#193. Road Trip!
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This is a short, film-free bonus episode built entirely around Mike's upcoming road trip: he's driving his two older boys and his mother down to a highway handoff point so they can spend two weeks each at "grandparent camp" with his parents and in-laws while his newborn stays home, a logistical scheme JVL immediately ribs as sounding like human trafficking (blindfolds, burlap sacks, and all). That spirals into a tangent about whether Mike's kids get tablets and screens on long drives — Mike insists he's not judging screen-time parents, he just never needed the crutch because his older two are content reading for hours, while JVL cheerfully admits his own kids get iPads loaded with whatever keeps them quiet. The back half turns into pure Nintendo Switch talk: Sonny confesses he spent months subtly manipulating his kids into "wanting" a Switch so he could play Mario Kart 8 himself, JVL declares Super Smash Bros. Ultimate the mandatory next purchase (since everyone can team up against the CPU instead of fighting each other), and Mike runs down his family's rotation of Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the four-player household favorite Mario Party, with Sonny chiming in about his own God of War Ragnarök binge and eyeing a Contra collection.
From the show notes
Mike's going on a road trip and also has some Switch advice for Sonny.
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode, and guys, we're talking about me. We're talking about my plans for this upcoming weekend. By the time you've heard this episode, it has already happened. I am going on a brief road trip with my two older boys, my eight-year-old and my five-year-old, and my mother. But there's a purpose for this. So we are, it all comes from trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do this summer. The baby's daycare situation, in-home daycare situation, does not start until July. Boys had some summer camps lined up, but we're trying to figure out what they're going to do. So the brilliant idea was to have two weeks of grandparent camp. One week at my parents' house, one week at my in-laws' house. My parents and my in-laws live about four hours away from each other. And they both have, you know, it'll be different experiences for them. My parents live on the lake. My in-laws live in Charleston. They love going to both those places. And they can be there for two weeks straight. And so we can just have the glorious time. Experience of only having a baby in our house for two weeks. So, but we still needed like two extra weeks. So I worked out a situation where my mom is visiting this week in order to cover this week. And then the week after my kids get back from my in-laws, my mother-in-law will also be here. So we've got basically like a full month of summer lined up of childcare. It's awesome. So we're driving. So my mom flew up this past weekend, staying with us for this week. And then we are getting in the minivan and driving down about, well, we got to figure this out. We still haven't figured out. We're going to drive and meet my dad and do a transfer. And then I'm driving back home to Virginia from.
JVL00:02:07Where are you going to do the handoff? We haven't, we haven't decided this yet.
Mike00:02:11No, I'm trying to like look at, think about the map. So we would, we would do it somewhere along I-85 because my parents live right off of I-85 on a lake. On the border of South Carolina, Georgia. So we're trying to figure out where we're going to do this. I don't want to make my dad drive too far.
Sonny00:02:32Raleigh Durham.
Mike00:02:33So it could be Raleigh. Raleigh's a little far. So maybe more like Greensboro or Charlotte.
JVL00:02:38Nobody will think that it's human trafficking watching two kids be bundled from one car to another car with different state license plates.
Mike00:02:45So when I grew up, my parents would do this with my grandparents, with me and my brother. And that was a much. Shorter trip. It was between Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, and we would stop at a McDonald's halfway halfway in between and get dropped off and we would go spend spend the next week with my grandma. So, like, it's a thing that happens. It's normal, right? It's not it's not human trafficking ask, right? Because my mom is going to be with them, too.
Sonny00:03:16You know, I mean, it's not human trafficking because, you know, the people I mean, it's right.
Mike00:03:21I mean, it's not it's not looking outside. It's just what I'm saying.
Sonny00:03:23It doesn't look like I think people are going to ask questions when, you know, they see the kids in blindfolds being pulled out of one trunk and shoved.
Mike00:03:31Well, I think that child have a burlap sack over her head. They they know the rules. If they behave, they don't have to have the burlap.
JVL00:03:38So why is that child gagged? So are you? Here's a question. OK. What is your position on tablets, movies and video games? Are you one of these these? super great parents who's like oh my children don't have tablets and they just they just sit and do the punch buggy game and they look for different license plates from different states and that is how they educate themselves and pass the time in the car like perfect angels
Mike00:04:08because if you say that i'm gonna fucking punch you uh well i guess i'm not gonna say that then
JVL00:04:14oh no you're a good parent with good kids who doesn't need to rely on technology to no no no no
Mike00:04:19no no no no no can i can i say something i have never claimed to be a good parent and i want that on the record i've never i've never said i i would never say that okay so first of all uh stop making
JVL00:04:32assumptions about me thank you but my children don't need technology to make a five-hour but
Mike00:04:36they don't here's the thing here's the thing so we had our first kid we were relatively young and we didn't have any money and so like we just didn't have tablets like it just wasn't a part of a thing to do so we had our first kid we were relatively young and we didn't have any money that we had and so and we took lots of trips because we live far away from family and so like literally we just rode in our dumb cars with no uh uh you know no technology or anything like that and like that's what our our kids are used to so like they literally just here's the other thing they're they're they're a little strange they if they had like a stack of books they could read for like five hours straight like they just love doing that um we are also so we do have the switch uh the nintendo switch but we are not letting them bring it to the grandparents so that's not going in the it's so it's not going to go in the car um and because it's not going to the grandparents um my in-laws have a we so they'll probably play some we but like my parents anyway so um like but they're weird they're fine with it and so it's now become a point where like i don't want to introduce it not because i don't i think i'm high and mighty it's just like why why and then now it becomes like this extra thing so like they're having these little hints like when we got the minivan um uh my oldest was like oh my friend is our friends who live up the street like they have uh movies in their minivan well our minivan doesn't actually have any of the the movie or the screen stuff um so like we just like said uh-huh and like they haven't asked about it since um and uh and it's like it's like bliss it's like a weird bliss i i'm gonna avoid that by never
Sonny00:06:19ever getting a minivan because i have two kids and that's enough that's all i ever want or need uh and uh it's interesting same my kids my kids uh i think my my i'm trying i'm trying to think we we don't go on a lot of like long drives we drove down to san antonio last you live in texas going to the grocery store is a long drive no it's not i live in dallas i live like everything that i want to go to is 20 minutes from my house it's great um uh at the at the furthest at the furthest it's 20 minutes from my house uh but like we go to the grocery store it's five minutes away i mean we go to the we go to target it's five minutes away draft house five minutes away it's it's i'm pretty i'm pretty well located uh but the i i i i don't think we gave them tablets on that drive maybe we did maybe we did i don't the only place can i just the only place we bring out the tablets is on an airplane if we go on an airplane that because i like don't want to have to deal with them bothering other people i don't care if they bother me so much
Mike00:07:19but like bothering other people well can i just say like i want to be very clear and and not uh there's not a bit or anything like i do not i do not i have reserved zero judgment for parents who who do it like i don't i don't care it doesn't it doesn't bother me i don't feel high and mighty about it at all i just feel like it's one of those things where like i like we just dodged a bullet on it in the sense of like the the need to like have it and have it like charged and all that stuff but like if like if it came to that like i'd buy like a cheap tablet and like throw it
JVL00:07:49if i need to i just just haven't needed so here's an ipad kid watch netflix watch watch porn whatever the fuck you want play candy crush just don't just be quiet with your siblings yeah just that's that's the real the real gift of it for us is that it keeps them looking down instead of at each other
Sonny00:08:09because if they're at each other then it's yeah that's true all right mike i have i have a question for you about the switch i'm gonna i'm gonna derail this whole conversation because i don't um yeah but but the switch the switch is interesting to me because we just got a switch we just got a we got a switch because uh i've been like i've been like planting hints with the kids for like six months now i've been like hey you know you guys play in video games at your friend's house huh that's a lot of fun they're like yeah yeah that's a lot of you guys want to switch for your birthday no we don't want that like what why don't you don't i'm like offering this anyway so eventually i want books daddy eventually i trick them into wanting a switch um and we and so that you can play switch so that i can play switch because i really want to play switch uh so we we got we got mario kart because that's the game that my daughter it comes it comes with
Mike00:08:58it it did not a lot of it did not interesting we had to we had to buy it separately um so we got
Sonny00:09:02we got we got mario kart and it's great i love i love playing mario kart at one point my daughter accused the video game of helping me win because the video the video game must know that you used to play mario kart daddy so it wants you to win like nope that's not how it works i'm just amazing i'm just better than you i'm just amazing at this i'm i have more practice than you do because i'm i'm i'm better um so anyway but like all right so we have mario i'm trying to figure out like what the next game to get is i saw i saw there there was a trailer for the new side scrolling mario game that looks awesome ultimate super smash brothers is that
JVL00:09:39is that a ultimate that's the there is no discussion on this there's the next game is ultimate super
Sonny00:09:44smash brothers are they here's what i worry about that is that they'll like start fighting each
JVL00:09:49other yeah oh no it's the best because they can fight on the same team against others that's right so you can play up to six people at a time in ultimate smash brothers and you can play in any configuration you want you can play three against the computer you could play five people against the computer you can be all in the same team you just decree you guys can't be fighting each other you'll always be on the same team that's a great idea that is a great idea all right
Mike00:10:19that that is probably what i need to get for them next because so we have uh and so so super mario kart 8 came with with ours it was bundled with it um and then we also my my this we got this for christmas last so like my my brother-in-law got all three of the boys at the time the baby wasn't born yet uh again so uh there was uh hold on it was super mario odyssey which my kids have just gotten into now like in the last month or so is that a 3d mario game it is although there are 2d elements of it uh sort of like retro elements of it that you can like play um so it's a little like super mario 64 in that in that sense um they got uh gosh now i can't remember what the second one was the third one they got for was for me was uh breath of the wild the the zelda game so i've been playing that um that game looks
Sonny00:11:15like torture to me oh it's it's amazing i watched that game and i'm like what you get you wander through the whole world and then you have to build machines to like that's the new one that's tears of the kingdom oh oh okay so this is tears of the
Mike00:11:28kingdom is the new one that just came out breath of the wild is old but it's new to me like i've only been playing it for six months um and it's the same it's the same basic idea but it's let it's not so much the building it's the finding and we are jvl you and our lives where sandbox games
JVL00:11:43are something that we can do i don't know but there are missions too i can i i i can do that
Sonny00:11:49with like god of war ragnarok that was fun that's a fun big i spent i spent more time playing that game than i've spent on any game and i spent like 50 hours on that game just like doing things i would stay up till like two in the morning just playing it just uh it was uh it was wild i've never i have not in a long time had an experience like that with a video game so so jvl you may
Mike00:12:10disagree with me on this but sonny you might enjoy because we occasionally enjoy it all together all four of us video game playing members of my family uh we enjoy playing mario party um and we just played it on saturday um because it was like i don't know mario party what is mario so mario mario party is uh it is like
Sonny00:12:32uh was that the one that's like a bunch of mini games yes it's like a bunch of mini games you
Mike00:12:37play it like on a on a board game it's like a board game with you play mini games and it's it is sort of like anybody at any level can play it there's a lot of collaboration like with the rest of the team and um it's it has caused some tears sometimes but when everybody is like on the same wavelength as we were on saturday it was like extremely humid it was about to storm and we were done with yard work and it was like everyone was kind of in a good mood like let's go play mario party it was like an hour-long game it's got a beginning middle and end and like the kids loved the kids loved like playing with us on something they were playing together so that's another uh all of you guys to play together but switch is great you can do online and play like i've been
Sonny00:13:24playing old snes games well this is i so i've been i've been i have very casually been uh looking because i don't i don't want to get sucked into this but i i am like trying i'm trying to figure out if i want to get like that there there's like a contra a legacy contra collection that i'm like i might get that i might we're like you know yeah i'm sure it's fine
?00:13:49you
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