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The NJ DAD Podcast
Taking Inspiration From Cultural Surrogates
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SPEAKER_02I'm sure some people out there are saying I think Vince Vaughn is obnoxious all the time. I get that. I understand that. I don't. But people might think about that about me, and you might be listening. Sorry. Turn it off then. Hey, welcome to the Fatherless Cheat Sheet. I am your fatherless friend, Andrew. Welcome. I'm your quasi-big brother. I am the I like the Miller Light of Mentors. That's that's a good one. I don't use that one enough. Today we're talking talking about cultural surrogates, cultural influences. We'll give it a little more gravitas and call them cultural surrogates. What I sit in my my studio here, way before this project began, I looked at my studio and it the things, the people that I have on the walls. I have Frank Sinatra's mugshot. I have Jacob Dylan over here. I have a piece, uh Canvas piece by it's not original, by someone named Mac O'Connor. Mac O'Connor inspired a lot of the art and style of madmen. And I have Vince Vaughn over here from Swingers. I walked in here one day well before I started this podcast, and I looked around and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, this these are these are the guys. These are your guys. This is sort of what you built your your persona on, your personality, your your style personality. And I kind of was a little uh I was a little moved by that idea in a few different ways. One of the ways was I thought it was kind of fucking sad. I'll be honest with you. I just felt in that moment, just a a shred, felt a shred sorry for myself. And then I smacked myself right in my face and said, get over it. You're not a victim. I did that. I didn't smack myself. You get the point. The other thing I thought about in that moment was, well, this isn't so bad. This isn't a bad group whatsoever. These are the guys that I sort of looked for or looked to for style confidence, the air of whatever, and we'll get into that as we go. But it was sort of a weird sobering moment. I I have I have baseball players, I have Joe DiMaggio's in here, Mike Piazza, all the ball players with a vowel at the end of their name. And it was a a sobering moment, as I'm not sober in this studio too often, but it made me think. And and that was a big impetus for the show. It was a big uh kernel of of thought, a thought kernel for the fatherless cheat sheet. So that's what I want to talk about today. And and let's let's try it out. Let's see if you like it on the fatherless cheat sheet. Check it out. Okay, we're back talking cultural surrogates, talking style influence. I god, I don't want to use the word style influencers. Oh dear lord. Has that word been bastardized by by some guy farting into a soda can? Influencers. When you're a when you're a a boy, I can only speak for for me as as I am a man, but was a young boy at one point. When you lose your dad, when you lose that male example of behavior, when you don't have that male example of behavior, how do you how do you sit? How do you interact with the world? How do you carry yourself? How do you what's your posture like? So so many of these things really do, as I say at nauseum, slip through the cracks. When you see a father and a son, so often, the son does everything so much like the father, besides just sheer physicality, their movements, their cadence, their and I'm very observant, as I've said a million times, how they move through the world. And for me, again, not a victim, I I never had that. I was not around men very often at all. Even my grandpa, who I love dearly, I was not around him often. Uh, and he was at that point in his 80s. What what am I what am I drafting off of him besides love and kindness, a members-only jacket, and and you know, how to dial the rotary phone with a pencil because his fingers were too thick. It's a true story. And my uncle, I just didn't see him that often. But definitely my uncle was more akin to some of the style that we're talking about. What I'm gonna talk about today is some of these people I'm gonna talk about a little bit. Certainly, sort of that old school, old-fashioned type of thing. But I want to talk quickly about the show itself and how these influences influence the show. Because obviously the show is me, but I want to talk first about the art of the show. The the artist who did my fantastic art for the show. It's a picture, the only picture you'll see of my children and me. Her name is Brianna Rauchy. She's a great artist, she was such a pleasure to work with. She's so talented, she does a lot of great work. And when we were sort of thinking about what it was going to be, the concept and this and that, I saw that she did something really cool with uh for with Tony Soprano, a piece of art. And we sort of said, Oh, yeah, that's cool. I like that. The robe and this and that. Shout out Brianna, she was great, and she's doing she's doing great out there, she's doing great work, and so that's what we landed on. The music, Pat Van Dyke did my music, amazing. He's a local dad, and he's just a killer musician, and he did my music, and the music, I think about the music for the show, James Brown influence, Black Keys, uh Pat Sweeney, so many of the groups, the racantours, the vibe, the beat, the feel of it. And he and Pat nailed it as well. He was so great to work with, and he just delivered. And I love the music for the show. I hope you like it too. Now, obviously, if you grew up with two parents, six parents, eight parents, you're going to be influenced by the things that you enjoy over the span of your life, especially in your younger years. I'm not saying anything that's not obvious. But when you're fatherless and a young man, especially, and I again can't speak for women, you don't it it's kind of like you're putting together a piece of furniture. You have these ingredients to the furniture, these pieces, you don't have directions, and you don't know what the hell you're putting together. You just know that you have this box of pieces, and you're trying to figure out what to fit where. It's very confusing, it's extremely frustrating, and there's a there's sort of an emotional wanderlust that happens. So where do you turn? Now, this is this is a whole different show, and I can't speak to this, but this is why a lot of young men go to whether it's gangs or affiliations or whatever, that's way out of my pay grade. We're not going to talk about that today. For me, for me, and just getting back to the show for two seconds, even the show itself, the vision I have for the show going forward and how I try to present it in a very small scale. I'm not comparing myself, my influences as a host, as a communicator. I grew up watching Letterman just every every night before I went to bed. I should have gone to bed. The Dean Martin roasts. I used to watch the Dean Martin roasts, the repeats of it. I still do. I'll pull it up on YouTube. My wife goes to bed an hour and a half before I do one night, some nights, and I'll stay downstairs with that rocks glass, and I'll sit and watch Don Rickles just tear tear people to pieces. And it was hysterical. Well, well before Kill Tony was out there, you know. So those influences really do leave that mark on you and your character and your personality and all those things, and it's it's an important thing. But I digress. Um the I was saying the psychological wanderlust. So what happens is you don't know how to behave, you're looking for cues, you're looking for insight. You're trying to figure out as a young person, anyway, with with with a foundation, with the security of that parent sort of showing you the way. And again, I say this too. Linda did her best, her best. We're talking about something completely different right now. You're building, you're building sort of a a patchwork. You have to build a patchwork out of cultural fragments, is how I like to say it, and how I kind of see it. You don't know how to do it yourself. I couldn't extrapolate from any real men that I was seeing in the world. I didn't see them enough. And certainly some of the men that I had to pull from, one of them had a tattoo of a naked lady on his leg with steam coming out of her lady parts. I don't think that that was a a cultural uh sort of an influence I should have pulled from. We talked about that in an episode a while ago. But what I did have, and this is sort of where it started as a young man, I had I had Columbia House VHS cassettes. Do we know what that is? Columbia House was a service for those people who are young potentially and don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Let me center myself a little bit better there. Columbia House, you can buy call it eight VHS videos. Everybody knows what a VHS is, right? Big clunky thing that before the DVD. You pay pennies on the dollar, they ship it to your house, and then you're in debt to them like the IRS for the rest of your life. And I still get I still get mailers for them. I I think I owe them on a copy of Home Alone 2 that I that never paid for. The first shipment of these VHS tapes that we got, it included Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Goodfellas. So this was like my mail starter kit. And I started looking and watching these movies at like nine or ten years old. Maybe a little early, but I was a, like I said, a latchkey kid. And so I'd watch these movies and I was blown away. I love these, I still to this day love these movies. And you're looking at somebody like Crash Davis from Bull Durham, which is which is a just a great movie written by Ron Shelton. One of my favorite, probably my favorite baseball movie, actually. And the movie is is well written. Crash Davis is a is a tough guy. He was a catcher. I was a catcher. He got the he got the woman in the end, and he hit his dinger. And it was and it's a sort of a romantic movie, in the sense that it's just everything landsworth supposed to. And I'm like, okay, so this is what this is what's supposed to happen. Then you had friendship and lethal weapon. This is how buddies are supposed to be together. And then you had good fellas. This is how tough guys are supposed to act. And then I could go on and on and on. And then you had Field of Dreams, which is the the archetype of the father-son baseball movie. And I said, Oh, this is how a father-son is supposed to have a catch. So that was really as maybe as sad and pathetic as that sounds, that was sort of my male starter kit from the from the goddamn Columbia house that sent these these VHS to the house. And I would watch them all over and over and over. And sure, Major League was in there as well, which was I still love that movie to this day. But my point is that you have this thing, and then you have aspiration, then you you aspire to be like these guys, but the aspiration is thin, it's so ambiguous. There's no there's no scaffolding, there's no real information there. You just have sort of hints of style and hints of you know a sort of a general essence and and attitude. And so also going back, going to music for a second, hearing Sinatra, Dean Martin, of course, even in their you could hear how cool those guys were, just in their music. Just in their music, you can hear how just that that Dean Martin with the tongue-in-cheek, sense of humor. Sinatra, just just shoving the audience, the audience's face in in his music, in that ballad, or whatever he did, the command, the confidence. And you know, even somebody like like Leonard Cohen. My mom listened to Leonard Cohen, still does, and I grew up hearing Leonard Cohen and hearing that that deep that voice of his, but also hearing poetry come out of that mouth and him articulating himself and being a man, but being able to speak like he did, that had a very large impact on me. Um the the problem with all of that is that some of these, all of these influences, they they can't correct you. They don't even know that you exist, they have no idea you're there, they have no idea what your circumstances are, and it's not their responsibility whatsoever. So as much as as you can take from them those things, the essence, the style, the attitude, you have to figure out how to use that use that yourself in many ways. Um so what happens is especially when you're sort of a young influential person. Influential? Influent what is that the word? I don't know. Someone will correct me. Um Scared Straight, by the way, going back to the last episode, Scared Straight was the show I was trying to think of, and I just I thought of it, of course, as I was listening to the damn show. Doesn't matter. We have a maybe a couple, a couple of fans out there who know what the hell I'm talking about. But you know, what you do is you sort of you you're aspiring to be a a caricature, if you will, of all of an amalgamation of all these pieces that you're seeing. And sometimes it doesn't work out quite as well. Uh I just want to really quickly talk about the people specifically, the influences specifically. And I want to talk about Vince Vaughn first. And I I know I know this is a little this is a little crazy, this this conversation and this topic in terms of just like how when you're a kid, when you're a kid, when I'm seven I'm 17 years old, 18 years old, and and you're all by you're by yourself and your friends are away at college and you're going to a college locally and you feel completely isolated and doesn't work out with the college girlfriend who left and and that was a rap. And you find a little movie and it's called Swingers, and and it feels and it's it's a bunch of guys doing exactly what you want to do, and there's this one guy who's is just a smacked ass steal on the show. You know, when you're 17, 18 years old, you go, Oh wow, yeah, that's it. This guy's got it all figured out, and so Vince's his quick silver tongue, his charisma, his style, I just always gravitated to that and to to even Favreau love all of his work. And again, when you're when you feel isolated, when you feel like nobody's nobody gives a half a shit about what happens to you, you know, and you're all by yourself, you're all alone, but you have this this thing, this this movie that you just discovered that you can go to, then you go, wow, this guy, this guy knows his stuff. And so that's sort of that was my first uh meeting with with Vince. Vince Vaughn, I've never met him, of course, but I might might lose it a little bit. I I wouldn't be, I don't think I'd be starstruck by uh probably anybody, maybe Christopher Walken and Vince Vaughn. That's about it. Because I did get to meet Jacob Dylan once and he was awesome. He was so nice. But anyway, uh my point is so Vince, his charisma, his, his also his uh I I kind of felt like after I saw Vince and then saw who he was, sort of in in interviews and stuff like that, he was his big, big dude, he's like 6'5. I'm 6'3, the guy's got two inches on me. It's like this big guy who was willing to be outwardly goofy and funny and kind and charming, and all the things that I wanted to be, but I thought you had to be the strong silent type or the cool aloof type and stuff like that. Because again, I'm 17, 18 years old. I don't know my ass from my elbow, and I'm trying to figure these things out. So that was that was Vince. And then sort of going to you know, the Sinatra of it all, the Rat Pack, obviously, those guys, just the cool, the cool, the camaraderie, the the ease of of moving about the world. Now it's funny because I I've watched a couple different uh things on on Dean Martin, especially, and read some books on him. And apparently he wasn't even a drinker, he was sort of put putting it on a little bit more than it was, and um, and I could see that, but he had it, he had it, he had the thing. He he was even a little bit of a goofball, which I love because I'm a goofball, and I and I I like that. I like that he could. Sinatra had a sense of humor, but I don't think he ever laughed at himself. So, you know, and again, getting back to the music of it all, the Jacob Dillons, the Dave Grohls, these guys who are so great at songwriting and with words and and being able to in a in a masculine way put their thoughts and emotions out there in a creative and proactive and accessible way. It's all stuff I just gravitated towards. So now there are limitations to these surrogates, and I said it before also there's no they can't correct you, and sometimes you can use these things very, very recklessly, and I will I will tell that story right now. It was about, I think it was I was in the middle of college, and uh after Swingers, a movie called Maid came out, and Favreau wrote that. I think he wrote and directed it. And the guys Favs and and Vince teamed up again for this movie, and I was just I was so excited. I was so excited to go see this movie. So me and Dino and this other guy we used to be friends with went to see this movie, and in the movie, Vince is a very elevated version of himself, obnoxious. He's obnoxious in the movie. I mean, look, I'm sure some people out there saying I think Vince Vaughn is obnoxious all the time. I get that, I I understand that. I don't, but people might think about that about me, and you might be listening. Sorry, turn it off then. But my point is that we see this movie and we get out of the movie, and the person who was with us said to me, he goes, and I remember him saying this because it it cut it cut pretty deep. He said, paraphrasing, paraphrasing an asshole. He said, um Yeah, he was just like you in the movie. It was just really annoying and all over the place. You act just like that. This is a friend of mine at the time. And so I'm he he's an asshole. And he walks around with a self-imposed black cloud around his head to this day. And I we're no longer we're no longer friends. Uh addition by subtraction is a real thing. Put that in the cheat sheet. But he was not wrong. He was not wrong. I was driving way too hard to the hoop and overcompensating for insecurity and lack of identity and lack of self. So I was acting like that to a degree. So what he did in the way that he used to do again, not great. He just pointed this out to me. And I finally said to myself, sort of after that, like, all right, you know what? He was right. He was right. He didn't have to say it like that, but that's just how he says things because he's a miserable human. But my point is, is that I had to reel it in. I had to reel all that bullshit in and start to figure out who I was going to be. And now, again, fatherless or not, at that age, I was 20. 22. No, 20. I was in college. We're all trying to figure it out. We're all trying to figure out who the who the fuck are who are we? Who are we at that point? And God bless. Look, I'm sure there are fatherless people, no parents, orphans who uh, you know, were born to the wolves who figure their shit out right away. And that's good. That's good on them. That's fantastic. I rule for everybody. Maybe that, not this asshole that I told the story about, but I rule for everybody else. My point is this. I had it was a wake-up call for me, and it was about time. So at that point, I kind of said, all right, maybe, maybe I'm doing too much with this caricature of whatever the hell I think it needs to be. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my my 20s and even my 30s, and I was a little bit of a howl at the moon type of guy. But it I kind of got away from that imitation, if you will. But the idea, but the idea of these cultural surrogates or you know, influences being all negative is not is not the idea that I want to convey today. Because it's not all bad. And honestly, they gave without knowing, they gave me more than most. They truly did. And I know that could sound very, very sad. I know that. And I'm not trying to make it sound sad. It was, it's great. What happens is you take all these things and you put them into your own your own mix and alchemy, and it comes out the way it's going to come out. So where does that leave me now? Well, I you're you're watching it, you hear it, you see it. And I'm sort of I kind of still I love the the the culture, the things that I've been influenced by. I love, I love the idea of the Rat Pack. I love that camaraderie, the old school sitting in that velvet booth with your buddies in a smoky room, drinking a whiskey, shooting the shit, having a great time. There's nothing ironic about that. It is straightforward. It is right at you, it is exactly in the moment and it is present. And I love that idea. I love how I love I love how Vince Vaughn is not ironic at any point. He's not. He's he's a he's a funny, charming, hit you over the head with the same fucking thing he does all the time. And it's great. And it's great, and that's who I am. I do that as well. And what I've realized to this point, to this day, is that not because of all of that, but as you get older, you just start to, you start to just morph into the person that you're gonna be. Because all of this shit, all the stuff I'm talking about, this is this is a tapestry, the life experiences, the movies, the music, the the asshole telling you telling you at the movies that you're acting like an idiot, all of these things turn you out to be who you are. And at the end of the day, if you could look yourself in the mirror and say, oh, well, I'm not that much of a piece of shit. I like to make people smile and and I do this show, and I sort of have a great time being who I am. And at times the slingshot effect, for me specifically, definitely happened. Whereas I got almost uh totally withdrawn and reclusive because I was sort of afraid to put to put out there this the product, if you will, of this culmination of stuff, uh whatever the hell you want to call it. And it's just an interesting manifestation, all of these things and and where we've where we've come to this point, where I've come to this point. And the funny thing is, the most ironic thing about all of this, all these people I've named, all these things. The w where I'm where I'm at now, who I am now, the man I am now has been completely bolstered by two little girls who are, you know, I don't know, 50 pounds and 30 pounds. I don't even know how much they weigh right now. I'm not gonna tell you anyway, they're probably pissed off at me down the road. But my my girls have have sort of dictated who I am now and the man I am now. And and that's what's important. And you know what? They love they love the goofball that I am, and they love all the stuff that I've extrapolated, and they love when I play Sinatra on Sundays when I'm making my sauce, gravy, whatever the hell you want to call it, I don't care. They love watching Fred Claws and Vince Vaughan movies with me because he's a big giant circus-tall funny guy, just like I am in the house. So if you could look at it a hundred different ways, but now because of my girls, because they sort of sooner than later honed and helped shape and formulate who I am now, I could thank them to a large degree, to a large degree. But it took all these things going down the road, and and you know, at the end of the day, the thing that I reflect on most is that I never felt like, and and you could again, there are a million different reasons for this stuff. It's not just because I didn't have an old man, but I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I never felt part of something. And I played at a high level with baseball, I was on teams from young to old, I was in clubs and this and that, as an actor, as I worked at jobs and bars and this. I've I've done I've done it all. I never really felt like I completely belonged somewhere. But now as a father and with my girls, I feel like I completely, and my wife, of course, I feel like I completely belong. And and that's important, and that feels good. So the rest is history. I don't know. And and I'm gonna keep watching Vince Vaughn movies, and I'm gonna keep watching Mad Men and The Sopranos and my listening to Dino and watching the roasts and doing all these things that make me happy. I'm seeing the wallflowers next week with my wife. They're in town. I'm so excited about that. This will probably come out right after that. Yeah? Yeah, this will be out after that. I can't wait. Because I'd like to do, and you should like to do the things that you like to do. And if someone has something stupid to say about it, tell them to fuck all. Mind your business. Because at the end of the day, we're just trying to make the most out of the time we have, and and that's what I'm doing with this show. And boy, if you're listening to this whole thing, I appreciate you. I really do. I'm having such a great time with this show, and we're moving along. We're moving along because we're we're we're we're driving ahead here. I mean, I was talking about episode two, I remember something I said. I said, I'm as surprised as you are that we're here, and we're we're past that. But we're gonna keep moving forward. So I hope that I hope that if if you have somebody in your life who you think might get something out of this, this show, a young person or sort of uh doesn't matter, older person, might get a smile out of this. I know there's a lot of content out there. It's not easy to break through the noise. I'm learning that the hard way. But if you think they might get a kick out of it, turn them on to the show. Give it a shot. You could always reach out to me, fatherlesschip podcast at gmail.com, my Instagram, we're doing some New Jersey dad buffoonery and fun stuff on there, just to have a little fun, just to do a little writing and a little performing. And it's just a nice little micro. It's a little more in the current zeitgeist of where things are. If someone doesn't want to listen to my kibbles of bits for 30 minutes plus, they can just see me for 12 or 13 seconds. But we're gonna keep moving forward, and I just want you to stick with me and I appreciate it. And YouTube, subscribe, it helps. Instagram, follow, reach out, say hello.
SPEAKER_00And this has been Fatherless Cheechi.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health Premium subscription. Features subject to change, availability, and results vary, not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.