Side Effects of Being A Single Girl Dad (with Orlando Jones)

We're talking about him being a girl dad. That's what we're talking about.

And I feel like these are the kind of conversations that we don't typically get to have with a lot of folks who are in positions of privilege or, you know, just like the spotlight because you're always talking about like the thing that got them in the position of privilege or the thing that got them in the spotlight. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. And he literally came on with a hat that said that. So we was like, oh, what's that?

And here we are. And what I really enjoyed about this conversation is you're going to hear him just talk about so much in the context of still being a dad. We're going to talk about black history. We're going to talk about literature. We're going to talk about conflict resolution. We're going to talk about emotional intelligence.

And I think that it really is a great expansive experience for just the conversation around what being a present father is. So I really didn't know what to expect from this episode. And I'm so pleasantly surprised. And I learned so much. So have your notebook out, because I think there's going to be some great tips in here in terms of parenting. But also just in terms of how he's raising his kids, I feel like there was tips for us as adults too.

because that preparedness to, you know, that's one to carry, you know, just like the power of preparedness. So before we get into the episode, normally we do a gen drop, but like, what do we do a gem drop about for like, how to be a single, like not even how to be, but like being a single girl dad, there's no gem drop, but there is a that's one time. And I would like to share with that one time as the daughter of a father who at one point was a single girl dad. That one time.

So one of the things I appreciated about the interview with Orlando Jones was him saying that like he talks to his daughters, he's a safe space, but he's also not trying to be an authoritarian. And that is feel like a very important part of like creating a rapport with your kids that

Let them know that you, you're not to be played with, but also that you respect them. And that was a thing that I think at the beginning and like throughout my father and I's relationship is what has really just failed for us in general. He never respected me, like as a person.

And maybe that's an old school thought process, you know, of like children should be seen and not heard, et cetera. But I feel like my mom always understood that I was a different kind of kid. I feel like my teachers always understood that I was a different kind of kid. Not even I feel like they did. And they have told me as an adult that they did. And that's why they acted a certain way and supported me and preserved me a certain way. But my father never did. And one of the stories that I feel like is like really indicative of this is the broccoli story.

I hate broccoli, okay? Cauliflower even worse because cauliflower is just like broccoli and white face, okay? And I would go visit my dad and he would do stuff to assert power that I feel like in hindsight was really just you being a dick.

And I will never forget when I was going to his house and it was my birthday. And there was a sack of presents. And he was like, you can't open the presents until you eat this plate of cauliflower. Now, here's the thing, y'all. I know I'm a child. I know that there is nutrients that I need to be taken in, et cetera. But you can't get the nutrients from the cauliflower from somewhere else. This got to be somewhere else is going to give me these same nutrients, but something that I like. And Dr. Sebi said cauliflower ain't even no real vegetable anyway.

So there's that. So he was like, you gotta eat this whole plate of cauliflower. The other part of this is, y'all, who's eating a whole plate of cauliflower? Like that's OD. A whole plate? They ain't even nothing else on the plate that I can stop it up with, or that I could like mask the flavor with. You just gonna lay out a plate of cauliflower in front of me. Ain't even no salt on it. Ain't even no lauer is on it. There's nothing on it. It's just steamed white cauliflower. And that also smells nasty, okay?

And I said, can I have some cheese? Now he has done this before with broccoli, but I didn't think he would do it with the cauliflower because I hate the cauliflower even more than I hate the broccoli. But if you put cheese on anything, I'll eat it. I mean, that's just kind of the rule, all right? This man took a quarter and cut out a piece of cheese the size of the quarter. And that is the cheese that he put on the broccoli.

and had the nerve to melt it and said, that's as much cheese as you can get. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I don't think that's parenting.

I think that's asshole. And I think that when you create that type of dynamic, you are letting your child know, not only do you not respect them, you literally don't fuck with them, like you're playing with their mind and you're doing like weird asshole shit just to assert an authority that you have regardless, because nigga, you're a whole man.

Like you're literally a six foot tall man, and I am very small. And even though my mouth is mighty, my blow is not. So shout out to Orlando Jones, who I don't think would ever force his daughters to eat a whole plate of cauliflower with a quarter size amount of cheese. If anything, he would at least put a dollar size amount of cheese.

And I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as all of us here did. He definitely enlightened us and really let us know why he was the right person to play the role of not just Ms. Stenancy, but of course, one band, one sound. One band, one sound. It never gets old. Let's get into it. Side effects of being a single dad. A single girl dad that is with Orlando Jones.

This is long overdue. It's a little bit. I mean, you're very busy. So, you know, it's very, you know, it's very hard to get an opportunity to sit down with you. Wow, the jokes already. What with the first going on on your, on your socials. The first, there's a mix. There's the first, there's the. No, I had to put up a thirst trap.

to just let a person know what they missed by being an asshole. So it wasn't really just like gratuitous trapere. There was motivation and a clear purpose. To be fair, whether you're actually trying to let a person know or not, there's still a high amount of thirst going on in your social stuff.

I've been there before, I've skated, I know what you're talking about. There's just general thirst, and then there's when you're doing what you're doing. So I'm just saying, the mix between the thirst, the hate, you know, the info comedy language, it's like going on. I enjoy it myself, but this is overdue.

Yes, it is overdue. And I love when we get to have conversations with, particularly with actors about stuff that they don't really necessarily talk about that much, right? Because the conversation typically is about a project that someone's working on or, you know, something that they're promoting, but

You know, artists are artists. Like there's a lot more going on in their life in order to make the art work. Like that's the thing. If you're just talking about the art, then you're not living enough to make the good art. And we really have gotten the opportunity to see the dopeness of Mr. Jones. One band. One sound.

It's true. And to be clear, I did not say one penis for the kids. That's not what I told Nick Cannon. I simply said one band one time. How he took it, I cannot do this part. He's making his own band. That's literally what it feels like he's doing. He's like, y'all gonna be the tubas, y'all gonna be the drum line. Yeah. He's gonna be like, why are y'all talking about me? I'm not there.

But speaking of being a parent, you're a girl dad, but you're not just a girl dad. You're a single girl dad. Yes, I am. I am a single girl dad to 13 and seven. Is it imposing to ask how you became single? No, not particularly. Can I ask that first to start us on this journey? Yes. So I think the simplest response to that is

Throughout the course of my life being raised by the black woman I was raised by, she was consistently pointing out to me that I needed to be magnanimous, that you needed to rise above, that you did not, you know, you don't want to absorb this hate, you know what I mean, just because this person is, that doesn't mean you. So through the course of that knowledge,

I found myself in a situation where I married this young lady, frankly, I think making excuses for her rather than being honest about what was really going on. I kept making excuses for her. And so in my stand-up, I framed it as Mr. Nancy married a carrot. That's my... Got it. That's my set-up. And through the behavior... Oh, so this is a white woman.

correct. So through the behavior of the Karen and my excuses and what have you in attempting to rise above, is it like excuses like she's a white woman, she don't know better excuses like she's young, like is it like more about like, don't know better, right? Yeah, you don't know what you don't know, right? Yes. So on a regular basis, I watch the news or what have you.

And what I always see is two white people discussing either racism or sexism. And it's usually two guys. And it's hilarious to me because it's weird to see two people who've never experienced racism discuss it with such eloquent. Yes. Yes.

I don't know how I do know. And the same way that we can see two guys sitting around talking about women in that particular way. You've never experienced sexism in a intimate way. So why are you talking? Don't you think you need to get somebody in here who could really break it down to you? So in that process, I was doing a lot of, she doesn't know any better. She's trying to rise above. I can educate people or people. This is about us being humans and all of that in my own personal case. And all of that is lovely, but there's still just

being a nasty human being, not really caring, and there's raising children.

And whether she likes it or not, these are two little black girls. And so in looking at their future and in looking at who I want them to be and how I want them to be, I do not wish for them to make the excuses that I made. They can just simply say, no, thank you and keep it moving. And I tease my mom saying, you got me into this because you really weren't talking about this rise of thought. I could have told you because my ass had walked away a long time ago, but no, I was going to try and be understanding and thought also to my own fault.

I made these excuses.

I had this behavior and it got to the point that I was like, this is not in the best interest of the humans that I care most about in the world, ergo. I believe we should, you know, go our own separate ways. And that was an extraordinarily messy process that brought about even more care in this behavior, which is hilarious. I talk about a lot in standup because it's just funny to me at this juncture, but that is my short answer or maybe long answer to your question.

No, I mean, it's a thorough answer, but I do know that it is rare that the kids are with the dad. I know in America, they're very particular about that. And so in the process of becoming the single dad with your two daughters, do they live with you on a regular basis? How does that work?

We're 50 50. Awesome. Awesome. So we were 50 50. And then during the pandemic, we went to court and then she told the judge that I was going to kill her and that I was abusive. And you know, she went all in. She went full Karen. And then the judge let her take the kids to California under the premise that I wasn't working during the pandemic.

and that she supposedly had a job, though she'd never had a job before. So for that period of time, unfortunately, I was doing a lot of zooms and traveling and what have you. And then through some other machinations, which I will not bore you with, they moved back to North Carolina, which is where I am right now. And then they have now just moved back to California and subsequently so have I.

Welcome to the West West. I'm in Joshua Tree right now. I'm back and forth between Joshua Tree and LA. I'm on the ground there technically now into August because there is no version of this world where I don't see my daughters. I'm not built that way.

And that's where I was getting because so I saw there's like a story, you know, the Afro beats performer Davido. Yeah. So he's going through like a custody battle with his daughter and his ex and basically the ex is wanting full custody. And he said she can have her.

And in the comments, I said, that tells you what kind of dad he is right there. Because no father that's really about his kids is going to say, you can have her. No parent would, they will continue the fight. And so I would love to hear about you just like your philosophy on being a dad and what being magnanimous as a dad means to you.

For me, if you're looking for like privilege, here I am. If that's what you're looking for. If you're looking for a silver kente cloth spoon, this is it. Right? So that's me, right? That's who I am. In what way? Like you got to go to like highfalutin schools and you grow up with money? Listen, no, I wouldn't say I grew up with money, but I have two parents. My parents are still married.

I've never questioned for a day in my life that my parents love me. That's never been on the table. I went to private Catholic school. By the time I was 18 years old, I started an advertising agency. By the time I was in 1920, I was writing on a different world. By the time I finished a different world and wrote the pilot of, you know, Did Rock Live and The Sinbad Show and then

Launch the FX network into what y'all now call reality television and then move to mad TV and wrote performed on that I have been very privileged in my professional career and in the breath of opportunities that I've had in marketing branding AR VR.

data, machine learning, what have you, all separate from the acting stuff that people like the chit chat about. So I'm knowledgeable of how privileged my life has been versus the tremendous difficulty so many of my counterparts have experienced. But I grew up in the room in Hollywood as a writer, producer. So I know where all the bodies are buried. Whereas, unfortunately, most of my counterparts only see that world through being an actor or performer.

And it's a very, very different world when you're inside the machine. I grew up inside the machine. This is why you ended up with a white lady. This was correct, my lady, because I

That's why, because you're weird in the best way. That's why. And like- I am very strange. The weirdo black niggas be thinking that only white ladies want them. And that's not true. No, no, no, no. I'll tell you exactly what happened. Okay. What people don't want to say is that back in the day, particularly on those sitcoms, everybody and their mother came through those sitcoms. It was a different world. So the writers, Rockland Martin, the pilot of Rockland, these are the shows where all the black folk came through.

So the actors and the writers don't necessarily interact, particularly on sitcoms. There's kind of rules you keep it separately. But the writers and the producers have the microphones on all the time. So we're sitting in the producers booth. We hear everything that's going on in everybody's business, right? And they use that against you in negotiations, but they don't tell you that.

Okay. So when I went down and I'm trying to interact with these sisters and whatnot, not only did they often see me as a suit,

They were not particularly interested in engaging with me. They were focused on the visible black actors in one. And I'm listening. They don't realize it. I'm listening to their conversations in general, right? About what they're up to, what they're asking, what they're dating, what's going on. Because the producers got the mics on and I'm the right of producers.

I quickly understood that as soon as I started talking about what I did every day, they would turn around and walk off and leave me. So I could not get arrested in my first five years in Hollywood. And trust and believe, I will not name names, but I tried. And I tried. I tried. Listen, you know, and the energy that I got, the people who were coming at me and droves were rose ladies. That was it. Right.

So, you know, you take what you're getting. At that time, I wasn't trying to get married. So for me, it was like, hey, you ain't trying to marry me. This should be easy, right? I could keep this pushing on down the road and have my fun. And to be fair, as biased as it is, I thought of it that way. I'm like, y'all are disposable. It's not important, right? I then got myself into a situation. I got married not in my 30s, right? I'm definitely in my 40s. I've done all this stuff. And this young lady, we did a long distance relationship for about three years.

And she said all the right things. She went and met my mom and my dad. She did all the right things. And I can tell you with great certainty, we got to the honeymoon. And on the honeymoon, it went left. And I mean, way left.

And I was like, all right, I'm going to be the guy that gets married and divorced inside of three. And the honeymoon, by the way, was a month. Well, in this bond, Chicago, London, Africa, Louisaaba, the High Plains Birthplace of Man, Nairobi, France, back.

but most of the time was in Africa. And so my point is then I started making excuses for what I knew was a mistake. And I'd already made my first set of excuses that got me into it. And now I was dealing with an entirely different human being. And one day after a massive fight that I was pretty sure, in fact, I told all of my folks where I'm getting divorced, this is done, I came back home and she met me at the door and she said, guess what?

And my first thought was, you called your attorney too. We're getting a divorce. And she said, I'm pregnant. And based on the level of fight that it just transpired, I did not understand the smile on her face. It was extremely confusing to me. So I looked at her, I paused, and I said, congratulations. And I went to bed.

And that was kind of the beginning of the end. And I was like, I'm not leaving. There's no version of me not being a father to my kid. I'm not built that way. It's not who I am. And so I was like, we'll make it work. Let's figure it out. You know, let's do that. And that didn't work either. And that was that.

So now that you get to father without this complication, what do you feel like is the best part of being a single dad? There's an incredible amount of things I think you learned about yourself.

and that you learned from children because they're so brutally honest. And also they're not thinking about you, you know, they're thinking about them, right? They don't have that gene yet, right? The first five years, they don't even have the ability to think outside of who they are and consider what your feelings are. And my daughters and I are extremely close. They are effusive about how much they love me. Oh, yeah. And I'm effusive about how much I love them.

And they are the greatest sense of joy and inspiration in my life. So I would say, I don't know that I would be who I am without them. I think that they were a gift for me in every possible way. And I think they also helped me or rather caused me to take a more honest look back at the black women that raised me and made me start to really write about.

see all the rants for, and Dolly Mae Pettis, and Daisy Cowling, and all of these ladies were, and I didn't see there. I saw their love, but I didn't see the sacrifice in the same way, and how critical they are to who I am today. I don't think that there's actually any part of the work that I've done, that they're not sitting in the center of. I believe everything that's great about me is really because of the love that they truly bestowed on me all throughout my life, so. Do you want to call my Patrick? That's just how. He needed a lesson. If you need me to call him.

You need me to highlight him. You're so serious. You're like, I will call him. I will. I'm very serious about the, not just the black dad thing, just the dad thing. It's so critical in so many ways. It's not that mom is irrelevant. She is, right? But you're relevant to the two are super relevant. And there's an important role to play, at least to me. And I don't want

I don't know who they will fall in love with, but I do know that there's rules and regulations. Yeah. And you're gonna act right. I know that. There ain't gonna be no shenanigans. I know that. And I know the enforcer of says shenanigans is right here. Hey, Bobo. Hey, Bobo. Okay, go have fun. I love you, Bobo. Yeah, we did not script this. This is completely authentic.

My daughters, I don't know. Listen, we're about at the DC right now. We got their co-otic center. We got trips that we had to Atlanta. We got our shenanigans and trips there. We traveled together. We explore stuff together. We did the day African American History Museum. I think four times the private tours. All right. We're doing the art museum. You know, we do museums.

We do books. They just finished our IXL in their reading for today. How old are they? They're reading Tony Mars and they're reading Jules. You know, they're seven and 13. My oldest is 13. They're reading Tony? What are they reading? Oh, of course. Tony is required reading in this house. But what are they reading? Because I'll tell you what, if they can read Song of Solomon, they need to call me and teach me. Because Song of Solomon is hard. Song of Solomon is a difficult book because of its density.

I'll give you my reading list so you can hear all of my ideas. Is this a summer reading list or is it just Orlando Jones' father reading list? It's really an Orlando Jones' father reading list, but it's couched in the idea that this is what your summer reading is. Got it. Got it. Does that make sense? Yes. And you have to read Tony to spack the density of her. I believe that I don't know how you don't read her. Well, I just wonder if they can grasp

Well, I started them with Sula. You started them with Sula? Yes, I gave her. And I gave her Sula as an audible book so she did not have to wade through it. And I gave her our tell you via Butler. And that was, of course, parable of the sour and wild seed and kindred. And then June Jordan, you know, some of us did not die. Those are the books I feel like she needs to be. So let's pause real quick. Yes, ma'am. Because this is college level reading.

So they didn't just start here. You got them here. So talk to me about the processes, because for instance, people will ask me, Amanda, how did you become the kind of person you are per se? People ask you these very overarching questions, but I can tell people that definitively, I know that it's in part because my mom always surrounded me with books,

And I was always expected to be learning in whatever I was doing. Even if I was playing, learning was going to happen. And three, every night, I was read a story and I was quizzed on random things from the student's companion. So I would love to hear, how do you get your daughters? Because I'm hearing from you that you take an approach to parenting that is very, it's not just willy-nilly. Well, you're not a willy-nilly person. Are you a Virgo?

No, my mother is. I'm an Aries. Oh, same. Okay. Same vibe. Same vibe. It's very like it's cutting through. So I would love to hear like, how do you feel like you have influenced and shaped and molded your daughters with the ability to even be able to approach texts like this?

I got handed James Baldwin the price of the ticket collected essays when I was about 13, 14 years old. And it changed my life. Because I had never heard anyone talk about these ideas in this particular way. No one had talked about the Belgians and the Congolese and what transpired there. His writing was transformative for me. And I read it over and over and over again. And it was a short collected essay, so it was very easy for me to do that.

And I started the mouth, you know, we did all the like stuff. We did all the fun stuff in the school stuff. What's the fun stuff? Like Judy Blue. I look. Yeah, listen, I won a national championship in dramatic and humorous and terp performing the Butter Battle book by Dr. Seuss. And as we all know, Theodore Seuss, Guy of Zola is a raging bigot, right? Yes, yes. But he wrote a children's book in 1984 and won a Pulitzer Prize for writing a book about nuclear war, right? Yeah.

And I came into my daughter's school and I performed that entire book because I started performing it in high school. On the last day of summers, my grandfather took me out to the wall for a while and he stood silent. And finally, he said, with a very sad shake of his very old head, where as you know, on this side of the wall, on the far other side of the wall, the dessert, and it's hard, hard, you know.

I perform it, right? My daughters saw that. You're a lesbian. You're a lesbian. You're not an actor. You're a lesbian. And they were, you know, their classmates got all excited. I was doing, you know, because there was a character. They're like, Oh, the old man. Yes. Can we see the Italian? So it got my daughters excited about reading.

And the fact that you could take these words off the page and bring them to life in this way, right? And I started just feeding them little things like that, you know what I mean? And we started, you know, all kinds of silly books, you name it. Good night, moon, yoga at night, you name it. Okay, all the children's books, we have a library at the house.

We read through extensively. My father had a bunch of stuff. My father's an educator. My mother's a former librarian and educator. I got passed down to me. I didn't really have a choice. And so that's what got them interested. And to her credit, I will say that my ex-wife is also a voracious reader herself and is a lover of books. And so she always has an Oscar Wilde, but she's very much, you know, she's a pride and prejudice lady, you know what I'm saying?

And my thing was... I'm not mad. I'm not mad at all. Howard ends as a better movie, but go and buy the hay. Who am I to end? Sense and sensibility is actually the best of all of them. So let's just... Agreed. Sense and sensibility is the best about them. Pride and prejudice is a problem. I don't, you know, we agree.

I mean, it depends on the version. It depends on the version, but I really do like the Pride and Prejudice version with Kira. I do, I do. She does too. Miss Adasi, do you prefer the BBC version? It's not that I prefer the BBC version. I prefer sense and sensibility. That's really the truth. And I was not as caught up in the Kira Nightly of it all. And my ex loves it because people tell us she looks like Kira Nightly.

So I was like, I don't really care if I was second favorite movie of all time. I've seen it 15, 20 times trust. So you had to read the book and the whole thing. And I read that too. And I understood what her reading list was going to be. And I got it. And I was not going to object to her reading list, but understanding what transpired during that period of time and her reading list is in no way as crucial as understanding what's happening right now. Yes. And the rights that is being eroded from them as we speak. So.

I thought, let's not wait. We don't have time to wait. Let's jump in now and try and understand what some of these ideas are from the ladies that came before you because, frankly, I benefited from that. It's a great source of inspiration in my life, those ladies. That's how we got here. That's how the reading lists got put together and I bought lots of books and I even have an AI chat bot that I do on a platform called Versa, one of my boys.

that actually you can choose the genre, choose the age, and it will generate stories in real time. If you don't want to spend a bunch of money buying books, I'll send you the link for you to share with your subscribers. And it's pretty awesome. You can literally choose the fandom that you're into, be it Harry Potter, Paw Patrol, Star Wars, DC, Marvel. Choose the age of the person who you want to read to. Click generate.

it will generate three stories. You pick the topic that you like, you click that topic, and it will generate a fresh story in real time, in that shot. And we read a lot of that, and that's how I get my commercial reading stuff done, but at least stuff that's fresh and not having to buy all the time. Wow. This is probably a dumb question, but just for the sake of verbalizing it, this can also apply to African-American studies, like two stories that are specifically leaning into that space.

You could absolutely build it that way. Essentially, what the AI has done is compiled all the rules of those particular worlds, all those characters, and what have you. And it's just using all the rules and characters and all the existing material that is available for all of those worlds and then generating stories in real time for you to read the children about them by virtue of what age you choose. I think it's between six and 15. Fascinating. Fascinating.

What is the conversations like? Because I mean, you have to contextualize for your girls when they're reading these kinds of books. So like, do you guys have like a set time that it's like it's book talk time? Is that over lunch? Like, how does that work? So you get game time on Roblox and all that kind of stuff. The way you get.

time is you can have an hour and play on Roblox, which you got to give me 20 minutes of I.X.L. or you got to give me 20 minutes of reading. So for every hour, you got to give me 20, 30 minutes. That's just kind of the way it works. So by the time we used to rent it into the day, they've usually done three, four hours of work, particularly if it's Randy and, you know, hot and we'll go to the pool and, you know, do all this stuff. I cook. I like to cook. Cook is my love language.

So I'm always cooking and snacking and all that kind of stuff. So I don't like to do a formal thing. It's just always sitting around and eating. I ask you questions. And my questions are framed in a very particular paradigm. And my daughter knows what it is. I give it the cheat sheet. The cheat sheet is.

Slavery is when somebody says A, and then you do B. They do B, and you do C. They do D, and you do E, because you are basing everything you do to someone else. You are reactionary in time. Freedom is they do A, and you do nothing. Because why would you do anything? That ain't got nothing to do with you. Stop.

What's the best move for you to make? Sometimes, in often cases, it's best not to respond at all. So let's talk about what the application is of what you're talking about. There's the story. Here's the scenario that they were describing. You're in the scenario now. What are we going to do? What's the funny thing we would do? I don't need this seriously. I do the funny. What's the funny thing we're going to do? And I kind of keep it in that realm because in the process of talking about the silliness

You know, we cover her. Yeah. The critical thinking. We cover the critical thinking of the joke, right? So I keep it on the joke and the fun by taking those very serious scenarios and us laughing about them. We just had one the other day while there's like, is 1865 the mancipation proclamation just happened, but half these people can't read.

Right. Right. It's not all together different than the dropout rate in a circle of like colleges being 65%, but have a whole not story. Let's keep them. Okay. All right. All right. All right. It's a whole of the podcast. Y'all. It's a whole other podcast. But so I say to them, what do you imagine of this life? Do you think the slave owner came and told you you were free? Or do you think the slave was like, uh, not so I've been reading the paper today and it's saying, well, but that's actually true.

Yes. Or did you think the massacre in the dorm is like, Jasper? Right. You don't have to stay here no more, Jasper. You was free. Free. That's what you was on there. Oh my God. The guy who doesn't believe versus the guy who is advocating for and we giggle and laugh about it, but in the process,

of us laughing at the stupidity of what that might look like or not look like, we're talking about who are you? Are you the person that stood up for yourself? Are you the person that was so brainwashed in the signature scenario that you were in that you fought to stay asleep? And of course, they don't want to

They're not fighting, exactly. You chose what I wanted you to choose, but I didn't make you choose it. You thought of that on your own. You got to that conclusion without me. You use your own thought. I didn't make you think you thought. That's not what I think is what you think. It's not important what I think. Listen, listen. This is what people keep, this is a side note. Like on these internet, people keep asking me to tell them what to do as it relates to their voting. And they're like, we don't know where you stand. It doesn't matter where I stand.

It doesn't matter where I say it. At all. Because I am showing you information from an unbiased position. Like I'm literally giving you this and this and this and this. I'm just giving you facts so that you can determine where you stand. Because that's what happens. Exactly. Make your decision. I'm not trying to be responsible for your decision. It's yours. Listen, I told people to vote for Joe Biden in the last election and to this day, to this day, to this day.

They like, you tell people to vote for you. I'm like, you know what? Never again, never again. Think about for whom ever they want. And if you get to find yourself in a project 2025 scenario and you don't know how you got there, consult your vote or a non. That's a whole other conversation. That's a whole other conversation. Consult your choice. You do have to consult your choice, but you also have to consult why that was your only choice.

Well, there is that. We don't often create the scenarios. So there's that. Because I saw someone put up a tweet the other day that said, we have to vote blue so that what's happening doesn't happen. Well, that, I mean, two sides of the same coin, my people. No, listen, listen to that phrase. We have to vote blue so that what's happening doesn't happen.

And I was like, cool, okay. You know, I remember Anita Hill. And I remember who was head of the Senate confirmation committee that sent Clarence Thomas to the White House. And last I checked that man is president. So I don't know what you're talking about. Who Biden?

Yeah. He didn't say Clarence Thomas to the white. I thought that that's one of the Internet's greatest lies. And I was saying it and someone corrected me and I googled. He didn't vote for him. The real issue though was that he was incredibly biased in how he interviewed Anita Hill.

So even though he didn't vote for him, he did not properly take into account what she was saying in order to actually expound upon to his colleagues that this is not the right person.

I simply watched their interactions and based on the disrespect that I saw him treated her with. Yes, because what that says is... I thought he discredited her and to me, his discrediting of her was a vote for her. But you know what? What's crazy is that one doesn't connect to the other because the discredit is going to happen regardless just because she's a black woman.

100% like it didn't even it wasn't even in his mind. Like some type of attachment to his resign. Right. But in order for him to be on my shit list, all he had to do was do what he did. Yeah. 100% correct. Yes. Listen, it's a shared shit list. It's a shared list of shit. My mama was fit to be tied. My aunties was fit to be tied. And it was a conversation over collard greens way too many times.

Now the next comment, did you know? No, like I got corrected and was like, oh, I've been saying that actually. I am certainly not always right. What was your eldest daughter's reaction to Sula sleeping with her friend's husband?

She is in the middle of it. She might have just got out of the first chapter. So she just started. I need to know. She literally just started about eight days ago. I'll keep you posted. Keep me posted. I need to know. She's not. I know that my college class, we were all beside ourselves. This of course. And as we've all gotten older, you're like, I mean, it wasn't cool, but.

You know, there's more. There's more going on here. There's a deeper situation. So that is the conversation I am waiting for. I chose that for it to spark. Yes. That conversation. I'm not going to be in that conversation. That's going to be her and the women in my. Yeah.

So tell me that, as the girl died, how do you know when this is a conversation for me and the girls? This is a conversation for their aunties and the women in my family and the girls.

I don't know that I know the difference. I think what I try and do is I don't shy away from any conversation with them. You know, my ex was going through the process of having, you know, we went through the home birth thing. I became a doula. You know, I, you know, I, I previously dated this girl and she was becoming a doula, which meant I was becoming a doula because she, right?

Okay, so... Well, we just did a whole episode on maternal health, on black maternal health, so we know all about doulas up here. Okay, so she went through the doula process. She got the certification, but I passed them to. Fair. And through that process, when my first was being born, there was a woman named Deb Frank, who has since retired. She was probably one of the first midwives in California. She was the only one that had privileges as theater cyanide.

So Deb Frank came in with her midwife and what have you and I kind of really dove into that conversation. So because of that, all of those conversations that often I think men shy away from, I do not, I'm in that conversation about what's going on with your body in a real way. However,

I point her, I'm like, Carl, you know, call my sister, you know, Carl, Auntie Karen, talk to my mom. Like, you ain't got to take my word for it. I'm just, you stupid daddy, right? I framed myself as I don't know. Here's my thought process. Go check on fat, check me. I'm not perfect, make sure. If you care about it, then you can go figure that out, right? So those are the conversations. So I send them that way. Cause my mom might give you the wives tail version.

But magic Karen is not going to do that, right? And my time, my sister is like, she's really my first cousin, but there's one of my sister. Same thing. So there are enough women and they're from different generations. So they have various different points of view because they look at the world differently from the first things I learned growing up. My great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother all had very different opinions about civil rights and very different experiences.

about those things. So I quickly learned that generationally, how we see these things are very different. And so I try and point her.

in that direction to say, hey, I'm the guy with the penis telling you what I think. I'm sure I studied, but at the end of the day, I'm not the person who can tell you intimately what that is. You need to talk to somebody who can talk to you about this in a more visceral way. And so I push them in that direction, but I try and be knowledgeable enough to say, here's what I do now. And here's what is correct. And here's what isn't correct. And now go forth as it were, you know, be Mary.

Has there been anything that your girls have thrown at you that you didn't see coming? Yes. You're talking about it. Most mature conversation with my eight year old, she blew my whole world up. She asked me why I married her mother and she asked me to lay out her good quality in the middle of the divorce. How do you handle that? I gave her the political answer and she rolled her eyes at me and said, Dad, tell me the truth.

Is it time for the truth, even if they ask for it? At eight? As someone who's not a parent, I just, I'm curious like how you make those decisions. The choice was to lie or tell the truth. I promised her I wasn't going to lie to her. So I tried to tell her a version of the truth that did not paint her mother in a bad light, but was still the actual truth.

So I told you the truth. And the truth is what I said to you earlier. I said, listen, I've lived a very privileged life. I've had access to generations of knowledge. I knew my great grandmother and my great grandpa. My great, great grandmother and laid eyes on me. I've had generations of knowledge. Your mother did not, it wasn't privy to that. She didn't have that. Her family had a lot of turmoil and things that went down. She didn't get the tools. So you can blame her for not having the tools, but that's not necessarily her fault.

It's her job now to go get the tools as an adult and to realize where her shortcomings are. But these aren't your problems. Those are her problems. So what we're not going to do is bash on your mom for not knowing and not getting the tools. But you are going to have the tools so you don't have to be in that scenario. So I'm going to lie to you and say, she's right. I'm going to make sure you have the tools. She clearly doesn't have them. That's why you're witnessing the behavior you're witnessing.

That's why I get that it's upsetting to you. But I know people who came out of refugee camps and once both their parents die, everybody's got a cross to bear my lady. So let's not make your cross bigger than what it is. We've all got to get over something. This is yours. I have mine. Let's keep it lower. Right? And so that gave her comfort, right? She was like, okay, okay.

I find that if you give them the tools in a way that they can see what they can do, it's okay. But if I sit there and all I do is talk about how screwed up your mommy is, and that doesn't help. She made me give her a real answer, though. She made it. She really did. And I was so impressed with her.

And I realized how much smarter than me she was and how much older than me she was at eight, because hell, I was 35 before I started even beginning to think about things in those terms. And here she was at eight holding my feet to the fire, blew me away, truly.

Well, I commend you. We're about to go into these questions. I commend you because I feel like there also has to be a certain level of self-awareness and ego-checking that happens in that moment. And a lot of dads, I feel like want to just plant a flag in. I'm the dad. I'm the authority. Like you can't be smarter than me. I speak as somebody who dealt with this with my father. Like I was the smart eight-year-old being like, now come on now. But it was more important that he assert authority

then actually empower me with information. You know what I mean? Correct. I'm not the authority. You know what I'm saying? There will be a day I'm not here. I need them to be empowered before that day arrives. Yeah. Right. And so for me, it's all about the preparation of that. And to me, that's the preparation of being a teenager. So I feel like those are the tools I got. And so I'm trying to get her the tools I got.

Well, what we got is questions. So, y'all know what it is. We're gonna head on over to Patreon and rock out with the Seal Squad for our Patreon-only segment of Bonus Questions with Orlando Jones. The Last Dose.

Well, before we go, if you had to write your daughters something that they would read when they turn 18, what would you want them to go into adulthood with? Oh my goodness. You're a writer, so I gave you a hard one. Yeah, you dare, geez. I would have done it to really, I need to think about that. Think about it. Like what is a mindset to like step into adulthood with? I don't know if I can stress on them

how important preparation is, being prepared, knowing what you need, knowing what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel comfortable, knowing what your boundaries are, knowing what your particular worth is, but you need to be prepared to stand up for yourself. You don't just stand up for yourself. You need to be prepared for these things. They don't just miraculously happen.

that gonna require you to do some work and it's not gonna be comfortable. So preparation means that you have to be okay with being uncomfortable sometime and being uncomfortable is not bad. Being uncomfortable is how you learn and grow and create the space where you are comfortable.

But first you need to be a little uncomfortable to understand how to get there. So there are all these things that you get taught about like failure. I don't know what failure is. I've been failing my entire life. Who cares? All I know is the only way you succeed is tremendous amounts of failure. So if you don't, when you're prepared,

You don't overvalue failure and you don't overvalue success, right? They're impostors. They're the same thing. So if I can get them to understand how important being prepared is, hopefully I think it will give them the future that they want. And here's the thing. If you close your eyes and you imagine it, if you write it,

If you make a plan and say, in precedence, I will dis-i-ba-ba. That is a very big deal in terms of accomplishing your goal. Seeing it, believing it, those are very big deals. People think like, what's that going to do? Well, it trains your mind and it makes you start to prepare.

Right. To get the thing that you'd want to get. So for me, I think I wish people had stressed more preparation. I had a stress in my life a lot because my dad's a coach. I'll tell you this one story and I will move on. I wanted to learn to shoot free drones. Every male in my family playing professional sports, professional sports is the family business in my world. Got it. So as soon as I said, I was going to Hollywood, they call the family meeting to have a discussion. Right.

So my uncle Larry shows up. He said, Hey, you're mad to say you're going to count up over that what you're bad to see. You're bad to say you want to be out. That's something you need to talk us information. Lord, I didn't know what he meant. So I was like, well, man, we, my uncle, the mark came and he said, can you want to know if you would die better? Do you have sugar in your pain? That way you want to know that what we all want to know. I said, uh,

Well, how come Uncle James ain't here? Cause member of our family who falls into that category. And then everybody started stammering. Cause he is the one that has knocked every one of them out with one punch. They say, let's go learn to shoot free throws. I said, okay. We're transition, but let's go shoot free throws.

They pick up a volleyball off the rack as we walk into the gym. They tell me to stand at the free throw line. Said, we're going to prepare you for the future. And since you say you're going to be an actor, but we're trying to tell you it's that Hollywood, but the white man sports for the black man. Why are you going out there? Hollywood paid the white man. Hollywood don't pay the back name. That's what they said. Okay. So a lot of teach me to shoot free throws and be prepared. They threw a volleyball at the back of my head while I was shooting free throws. What have I made it or not? Got it. And I said,

How does this help? They said the volleyball and go kill you. And free throw is a concentration shot. So I want you to block that out and shoot the free throw. The same way you would. And anything else, block it out, concentrate, focus.

And so I shot free throws at 98% because I could block anything out because I had to learn to shoot them with a volleyball through and throwing the back of my head and then Kathleen and laughing as they did. Right. Right. Right. Preparation. Yes. Right. Preparation attitude craziness. They were like, we're going to build the monster. We won't.

Right? Yeah. It really had a huge effect on me. I think about that. I don't want to throw no volleyball in the back of my daughter's hands. I don't know if that's like the, I don't know if like mimicking that completely is really the best. That's not the best. But the idea of we're going to create a pressure cooker so that when you're in a pressure cooker,

You'll be okay, because you'll know what it is, and you'll be able to be in control of your emotions, right? So when I was playing ball, we were winning state championships, and I was in the eighth grade playing on the varsity team, and they're going crazy, and the gym is mad loud. Cool, it was a cucumber, sis. Hey! Right, it's not a pat, pat, pat, pat. Everybody got a double pat, right? Right. To me.

But they made me into that, right? So for me, I factor that all into my gump if that answers your question. It does. It does. It does. Well, we thank you so much for sharing so much of the personal experience of being a single girl dad, you know, parenting as a

job and as a lifestyle is so unique to everybody. But yet I feel like people gain so much from just hearing other people's experiences. And somebody listening is going to look up Yuka. Somebody listening is about to put together their summer reading list.

You know, and somebody listening about to throw a volleyball at somebody. Hey, but you don't have to, you don't have to be the one that's to blame for that. So thank you so much and shout out to your daughters. And it sounds like they are very fortunate to have a dad that loves them like you do. Yeah, I'm the one that's fortunate. I told you I got this black privilege on lockover here. That's for sure. For sure.

Amanda Seals, you are an insanely talented, wonderful human being. I am a fan of yours. I was excited to actually sit down and talk to you a beautiful self. And I get a kick after hearing about all of the dating and crazy shenanigans you go through, which Jimmy cracks me up.

I hope to meet you in person one day since. Keep on believing. I love you to pieces. Those of us who love you and support you, understand that everybody's got a dichotomy. And so, you know, why are you going to try and hold everybody? I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't understand. I don't care, to be fair. They don't matter to me, not at all. But I wanted you to know that you are, you are loved and cherished and appreciated and I'll let you boy if you need me.