The one with columnist Christopher Katis

This week, we mill Fathers' Day, David is a human sheild, for the musical theatre girls we rank our top 3 endings to Act 1, and this week we are joined by Salt Lake City Gay Dad columnist Christopher Katis who talks about us about his mission West, his Greek heritage, why his kids are still sleeping at 10:30am, and why Utah has so damned many gay dads.

Questions? Comments? Rants? Raves? Send them to GaytriarchsPodcast@gmail.com, or you can DM us anywhere @GaytriarchsPodcast

Transcript

Gavin: 0:00

I uh God. I hate myself. Me too.

David: 0:04

I hate you, I mean. You. And this is gay tree. And this is gay tree. Oh, I said that first. So as we know, I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old. My four-year-old is obviously potty trained. My two-year-old is flirting with the idea of potty training. So we have the little tiny potties, you know, that are just you know.

Gavin: 0:37

Yes, no dignity whatsoever. But yes.

David: 0:40

So we have one in our upstairs bathroom, kind of facing the other toilet. And so we were gonna do a group bath because we were playing in the um sandbox and both kids were dirty, and so we're like, two kids are gonna go in the bath, and they're like, Great. So we go upstairs, and my son, Emmett, sits on the toilet because he's like, I have to go potty. And then Hannah wants to sit on the other potty, and he is like, I don't want her to see me naked. And we're like, you're about to take a bath together. And he's like, No, no, no, no, please, I don't, I don't, and so the only way to get them both to sit in the toilets that face each other was for me to take a bath towel and hang it between them with this little shame curtain, and I had to hold it there while they both used the bathroom. And then what what did they do right after that? They climbed into the bath together, they got naked together in the bathtub. They were already naked, but he was so terrified of him her seeing him naked, and then they got in the the bath and they were totally fine. I was like, Do you do you understand what naked means, babe?

Gavin: 1:39

Don't think so. So there is something very visceral and human about you know, I never understood the psychology of like kids who don't want to poop because they're afraid they're, you know, like letting their body fall apart, kind of thing. And there it's an intimate thing to like be pooping in front of somebody else. I I guess. Well, I mean, when you're four and three, two, they don't care though. My kids, man, they would they I've always been a big, big supporter of being able to poop in public, like your whole life is still easier.

David: 2:13

Especially if you're gonna live in New York City, like uh every New York City person has some sort of poop in public story because there are not a lot of bathrooms and they all have those stories.

Gavin: 2:23

You join the New York Sports Club just so you have a place every five or ten blocks. Um, but yeah, we luckily we never had any uh poop moments that um that uh that I my my kids had no problem doing it in front of each other, that's for sure. And um and it's kind of cute, you know? It's kind of cute. Yeah. Um I recently um had an experience where I was reminded of the elements of my kids that I hope they don't have, or like lessons that I'm gonna instill in them so that they make life better for other people around them, which is we recently had our um elementary school graduation. I mean, don't get me started. Oh my god, I lost five pounds in tears. It was um it was, it was, it was a lot. There was a lot of layers, et cetera. And it was sweet, it was exactly what it was supposed to be, right? But I I was there early um because I just wanted to absorb it all. And they had a little slideshow going. And I sat next to somebody who was not my partner who just chatted my ear off about like, I don't know, they got the lawn mode recently. Hey, have you seen the stock market recently? I mean, literally was talking to me about the stock market. And I'm like, can you read the room? I'm my lip is quivering right now because I'm just trying to hold it together. And um, it reminded me the day before that, I was trying to have one of my last moments waving to my kid as he drove away in the bus, right? And a neighbor stopped and was talking to me. And I'm like, I'm trying to have a moment watching my kid for the next to last time waving to me. And she was just chatty, chatty, chatty, Kathy. And I'm like, you are ruining the moment for me here right now. Please don't ruin the moment for me. And I pray that my kids will have judgment, social judgment calls to not ruin the moment. Read the room, people.

David: 4:15

Read the room. For our listener out there, if you ever see Gavin on the street, do not approach him. Do not talk to him because he will ruin a moment he's having. I mean, it's uh it's a judgment call. And um But it is so like I I I how do I tell the story and not divulge too many things? I had a very big professional event happen in my life. And during the event, I was trying to do exactly that. I was trying to take it in, just really absorb it. And I had a person next to me talking about wow, isn't it great doing this professional event? Oh my god, isn't this such a great and like trying to like be a part of me? I was like, just leave me the fuck alone and let me just enjoy this. This is also because we're in our late 70s, and so we are basically we're basically starting to withdraw from society and starting to talk about the good old days. Yep. Um, speaking of the good old days, guess what? We missed Father's Day again on this fucking this stupid show that we've decided to make that we never plan on, and sometimes we record ahead of time. Isn't it? Father's it makes us authentic, right?

Gavin: 5:21

Like we're not, hey, listener out there. Listener out there, we're not manipulating anything. You can know that this is done on the fly and we are not thinking about things too much in advance to manipulate your emotions, that's for sure. Well, well, Gavin is maybe not.

David: 5:37

Maybe Gavin is not preparing his top three lists the way he should be, but David is. But okay, so Father's Day was two weeks ago. I mean, we talked about this last year. Father's Day is weird for for gay dads. Not in, I don't think it's weird in a bad way. It's just like Mother's Day in Weird, where it's just like it doesn't exactly perfectly fit into your family. So you just have to make a decision on how you're gonna celebrate it. My husband and I don't. We don't give each other cards, yeah, we don't do something special. It's just a Sunday. But our our daycare um had a donuts with dad celebration. So all the dads got to come in. We got to eat donuts with our kids, we got to do, we got to watch them do show and tell, which was really fun. Um, so it was it was a fun little moment. But the actual day, I I I I don't, it's we can't switch up. What am I gonna get my husband breakfast in bed? Right, and then he gives me dinner in bed and we're just eating in bed all day. What is that?

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

Like, yeah.

David: 6:27

What was the daddy vibe like with the uh donuts with dad? It's hard because these are the dads that I have known since my kid was in like like six months old at this school. So, like there's yeah, I know the hot dad that I like stalk, he he wasn't there. And I was saying to Gavin before we started rehearing uh recording. Wait, what? I was trying to make this completely organic, like we hadn't already talked about this. But I was saying, I don't know if this guy is hot or just tall. There, there's some time you can get confused because he's like 6'5, maybe even taller. And so you're like, oh, he's hot. Or you're like, is he hot or is he tall? Yeah, is he hot or is he just a pilot, right?

Gavin: 7:07

Like, who knows? Right. Uh, but there weren't any new daddies who just showed up who you'd never seen before, and you were like, ooh, new meat.

David: 7:14

It's all the cool guys that I like or the ones that I hate and who hate me because I'm gay.

Gavin: 7:19

On that note.

David: 7:21

Yeah. Let's talk about anti-gay. All right. All right.

Gavin: 7:24

Oh, in the gay, in gay news, I do want to keep every as as we are America's um finest news source. I do want to ha um, I do want to be able to point out that there um a judge struck down anti-trans legislation in Florida, which of course DeSantis says, Oh, we're gonna appeal this shit, and you're like, oh, Jesus. But it is a step in the right direction. It's great. They will not, the judge said you cannot take away the um affirming um medications and treatments for children and frankly adults um who need those medications to be able to affirm their um their identity. So that was a positive thing. But then also, have you heard about the bullshit coming out of Colorado right now? In that the I thought you were the only bullshit out of Colorado. The GOP, the Republican Party of Colorado, has this bonkers leader who's trying to get Trump's um uh endorsement as he is actually running in a congressional primary right now. So he has pulled out all of the freaks, that's for sure. And he's making all of these anti-gay proclamations, including we should be burning pride flags in Colorado. And you just, thank God, I'm just sitting back and laughing at it because right now Colorado is a place that's gonna be like, yeah, shut the fuck up, dude. But um, let's hope anyway.

David: 8:38

It's so funny, too. Like you you think, okay, so we're gonna light pride flags on fire. Do you understand that most gay men were like flag girls and high school? They're gonna turn that shit into a fucking podcast.

Gavin: 8:49

A full Broadway production. A Broadway music. Yeah, we're gonna make this a full movie. It's there's gonna be music made for us. Um, we're gonna this is gonna be, yeah, a thing for sure.

David: 9:00

It's so funny how Florida, going back to Florida, I know I shit on Florida a lot in the show. And listen, I I grew up there, I have family there, I I know it intimately. But but what always blows my mind about the when there's some sort of political, like we're gonna, you know, anti-trans legislation or whatever. I'm like, you guys, the ocean is starting to take over your state. Insurance company has pulled out, your housing market is going to crash soon. You guys have other things to think about. A condo building collapsed in. Remember that? Like, you have other shit to worry about. Do you really need to be spending your your time doing this when your state will be underwater in a hundred years? 100 if you want to go on and on. We're like nine.

Gavin: 9:46

Yeah, I mean, it's it's insane. All right. Well, what else you know what else is insane? What? Our top three list. Gate three marks. Top three list, three, two, one.

David: 9:59

Oh, I'm so proud of you. That is exactly the transition I would do. That was amazing, Gavin. So they can't they say you can't teach old dogs.

Gavin: 10:06

So you know I have been obsessing over this for the last three and a half hours, minutes. Um, but tell us what this week's top three list is.

David: 10:16

So the top three list is the top three endings of act one. So this is if you've seen a musical right out right before intermission, what is that last song that just sends you into intermission? Now, structurally, it's usually the world changes, some there's some sort of big emotional change. Yeah, but what are your top three? So, for me, in number three, not a lot of people know this show, Bandstand. Have you seen Bandstand? Yes, but I definitely don't remember the end of act one. So, the end of act one, this is so each one of my uh top three is gonna be like for a different category. This one is musically. Musically, this song that ends act one, it's about them deciding that they're gonna go do this thing. And they, it is so filled with emotion, and it's incredible. But the way the song builds, and then the very last chord of all these guys singing, it is absolutely incredible. If you haven't heard it, it's called Right This Way from Banson.

Gavin: 11:09

Okay. Um shall we link that in our non-existent show notes?

David: 11:13

Yeah. Okay. Uh, and number two, you're gonna laugh at me, but I'll I'll I'll defend myself. So much better from legally blind. God damn it. You know that was my number one. That's it. Oh, that's okay. That's a we can have crossover.

Gavin: 11:24

We can have crossover. I believe you. It kind of got um honorable mention as well.

David: 11:28

But uh listen, I believe, I I I think it is good. Tremendous honor. Listen, but I think having crossover is great. So the if you don't know what it is, basically, if you know the movie, she goes to she she chases this guy to Harvard and she's like, he's the guy or whatever. And then she finds out she gets into this very prestigious thing, and then she realizes, oh, wait, maybe I'm here not to chase this guy. Maybe I'm here to do something better with my life. Maybe I'm maybe I'm gonna be a lawyer. Maybe there's this whole new world in front of me. And when you think about the end of Act One of the musical and how it should change the world, and your main character should be forever changed, and you should be leading into a new direction. So act two is all about something different. This perfectly sums that up. And on top of that, it is a fucking bopping song. It is a great song, it is fun to listen to, it's dynamic, it's exciting. Um, so much better from leading that. And number one, and this may be crossover too. Number one, I I will defend this to the end of the days. Defying gravity from Wicked. It is inarguably the best ending of act one. Not only do you have what I talked about with story, with music, with all that stuff, but visually, if that's not the most fucking compelling way to end an act, I don't know what it is. I have some um honorable mentions, but I won't go into them because I think you might have the money.

Gavin: 12:45

So many honorable mentions. Uh, but yes, uh well, now I'm gonna switch my order now, frankly, because to um just say yes, number three, Define Gravity, without a doubt. It is just it uh catapults you, it cannonballs you out of the show, and it can be taken out of kind of it's just fantastic and it's thrilling. You just have to you have to love it because it is just everything you want it to be.

David: 13:05

Thrilling is a great word for it, it's thrilling to watch, yeah.

Gavin: 13:07

And to to that end, though, I would say, speaking of thrilling, number two, um, for me, honestly, this is so cheesy. Oh my god, this is so cheesy. But I was actually thinking, I want to talk, not insider-y, uh too insider-y in this case. And so um uh oh my god, what the it do you hear the people saying from Les Miz? Is that the fucking title? No, it's one name.

David: 13:32

But I'm glad that this musical was so influential to you to even remember the name of the book. I'm so straight. I'm so straight. You're so straight. I'm so straight. No, yes, that was one of my honorable.

Gavin: 13:43

So I'm just gonna make that my number two. Um, I do love um how then for number one, a show near and dear to my heart, my very first Broadway show that I was in, 42nd Street. I love how 42nd Street ends, where Dorothy Brock, they're just about to sing your arousing version of the song 42nd Street. She gets knocked over, breaks her ankle, etc., etc. And it's just an unconventional way uh Julian Marsh comes out and announces that the show has to be canceled, lights up, and he's out there on the stage and the lights are on, and he just walks off the stage, and you just it's very, very abrupt.

David: 14:14

And uh Well, because it feels it's a very meta moment, right? It's it's a show, there, it's a show inside the musical 42nd Street that stops and then the show 42nd Street stops. And it is this weird moment where the audience I directed a couple years ago, where the audience doesn't quite know what's happening. They're like, Am I are we supposed to be happening? Always a nervous titter in the audience.

Gavin: 14:33

Uh then um, okay, so legally blonde was definitely um uh my honorable mention. But then another honorable mention is um Sunday from Sunday in the park with George, which is so musically glorious, and it is not exactly a rousing, thrilling song, but it is just like the musical climax of the whole show. And um on a Sunday morning, you should just put on the song Sunday from Sunday in the park with Sunday.

David: 14:59

Yeah, you really should. My honorable, quick honorable mention, because we could do this forever, is and I am telling you from Dam Girls. Oh listen, like that song. Now, as as far as like the change in the world and all that kind of stuff, doesn't quite fit that bill. But is that not one of the most legendary songs of all time? It is. It is. Um, so what is next?

Gavin: 15:20

And oh shit, and then I mean, this is where we could obviously go on and we could go forever. And I am so more fucking mortified that I call one day more TV here at the people sing. But and do you think I'm deleting that? Not on not that you're you also have to sh think about um I mean, just uh absolutely over the top Act One endings, also is um I Am What I Am from Lakage, which equals, I think, um uh Dream Girls for sure. It's a little gay for me. Anyway. Oh shit. I um thank you, David, for demeaning yourself by being on this stupid little show with me. Um next week, I want to hear about the three careers that you desperately hope your children do not uh pursue. Our next guest is a proud Greek daddy to two grown-ish kids. He's lived all over the American West, including Salt Lake City, where he says he was too gay and not Mormon, so he had to flee to LA. But actually, life has brought him right back to the SLC. He also came to us in a rather unorthodox way. We had issued a press release and he charmingly and snarkly asked, Well, have the Gatriarchs ever heard of the Salt Lake City gay dad columnist who's your daddy? Answering the perennial question, we now know who is your daddy. It's Christopher Catisse. Welcome, Christopher Catese to Gatriarchs.

SPEAKER_03: 16:48

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Gavin: 16:50

So tell us, how have your kids driven you bananas already today?

SPEAKER_03: 16:56

Um, so first of all, it's uh 1015 my time here in the uh Rocky Mountains. And the little bastards aren't awake yet. Wait, how old are they?

David: 17:08

How old are your kids?

SPEAKER_03: 17:09

Well, 21 and 17. The 21-year-old has a day off from work. He has a rather Friday off. But uh I will tell you how every single day. My oldest has uh a belief that there is no kitchen cabinet cover or drawer that should be closed. And the youngest uh has an aversion to putting the towels in the bathroom either back on the hanger or into the dirty laundry. He leaves them out over the toilet sheets.

Gavin: 17:46

Wait, and leaves the towels out over the dirt.

SPEAKER_03: 17:51

The closed toilet suit. Yeah. But yeah. And and don't even get me started on their the the both of them cannot put the toilet paper roll back on the roller. They just put it on their sink and leave it there.

David: 18:05

Wow. The idea that somebody is still sleeping at 1015, as a parent of a four-and-2-year-old, I have lived an entire lifetime by 10. By 1015, I'm considering what I want to do before bed. Like by 10:15 a.m., I am already thinking about bedtime. The thought that somebody's still sleeping right now is I'm I'm enraged with jealousy.

SPEAKER_03: 18:30

It'll calm. It'll calm.

Gavin: 18:32

Right, no doubt. And but now, I mean, now that you have pretty grown kids who sleep till 10, are you ever able to sleep past 6.30? Or has your body just had two decades of training that you you know, you we're all just old men now, and we automatically wake at 6.15 because that's what we do.

SPEAKER_03: 18:48

So I have to tell you something kind of amusing, and that is the fact that um I can genetically tell you where I got my night owl gene. So it's from my grandmother's side of the family. And on one of those DNA testing things that now says, oh, you have a propensity for having a patchy beard or whatever, that also says that I would prefer to be a night owl, which is totally, totally true. So no, I do not automatically wake up at 6:30 in the morning. Uh, you know, on Saturday, if if 7.30 rolls around and I'm I'm like, oh fuck no, you're going back to bed.

Gavin: 19:25

All right. So, Christopher, you have a rather interesting and unique um story about your adoption process. Can you share with us how you became a dad?

SPEAKER_03: 19:35

Sure, absolutely. So um it was kind of a surprise to me uh that I was gonna become a dad, in as much as my husband, um, by that time we'd been together for about uh twelve or thirteen years, uh was spending a lot of time on the computer, and I just assumed, like all normal gay men, he was looking at porn.

David: 19:56

Obviously.

SPEAKER_03: 19:57

He was not, he was actually researching porn. Parenting and adoption. So we asked we went to an orientation that the county of Alameda, which is where, say, Berkeley is, for example, or Oakland, where we lived at the time in California. And we went to the orientation and I marched myself up during the breaks to the facilitator and said, Well, obviously we're a same-gender couple. Do we even ever have a chance of getting a kid? And the look of like, what the hell is wrong with you, mister, on her face told me, yeah, we were eventually getting a kid. We were the last couple in our training group to be matched with a kid. I have to be honest about that. So we got this kid, baby, adorable little baby, whom we named after my father in the Greek tradition. Uh, and we'd moved to Los Angeles and we talked briefly about maybe getting a second kid because I'm the youngest of six. My husband uh was number uh three of four. And so we we know what it's like to have siblings and close to our siblings. And uh we started the process and he reached out to Los Angeles County, and you have to go through an in in Alameda, you have to go through a very long 10-week training program before they even consider you.

SPEAKER_00: 21:20

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 21:21

So in Los Angeles, um we asked about that training and said, you know, can we just transfer our training over? And we were told, no, it's a different county, a much less strict, a much less intense uh process, but okay. And uh they didn't have any openings yet, and as soon as they got an opening, they would let us know. And it's been 18 years now, and we still haven't gotten the call from them, so there's hope, I guess.

David: 21:51

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03: 21:53

But in the meantime, I'm at work one day, and my my husband Kelly calls, and he's very emotional, and he says, Gus has a baby brother. And what happened was uh their mom, they our kids share a common mother and different dads, and now they share a common mother and the same dads, which is kind of an amusing irony. Uh, and she said uh, you know, the the baby had uh was in the system, and it happened that the woman who placed our oldest son with us was now a uh parental rights termination supervisor. I didn't know that. I called her to find out if she knew anything about what was going on, and she told me this was her position and that a file had come across her desk. She looked at it and said, Hey, that's Gus's brother. Reached out to that, the the baby's um caseworker, said, This kid has a sibling who's been adopted. Find the parents to see if they'll take the kid as well. About three days later, she ran into the guy whose job it was to find the parents, and he said to her, Those guys have fallen off the face of the earth. It's like they never existed. And 15 minutes later, she handed him Kelly's cell phone number. And that's how Nico came into our lives.

David: 23:14

That's awesome. That's were you that off the grid? No.

SPEAKER_03: 23:21

Somebody was Google could have filed me in my work.

Gavin: 23:24

Yeah. Somebody was not filing the paperwork very well, that's for sure. But that I mean, that that's a pretty unbelievable uh reunion, frankly. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 23:33

It it is. And actually, we had the photo of the very first time that the boys saw each other. And that's when a a caseworker uh flew Nico, who was seven months old at the time, to Los Angeles. And by the way, I walked up and she just said, You must be Christopher, and handed me the baby without asking for ID, which was a little scary.

David: 23:54

But kind of risky just handing people babies and assuming they're yeah, that's who they belong with. Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 24:00

Exactly. Right. So uh the it he just looked at his brother like, where the hell have you been, dude? You were supposed to be there with me. And uh it's a great photo, but the really kind of amusing part about that is that shortly thereafter, Gus was asked where his little baby brother came from, and he answered correctly. The airport.

David: 24:22

Yeah. Yeah. My dad just gets handed babies. That's how great men become parents.

SPEAKER_03: 24:28

We're waiting for the next one.

Gavin: 24:30

Every time I go to an airport, I always wonder.

SPEAKER_03: 24:34

David, no, we're not waiting for the next one. We made that very clear.

Gavin: 24:39

You've been going out parenting advice as the who's your daddy columnist of Salt Lake City for a long time. And so you're like, I'm I'm assuming celebrity journalists walking around in Salt Lake. Do you get accosted in the grocery store for I for either giving good or bad advice?

SPEAKER_03: 24:57

Uh I can count the number of times people have recognized me on one hand with digits left over. Okay. No one has ever said I've given bad advice or good advice. Mostly they think we're good parents. We we cover it really well, you know.

Gavin: 25:13

Uh, but yeah, no. I mean, we would definitely make assumptions about it being Salt Lake City, and that's um that's terrible because when you assume, you know, but um it's uh you find Salt Lake City is totally open and um embracing of you as gay dads.

SPEAKER_03: 25:28

Well, let's not be crazy, but this is an interesting tid bit. Utah and Idaho have the largest per capita populations of same gender parents than any states in the Union.

David: 25:40

No kidding.

SPEAKER_03: 25:41

There's a reason for that. The Mormon church encouraged for many, many years young men who came and said to their their religious leaders, you know, I like Dick. They were told find a nice girl, get married, and apparently the JJs down there are just magic, and it'll solve everything. Uh but yeah, you know, we do we stood out when we first bought our house here in the suburbs. Uh there's a huge holiday here in July called the 24th of July or Pioneer Day. It is the day when the Mormon Pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley. The uh you know apocryphal story is Brigham Young stood up, glanced, looking over the valley, and with one hand extended said, This is the place. It was a little more, I can't go on anymore. This is gonna be it. But uh, it's a huge, uh, a huge holiday. And around that time, the street we live on always does one of these kind of block party things. And they they close off the street, and people bring, you know, some sort of uh you know, potluck item. And the very first year we were here, we decided, well, we we had better better go. And I shit you not, a woman climbed over a picnic table to introduce herself to us, and then she and all of the other women were like, so you guys live in Mrs. Salada's old house, right? And we're like, Yeah, and and you have kids, right? Like, yeah, they're those two right over there, and you're together, right? As a couple. And we're like, Yeah. And so when we were leaving, I think my husband said, Yeah, I think we're the first actual gay people that ever met, and they're probably at home calling their sisters-in-law. You know, saying, Yeah, oh my God, we met homo.

David: 27:30

Yeah, like it gives them street cred too. Like we met homos and you know, we escaped with our lives, which is so exciting. I have worked in Solic City, and I'm can I continue to be fascinated with people who are religious, but especially Mormons. But I have witnessed that exact thing with somebody I worked with who was an out gay man, went to his church, and they said, no, you should marry a woman, and they are still married and have six children. And it was so it it still to this day blows my mind that like somebody's like, oh, I know who I am. I'm a gay man. They're like, Well, why don't you live a totally different life? And they're like, Cool. And then they do. And then they do.

SPEAKER_03: 28:07

Yeah. I mean, I have a friend who who did do just that. And when they got married, his wife knew that they were that he was gay. And uh they have I guess three or four kids. They have some kids. And uh, you know, 20 years in, he was like, Nope, can't do this. And she was like, Nope, I deserve to be happy too. And they went their separate voice and he got married to a guy, and it seems just ecstatically happy.

Gavin: 28:34

That's I mean finding your place for sure. Finding your place. So then speaking of finding a place, actually, um, what a great transition. What a great part. Uh high five. What something I find fascinating here is that uh so you're very proud of your Greek heritage. I mean, in uh a little bit of our talking, Greekness comes up a lot. How did your Greek family find its way to Salt Lake City?

SPEAKER_03: 28:56

Uh so you know, in the last century, um, there were a lot of immigrants coming to work at mines. Uh, we have at the time the largest open pit copper mine in the country and sheep, and the railroad was here, and that's how my family ended up because of the mines and the sheep or the mines and the um on the railroad. Um and actually, more trivia for you, Salt Lake City or Utah, in the turn of the last century, the largest single ethnic group in the state were Greeks.

SPEAKER_00: 29:28

Oh.

SPEAKER_03: 29:28

Now, all the others gathered together were outnumbered, but if you just had one group, it was the Greek. So they faced a great deal of discrimination.

Gavin: 29:35

Uh-huh. Yeah. I guess that's kind of carry over. Yeah. So you have college-aged kids, whether or not they're I mean, they're of that age. Uh what um what are they what are they doing now besides sleeping and also hopefully listening to this in real time when we release it?

SPEAKER_03: 29:53

Well, uh, my oldest, who's 21, was accepted to go to our community college and decided it's not for him. And neither of my kids have been, you know, academic overachievers, to say the least. And that's okay. And, you know, he has a great job and he's making some money. Um, he has a wonderful girlfriend whom I remind him I like more than him all the time. Oh, yeah. That's right. Uh, and the youngest is in his last year and has decided he wants to try to go to the job corps and finish high school there and then learn a trade. Uh, I'm pushing him for plumbing because what family doesn't need a plumber. But right. He he's actually uh looking at a couple of different options. Uh he's a really skilled chef. And uh even when he was little, he was making a spana copato with me, which is a Greek spinach pie. Uh and in fact, both of my boys, their first jobs were at a Greek restaurant owned by the nephew of the Greek teacher who fed him this, right?

SPEAKER_00: 31:10

Of course.

SPEAKER_03: 31:10

So during a a one of the the school programs that he was involved in, um they did kind of a uh a course where you did a little bit of a trade, which I think is a great idea for all students. And he did the culinary track. Uh he walked in one day and he said, Uh, so the the teacher came up and said, Do you know what Pilafi is, Nico? And he said, Yeah. So, do you know how to make it? He said, Yeah. And he, I guess a teacher pulled out their cell phone and said, Is this the recipe? And he said, No. Can you run down into the cabinets and see if we have everything you need? And he did, and he said, and then dad, he made me make the pilafi, which is right type of rice. He said, Why, why would he choose me, Dad? I'm like, dude, you are ethnically identified. And he said, How would he know I'm that we're our family's Greek? I'm like, dude, your name's Nico Katis. What do you think he thought it was gonna be?

Gavin: 32:03

In Utah, that goes pretty far. And he's like, You were he was, yeah, he was culturally profiled. He's not the white guy in the class, so obviously he knows how to cook Greek.

SPEAKER_03: 32:13

Right. Well, and they are Latino. Our kids are actually Latinos. Um, but uh, yes, indeed. And and I will say that I think all parents have certain expectations and dreams when their little babies are in their arms, right?

David: 32:27

Sure.

SPEAKER_03: 32:28

And even when they're a little older. And would I have loved my kids to say, you know, we're going to go to college and we're going to get professional degrees. Yeah, part of me. But what I'm more interested in is that my kids grow up to be decent, kind human beings. And they are both that.

Gavin: 32:50

That's great. That's an excellent who's your daddy column, right there, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_03: 32:55

Yeah, thank you. Uh, and you know, we we're just dysfunctional enough that they're usually the funniest guys in the room.

David: 33:01

Yeah. We say that all the time. The balance of like just enough trauma to make them interesting, but not enough to send them at the top of the bell tower.

Gavin: 33:09

So um I I was gonna ask you, uh, you've been in the comms world for a very long time as a as a as a strategic communicator, right? And um, but you have a funny story that you shared with me about one of your jobs that you had in Boston. Would you tell us that anecdote?

SPEAKER_03: 33:24

Yeah, so uh I I was actually looking for a job uh because it was the the Great Recession. Uh and uh someone whom I know in Boston uh is a headhunter. And he called me one day and said, This can't get back to me because it's not my client or you know, aren't my company's client. But the gay website mandate is looking for somebody. And I think you should perhaps talk with them.

David: 33:50

Is that like a precursor to a grinder? Like what kind of a website was mandate? I actually don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 33:55

Exactly what it sounds like.

David: 33:56

Like manhunt. Like it was like manhunt, yeah, yeah. Adam for Adam.

SPEAKER_03: 34:00

Yeah, yeah. I don't know what manhunt is. Um, but it it's probably mandate, yeah. So I mean it was it was it was billed as you know a place to meet uh a partner. Um I don't think it might not have been also a place where you know you meet your partner for a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_00: 34:17

Right, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, we're all talking about the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:21

Yeah, yeah. So um, and it was online, and this is in in uh a time before apps existed, right? Uh, and I don't even know if mandate still is around or not. But they were looking for somebody to kind of head up their content and and write content for them. And I had a couple of conversations with the the vice president of marketing, uh, and it was they were terrific. And he said, Okay, I do need you to uh send me a couple of writing samples, and we're asking all of the people we're talking to to do this, and I need you to do three. One of them is to announce to our subscribers our new interactive conversation text messaging, you know, instant messaging. I'm like, okay, not a problem. So the other two need to be something for the kink community. And I said, uh, well, well, one man's kink is another man's vanilla. And he said, you know what, you're the only one who understood that. I was like, yeah, well, so I I wrote the the piece about uh you know their their instant messaging program, and then I thought a long, long time about what I could write. And I ended up writing one about you know, daddy kind of thing, and the other I think was about water sports.

SPEAKER_00: 35:35

Right on?

SPEAKER_03: 35:36

Hey? Yeah, that's right. I tell my husband, come read these, and he reads them, and he says, So we you get this job, we move to Boston. You're never going to career day at school art. I'm like, hey, Johnny, it's your dad's name Bill. He's into some weird shit, dude.

Gavin: 35:58

Well, can you um that's uh fantastic. I would love to actually be able to stay um to interview you post having that job and your career day, but oh well, um that that can be another fantasy for another time.

SPEAKER_03: 36:10

So the uh excuse me, I'm interrupted, but I always said that the um uh that head of marketing said when I told him we have to move to Utah instead. And so I pulled myself out of the uh I pulled out, haha. Um uh I pulled myself out of the consideration. He said, as soon as your kids graduate high school, I'm coming to pack you up.

SPEAKER_00: 36:32

Dude, if you're listening to this, my oldest has a year already. Come on, let's go.

David: 36:39

I just did a quick Google search and mandate.com, mandate in general does not exist anywhere on the US.

Gavin: 36:44

Does the URL exist?

David: 36:46

No, when I go to mandate.com, it it it goes, it says you know, no can't find page or whatever. We did on that. That's like something that's it sounds like like what what year was that?

SPEAKER_03: 36:57

2008. 2007, 2009. Okay.

David: 37:00

Because I feel like you had a kind of A-lock at rooms and then you had like Adam for Adam and Manhunt, which was like the early 2000s. So yeah, maybe it was like uh taking the baton from there.

Gavin: 37:12

Um having now survived teenagehood, I am curious, are there any lessons that we can learn from mistakes you made, or particularly parenting wins that you can pass on?

SPEAKER_03: 37:23

So wins, like I said, my kids not with their parents, but I'm told all the time are just the nicest, most polite, kindest people. Well, that's like, oh, you mean those two lasses? Um however, uh, you know, my kid told me yesterday that I think you did a good job, which was really fun.

Gavin: 37:46

It's pretty gratifying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 37:47

Uh my youngest son and I butt heads a lot. My mother refers to him as my quote, karmic kick in the ass. Uh I I will say when he was in uh preschool, he went to two different ones uh four days a week. And in one of them, I came to pick him up and I had to sign the incident report because he bit a kid. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing biting? And I wrote on the note, you know, he doesn't do this at his other school. And the director sent me an email that night, and she listed a lot of really good possibilities. The size of the room, the boy-to-girl ratio, the number of kids, a lot of them. And then she proceeded to say, we have discovered that Nico is independent, strong-willed, and teases way above his age level. And we were like, oh, okay, like being independent and strong-willed are not necessarily bad attributes, lady. But like, what does that mean? My cousin, when I told this, my cousin said, um, yeah, Nico, he teaches it on a third grade level. So uh I would say that the biggest piece of advice that I fail a lot. I have I have some virtues. Patience is not one of them, never has been. I, you know, pray every day it's gonna be, but it's not. When it comes particularly to deal with somebody who is a mini me, uh, although not so mini anymore, um I've had to like realize I can't and don't need to win all the time. I need to be patient, I need to be calm because I don't all I'm not always calm, but I've noticed that when I don't necessarily win, when I'm calm, when I don't raise my voice, that we get to where we need to go.

David: 39:55

We say this all the time on the show children are ugly mirrors. They are just They do not reflect back to you. The good things they reflect back to you. Those things that you're like, ah, fuck, you're right. I am impatient or whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 40:10

Yeah, but my mom and and sister have said multiple times, I think you need to get a DNA test to see about power.

Gavin: 40:21

Well, wrapping up here, are there what's a do you have a moment from your kids' upbringing that you will just never ever forget?

SPEAKER_03: 40:32

Oh, good lord, so many of them. I'll give you two. And they both have to do with my youngest son kidding. So when he was a baby, and and by the way, my oldest son reminded me of this yesterday. When he was a a newborn and brand spinning into our family, I was changing him. And uh my oldest son was four at the time and was watching, and I was wiping him, and he pooped right into my hand on the wipey, which, from a parental standpoint, is fantastic.

David: 41:12

It's a perfect strike.

SPEAKER_03: 41:14

Exactly. Exactly. Well, for a four-year-old, that was about the most hysterical experience of his life. He was screaming so hard on laughing, and he belted out, have to call Papu. Papu is grandpa in Greek, which is my dad. Have to call poo poo. So I called my father, and he yells into the phone. My son yells into the phone, laughing, Papu! Nico pooped in daddy's hand. My dad couldn't understand it because he was laughing so hard. So I had to repeat the fact that my kid had just crapped in my dad. And then, you know, the two of them had a had a the second was uh a few years later, we lived in Salt Lake. We were going to Los Angeles on a on a family vacation, and we stopped in like Barstow to eat at a Chipotle's, and it was one of those at a gas station kind of like I don't know if you have Mavericks in the back east, but or come and go's, but kind of those.

David: 42:14

Yeah, that's tattooed above my uh waistline. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:19

Yeah. There's a a park here in Salt Lake that uh had a sizzler for hundreds of years adjacent to it. It was being torn down. They were planning to put a come and go in there, and somebody rather amusingly said, Well, hasn't that been what the park's been for for years and years? But uh it's it's like a gas station, and you can buy treats and that kind of stuff and sandwiches, and then they often have a fast food joint associated with it. This particular one had a chipotle, our kids love chipotle. We went to the chipotle, my kid, of course, has to take a dump. And you know, it's one of those funny.

Gavin: 42:56

Usually, usually people have to do that after they have the chipotle.

David: 42:58

And Christopher, this is this is a high-level show. I don't know what kind of show you thought you were on, but we don't talk about this kind of stuff. We keep we don't like to talk about this stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 43:06

You know, I poop.

David: 43:07

Please tell us, tell us more.

SPEAKER_03: 43:09

So I take him to the bathroom, there's two stalls, there's two urinals, he goes into the stall, and I wait for him. I'm not gonna leave like a six-year-old kid, five-year-old kid in the toilet by himself, right?

SPEAKER_00: 43:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 43:20

So I wait for him, and people come in and they're like, oh, is there a line? I'm like, oh no, they're open, come in, come in. These two young guys, two hot guys, probably, you know, mid-20s, come in, stop us, say, oh no, they're open. They give me the fish eye. Like, why are you hanging around in the men's room?

SPEAKER_00: 43:39

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_03: 43:40

When thank God, at that perfect moment, I hear from the stall, Daddy, you still there? And I was like, Yep, I'm still here. And the guy started laughing. I'm like, yeah, the joys of fatherhood.

Gavin: 43:55

That's uh very, very relatable and universal, yes, the joys of fatherhood. Uh, Christopher, thank you for demeaning yourself by being on our stupid little podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03: 44:06

Oh, this has been great. Thank you so much. And I'm glad my snark uh turned into something good. Yeah, totally.

Gavin: 44:12

Hey, I mean, if you have something snarky to say, please come join us.

David: 44:17

Yeah, yeah. We made an entire show about it.

SPEAKER_03: 44:19

There you go. Terrific. Well, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Gavin: 44:23

Thanks, Christopher.

David: 44:25

So my something great this week, a little broad, but we talked about this before. We talked about the the when you dreamed about being a dad before you were a dad, what age the kids were. We kind of surmised that men in general imagined a kind of five-ish-year-old kid, and then women tended to think about uh a baby like an infant. Yeah. And so my son, uh, he turns uh five in August, and he is now very much uh the age and doing the things that I had imagined being a dad would be like. And it is a new, I hate to say it in a podcast like this, but it is a new level of joy that I feel uh parenting this kid because it's so fun and relaxed. There is a just a there is a banter, there is a like a camaraderie. There's just this new budding relationship with this child in a way that just feels like, ah, this is this is the part of parenting I thought would be really fun. And it's here and it is fun. And we're doing rides together, and he's still baby-ish enough to like cry and want a hug and stuff, but he's like, we're happy like this morning, we're laying in bed and we're just like telling jokes to each other, making funny faces, and he was just laughing. I was like, yeah, this is the shit, man. So my something great this week is kids your kids being five.

Gavin: 45:43

That was almost no that was beautiful, David. I'm gonna undermine it, okay? Okay, and say Netflix Nazi uh documentaries. Okay. That is my something great. Uh we are in summertime now. Uh my son tends to cash out earlier than my daughter does. He's like, you know what? I'm done. I'm uh the sun's down, or it's not even down, I'm going to bed. And my daughter immediately looks to me and goes, Can we watch Nazi stuff now? Oh my god. Hey, she's into the history, she's into the gore, she's into the horror of it all. And Netflix has a new uh docuseries that they've partly dramatized, and but they use old footage that they've put color, you know, they've whatever, they've they've remastered it with um color, which is creepy. And frankly, the dramatization part is really creepy because they're like a modern dude playing Hitler, which is bizarre. But I love being able to watch this shit with my daughter and have her say, let's can we watch Nazi stuff now?

David: 46:44

I hope you're proud that that just is going into the airwaves to our listener.

Gavin: 46:50

And that's our show. If you have any comments, suggestions, or general compliments, you can email us at gatriarchspodcast at gmail.com.

David: 46:58

Or you can DM us on Instagram. We are at Gatriarchspodcast on the internet. David is at David FM Vaughn everywhere, and Gavin is at GavinLodge on the face. Please leave us a glowing five star review wherever you get your podcast. Thanks, and we will not see you next time on another episode.