st 100%. You didn't even know this was
19:28
coming. So, yeah, go ahead.
19:31
No, I didn't. This is the beauty of our
19:32
podcast is we just decide what we're going to talk about, why
19:35
we're talking about. So people don't may not realize,
19:37
but as soon as we as soon as we're both on screen, Mike hits
19:41
record. So the only thing that's pre
19:44
planned in a sense is the top 11 list.
19:47
But that doesn't drop till the end of the show.
19:49
So everything else is just us having a conversation and it
19:52
leads how it leads and it takes us where it takes us.
19:55
So there's no, there's no script.
19:57
The only consistent thing for the last three shows is the top
20:02
11 list. That's it.
20:04
Everything else is just off the cuff.
20:06
What do you want to talk about today?
20:07
What's you know, good, bad. So, yeah, so, so.
20:11
Jake really appreciated that, by the way.
20:14
That was one of the things he said he really enjoyed was that
20:17
it was it was raw and it was honest and yeah, he liked that.
20:23
So go ahead, comforters. Yeah, real, real, real, real,
20:28
real. Raw and and relevant.
20:31
So separate comforters. Whoever makes the dinner, the
20:34
other whoever makes the dinner, the other one cleans it up.
20:37
And then you, you kind of have to know your lane.
20:40
And by that, I mean I'm not great at laundry.
20:44
And it's it's and it's not that I'm not great at laundry as far
20:47
as doing it properly, but I just, I don't.
20:54
I don't do it the way she does it.
20:55
So we learned a long time ago I don't do laundry.
20:58
She does now. The caveat to that in my insane
21:02
workout regiment and when I was doing 8 workouts a week, you
21:06
know, in those five days, then Friday when I got home for my
21:10
second workout, I would do my own my own workout laundry.
21:14
And I made the mistake one week of throwing all my laundry in
21:19
and didn't do hers. And then she was kind of like,
21:21
what the fuck? And I was like, well you you you
21:24
get mad at me when I when I do all the laundry, I said.
21:28
So I just was taking care of mine.
21:31
So now I've learned that if I'm going to throw my stuff in, I
21:35
throw hers in with it. And I just do a whole, a whole
21:38
load of sanitize. Because when I work out, you
21:41
know, this shirt would be soaking wet by the time I was
21:44
done working out because I just, I work my ass off.
21:48
Oh yeah, I work. So there's kind of that you kind
21:49
of kind of everybody's got to know their yeah but you know so
21:52
everybody's got to know their their lane right.
21:57
The other everybody got has to know their has to know their
21:59
lane. So there's other little caveats
22:01
that I won't go into because they kind of hinder on the
22:03
personal aspect of Heart of Her and I's life.
22:06
I don't and I'm not Howard Stern and you're not Robin Quivers.
22:09
So I don't think she's likely to I'll happily share with you off
22:12
airs because you'll get a kick out of it.
22:15
But that to me is the is the the most the the basic of it is
22:20
separate comforters. Whoever cleans it, whoever makes
22:22
it, cleans it up. The other person cleans it up.
22:25
And then I typically will load and unload the dishwasher just
22:29
because she does like all the laundry.
22:30
So the caveat there, she'll do the laundry and then I do the
22:32
dishes, I'll load them, unload them.
22:34
Every now and then she unload them.
22:35
But for the most part I'm unloading them because I just
22:37
kind of feel because she does that part of that laundry and
22:41
whatnot, then I should do that without any issues.
22:43
So we're we're kind of cool like that.
22:46
Where we don't, we don't. We don't kind of step on toes
22:53
that way every now and then. You know, like I said, I'll do
22:55
something laundry wise and she'll do dishes.
22:57
But for the most part, like we did a crock pot thing for
23:00
tonight's dinner, so when it's all said and done, I'll clean up
23:04
the mess because she put the pot, the crock pot together.
23:08
So it's the whole. It's still the whole.
23:11
Even though you've not been buried, you've had
23:12
relationships. It's still the whole team
23:14
concept. Correct, correct.
23:20
And there's nothing that and going back to your your, your
23:22
point before. Right.
23:24
And and anything that I would do, I mean, yes, I can live my
23:28
life and yes, she can live her life.
23:29
But we obviously know any, any, any dramatic thing like if if if
23:38
we decided, you know, next Tuesday, oh, Chris, come to
23:41
Pontiac and let's record an album, you know, you'll be here
23:44
for a month. I'm just not going to go up to
23:46
her and say, hey, I'm going to Pontiac to go to Mike's house to
23:48
record now for a month. I'll see you back in March.
23:50
She's like, oh hell, you know you're not because that that's
23:54
disrupting the life, that's disrupting the the, the routine
23:57
we have now, if it's something like, hey, on spring break, I'm
24:00
going to go to Illinois, blah, blah, blah, you know what I
24:03
mean? We talk about it and decide, OK,
24:05
is that you know? So that's exactly what I'm
24:10
getting to. Why?
24:12
So what I'm hearing from, and this is not just one couple,
24:16
this is not just one relationship.
24:18
This is partly relationships I've had.
24:21
I mean this, this is a amalgamation of a bunch of
24:24
different things that, you know, you know better than anybody.
24:28
I'm a student of human nature. I have a lot of time on my hands
24:31
because I am single. So I like to study people and
24:34
how they live. And the one thing that I look
24:41
for would be, let's say we're out in public and we have a
24:47
disagreement, right? I would like some kind of
24:51
unwritten rule that we debate about it when we get home.
24:55
But in the public, in the face of the public, we're A-Team.
24:58
We're a solid unit, no matter if that person did something
25:01
completely wrong other than kill somebody.
25:04
I got your back. But if I disagree with you,
25:08
we're going to talk about it like adults like you and I agree
25:14
to disagree on a million things. It doesn't come to the point
25:18
where we're not going to talk to each other for five days or five
25:22
weeks or five years because I'm pissed off because you have a
25:25
different viewpoint than me. You know what I'm saying?
25:28
That's what I'm getting to is like here.
25:31
I wrote it down, and I can't remember without reading it
25:35
right off here. It was very poignant.
25:38
It was all a like a whole stream of consciousness just came to
25:41
me, like you write lyrics. So I look at it like I went
25:48
through the darkest period of my life on my own, right.
25:51
Just like you went through the darkest period of your life on
25:53
your own. At the end of the day, you and I
25:55
had to save ourselves. A lot of people prayed for us,
25:59
helped us, rooted for us, whatever.
26:03
But at the end of the day, we survived a very dark place that
26:07
a lot of people don't even understand how hard that is to
26:10
pull yourself out of it. So First off, I'm coming to it
26:14
from that perspective and I would inform any future Missus
26:19
Michaels of of this fact. You know, here's where I've
26:22
been, here's where I'm at. I don't need a lot of help in
26:25
the psychological department. I got that under control.
26:28
You know, So what I'm thinking is these people are not
26:32
realizing that their spouse is literally policing their life.
26:37
And make no mistake, that's exactly what you're doing.
26:41
You're allowing that person to dictate what makes them happy.
26:47
I'm going to repeat that you are living your life to make them
26:51
happy. Your whole life now is.
26:55
Which is the wrong way to live. Yeah, now you're walking on egg
26:58
shells every day to hope you can get through another day without
27:04
making that person upset about whatever, just so you have a
27:07
nice peaceful day. Fuck that.
27:11
Fuck that. I'm not living my life that way.
27:14
I want somebody that's going to. Say agreed and that.
27:18
I want somebody that's going to say, you know, Mike, I think
27:21
what you're doing is detrimental to your health or our finances
27:27
or, you know, but let's talk about it rationally.
27:32
You know, nine times out of 10, I'm going to say, you know what,
27:37
I didn't look at it that way. So thank you very much for
27:40
bringing that to my attention. And we get stronger as a team.
27:43
I personally have never found that in my life.
27:45
Sure, absolutely. But that's what I'm getting at.
27:52
Nikki and I are unique in the sense that that I can count on
27:56
one hand how many times we had drop dead blowout argument
28:01
fights. That's amazing in 30.
28:04
Probably three of those were were in in Oh yeah, like
28:07
probably three of those were in my drinking days and the other
28:12
two probably in the last 3-4 years.
28:16
Just because we were doing, we were doing the the remodeling
28:21
our house and building the addition for my daughter and and
28:23
the grandbabies. And you don't understand the
28:27
stress that puts on a couple until you live it.
28:33
Like the the amount of bullshit we went through because the
28:37
contractor we had was a piece of shit, Didn't follow through,
28:41
didn't follow up, just stopped working on the House.
28:44
So then I had to kind of step in, which I wasn't.
28:46
I'm not a contractor. I've never pretended to be a
28:48
contractor. I'm not.
28:49
I'm not a a foreman by any may, you know, by any means.
28:57
And so I had to start just picking up the slack of this
29:00
shit that I didn't want to do and the timing of it was screwed
29:05
up. I mean, it's just unless you've
29:07
lived through a remodel with with your significant other, you
29:10
don't know what I'm talking about if you have.
29:12
I hear. I hear that all the time.
29:14
Hammer on the head. Yeah, right.
29:17
You're hitting. It I have never had, but I have
29:19
heard that story countless times.
29:21
Yeah. And it's true. 100% true, 100%
29:25
true. Like like and so but that's it.
29:29
Because we are. We both came from, from very
29:33
dysfunctional families. Before dysfunctional was cool.
29:37
We both came from families where there was was addiction was was
29:41
prevalent. We didn't realize it at the time
29:45
we were growing up until after the fact.
29:48
Like looking back on my life, right.
29:51
Because in in in society you think addiction, drugs, alcohol,
29:56
yeah, sex is an addiction now for some and that's been more
30:00
prevalent in over the years. But you don't think of anything
30:04
else like. Right.
30:06
But you don't think of anything else addiction wise.
30:08
But but personalities the the abuse of personalities can be
30:12
addictive. The the beating, the physical
30:15
abuse is addictive. You know because you get a, you
30:17
get a. You get a rise out of that when
30:19
you're when you're when you're you know when you're smacking
30:23
somebody around like you know what I mean?
30:25
You get and then you you have the flip side of the coin to
30:28
where those that are involved in on the abusive people taking the
30:32
abuse and domestic violence things, those are addictions.
30:35
Those are your trap. Because I I watched, I watched
30:40
her, the mother get her ass beat by the student named Doc who's
30:43
now on death row. But he used to beat the shit out
30:46
of her. Like you know, just pile driving
30:50
WWF Monday night wrestling and just you know, jumping her over
30:55
the back of the couch and shit. Holy.
30:57
Shit, man. But you don't.
30:58
When you're a kid, you. Oh yeah, yeah.
31:00
When you're a kid, you don't. You don't.
31:02
But you don't really realize what you're seeing because it's
31:05
just, it's so and go fast. It's like a movie and then.
31:08
So how how old are you? As I grew up with that person,
31:11
it was when we lived in Phoenix, so anywhere between 3:00 and
31:16
7:00. So probably probably I became
31:19
5-6 because I can remember it. You became old enough to
31:23
understand what was happening at some point.
31:25
If you did it, tell yours. If they did it, tell yours.
31:28
Right, right. So right.
31:31
And then and then so watching her take that abuse, that was
31:36
her third husband. She ended up having five, but
31:41
then as I as when we moved to Tempe and then she started
31:47
taking her aggressions out on myself and my brother.
31:52
That's learned behavior. Like when you're when you're
31:54
abused as a child, it's it's it's not uncommon for the abused
31:58
child to grow up to be the abuser.
32:00
It's. More common than the exception.
32:02
To that rule, because I was a right.
32:05
Exactly. You are was abused on all
32:07
different levels, totally. I mean, granted I dealt with a
32:11
little bit with the alcohol abuse and and you know, but I
32:14
was able to reel that in before it caused any real significant
32:17
damage, correct. My my brother wasn't so lucky.
32:22
It took him years to kind of navigate through that and he's
32:25
finally clean and I talked to him briefly every now and then
32:29
talked to him last couple weeks and he's he's you know,
32:32
completely clean and sober and he's happy.
32:34
He's in a great place. He's two years older than me, so
32:38
you know that's 40 years struggle with him, probably in
32:41
and out of of whatever. So not everybody's as lucky as I
32:45
am as far as being able to kind of come through that unscathed.
32:49
For the most part, music obviously helped immensely.
32:55
Writing of of the songs helped immensely.
32:58
Some of the stuff that we wrote in Nemesis was directly tied to
33:01
how my childhood was the band right before us and Illusion
33:07
Dog. I had a lot more darkness in
33:09
writing there, which I think was good because I got that out
33:11
before I joined Nemesis, because Nemesis lyrically wasn't so
33:18
dark. There was darkness to it, but it
33:21
wasn't. It was more storytelling.
33:24
I looked at it as the stuff I wrote with you than it was, you
33:29
know, like there was a song I wrote Never again and it was a
33:32
dog that was dark. There was a song I wrote Mother,
33:35
which has nothing to do with Danzig's mother.
33:37
It was the story about how when I was eight, she kicked me out
33:40
for lying during a monsoon storm because the garbage flew in the
33:43
backyard and was rolling towards the pool.
33:45
And she baited me, 'cause she know.
33:48
I took it out and she asked me about it and I was like, I
33:50
didn't do it, you know, 'cause I'm eight years old, scared to
33:52
death, cause, lightning, Thunder, you know, buckets of
33:55
rain being dropped. And you know, Long story short,
33:58
she's kicking me out of the house, 8 years old, in a monsoon
34:00
downpour because I was scared of her, you know, You know, 8 years
34:09
old, eight-year old. Kids lie.
34:11
They don't. They don't lie to cover shit up,
34:14
I don't think. I think it was a lie to because
34:16
I know I'm going to get my ass beat if I tell the truth.
34:19
So we exactly lose. Exactly in your situation.
34:23
But that, that, that. Right, right in my situation.
34:29
So here's not to interrupt you, but here's the 180 of what you
34:34
just. You're good.
34:35
You're. Good, because you and I grew up
34:37
180° apart, and everybody needs to realize that.
34:41
I grew up with two parents who, you know, wanted children,
34:47
wanted to have a family, just like you're doing right now.
34:49
You know, I grew up with the family that you created.
34:52
My mom and dad wanted to have every one of us.
34:55
They were happy to have us around.
34:57
They were sad when we left. They loved us the best they
35:00
could. They taught us about life the
35:02
best they could. And in your situation, I lied
35:06
only because I knew I was going to get in trouble.
35:08
I wasn't afraid that I was going to, like, be injured or beaten,
35:12
you know, to where I was going to show marks.
35:15
My dad swatted me exactly one time in my entire life, and my
35:20
dad is 6/4 at the time. He was probably 235.
35:24
He's a big dude. And you know how not of a big
35:27
dude I am. So he swatted me on the ass one
35:30
time for talking back to my mom or whatever, when I was about, I
35:34
don't know, 810. That's all it took.
35:37
I was like, OK, I'm never going to push him to that point again
35:39
because I'm not stupid, you know?
35:42
So to hear your story, just so people understand my story is I
35:46
grew up as close to, you know, what you would consider a normal
35:50
family in America. I guess I don't know what you
35:53
define like. A nuclear a nuclear family, they
35:55
call. We were not abused.
35:56
Yeah, they called it a nuclear family back in the day.
35:59
Sure. Right, bottom line is I would.
36:02
And I could and I could. Take any level.
36:05
Yeah. And I could and I could take
36:08
being, you know, ass beat for, you know, you know, I don't
36:13
know, doing something that needed to be disciplined.
36:15
I'm not against disciplining your children.
36:17
I'm not against spanking the butts.
36:19
I mean, I, you know, spank both my kids.
36:22
Oh, you know, I've I've, I've smacked a little man in the butt
36:27
in his small existence of four years.
36:29
But it was an extreme reason. It wasn't because, oh, he's he
36:32
knocked over a sippy cup. No, it was.
36:35
I don't remember what he did, but he needed his butt to be
36:37
spanked because he was being a little terror.
36:40
And it was the same reason. I think he's done it again.
36:43
I. Mean.
36:44
It was the same reason that my dad swatted my ass because it
36:47
was an extreme circumstance where I said something to my
36:51
mother or whatever that was needed to be addressed
36:55
immediately, you know? And he got his point across
36:58
because he never had to do it again.
36:59
I'm not stupid, you know? I'm like, OK, that's his limit.
37:03
Let's not push him to that point again.
37:05
You know, I think the children have a little bit of
37:08
responsibility in learning how to be a respectful young person
37:12
too, you know? And the one thing, the one thing
37:16
talking about being a father, the one thing that I will give
37:19
my dad credit for is I was probably 1516, you know, enough
37:28
independence to be raising a little hell to start with.
37:33
So I'm sitting down to dinner one night and here comes my
37:36
brother trucking down the hall. He's like 8 years younger than
37:40
me. So he would have been about six
37:42
or seven, you know, And he's like, look what I found in
37:46
Mike's fuck bag, cigarettes. And of course, you know, my mom
37:52
went ballistic and she sick my dad on me.
37:56
And my dad says, OK, you know, let's go in the bedroom and
38:00
we're going to close the door and we're going to have a
38:02
private conversation that, you know, he that was the other
38:04
thing. They didn't punish us in front
38:06
of the whole family. You know, they did things
38:07
privately. Which?
38:10
Looking back on, it was pretty cool, yeah, unless we push them
38:13
to the point where they had to lose their mind and you know how
38:15
that goes, being a parent. So anyway, he sits down and he
38:19
says now at the time my dad quit smoking in 1995.
38:24
Congratulations, because I haven't done it yet.
38:27
So once again, congratulations. But back then he smoked about
38:30
two packs of Marlboros a day and loved every minute of it.
38:34
He quit, but he almost died. So anyway, Long story short, he
38:40
said, you know, yeah, your mom doesn't want you to smoke, but I
38:46
smoke every day so far. Be it for me to be a hypocrite.
38:51
If you're going to continue to smoke, for Christ's sake, don't
38:53
get caught again, Mike. OK, that was the first time that
39:01
I really was old enough to have a lot of respect for how cool he
39:05
was to have handled it that way. Yeah.
39:12
Another time I came home drunk, puking all over the place.
39:16
And of course, my excuse is I got into some bad food.
39:21
You know, I'm trying to sell that.
39:24
And when you're 1617, you're too stupid to realize what you look
39:29
like when you're drunk and everyone knows you're drunk.
39:33
I thought I was going to be slick, you know, and tell the
39:34
story about how I got into some food poisoning and my mom once
39:39
again sick, my dad on me thinking that he's going to just
39:42
lay into me. And now in front of her, he
39:45
says. Right.
39:47
Yeah, he says. I had a couple nights where I
39:49
got into some bad food like that myself.
39:51
Mike, he says best thing you can do is go sleep it off.
39:56
That was the end of it. To look at my mom's face that
39:59
night. She could have, she could have
40:01
killed him. Oh, she was just like, what?
40:04
That's it? You know, you're not going to?
40:06
No. He said.
40:07
Yeah, I had a couple of nights where I got into some bad food
40:10
myself. Best thing you can do is go
40:12
sleep it off. So that's the kind of
40:15
environment I grew up in, man. You know, my parents had a good,
40:21
they had a good balance of, you know, there were times my dad
40:26
had. Good, come back.
40:27
Different, exactly. Because there were times he had
40:30
to be different than that, and he handled every situation
40:33
accordingly. But so did my mom.
40:35
You know, most of the time you wanted to deal with mom.
40:38
To your point earlier with Jake, you know I really wanted to
40:41
settle it with her because talking to my dad was not so
40:43
easy. But once again, we were not the.
40:49
Thing that's that's right and and I understand I don't want
40:54
people listening watching this thinking that my entire life was
40:58
was you know wake up beaten, go to bed beaten.
41:01
It's it's it's it had enough. It happened.
41:06
It occurred enough times for as long as I can remember, you
41:10
know, kind of started around 8 years old until I was old enough
41:15
to not take it anymore, which is probably 11-12.
41:22
It outweighed the positive, it outweighed the good.
41:25
You know what I mean? Because you, you, you, you take
41:28
that darkness over that period of time, and it's not your
41:31
entire life, but it's enough that it overshadows whatever
41:36
positive things. Because on the other flip side
41:38
of the coin, there's a single mom raising two boys on her own.
41:43
You know, we were from Illinois. They moved to Arizona because
41:46
supposedly I was going to die. My ass was so bad.
41:49
They, you know, you got three months to live.
41:51
It's Colorado, Arizona, because those are the best two
41:53
environments for an asthmatic. They were tired of the cold.
41:55
So we went to Arizona you know, and and I learned when going
42:02
back, my grandmother passed, my brother and I connected at the
42:06
airport in Illinois and then drove rented a car and then kind
42:11
of drove the whole backwoods of Illinois, you know Springfield
42:15
to Ave. Galesburg area near the Quad
42:17
Cities to give you a point of reference.
42:22
That's when it came out that that he always held it against
42:25
me because I took him away from his home.
42:29
I was fucking three years old, man.
42:30
I had no choice in anything. He was 5, so he has a better
42:37
recollection of being completely removed from all he knew and
42:41
transferred, you know thousands of miles away to the desert.
42:45
Again, not my fault. I didn't say let's go do this,
42:52
you know, and and but there was bitterness there from him,
42:56
legitimately. So which I I, I, I when he told
42:59
me that I'm like, holy shit, I could see that, you know, So
43:03
even though it wasn't an intentional, like you're a Dick
43:06
for making us move, there was still that underlying anger that
43:08
he carried with him our entire life growing up.
43:11
And still, you know, to that point that was this is 23.
43:15
So that was back in 1415 ish. No, maybe after that, 1617.
43:21
I don't remember when she when she passed, but he carried it
43:24
for a long time and then finally shared that.
43:26
And I was just like, wow, you know, my bad.
43:30
But how would you have known it like he?
43:31
Remembers when my right and he remembers when my parents
43:37
divorced and and you know, he was sitting in my grandmother's
43:40
picture window waiting for David to show up and he never showed
43:44
up. So that had to be traumatic on
43:46
him because that happened around the same time, you know, that
43:54
whole thing happened because she claimed he couldn't handle my
43:59
because I was sick. I was 2 1/2 months early.
44:01
I was terrible, baby man. I was, you know, I was going to
44:03
die every other day. You and I have that for three.
44:06
Months after being born, I didn't come home.
44:09
Yeah, So yeah, I'm not going to go down all that bullshit stuff,
44:13
but it is what it is. And you you.
44:16
I guess the moral to this conversation is is your
44:19
upbringing helped mold you into who you are.
44:21
My upbringing helped mold me into two into two, into who I
44:24
am. Probably one of the main reasons
44:27
I got into abusing alcohol was because I was burying shit, even
44:31
though I thought I had an outlet, purging it with music or
44:33
whatnot. It purged a lot of it, but not
44:36
enough of it, right? It it, it kind of pulled a lot
44:38
of the demons out, but they still kind of lingered.
44:43
The ones that were a little bit deeper and darker, the abuse and
44:47
whatnot that you know, that takes a while to kind of
44:51
represent itself as you go on a life.
44:53
And it's not, it's not how you're brought up, it's what you
44:56
do with it. So you know.
44:59
I I also think that what people underestimate being a musician
45:03
and being in a band, as much as you are busy, there's also an
45:08
immense amount of downtime no matter how you try to work your
45:12
life. And that immense amount of
45:15
downtime has to be filled with positive things.
45:19
And when you're 22 and invincible and you don't think
45:23
you're going to die, of course you can do drugs all night and
45:26
you can drink all night and you can still function every day,
45:30
you know, And you can do that for a long time.
45:33
And that's the problem is you're not smart enough when you're
45:36
young to understand that when you get to be our age, all that
45:40
takes its toll and you start to feel it, even if you don't look
45:43
like it. I get complimented on not
45:45
looking like I'm 50 years old all the time.
45:47
I appreciate that. I feel like I'm 65 because of
45:51
use that I put my body through in a nice car accident, but.
45:58
Yeah. I just wish you know.
46:02
In yeah, I'm the same. Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm the same
46:04
way. Go ahead, go ahead.
46:11
No, I just definitely wish in hindsight that we had done
46:13
things differently during that time.
46:15
But I guess that's why we have the stories, to be able to tell
46:18
people that, you know, didn't live that kind of life.
46:24
Right. And I think, I think people get
46:25
caught up. And again, this is just my
46:26
opinion and it's not, you know, I'm not baptized in the world or
46:29
anything with a garden hose. But I think that that people get
46:33
wrapped up in the blame game and pointing the fingers, you know,
46:37
like, Oh my mom or my dad, Oh yeah, I got daddy issues, Mommy
46:40
issues, nobody, anybody that says they had the perfect
46:45
upbringing and have the perfect life, they're lying through
46:48
their teeth. Just keep an eye on them and
46:49
their life will fall apart within the next, you know, 6 to
46:52
12 months. And it'll be for all the world
46:54
to see. There's nothing more ironic, I
46:57
think, in this, right. There's nothing more ironic than
46:59
you see these, these these people on social media and and
47:04
you know, they're championing their lives and this and that
47:07
and everything's roses and and Peaches and you know, and then
47:10
all of a sudden it just gets fractured and their lives go
47:13
tumbling down these two different directions and they're
47:16
sharing all their garbage on Facebook and Instagram or
47:20
whatnot. And you're calling the other
47:23
person out and you go from like, it's it's roses and and daisies.
47:29
What is it? Rainbows and daisies and all of
47:31
a sudden it's it's Dragons and chaos.
47:34
I'm sorry, they didn't happen overnight.
47:36
Oh, I just. Didn't you?
47:37
Were you were masked. I love those people.
47:39
Yeah, I love it. You're right, 'cause you're
47:43
yeah. You're hiding.
47:44
You're hiding behind. You're hiding your cast in the
47:47
world because you think it's going to make your life better.
47:50
It's not. The more honest you are and the
47:53
more forthcoming you are with whoever your significant other
47:56
is, the the better your life is. If the people that get divorced
48:01
in four years, they, let's be honest, they just gave up.
48:04
They didn't try. They hit a wall.
48:07
They hit some kind of hurdle they couldn't get over.
48:10
And instead of working together to get over that hurdle, they
48:13
decided to go around it and divorce each other and get on
48:15
with their lives. OK, so could have like done when
48:20
I? When I got sold at the end.
48:21
Of my drinking. They either did that.
48:25
Go ahead. I agree with that.
48:27
Or, you know, the other reason that that happens is people put
48:32
on a fake persona for the whole time they're dating somebody and
48:37
then as soon as they marry them, the real person comes out and
48:40
it's like, OK, now this. That's what scares me right
48:43
there is now here's what I am as a real person.
48:47
You know, I fucking faked it all this time and you know me better
48:51
than anyone. The one thing I am is an open
48:53
book. I probably too honest, but I
48:55
don't know any other way to be. I'm not going to show.
48:58
I I don't have time to sugarcoat especially anymore.
49:01
I'm getting older. But even as a young guy, you
49:03
know, we just talk to each other like fucking human beings.
49:06
Let's talk. We can disagree.
49:09
We don't have. It's unrealistic to agree on
49:12
everything. I'm not looking.
49:14
I think people misconstrue what I'm saying when I have this
49:16
conversation with them, and that's part of the reason I
49:18
wanted to bring it up. I'm not looking for a utopia.
49:22
I know that you're going to have struggles, but it's how we deal
49:27
with those struggles that is important to me, that we do it
49:32
civilized and like adults and human beings, and that we don't
49:36
try and police each other's life.
49:38
And I don't think that's too much to ask for.
49:41
You're you're living proof. My parents are living proof.
49:44
They haven't had a perfect ride either.
49:46
But almost 50 years later, love carried them through.
49:51
I guess, you know, at the end, at the end of the day, it was
49:54
worth it to them to figure it out rationally in the end.
50:00
I know emotions happen sometimes, but the people that
50:04
I'm talking about, it's almost like a constant struggle to stay
50:11
together. You know, you'll have one nice
50:14
conversation with them. Oh, we went and did.
50:17
We went and had dinner. We took a ride or we went
50:20
wherever. And then the next nine
50:22
conversations in a row are, oh, that fuckhead.
50:25
I just wish he wasn't around and you know everything's negative
50:29
again. Then there's one positive
50:32
conversation, dude, to your to your point, on Facebook earlier.
50:36
I literally have a friend on my Facebook and this is no shit
50:39
that has broken up and gotten together with the same fucking
50:43
person at least 15 times. And I'm being conservative.
50:49
Wow. Wow.
50:51
What are you thinking? At that point?
50:54
I got to know what. Yeah.
50:58
Who's going to change? Because it's.
51:02
Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing.
51:04
It's it's if you're if you're getting married to someone that
51:09
you think you can change them. Once you're married, you can't.
51:12
It's just a it's a lost cause. You can't like Nikki and I don't
51:15
want to change each other. We know who we are.
51:17
We we've we came from where we came from and that was one of
51:22
the things that worked because it was completely disheveled
51:25
lifestyles or not disheveled but dysfunctional lifestyles that we
51:29
came from and we were just opposite enough, like our first
51:32
date. I find out told her I want to be
51:33
a rock star, I want to be a musician.
51:35
This is what I plan to do with my life.
51:37
This is what I it's acting. It's music.
51:39
Is this like straight up our first date like she knew from
51:43
within 10 minutes to get in my truck and walking around Salt
51:46
River Bottom because that was our first date.
51:47
Went to Salt River and just talked for an hour and a half,
51:51
two hours, whatever it was. But that was part of that
51:54
conversation. So there was no, there was no
51:58
surprise when I ended up finding you at at Candlebox show and we
52:03
came together as a band and we're doing what we were doing.
52:06
There was that wasn't a shock to her.
52:08
Now she may not have liked it. They she may not like that
52:10
lifestyle. She may not have liked the fact
52:12
that you know, gone as much as I was with rehearsals and shows.
52:17
But she still understood that was that was who I was.
52:20
That was what I wanted. It wasn't.
52:22
I don't want to be an astronaut. I don't want to be a lawyer.
52:24
I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to to bring music to
52:27
the masses and share what I have always been considered as a
52:31
considered as a gift of my writing and and passions.
52:35
And that, like your guitar playing, it's a gift.
52:38
You know, you were given that gift.
52:39
And so she knew it wasn't a surprise.
52:43
So when these people get married, right, So when people
52:46
get married and think they're going to change that other
52:48
person, oh, it'll be fine. Once they get married, I'll
52:50
change it. Old school.
52:51
Perfect example. Frank the Tank Man.
52:54
Frank the Tank. She wanted him to change once
52:56
they got married. Well, Frank the Tank didn't
52:57
change, man. That's who he.
52:59
Was he was a party animal. He enjoyed life, right?
53:03
You can't expect somebody to change like that because you're
53:05
married. It doesn't work.
53:07
And the marriages that fail are because people don't want to put
53:11
him to work. If your parents put him to work,
53:14
Nicky and I put him to work. Rick and Anne Ro Dougherty of
53:16
people I've known since 76, they put him to work.
53:19
It's it's the rabies mother, you know, Duke and Kathy Raby,
53:22
another family around there. But they put him to work.
53:25
It's. That's when my mom and dad got
53:27
married, too. It's.
53:28
Worth it, right? Yeah.
53:31
It's worth it at the end of the day because you're sharing your
53:33
life with somebody. I couldn't imagine if Nikki and
53:36
I weren't married now I just, I just, you know, I couldn't
53:38
imagine it. It's just, you know, you just
53:43
it's it's part of you. It's part of your soul.
53:45
That's why I think a lot of people that are married 50-60
53:47
years, you know, and then their 80s, seventies, 80s and 90s.
53:51
And one goes, it's within two weeks, man.
53:53
The other one goes because it's part of them, it's it's it's
53:56
part of their makeup, part of their DNA.
53:58
It is and they. Are and if you've evolved.
54:01
It's cool that you bring that up because I noticed, and I guess
54:06
because I'm getting older, I noticed at Christmas time that
54:11
that ebb and flow of my mom and dad in their own home is it
54:17
would be so. It would be so weird if one of
54:20
them wasn't there, You know, like my mom was sitting down in
54:22
one living room with my sister and my sister-in-law.
54:25
And, you know, they were having their conversations.
54:27
And my nephew and my dad and I were sitting in the other living
54:31
room watching the football game and we were having our
54:33
conversations. But, you know, if I wanted to
54:35
get up and go talk to my mom, she was right there.
54:37
You know, it's just that kind of stuff.
54:39
Like you said, they make that home together, but they work
54:45
their ass off. And that's the thing that
54:47
people, they don't see that every day.
54:50
They committed to not giving up, you know.
54:55
Right. Yeah.
54:56
Like, like we were doing something last week with with
54:59
everybody and Sky made made a a joke that Nick and I were
55:02
holding hands. We hold hands all the time.
55:06
Like legitimately, we like each other.
55:08
Not only do we love each other, but we like each other.
55:11
So you know, we've done things over the years where we had 51st
55:14
5050 first dates in a year. So that year we decided we're
55:19
doing 51st dates. So something that we've never
55:21
done before as a couple we did counting from 1 to the 50th
55:25
date. So in that basically it's a,
55:27
it's a, it's a date night once a week with the exception of two
55:30
weeks of the year, right. But that's shit that you do just
55:34
because that's what's you know, that's one of the, that's what
55:39
one, I guess that would be. The other thing that you do to
55:43
maintain longevity is you have date nights that they're not
55:46
scheduled like they were that year.
55:49
But we still go out, we still do things, you know, it's more
55:51
spontaneous, you know, for the most part, until I broke my
55:55
foot, we were going out country dancing every Saturday night at
55:58
this place in Mesa called Graham or what was it?
56:01
Denim and diamonds. Because she loves the dance, OK,
56:04
I have a, you know, and who knew?
56:06
We're fucking great at dancing, man.
56:08
But that goes back to the fact that we've been together so
56:10
long. We have a very we have a very
56:13
healthy relationship on a whole, and it's just something we both
56:19
enjoy doing, you know, We both enjoy running.
56:22
We both, you know, I I would, if I had my way, we doing half
56:25
marathons for the rest of my lives.
56:27
And she's kind of tired of that. So I still want to get to a full
56:31
marathon, you know, and to complete it, because she's done
56:34
too. But at some point in time, we'll
56:37
probably stop doing half marathons and drop down to 10
56:40
KS, you know, just because she doesn't want to run that length
56:44
of time where I still want to challenge myself and get down to
56:48
an hour and 45 minutes for 1/2. My best is an hour and 40. 8.
56:52
And I want to do that before we stop the whole half marathon
56:55
thing. But it's just, you know, so one
56:58
of those things you got to baby step it.
56:59
To that point, I would say that's what that kind of
57:07
describes. I guess that's almost a
57:10
definition of what I would look for in the definition of an
57:14
ideal relationship as that you are making her priority and she
57:19
is making you a priority. That's what I feel like is
57:23
missing from these conversations with these people, that
57:27
everything is negative. You are not making your
57:30
significant other. I couldn't.
57:32
I couldn't even say it. Significant is the word people.
57:35
You're not making your significant other a priority.
57:39
You are dissing them. Nope.
57:43
And I know I I just, I I can't wrap my head around how that is
57:50
helpful, constructive, positive in any way.
57:54
You know, I I just don't understand.
57:57
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in that situation.
58:00
I don't. Either priority.
58:03
You have to if all you do right. And it's not to say that your
58:08
life ends because that's the other thing that people don't
58:10
understand. Just because your relationship
58:11
doesn't mean you can't have friends.
58:13
No, it should. Begin.
58:14
It doesn't mean you can't go hang out with your best friend
58:16
from high school, right? Correct.
58:18
It's. I still hang out with Todd.
58:19
I've known Todd since since 84. You know, I still hang out with
58:23
Tony from time to time. I've known his entire family
58:25
since 76. So it's it's not like you can't
58:31
still have your friends and do your things, but there has to
58:36
be, you can't do anything that jeopardizes either one of you's
58:40
trust and understanding of who you are as individuals and and
58:43
as long as you have that foundation you you're
58:47
successful. You just have to be willing to
58:48
work through the struggles because you're going to struggle
58:50
regardless. There's always going to be
58:51
struggle. Well, and let me tell you.
58:55
If if the. The trust issue.
58:58
If that person's going to cheat on you, they're going to do it
59:01
somehow, some way, regardless. The fact that you don't, yeah.
59:05
The fact you don't let them go out with their friends is not
59:08
going to keep them from fucking somebody else.
59:11
If they want to do it, they're going to do.
59:13
It it's going to make it. Worse, and that's the thing that
59:15
I don't understand either, is if you want it, if you want to go
59:19
out and screw the whole world, why are you married to somebody
59:23
you know? Why are you talking to other
59:24
women? See.
59:25
And here's the sugar. Ray got life by the balls.
59:27
Right, right, right. Sugar Ray.
59:31
Not a big fan of sugar, right? I'm not a big.
59:33
I'm not a big fan of Sugar Ray. But you know who Sugar Ray is,
59:35
right? I say Sugar Ray, not all for
59:38
your baby. I agree with you, OK?
59:39
Come on, you know. But he had a thing.
59:42
But he had a he had he 30 years ago.
59:46
Whenever he came out 25 years ago, somebody asked him.
59:48
I was watching something. Somebody asked him probably once
59:51
MTV things back when they played music.
59:54
They asked him why he why he didn't have a significant other.
59:57
However, they phrase a girlfriend, whatever.
59:58
He said, 'cause I want to get laid, man, is that get it
1:00:01
wouldn't be. It wouldn't work.
1:00:03
I'm out enjoying my life. I'm.
1:00:04
I'm going one night stands all across the country.
1:00:08
Every time I play a show I'm I'm enjoying my life and having
1:00:11
having fun with it. Why would I get married and and
1:00:14
and end that. That to me was brilliant, like,
1:00:18
you know? Who you are, you know that
1:00:22
you're at the precipice of of of the world.
1:00:25
Is that your feet? Because at the time they were
1:00:28
they were on fire. Sugar Ray was was the thing.
1:00:32
And he knew enough about himself to know that he couldn't be
1:00:35
loyal to one person. So why do that?
1:00:37
Bon Jovi, Same thing, man. He buried his high school
1:00:39
sweetheart. What people don't realize he
1:00:43
married his high school sweetheart about 1520 years
1:00:45
after Bon Jovi made it, because his his high school sweetheart
1:00:48
saw what he wanted. And she's like, fuck that.
1:00:51
I'm not going to be involved in this shit 'cause you you.
1:00:53
There's no way that you're going to stay loyal to this
1:00:57
relationship. Kudos to her.
1:00:59
Kudos to him. Because then what do you do?
1:01:01
He wounded all the supermodels. Cindy Crawford, I was the only
1:01:06
one I remember, but just all kinds of like, chicks that were
1:01:10
the chicks at the time, you know, top ten models, actresses,
1:01:14
whatever. He went out and did his thing.
1:01:17
I'm Jon Bovi. Jon Bon Jovi, a rock star.
1:01:19
And I'm. I'm nailing all these beautiful
1:01:21
women. I'm doing all.
1:01:22
But at the end of the day, it wasn't enough to sustain his
1:01:25
happiness. So what did he do?
1:01:27
He went back to his high school sweetheart and made the
1:01:31
commitment to her. And now what?
1:01:32
3-4 kids later, they're all, you know, adults and things like
1:01:36
that, and they're having the time of their life.
1:01:39
So, you know, it's a wonderful thing I have to go right now,
1:01:43
which is ironic because somebody's dumping dirt in my
1:01:46
yard. Well.
1:01:49
So I have to cut this thing short.
1:01:52
We will let them dump some dirt in your.
1:01:56
So let's do our top. Let's do our top 11 things while
1:01:59
on winter break real quick and we can do that.
1:02:06
Put I gotta ask, is it? OK, so I I really I'm so feel
1:02:16
bad to end this because this is such a great conversation, but
1:02:19
it it is what it is so. Here's what it is, ladies and.
1:02:22
Gentlemen, the top 11 things to do while in it.
1:02:24
OK, right. Right.
1:02:25
Life. Life happens.
1:02:27
That's the the beautiful thing about doing this.
1:02:29
Like. Life happens right on this
1:02:31
podcast. We do it so right on the spot.
1:02:35
So the top 11 things to do while on winter break might take it
1:02:38
off. Take off with no I I start #11
1:02:42
eat holiday foods. #10 You're even.
1:02:48
You're #10, yeah? I'm #10 work out so you work off
1:02:52
the holiday. Food Go ahead #9 #9 use use your
1:02:59
grandmother's fruit fruitcake as added insulation. #8 Listen to
1:03:07
rock'n'roll Christmas music. Oh yeah.
1:03:11
Oh yeah. Yes, #7.
1:03:13
Go see trans-siberian orchestra in concert.
1:03:17
If you haven't done that, you must do that.
1:03:18
They're fantastic. It's absolutely amazing.
1:03:21
He's not kidding. Do yourself a favor, number six,
1:03:25
Go holiday shopping. Look on Amazon.
1:03:28
I hope. Right.
1:03:31
Yeah. Don't go out in the public.
1:03:32
That's insane. #5. Attend an ugly sweater party.
1:03:38
It's a rite of passage if you haven't.
1:03:41
If no one you know has an ugly sweater party, then you host one
1:03:44
next year. You'll thank me.
1:03:45
OK #4, attend a New Year's Eve party.
1:03:51
Those are always fun. Yeah, even if even if you didn't
1:03:55
this year and you know like neither one of us did, still at
1:03:57
some point in time in your life, you should do that #3.
1:04:01
Don't drink and drive. That's a must, a must.
1:04:06
Things to do while on holiday break is don't drink and drive.
1:04:10
#2 Eat some tasty Donuts. Right.
1:04:16
Because, you know, everybody can have a donut every now and then,
1:04:19
and the number one thing to do while on winter break?
1:04:24
Your significant other. Yeah, so one thing.
1:04:30
Yes. And with that I have to go.
1:04:33
Yes. OK.
1:04:34
We're going to let Chris go and I'm going to do some
1:04:38
housekeeping. You do some housekeeping I'm
1:04:42
going to. Go.
1:04:43
OK, later brother. OK.
1:04:46
Good luck with your dirt later brother.
1:04:49
OK, so a shout out to Sunshine for showing me how to increase
1:04:58
our Facebook page following. So I'm going to ask all you guys
1:05:04
to do me a favor and go to the Chris and Mike show on Facebook.
1:05:09
And right next to where the message button is, there's three
1:05:15
little dots. Click on that button and it'll
1:05:18
pull up another page and you go down to like #4 and it'll say
1:05:23
invite your friends. If you can go to the top of that
1:05:27
page when you click it, you can invite all your friends to like
1:05:30
our page, and that will definitely help drive the
1:05:34
traffic to it. And that will make all of us a
1:05:38
lot happier because it'll be a better page, it'll be a bigger
1:05:40
community, and we'll all have fun.
1:05:43
So thank you Sunshine, for showing me how to do that and
1:05:47
for inviting all your friends and getting people involved in
1:05:52
our Facebook page. It's been growing exponentially
1:05:56
over the last, I don't know, 12 hours since we started this
1:06:03
process. So once again, thank you.
1:06:06
And obviously we had to let Chris go because he's doing a
1:06:11
massive home improvement project in his backyard.
1:06:15
He's basically re landscaping one whole side of his backyard.
1:06:19
So we'll forgive him. He's been busy this week and
1:06:23
he's got family in town and I don't have any of that stuff
1:06:26
going on. So I got Bob Ross the bobble
1:06:30
head in the back and a new lava lamp and that's about the
1:06:37
improvements. We're going to have a new studio
1:06:40
table in here in the foreseeable future, so things will probably
1:06:45
look different and should look better going to do some upgrades
1:06:49
on the equipment. But anyway, that's all
1:06:51
information that you guys probably don't need really.
1:06:54
I just want to thank you for your subscription hitting the
1:06:59
follow button Facebook page. Just appreciate everybody that's
1:07:07
giving us positive feedback and got a lot of positive feedback
1:07:11
on Jake's podcast. It was a blast to do.
1:07:14
He's an amazing human being and I'm happy to now call him my
1:07:18
friend. So until next week, I hope
1:07:21
everybody stays safe, be kind to one another.
1:07:25
There's no reason to not be. Just if you don't like somebody,
1:07:29
don't talk to him. There's no reason to be mean to
1:07:31
people, so be nice. I didn't used to be nice.
1:07:36
I didn't have any friends. I became nice and I got a lot of
1:07:39
friends, so I guess there's something to it.
1:07:42
Anyway, until next week. Peace.
1:07:49
The. The.