Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian (14 page)

The words
But I digress
are what you often read in a sitcom script when the writers of a character have nothing better for them to say. I’ve had to say it a few times on different shows. It’s the ultimate drinking game if you’re sitting home watching every sitcom of all time. Truth be told, there are only so many ways to core an apple.

Speaking of which, my laptop is heating up again and I won’t go into detail but I’ve just put a potholder mitten over my package. But I digress.

So yes, I’m almost done addressing how and why I was “blessed” to land on
Full House
.
Blessed
is a one-word expression some sketchy nightclub promoters have said to me over the years when I’ve asked them, “How are you doing tonight?” “I’m blessed, man.” And they always seem to say this while there’s a crazy situation all around them: one girl is trying to break through the VIP line, another is vomiting on her stilettos, which are now ruined—and they’re not even hers because she borrowed them from her roommate, and now the faux-suede fabric is stained forever and they have to be thrown out before she gets in the cab to go home . . .

Scares me that I knew that world for a while. “A while” meaning a couple decades. That was after
Full House
ended and I was going through my stereotypical forty-year-old’s midlife crisis, which I’m probably only halfway through. Life itself can occasionally be two-dimensional.

Which brings me back for a moment to Danny Tanner, the admittedly somewhat two-dimensional character I played, on a family sitcom aimed at twelve-year-old girls. People ask me all the time about the character and why I am not like the guy on the show in real life. I’ve met people who’ve watched every episode and own the boxed set and can recite all the lines and even know where the music cues came in.

If you’re one of those people, bless you. I mean it. I could’ve used those people while acting on the show, because I never knew my lines or why I was saying them. Not totally true. I knew why I was saying them. To put my kids through college.

I do want to state that the show sometimes tackled significant issues, right in your face, and dealt with them by “talking” about them, as sappy as that may have seemed.
Full House
was actually rooted in healthy family-therapy doctrine. So in some ways the show was three-dimensional, or hell, four-dimensional. If you’re the Octomom, eight-dimensional. You know at least five of her kids have watched
Full House
.

But my point is, just like there’s a place for a movie like
The Aristocrats,
there’s a place for a show like
Full House
.
FH
was meant to be able to be watched by everyone. And it relieved some parents from having to actually bring up with their kids’ issues like bullying or drinking at prom. Seeing those subjects covered, however lightly, on
FH
gave them a point of entry. Again, I don’t full-on believe in this theory, but it has been told to me . . . a lot. And if you hear something enough, it starts to influence your belief system.

Some people are too cynical these days about anything that is teaching kids good morals. I understand that preachy “family values” are a turnoff for many. But again, there is definitely a place for it. A need for it. A void. Some people still want that feel-good TV show or movie, just the same way the rest of our culture wants good solid chop-people-up zombie TV shows or movies.

Between the chop-people-up zombie TV shows and movies that get made and the reality shows that abort their way onto the air, we do seem to be getting farther and farther away from the purity and intended beauty of what
Full House
was. Something you can actually watch with kids. Even the littlest of kids. Now we are in a world where toddlers just sit there, with or without an adult, watching the nightly news in all its gruesomeness.

Okay, for a second, grant me this one digression on the nightly—hell, the
daily
news . . . You know how when they’re about to show you a shooting or a bombing fully captured live on camera, they tell you, before you have a chance to look up from your soup, “What we are about to show you is violent and could be mentally disturbing, especially for children. Okay, now that we’ve told you, please enjoy this footage of the same murder that you’re going to see for three days over and over and never be able to get out of your mind.”

That is when I say, “Fucking stop this. Where’s Webster when I need him? Gimme
Mr. Belvedere
!” Or just wait and only show that insidious news clip of heinous hell on earth late at night, so little kids won’t be awake to see it. It desensitizes them. Becomes part of their emotional lives. Unfortunately not everyone is blessed with parents who can help redirect or navigate them away from the bombardment of negative and horrifying stories and images.

Whew, where did this soapbox come from? Look, some may say I’m a hypocrite to preach about what’s suitable for kids. Yes, I’m occasionally on cable late at night doing an R-rated turn of comedy, but I take responsibility for my adolescent rants. If a warped teen watches my stand-up, the most they get out of it are the same things I found funny as a teenager, and still do: penis and bathroom humor. Nobody gets hurt from that. Maybe a rash, but that’s treatable. A running theme in my stand-up of late is telling young college kids not to have sex with sea creatures. Or goats. Or a turtle. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t I providing a public service?

I love and look forward to doing more “adult work” (sounds like I’m about to start a porn empire) but I also, to this day, cherish shows that may not be geared specifically for kids but do put out good values. And kids can watch them. Like a show I got to be a small part of for many years, the sweet, charming, and full-of-love
How I Met Your Mother
.

That show is about the search for love. Something we all need. I could use some right now in fact. Here I am sitting in bed on a Sunday typing on my laptop like Diane Keaton in
Something’s Gotta Give
. Yes, I am a single man sitting in bed, writing something I’m passionate about, living the life of a chick flick. And . . . loving it (
see:
Don Adams in
Get Smart
episodes for correct cadence on that catchphrase).

From an adult (yet made for everyone) show like
How I Met Your Mother
and going all the way back to
Full House
—made for the kids—I’ve learned figuratively how to be a parent for children other than my own, as creepy as that may sound. It’s part of my life’s journey. I’ve put my entire soul into raising my own daughters, and will continue to, because it’s the most rewarding part of my life. But they’ve also inspired me and taught me how to embrace and step up to that honored role of being a father in general. I get college audiences with thousands of people looking at me apparently as the dad they wish they had. And yeah, it’s only for an hour, and about as superficial a connection as can exist compared to actual real-life parenting. But I still take it very seriously. That’s not the comedian part of me using the word
seriously
.

I’ve said this before and I think it sums up my warped comedy: I wouldn’t hurt a flea. I’d finger a spider though. I remember tweeting that and then having a momentary second thought. But how is a stupid line like that gonna hurt anyone? And if it makes some people laugh, I’ve done a nice thing.

It’s healthy for people to get out of whatever mode they’re in and have a meaningless giggle. It’s a breath with a smile attached to it. And what spider is gonna be offended by that? They don’t even have brains that could comprehend a joke that’s intent is to violate them. On that spider-fingering line, one person tweeted back, “Which sets of legs does the spider pull apart for me to finger them?” Those are my people.

And staying on the subject of parenting other people’s kids—I’m almost done with this rant by the way—if a kid read that tweet about my wanting to finger a spider and decided to do so . . . yes, I admit, he could hypothetically get bitten by that spider, and I do know a person can die from a spider bite. Therefore, I hope I am not too late with this declaration to kids everywhere:
Do
NOT
ever finger a spider!
Under any circumstances. You can die.

See, that’s parenting. As an actor or a human, I can never go back to it in the
Full House
sense. But I am damn proud I did that show. I have friends now—I know, “good for you, Bob”—who tell me they watch
FH,
including one who’s a thirty-to-forty-year-old woman (trying to stay safely nebulous on age), and she says, “It just makes me feel good.”

Case closed. It worked. So, for one brief shining TV moment, there was a sweet show that may have been cheesy—but where morals weren’t added in an ironic way. The writer and the cast meant that shit. And some of us are better for it.

With the genre of family sitcom, there’s always a lesson learned. It’s true even with
South Park,
a brilliant show that I’ll always revere. They often end an episode with: “And what have we learned today?” The answer may come from Cartman, who says, “It’s bad to hate Jews,” or “Be nice to people or they’ll kill Kenny.”

On
Full House,
at the end of the day, no one went to bed angry with each other. You only had twenty minutes; you couldn’t. Going to bed angry is reserved for a two-parter. Wish my life was always like that. Maybe as I get older, I am becoming like a lot of people: “Why can’t everything just be wrapped up kindly and nicely with a big metaphoric bow around it so I can go to bed more easily?”

Nothing too selfish. Just want to be kind to others, be treated with kindness in return, and get some friggin’ sleep. ’Cause at the end of the day, it’s the end of the day. And I need some friggin’ sleep! Springsteen said it best: “Because the night belongs to lovers.” What?

So before I turn away from all this talk about why I will always love and be proud of
Full House
and launch into all the dirt from the show that I know readers are clamoring for, let me first start by acknowledging it’s been complicated at times to be so heavily associated with the name Danny Tanner. It’s a name I have said and heard uttered more than one would want to imagine.

Oh, Danny Tanner . . . he was a man who was more than a man. He was a widower and he was full of woe. He was a woe-man.

I spent twenty years trying to “opposite day” how some people regarded me. Although if I’d played Steve Urkel I wouldn’t have needed to spend the amount of therapy time that got me to here from . . . Danny Tanner. Once you take off the high-wasted pants and suspenders, you can move on with your day.

I’ve come to terms with it. Danny Tanner, or “DT” as I now call him, because when I hear that name I get the DTs—I shake and recoil as if someone just said “Beetlejuice” three times . . . DT was a guy I am still proud today I got to play. “He doth protest too much,” right?

Occasionally during my
FH
days I’d fritz out, wanting to be the edgy guy on the show—but the show wasn’t meant to have an edgy guy. Unless you considered Uncle Jesse, played by my brother John Stamos, to be tough around the edges. But how threatened can you really feel by a sweet, handsome Greek guy with a blown-out mullet, even if he is all dressed in black leather? And Jesus, is he a sweet person. As is Dave Coulier. I mean he was
Joey Gladstone
. You can’t get sweeter than that. Goofy, silly, whatever. The man and the character are just fuckin’ sweet.

Danny, though . . . Danny was as far from tough as you can get. He DustBusted a vacuum cleaner in the opening titles. I tried to butch him up, but any complaints from me and they took me back to the biker cave for a group lesson. Here’s the rub—ahh, right here, that’s right, don’t stop, look me in the eye and say my name . . . I still knew, even back then, and I know it more today, that portraying a good father for hundreds of millions of people is valuable. Portraying a good person who’s two-dimensional is valuable. A courtroom-artist sketch of a good person is valuable.

As I was working on this chapter, I was actually
in
San Francisco. I did stand-up there as I have for many years—San Fran is well-known as an awesome town for comedy. So while I was there, on my way to do press, a kind young driver guy who worked for the promoter I was doing my gig for—ironically his name is Joey—picked me up. And after one interview, I said, “Joey,
cut it out
and take me to the
Full House
house.” And he did. And I tweeted it.

People were pretty damn appreciative. I just feel bad that I did a drive-by. It’s the only kind of drive-by I’ve done. For the record, I’ve never passed an ex’s house to see what she’s up to. Not made that way. I may be a recovering OCD neurotic, but I ain’t no creepster. ’Cept I crept on this house. The
Full House
house. I pray the lady who owns it wasn’t home. I am not a person stalker, but I have stalked a house.

I also went there once for a shoot with Conan where we reshot the show’s opening credits with an Asian gentleman from Chinatown playing the part of Michelle. That was a trip. But it was especially wild to be there this past time since we never actually filmed anything at that house itself. It’s just where the producers put a camera one day for an exterior shot.

Anyway, this was an oddly cathartic moment for me. Because of this book I’ve been “driving by” this part of my life that I’ve often tried to run from.