Gamblin' Mommas: Episode 21 with Joe Gatto and Steve Byrne

If there was a problem, where to your mother? Hi everybody, I'm Joe Gaddam.

Hi, I'm Steve Byrne. We have a very special, special, special special episode of two.

Cool Moms Moms. Now it's sill cool mom Moms.

Sorry, listen, my mom my mom's Our moms taught us to be accountable.

Okay, And here's the thing.

We didn't have podcasts this week, so we said we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk a little bit, and we want to release some to the people because we know everybody wants it.

You know, favorite pitch, that's a favorite pitch America's.

There's tens on hundreds of people listening that are like, we need to get up on this.

We we eye contacted time to say we should be the people of the Year, and they said, who are you guys? So we said we better get started. We better get started. We got work to do.

But this actually got us down the rabbit hole a little bit of saying what did our mom sees you? My mom was huge on accountable and she was always like, you know, you have to you know, And I was like, oh, by my mom to teach me a lot of stuff and this weekend we were performing together on the road, which was so much fun. We were in I did my first theater run and Steve was kind enough to

So we discussed this. People think, okay, you would assume being on the road with comedians, especially one that likes whiskey late nights, like it'd be exhausted and hang out with me the sober one. The sober one is the one that you're gonna getdragged through the mutt. Oh my god? Five in the morning? Was it five in the morning? Leave leaving a casino? Laughing my ass off? One of the best nights I've had in a long time. Fun, unbelievable, so fun.

We had some fun casino and a casino is my world stage. I love being a casino with my friends around the crap stil It's always such a.

Good time dance floor a casino.

WHOA, that's a good one. That's your toss up dance one. Casino is tough.

That is a you know it will I will say if the DJ is I'm gonna say one hundred percent, music's right on the dance floor. If it's a great one, I'm gonna have to probably go.

I'm gonna have to go dance floor. I think, really, I don't know.

That is Yeah, well, here's why I will tell you, because the numbers of interaction could go up, like you could. You know, there's only a certain amount of people at the crabs table you can go, and you're also working a little bit trying to think about like we are you doing? But on a dance floor, I'm a free bird, baby, I'm out there peacock and strutting around.

But you like winning, I do.

But I like making my friends win just as much.

I love helping people win money like our boy Justin this week was I was helped him a lot win a lot more than he would have if he wasn't betting correctly.

So that was wedding with Justin, who is uh perpetual has the dark cloud. It's always raining. I never win and he won, Yeah, he won this past weekend really and then he won it left left right, center.

Yes, we left right center when we ate pignoles. What's the name replace partello? I was pay Yeah, that was that was really fun to hang out and play there. I don't know where would where?

Do you think you're freest as a bird because you're a social butterfly to well, I'll also put in there a large dinner table with friends, like a dinner dinner.

I think that's that's the polite like nice yeah for you. I I think you're in your element at a craps table.

Yeah it is.

It's so fun even when things aren't going so well, it's still fun.

Yeah that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

I don't I always say I don't mind losing as long as I having a good time doing it. And it's the worst when you're not having fun doing it, and then I just stop, Like that's what will make me stop gambling. I'm like, uh, this isn't even fun losing, Like if I'm losing, and I was like okay, because I always go with what I could lose and do

A totem pole at the crash. I've never seen this in my life.

Has to get them backlog right, Okay, backstory, So, so Justin was on a heater. He was on a heater, but I think the key was is that he and I would have to make eye contact. You're on opposite under the table, opposite into the table, so every time there's only so many times you could look at each other make a silly face or like you know, stuff like that. So I was getting more and more inventive with what I could do during an eye contact. So again,

Not break at all.

Right, he didn't break, and he still rolled after he rolled them, after he rolled.

Them, when he was what he was losing.

He would try to keep eye contact with you, and I couldn't believe how good you were doing. I even so much, was like amazed because I would watch it unfold. Justin wouldn't look at you, but I would watch you take your shirt off. You had your shirt off at one point, you had you had you had it around you like an ascot, like a proper gentleman. You grabbed your drink at your pinky out and he looked up at you and you were a bare chest in European, I guess some sort.

And when he rolled, I completely shoved my stomach out so far. I was spraying myself like a shamoo show. I was deep throat and chips. I was.

You took a bottle of water and just shot it all over your face and just looked at it. Looked at him like like you know a romance novel when the guy's under the waterfall and just does the hairwimb It's so funn Yeah.

I couldn't believe that didn't throw us out. I thought for sure.

I absolutely thought I was. I was like, they're gonna kick me out. And we were getting so delirious. Towards the end, I was crying, laughing at the things I was thinking of doing, you know, being behind Mike on that one. Yeah, and then Justin was hid from one and just had your eyes at the top. I just had my eyes like this. And then Justin he was talking to you, and I was like, oh my, now's

A heart sex. It was a phenomenal Oh great time, you have great time. It was just I love I love that. I love the energy of that.

But you start, you you create that. Like you start, you give license to be like, let's just have fun. And then we're having fun. The crew at the table is having fun, and then all those games happen because you are the gatekeeper and you're like, oh, let's just let's kind of go off here a bit. I mean you're dancing around the guy moving all the all the all the chips through the casino. It was beeping, and it was just standing there having a conversations. I mean

Stanch I wrote a stanchion at one point. It was it was a good time.

I will say though, on the dance floor now, if we're gonna go the other way, I love a good dance floor because the dance floor is always you never know who're gonna bump into. The possibilities are endless, Like it's always fun. You turn around you're gonna see these guys in the wine shirts, right, You're gonna see the wallflower that all of a sudden knows how to dance.

You're gonna see the person who really knows how to dance.

You have a robot off and they're doing splits, but you don't know what's gonna happen.

I love that, And if the music is right, I think that's a huge key.

The music's gotta be right.

You do like a dance floor, but you don't dance.

I don't dance, no, but you curate.

I love a sing along.

I love a single night. Yeah, yeah, I love a good sing along. But if there's like, uh, you know, if I'm basically a little tipsy and there's a song I love, I'll go out and sing it. But I don't like dance. Like you can dance even though you're goofing off, like you could still dance, you could.

Be well, I convince people that Jiggy is a good dancer, is a great dancer.

Jiggy was showing us some moves backstage. I was like, oh, he can really dance like he's actually obviously he's a great athlete.

But well, that's that's that's what we haven't common. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we both have athletic bodies. I've shaved like a bowling pin and he shaved like.

But there's also the you know, the fact that there is ladies on the dance for too, which which makes it well.

I love the I love the opportunity to make romance between the shy fellows.

I like to break the ice.

I like to dance.

I am man, I'm I'm I am a wingman.

You'll get the game stop crew that is a little nervous to talk to the girls.

Also just want to have a good time with some guys that working gamesop. You know what I mean. It's it's it's I think I think it's important. My my mother at.

My sister's wedding didn't tell anybody and went to the band and sang Chenda Luna, which she didn't know the words too, which is one of my favorite things ever. So my my, my sister's on the dance floor and everybody, you know, is dancing and and this.

Song goes Gendolona Man's you know, and it's a.

Bunch of just Italian works one together. So my all of a sudden, it's a big wedding. My sister's had this big wedding, and we're all hanging out and dancing, laughing on the dance floor.

I spent a whole night on dance floor and all of.

A sudden, you hear gend alone a man and and I'm like, oh, that's we didn't hear that sing yet.

That's a beautiful voice. And we look and it's my mother and she doesn't know the words, and she's just going.

Tenda menda, madaginza g gets in the sonna mada what just what figure whipping her dress round the place went nuts of My Mom's like, I don't got the gold hey, and she's just doing.

The whole thing.

And I was like, oh, you're kidding me, mom, And then she came over. I was like, Mom, that's not the words, Like, I don't know what the fucking words.

Just trussed the whole wedding.

It was so crazy how old she got up there.

I mean, that was what my sister's married twenty years, right, so I'm twenty Yeah, I'm like twenties, late twenties.

And that was the first time you saw your mom thing like that.

Yeah, she went crazy like that at a wedding like that. My mom was always a party animal, always a good time and whatever. But to just do that, I was like, wow, she was like just so cold in the moment. It's so happy, I think, And it was just really funny to see her sneak and just do it, you know what I mean, which is really cool.

The only time I saw my mom like come out of her shell like a party or whatever. My brother, I've never seen my mom have a drink in my life. I've never seen her drink anything. My father, on the other hand, but my mom. My brother had just come back from Iraq. This is maybe two thousand and five or two thousand and six, so up in or he's about to go on a second deployment. I forget which one it was, but but we we were I think we did a show. We did a show for them.

Yeah, yeah, my mom. Seeing your moms do first things, it's crazy. My mom was always against sushi and I'm like, Mom, I really think you like it. He's like, no, I can't do. I said, Mom, come on, and I took her for sushi and I was like, all right here, I'll get you. I'll get you a crab roll. I said, you know, I'll give you a California role it said's good crabs, let's take whatever.

She ate it. She loved it.

This is so good.

I was like, of course you do.

Everybody loves you know. I said, you want to try some of the some of the real stuff. He's like, Okay, what's this one? And it was Alm, what is this one? It's like it's tunent cucumber. She's like okay. She goes, took two bites and she goes, get me out of here, Get me out of this. Really, I was so proud of her those she tried to at that time.

She was like a sixty four year old Italian Staten Island woman who was like in her box, you know, set in her ways, who had nothing, but Palmadora was also a whole life, you know what I mean. I was so proud of her that she tried it, and but then whenever we ordered sushi, she'd maybe get her Yeah, it's really funny.

I took my folks to Vegas when I was doing you know, Vegas for the first time. He was doing Beatrice Madhouse and my mom, I don't think she had ever been to Vegas, never gambled into life. Because our family, our Korean side of her family, my mom's side is steeped in royalty. And what happened is your mom my mom's side has a great great grandfather who was part of this royal family. What ended up happening was I think it was my great grandfather, and he was a

Amazing.

And so the rest of the weekend, every time we passed it, she's like, see she's jumping up on the roads. Oh my god, it yeah, man, Yes, it was hilarious. She got a little taste of the fever.

That's crazy.

My mom was.

My mom was a massive It was a massive gambler. She gambled away everything. Oh really, oh my god, everything was crazy. When she talked to you when she died, she owed the casinos one hundred thousand dollars in markers. Yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. So that's where your fever for the casinos comes into play. Because you said your father took you guys to Vaga.

My father was a gambler as well. My father was a gambler, and my mother was a gambler.

But my mom was, like, well, the thing when my mom was my mom came into money when my father died because my father passed away.

He was the vice president of insurance company.

Wow, and I'm ninety seven percent sure he just called in every favor and got all sorts of policies added.

And when he died, he left millions to my mom.

Wow.

So she came into money like whoa nowhere. And she loved to gamble.

Yeah, and she loved the way she got treated in Atlantic City. You get treated like a queen down and she knew all these people, you know, so she would go down there. Everybody would know her because she was a firecracker. You know, she's not easy to ignore, right, So she would come in.

The room and like get the dinners and all this stuff.

She would love bringing people down with her, and you know, her friends and us, the kids, you know, because we were all of.

Gambling age, and she would just like love to play draw the dollar poker machines, the machines. You didn't like playing.

Cards, right, She hated that other people could affect your money, Like she would say that all talk about like blackjack or whatnot, right, So she would just sit there and play draw poker all the time. And I've never seen somebody so lucky those machines. Wow, she used to be so lucky at them.

Somebody so lucky in the casino like you, yeah, call things. I've never the horn high, unbelievable. We're playing craps again. Most of us I now have a familiarity in terms of what is required of you to bet, to be at the table. But then in the middle all the side bets, all the carnival stuff, yeah, all the middle yeah, all those what do you calling parlor bets or the.

Ones in the middle of carnival bets, like call them carnival.

Okay, carnival one off bets. Yeah, so we're playing. We have a hot hand. I'm rolling dice. You say, everybody take take a five dollars chip. Give it to the staff.

We all take a five give them around the dolls because they're out here working.

They're working. And then he says, everybody take another five dollar chip. Put on a horn, high horn.

Two ones.

We need two ones. That's it, right. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just put the chip in, I take the dice. What the hell's horn? I roll it, boom, snake eyes and we hit. Ye, you called the exact roll it was.

I knew that was a great when I felt off bet and it just happened. The universe was like, let's give these guys some money. They're they're a good time, fun time.

Another time you told me to bet on nine and then I hit nine like literally the next roll. It's but you were What I appreciate about you is you you seem to be a social gambler. I don't see you going by yourself.

Sure, I've been at times where I go and I if I want to gamble because I get out last at people. A lot of people do drink that I'm with, and it just when you're drunk and you're losing money, like, it's just not some people shou should stop.

You know.

And then sometimes I do enjoy just like to but I don't really like gambling by myself. I do enjoy being at the craps table sometimes by myself if I'm just trying to make up some ground or if i have a nice crew that I'm playing with or whatnot. But for the most part now I love being with people.

That's why I like crafts. It is a social game, very so. Even on a Jokers cruises when we did the cruises, I used to do this thing called in.

One of my events on the boat was I would grab fans and make them roll dice and we would hang out, which was so fun.

And we even did that with the with those three kids that were in the casino.

Remembers right, Yeah, So there was three twenty four year old, two guys and a girl walking by.

She had a cast on. They had never rolled dice. We opened up, we said come on in, We'd let her let them roll or whatever, and they had they had a great time. I love doing that. Stuff too, just like have people have an experience like that.

Right, yeah, yeah, I've seen you do that multiple times. But you create such a fun atmosphere.

Yeah.

I So did you get to gamble.

With your mom?

Did you ever like memble? Yeah? No, not like that now.

Yeah, okay, no, no, I didn't get like that with my mama.

She passed away.

I was in season two.

Okay, she's at the beginning of season two, so I was getting like fifty dollars an episode.

Faceic Cable Channel one million. But she, you know, we gambled. She did this thing.

When we went down, she had won ten thousand dollars twice within an hour on a drawer poker machine. And she called us all to come down, and we all came down. My sisters, we all came down, and we stayed over and we were at a blackjack table together. I'm sorry, I got three cart poker table together playing three card poker, and it was just one of the coolest, funnest things.

She was like, don't even worry about you know.

We were bett in like, you know, fifteen dollars a handles whatever. It was just having a great time. We stay that the whole time. Had so many laughs. We had a big steak dinner. It was really fun, so she was I guess I get that from her.

The whole communal you could make you could make it fun.

The big thing too, is if like you know what you're doing and you're doing it for fun, Like that's a big difference. Like if you know that, you're not like, I'm not there to try to break the bank, beat the you know, you know, take down that's how I'm trying to take out of the house. I'm just I'm there to have a good time with my friends and lose it.

I'm able to, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, we've all been to casinos, especially now at our age, and you know, being in entertainment, you you know, especially you go to Vegas whatever. It's not as fun to go people that are competitive and are looking to win and not just win but win big. Yeah, because they're betting big. And when you're betting big, your investments are that your emotional investment is that much bigger.

Gotten into baccarat bACC are at Baccara No, what is it? I don't I still don't know, but it was very fun. You got to yell at the deal, you yell monkey at the cards. It was very funny. A nice lady named Emily. We had a table two weekends ago and I was with Jiggy and we were I was like, oh, I've never played baccarn Now like cause you play.

It's fun.

So I went and I ended up winning a lot of money and I was like, Okay, I like this game. Yeah, And I was like how it work? And then I was like I don't really want to know. I was like, I don't even want to know, because I feel like that a lot happens a lot of times. I hate that when people come up like what do I need to roll? I'm like, don't even worry, just go because then you start thinking and then it's not fun.

You start like, you know, you start worrying about what you.

Have to do and what do you think your what do you think your mom would say if she could see how she saw Season one? Obviously unpacked, but but from it just being a show to it being to the to the point where you can't walk through an airport a grocery store or anywhere public without being noticed, Like everybody in this country a group of people. Somebody knows who you are. I mean, what do you think your mom would think? From well that too where it is now.

Yeah, my mom was a peacock at season one, like she was like, that's my son, Joe, Like I can't even Yeah, what she would have been like now, I think because she was super.

Proud of me even then, just because I was realizing the dream and doing that.

But now that I'm affecting people's lives in a way and trying to make families laugh the way my family grew up last and I think she would have a real real affinity for that and happy in a different way because when I did it, what she saw from me was I was doing something that I loved and I her son being like.

Oh look he's a comedian. He did it.

Yeah.

And then but now to see, as I see it, the.

Way that I am affecting change or able to affect change or try to do some good in the world and then things like that, that was on a different

And I was like, I get one hundred percent get what you mean. Like it's just like to be able to bond with your family over something like the way we did with our parents over TV or whatever. To be the thing to be watched is crazy in a different way.

And you don't realize that in the beginning, right, you know, like season one whatever, You're like, oh, I'm look at me, I'm I'm on TV, but you don't realize who's watching you.

Sure, and the importance of that.

Well, the difference between us is I did realize who's watching my show, nobody, because we could cancel it up the three seasons.

Three seasons.

We had three seasons. But I'll never forget when, you know, looking back on my folks, they you know, being here in New York City. I started in New York nineteen ninety seven, September thirty, first time on stage. My first few months getting on stage, I did Bringer shows. So they would come every Saturday to the New York Comedy Club Er Stand Up New York and be my two paying customers. They sit through two and a half hours of horrible stand up. I'd always be up at the end of course.

Oh you opened, you opened two and a half hours.

Se sit the whole time and just like watch all these bad comics, and they and I do five minutes. And they'd spend fifty sixty bucks every time. And so years later season one, even the pilot, I remember the pilot Sullivan's son so vividly because Dan Lowie is playing Steve Senior and Jodi Long is playing Oakcha my mom. And for them to come to like the Warner I

She's like, I gotta go play some slots. Well, thanks so much, guys.

Sorry we didn't have a chance to get into some this week, but we wanted to share some stories, give a little bit of love, and thank you as always for the love and support.

See us on the road, See us on the road.

Yeah that's right.

I mean you're you're you. You've got a major tour coming up, yep, where you're doing theater tours and I am. I'm gearing up to film my new hour special, so I'll be hitting the road. So my tour dates at Steveburnlive dot com and then I'll be You're kind enough to have me along and I love working with you and I've loved meeting a lot of the two Cool Moms fans.

Yeah, we love that one.

Been very nice.

We got to take some pictures.

But yeah, some girls had t shirts on, which is really cool.

Really fun. The the yeah, and the filming of your special. Filming on my special which I am directing.

You are directing Saturday, August twenty seventh in at Nashville, Tennessee, at the Franklin Theater. We're filming it for Amazon Prime. Joe is our director. This is unlike any other hour special you've ever seen. I promise you it's been. It's been a lot of fun doing it. But if you're looking to make a trip out to Nashville, maybe be a part of the taping. There's a handful of tickets left,

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