Episode 1176 - Michael J. Fox
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going could you just not just don't get the covid before the cure not that well not the cure but it seems like there's some promising things on the horizon here
Marc:Maybe we'll get a handle on this.
Marc:It's a very weird thing.
Marc:I recently had an experience.
Marc:Let me get some business out of the way because I'm very excited about our guest.
Marc:Michael J. Fox.
Marc:Everybody loves Michael J. Fox, rightfully so.
Marc:You know him from Back to the Future, Family Ties, Spin City.
Marc:And he's been very publicly living with Parkinson's disease since the 1990s.
Marc:He's written several books about it.
Marc:And his new memoir is called No Time Like the Future, An Optimist Considers Mortality.
Marc:I met Michael once.
Marc:I met him once at one of the Comics Come Home performances with Dennis Leary.
Marc:Met him and his wife.
Marc:And it's a very heavy thing how we handle people who are living with
Marc:Real problems, physical problems, sicknesses, illnesses, how the the natural compulsion or the natural reaction that someone has a lot of times is like, oh, my God, what it what a tragedy.
Marc:What you know, that's so sad.
Marc:And Michael J. Fox is pushed back against that.
Marc:For years and has really kind of taken on his Parkinson's, his disease as sort of, you know, an unwanted but accepted partner in his life and worked with it.
Marc:It's pretty fucking amazing and metaphorically and literally on all levels, whatever your struggle is.
Marc:Even if they're just psychological, the idea of like accepting and working with your liabilities, your insanity, if you're able to.
Marc:Very inspirational.
Marc:And I was nervous to talk to him because you wonder when somebody has a condition that is that compromising, like, is it going to be difficult?
Marc:Is it going to be difficult for him?
Marc:A lot of worrying and sort of instinctually codependent activity goes on in my brain.
Marc:But like, right, this guy's been living with this and talking with it and embracing it for decades.
Marc:And once I got comfortable with him, there's no way around it.
Marc:It's inspirational.
Marc:And it kind of gives you a fucking reality check.
Marc:That's coming up.
Marc:I talked to him.
Marc:Because, look, I've been very public about what I'm going through because that's what I do.
Marc:And the weird thing about being public about what I'm going through, and I have this platform and I speak fairly openly on Instagram Live, and I've shared my life fairly candidly for years.
Marc:you know, tapering it certain ways as not to involve or offend or disrespect other people in my life.
Marc:But for the most part, being pretty straight, you know, just I make some edits to protect some privacy.
Marc:But, you know, all I've been dealing with outside of the stuff that we've all been dealing with, which is a pig person in the White House who has destabilized the entire fucking world now,
Marc:And pitted us against each other.
Marc:We're all dealing with that.
Marc:And we're still dealing with it.
Marc:I guess we're going to be dealing with it until Biden puts his hand on that fucking Bible in January.
Marc:And probably after that, obviously.
Marc:But I am hopeful.
Marc:Somehow.
Marc:And we've all been dealing with this plague and there seems to be reason for some optimism on that front.
Marc:But for me, you know, I've been dealing with this fucking loss of.
Marc:A person I loved and some animals I loved and.
Marc:And I've been public with that, and it seems to be helpful.
Marc:It's not unlike the stigma of a disease.
Marc:There's something about the way that Michael J. Fox lives with his illness publicly and destigmatizes it.
Marc:Mental illness is another thing that is stigmatized.
Marc:Grief is another thing that is stigmatized.
Marc:Aging is another thing that is stigmatized.
Marc:Class stigmatized.
Marc:I mean, the list goes on, but I can't speak to all of them.
Marc:I can speak to mental illness.
Marc:I can speak to grief at this point.
Marc:But these are things that all human beings go through.
Marc:Everybody's going to go through it.
Marc:And as long as things stay stigmatized, then we think when we have the feelings or we have the sickness that we have to hide.
Marc:We have to lie.
Marc:We have to cover.
Marc:We have to blame.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:Things are just weighing on me a little bit.
Marc:I've entered some other phase of this quarantine situation.
Marc:So I guess I've been kind of serious, kind of raw.
Marc:And still dealing with these waves of this.
Marc:There's nothing good about grief.
Marc:But it's something that
Marc:That everyone is going to have to reckon with.
Marc:And I know that when I talk about it, I was recently accused of like using my grief.
Marc:To to what?
Marc:It kind of drops off there, doesn't it?
Marc:You're just exploiting your grief.
Marc:You're exploiting the death of the person you love.
Marc:It's like, are you fucking out of your mind?
Marc:Why would I want that?
Marc:I just don't know how to make things up, really.
Marc:And I talk about my feelings and what I'm going through.
Marc:And I'm a creative person.
Marc:For some reason, I haven't been able to write anything about any of it.
Marc:I've been able to write in my fucking notebook at all.
Marc:I'm just sort of like dealing with feelings, talking about them, sometimes to whoever will listen.
Marc:And leaning on people to move through this because that's what people do for each other.
Marc:We're built to carry each other's burden a little bit.
Marc:And sometimes it's as easy as fucking listening.
Marc:But as I was saying, I haven't been writing about this stuff because I don't know what to do with it and I don't feel the pressure.
Marc:I definitely do not want to.
Marc:People are like, you got to write about what you're going through.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Why?
Marc:This is what I do.
Marc:I talk.
Marc:And I don't want to sell books about whatever it is I'm going through.
Marc:This is horrible.
Marc:It's horrible.
Marc:But for some reason...
Marc:The other day, a few days ago, I started writing a song.
Marc:I started writing a song about what I was going through.
Marc:Now, I always play music at the end of this thing, and I'm not a songwriter, but I just took an honest approach to it.
Marc:And I play guitar, and people have said you should do something.
Marc:I never write songs.
Marc:I've written maybe three songs in my life, and I've only played... I've never played them.
Marc:But for some reason...
Marc:The experience I'm going through out of my heart translated into this song.
Marc:And it was relieving to me.
Marc:And it's like writing a poem or it's like journaling or anything else that anything you have to do.
Marc:You know, without hurting other people to get through the weight.
Marc:To the other side of it, or at least to get it so it settles in you.
Marc:You got to do it.
Marc:There's no right way or wrong way to deal with this stuff.
Marc:Keeps coming.
Marc:But anyway, so I did.
Marc:I wrote a song.
Marc:And despite my hesitation, despite knowing that anytime you put your heart out there in any sort of real way, someone's going to start kicking it around.
Marc:But I put it at the end of the show.
Marc:So I shared it with you.
Marc:If it inspires someone to write a song or to express themselves, great.
Marc:I'm not looking for anything from it.
Marc:It's just what I did and I'm sharing it.
Marc:I am a guy who makes things and I'm sharing it.
Marc:So.
Marc:Michael J. Fox was great to talk to, funny and inspirational.
Marc:And I'm sure he gets that a lot.
Marc:The book, No Time Like the Future, An Optimist Considers Mortality is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:And this is me talking to Michael J. Fox last week.
Marc:Nice to see you, Michael.
Marc:I see.
Marc:I have a little antifreeze.
Marc:Yeah, good.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:What is in there?
Marc:What's in that blue drink?
Guest:That's actually, that's a Gatorade type concoction.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Electrolytes?
Guest:Electrolytes, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Get things sparking in the morning.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:I think we met once.
Marc:I don't know if you remember.
Marc:I think we met at Boston.
Marc:Dennis Leary Singh, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And we're doing the show.
Marc:Oh, I'm glad.
Marc:Yeah, I was trying to remember where because I knew I had the memory, but it was it was in the haze of my life of all the memories.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I'm in the same haze.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, well, you've got the double whammy of I'm 57, you're 59.
Marc:And on top of that, you've got the Parkinson's.
Marc:So I imagine it's quite a jungle up there.
Guest:And you've got to whatever you've got.
Marc:Yeah, whatever the fuck I have, which is just... I don't know.
Marc:The memories start to... If you lived enough places, if somebody says they knew you from somewhere, you got to be like, all right, what year and what town?
Guest:And then you remember it and you go, oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're that guy.
Guest:You see a bar and say, I know that bar.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Did I do what?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I didn't want to remember that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I didn't realize that...
Marc:Like, like I'm a recovery guy and I talk kind of openly about it and I don't know where you're at with it, but you talk about it in the book.
Marc:But I didn't realize that, you know, the dark night of the soul that lasted a few years was directly related to to your your Parkinson's diagnosis.
Marc:That's when you started drinking.
Guest:No, I started drinking at 12.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was always a party guy, like partying, and then when I got diagnosed, then it became more medicinal and more directed.
Guest:It lasted a few years, about two, three years after my diagnosis.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, so you were going at it pretty heavy the whole time.
Guest:Yeah, I was diagnosed in 91 or 90.
Guest:I can't even remember now.
Guest:And I quit drinking in 92.
Guest:Ross Perot's birthday, June 28th.
Marc:But you had been building towards that.
Marc:You were going to get there either way, probably.
Guest:They were saving a seat for me.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because I was trying to figure out, like, you know, when you were shooting, you know, Back to the Future and running back and forth to do family ties, I was like, you know, how the hell did you do that?
Guest:I was just pure youth.
Guest:I didn't need anything to get me going.
Guest:I needed stuff to put me to sleep.
Guest:So I drink beers on the way home.
Guest:Crash out and get up in the morning.
Marc:So you're always kind of wired.
Guest:I was like 23 years old and I was doing a TV series on the Steven Spielberg movie.
Guest:So I had a lot to juice me up.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So like when you, I guess what this book is about is the sort of second kind of collapse of your sort of disposition in relation to all the work you've done on maintaining a disposition that got you through life, that it kind of got dark again.
Marc:And some of the tools that you had once relied on stopped working.
Marc:But I guess in the first time,
Marc:How much did you really draw from those ideas in recovery to kind of get you through?
Guest:Well, the big thing in recovery for me was always the concept of acceptance and surrender.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're too big for me.
Guest:You kick my ass, I give up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I always say if you accept something, it doesn't mean you can't endeavor to change it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you have to accept it first.
Guest:You have to deal with it as a fact.
Right.
Guest:And I mean, it's like this fact deficit we've been dealing with in the country for the last season.
Guest:And we say, this is what it is.
Guest:You lost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:This is the reality.
Guest:Step up to it.
Guest:Get into it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So my kind of thing was that I had always...
Guest:With alcohol, alcohol does what alcohol does.
Guest:It covers things up and buries it and gets it out of your mind.
Guest:You're not thinking about it.
Guest:You remember it six months later.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whereas with this, just to give you a thumbnail of what happened, I had Parkinson's for like 30 years when I was dealing with that.
Guest:Like I said in the book, we kind of reached detente.
Guest:It gave me the room to do what I wanted to do.
Guest:It took the room that it needed to take from me.
Guest:There were little losses, but there were gains.
Yeah.
Guest:And then I had this spinal thing, this tumor on my back and my spine.
Guest:I had to get that removed or I was going to be paralyzed.
Guest:And it was a chance with the surgery to be paralyzed, but I wasn't.
Guest:I learned how to walk again.
Guest:I had to learn actually the kinetics of walking again and mechanics.
Guest:I still don't do it that well.
Guest:So I went through all this, and then I was feeling cocky.
Guest:I got walking again, and I kept stressing every day.
Guest:I wanted independence.
Guest:I wanted to leave me alone and let me get better.
Guest:So I finally conspired to have
Guest:A night in my apartment by myself and my family were on vacation.
Guest:I was waking up this morning to go do a cameo in a Spike Lee movie.
Guest:And, um, especially movie he's producing.
Guest:And so I was all jazzed and I got up in the morning and I got out of bed and I walk into the kitchen.
Guest:I think I feel really good.
Guest:I took a little spin on that, on that, on that tile.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Shattered my arm, shattered my amorous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was the thing.
Guest:That was the thing of all the stuff I dealt with.
Guest:That was the thing that I have sitting on the floor waiting for the ambulance to come.
Guest:Just going, what an idiot.
Guest:What a fucking idiot.
Yeah.
Guest:And then finally, I just went to this whole thing about, there's all this optimism you preach to people.
Guest:Like, how can you, how can you like say, chin up, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When this is, this is broken arms, your level of misery and people have on misery index have so much worse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're like saying, be okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm out of the lemonade business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It just seems like everything converged on that moment from all the things that you had sort of framed a different way.
Marc:It was just that moment where you kind of blamed yourself and then it just collapsed from there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Once it's on me, I just found it very easy to brave myself and go after myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's amazing you held that off for as long as you did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think I'm annoying me.
Guest:I get pissed at myself earlier.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like in the beginning, you know, it was sort of amazing that you were able to write like the way you talk about your wife, Tracy, is it's just a profound relationship.
Marc:That, you know, from the beginning, from that moment where, you know, you've got your diagnosis, you've had tremendous success, you're relatively newly married, but you're listless and self-pitying and just, you know, drowning yourself in booze.
Marc:And it was a moment where she basically said, you know, is this how you want to be?
Guest:Yeah, is this it?
Guest:Is this what you want?
Guest:It was a horrifying moment.
Guest:I was on the couch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the couch.
Guest:We lived on the west side, so the sun was streaming in.
Guest:I was on the couch just sweating.
Guest:I had a Coors Tallboy that spilled over on the carpet.
Guest:It was on the side.
Guest:My son was kind of climbing on me and poking me.
Guest:He was three years old.
Guest:And I kind of woke up, and I saw my wife's feet.
Guest:And I looked up, and I saw her go to her face.
Guest:I expected her to be really pissed at me, but she was just bored.
Guest:She said...
Guest:Is this what you want?
Guest:Is this what you want?
Guest:And the instant I went, no.
Guest:And I was in a meeting two days later.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:You were prepared for anger, which you could just, that would just add to your self-pity.
Marc:But the sort of, the boredom, that was too much to handle.
Guest:Yeah, it was like she was just over the whole floor show.
Guest:She was over it.
Guest:And she was really frank about it.
Guest:That's what she said.
Guest:That moment she said it's not what she wanted to do, but she was ready to go.
Guest:We'll call this on account of pain.
Marc:And it's interesting that she comes from sort of a legacy of self-help, right?
Marc:I mean, she comes from a family of self-helpers, right?
Guest:Well, certainly of personally motivated people that accomplish and address issues.
Marc:Her brother is Michael, right?
Guest:Her brother is Michael, Paul, yeah.
Guest:Both the Bible and hallucinogens.
Marc:And didn't he write something about food too?
Marc:Am I missing it?
Marc:He wrote a lot about food.
Marc:And the most recent book is the sort of microdosing of illusions.
Guest:It's a really cool book.
Guest:And he also, he wrote a book called, my favorite book that he wrote, it's called Botany of Desire, which is how plant, it's a natural history science book about how plants manipulate us into making them better.
Guest:Like apples, they played a whole game on us to make apples for apple cider.
Guest:And we,
Guest:promulgated all these apple trees all over the place and like marijuana how it kind of you twist this we'll get better we'll get higher and we'll get stronger yeah it was all to serve the plants because they knew in their deep primal heart on a global level that they'd be left after us and they needed to survive they're screwing with us yeah i love it i love that book
Marc:So the beginning, when she calls you out and you go to meetings and you get off the booze, and that sort of – the idea of powerlessness is certainly a good place to start with sort of anything out of your control.
Guest:Well, not to scare anybody when I say it's over, but the first –
Guest:You get sober and then the first two years of sobriety are like a knife fight in the closet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just like, it's no fun.
Guest:You trust no one.
Guest:You believe no one.
Guest:I would wear like the same thing.
Guest:I would wear jeans and a white t-shirt and just like sunglasses and just go and sit in the back.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Angry.
Marc:You know, fuck you people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just like, yeah, yeah, it gets better.
Guest:Fuck you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's that moment where, you know, you finally share and you're pissed off and you hate everybody.
Marc:And some old timer comes up to you and says, you sound great.
Marc:Keep coming back.
Marc:Like, what are you talking about?
Marc:You know, I mean, it's been a long time for me, too.
Marc:It's been like 21 years or something longer for you, I guess.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:28, 28.
Marc:Are you still in touch with people in the in the rooms or?
Guest:Yeah, I still am.
Guest:Not to the extent that I was, but I try to show up every now and then for as much for to get a chip.
Guest:Get a chip and show a little gratitude.
Marc:And that was the sort of the interesting thing about this particular dark period that you went through after you broke your arm was that your gratitude somehow dissolved and you started to question the impact you had on other people.
Marc:by actually being optimistic and sort of proactive in living with your disease.
Marc:That struck me as kind of interesting that you felt guilty somehow.
Guest:Yeah, I felt that I had, and I was going to feel that I have a lot of things in my life and a lot of luxuries and a lot of perks that a lot of people don't get.
Guest:And I try to keep that in my mind when I'm assessing my situation compared to other people's situations.
Guest:So I started to think, well, how easy was it for me to say, oh, sure, I feel great.
Guest:It's all good.
Guest:And a lot of that is real.
Guest:I mean, the most of it is real.
Guest:I felt all of it was real until that moment under the phone.
Guest:And then I went, oh, no, there's another level here.
Guest:There's another level of disquietment, another level of anger and of not accepting it, like not being willing to accept it.
Guest:So I said, oh, this whole new thing exists.
Guest:And I got to look at this.
Guest:I got to look at what I've been offering up.
Guest:Optimism is a panacea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I was sincere in what I said, but at risk sounding glib, you know?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So I kind of opened my mind and I said, I'm going to go through this next period and I'm just going to take notes and just like, you're aware of what I'm doing, what I'm watching on television, what I'm interacting with, what message I'm sending them, what message I'm getting back from them.
Guest:And I just started, the gratitude thing became a theme that I picked up on and realized everything good came back.
Guest:Gratitude and this notion of optimism being sustainable when there's gratitude.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Gratitude is what makes optimism sustainable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also, I think, like, alongside of that realization or that questioning process, I mean, we're also in our mid to late 50s here.
Marc:I mean, that's a natural.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:You're mid.
Guest:I'm late.
Marc:I'm 57.
Marc:I'm getting late.
Guest:Not much happens in the next two years.
Guest:You go through a soul-searching crisis.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Anyone does.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I recommend.
Guest:Take notes and you get a book out of it.
Marc:Yeah, it's been a tough couple years, you know, but yeah, but I think that's also a natural time for you to go through that shit on top of whatever you were going through, right?
Guest:Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned Tracy.
Guest:Well, of course you mentioned Tracy, but...
Guest:I got to think about this morning.
Guest:I was having a hard time walking this morning.
Guest:I was getting in my house in Long Island and getting in the car.
Guest:And she's helping me get down the stairs.
Guest:And she said, are you okay?
Guest:And I said, yeah, it's life.
Guest:She goes, yeah, tell me about it.
Guest:And I said, yeah, you got a piece of this.
Guest:I'm sorry, you got a piece of this.
Guest:It hit me, but you got winged.
Guest:And I apologize for that.
Guest:I realize that what she does, people always ask me what she does and what's so cool about her and why it works so well with us.
Guest:And I think it's because, especially as it relates to the Parkinson's, is that she can feel it.
Guest:She can understand what I'm going through without assuming it and taking it on as
Guest:Something she's going through.
Guest:She never makes me, makes me feel like, cause I added, she has it.
Guest:And she, and she has to, it's totally the opposite.
Guest:She kind of goes, I can understand it fully, more fully than any other human being, you know, but I don't understand it as well as you do.
Guest:And she always allows me that room that I know that extra little piece that she can't know.
Guest:And she puts up with that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She had a piece of it, but.
Marc:She has boundaries around it.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:I mean, if she was more codependent, you guys probably would have spiraled out years ago.
Guest:Yeah, we'd be like sitting together with blankets over our laps on his porch waiting for someone to bring food.
Marc:But did she have that part of, did she have to go through that part of your process to kind of detach?
Marc:Or was it always natural that she had that ability to have the boundaries?
Guest:I think she learned it.
Guest:I mean, I think she adapted.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think she always had to predisposition it.
Guest:I mean, she always, yeah.
Guest:Even when I was like spiraling out of control, she gave me that edict, and in a sense, an edict, a strong hint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I had to change my ways.
Guest:And after that, it was cool.
Guest:Like we had this thing, we had a son, our son was three, and I went to the time that he was about five or six, I said, do you want to have another baby?
Guest:And she'd go, are you out of your mind?
Guest:that's ridiculous yeah and i gotta have another child and then then one day she just came and said he he could use he could use a brother or sister and then we had twins a year later right it's kind of cool it's a nice validation yeah and then you had another one now you got a full full crew we had four no they're great yeah they're all adults now too so they're great they even don't do shit and
Guest:You're all smarter than me.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:And it seems like you all get along.
Marc:And that was really a heartbreaking part of the struggles that you're entering in midlife was this idea that when you see yourself as a liability or as a chore and have to kind of weigh that stuff against it, because I would think that in thinking that,
Marc:It's almost selfish to think that in terms of how your loved ones love you.
Marc:So it must be a very difficult balance to sort of navigate that.
Guest:Yeah, it's hard to explain why you're, outside of personality, outside of who the people are to you, just a natural kinetic coming together.
Guest:When you're in a certain place and someone wants to help you, assist you, grab you, or catch you, or move you, or help you, it's just you suck to laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you have to think it through and think, well, I see where they're coming from and I see what they need from this and I see what I get from it and I have to admit that I get from it.
Guest:And then we can go forward.
Guest:But it takes some adjusting.
Guest:Because people say, when I'm walking, sometimes my momentum will carry me.
Guest:It'll go faster.
Guest:It's like I talk about in the book, the Heisman principle, that you can't measure location and speed at the same time.
Guest:Because by the time you measure this, if you're measuring the speed of it, just move from the location.
Guest:So it's the same thing.
Guest:I don't know where I am or how fast I'm going.
Guest:At any given time, I can't calculate those two things.
Guest:So I'll start to watch you fast.
Guest:And I'll trip over something and it'll start to fall.
Guest:People will go, first thing they'll do is say, be careful.
Guest:It's too late.
Guest:I'm already, I'm going down.
Guest:I appreciate the sentiment, but you missed the bus.
Yeah.
Guest:And then the other thing is, when people go slow down, it's like, if I want to walk with my head four feet in front of my feet, and I got a pitch angle like this going 30 miles an hour toward a bank door.
Guest:I mean, that's my choice.
Guest:That's the direction I'm going in in my life.
Guest:So it gets frustrating.
Guest:But then with family especially, it comes in.
Guest:You know, all things filter out, and you get down to the place where you're just both sitting on the couch watching TV.
Yeah.
Guest:lean over and put your head on the shoulder and you just realize you're safe.
Marc:Yeah, and that love is deep and real and the understanding is intrinsic to the family unit there.
Guest:It's really wild during this whole pandemic.
Guest:We were quarantined in our house in Long Island and we usually just got there on weekends in summer so it's weird to be there in March and kind of hunker down and
Guest:And the whole family was there.
Guest:And yeah, we did all the things.
Guest:We had the jigsaw puzzles out and we had long conversations.
Guest:We had these long conversations about social justice and government and all this stuff.
Guest:And it was just amazing.
Guest:And then we thought about the fact that there were people pressed up against the glass trying to see their loved ones in hallways of corridors of hospitals and
Guest:People had died alone.
Guest:And it's just the dichotomy, the sad irony of it.
Guest:So many people found family and union and joy.
Guest:And other people were facing awful pain and suffering.
Guest:And against all this, I was writing this book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Writing this book about myself and my inner, looking at myself with a dental meter.
Guest:you know like oh navel gazing and inward stuff i mean all the world is falling apart yeah and it actually really focused me because i i could i could i could relate to
Guest:It put my pain in perspective.
Guest:Helped me write about it.
Marc:In that you were able to, I guess it was sort of like trying to kind of come out from under a massive self-pity episode.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So for you to find some people who had more pain to compare yourself to on a large level in the world we're dealing with gave you a little space.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, it wasn't even an active choice to compare myself to.
Guest:I didn't go like, but here's my issues.
Guest:Here's the issues of the world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you could sense it.
Guest:You could just feel it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, it's like, it's like this, I'm thinking about this.
Guest:Well, what am I thinking about this?
Guest:I'm going to think about this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm looking at it from this angle, from that angle.
Guest:And actually it freed me up.
Guest:And a lot of times I, I, it helped me get silly because it just, because it just, I mean, sometimes you just have, well, you're in the business, you know, it's like, you're trying to occupation fool with an E at the end just to piss him off.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:You have to look at things through a different lens.
Guest:And it was really strange, too.
Guest:I don't write.
Guest:I can't type.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I can't write with a pen.
Guest:You need Rosetta Stone to figure it out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I dictate.
Guest:I have this partner, my producing partner, Nell Fortenberry.
Guest:And she would be on because she was locked down in her place in Sag Harbor.
Guest:And we would get on this thing.
Guest:And I'm glad I don't.
Guest:This is really weird that I've managed to get through this so far without screwing it up somehow.
Guest:And so I was really new to this whole FaceTime thing.
Guest:And I was like, wow, look at the person.
Guest:And I would get writing.
Guest:I'd be sitting there going, you know, the crow was on the treetop and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And she'd write it out.
Guest:And then I go to the bathroom and I go and I come back and I bring two glasses of water.
Guest:One for her, one for her, and they go, no, you're not here.
Guest:You were in it.
Guest:I was lost in it.
Guest:Yeah, that's hilarious.
Guest:Just a swirl of the world kind of being screwed up, and it was a nice place for me to slip in and do my inventory.
Marc:Wow, I mean, so that was the writing process.
Marc:That's something else.
Marc:So you would think it and then dictate it, and then she would write it down.
Guest:Yeah, I had notes, and I'd go –
Guest:Like I would say, today I want to talk about, I always wanted to, because it's such an odd thing.
Guest:I write about television.
Guest:I write about golf.
Guest:I write about just these strange things in my life.
Guest:I'd say, I don't know.
Guest:I'm going to talk about television today.
Guest:So then I just have these notes and I'm jumping off plays and I'd write it.
Guest:And it's funny when you speak it, if you speak it with the intention that it'd be on the page, it's funny with humor.
Yeah.
Guest:Like the way we time a joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a lot to do with, like, you add fixed gratitude.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You got to, you got to somehow set that up on the page.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's why the ellipses are my favorite thing in the world.
Guest:And editors are always taking them out.
Guest:You can't use the fucking ellipses.
Guest:I need the dot, dot, dot.
Yeah.
Guest:This is where I adjust my tie.
Marc:Yeah, that's the timing.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, you start to realize, I imagine, that it's like joke writers, like the comedy writers.
Marc:There's a beat to it.
Marc:I mean, because there's a lot of funny bits in the book, but you could see that eventually you learn that there are these beats and it lands.
Marc:It's just a different place to deliver it, you know?
Guest:There's a running joke I had with Family Times writers where they'd write
Guest:You know, Mallory says, my boyfriend and I, it's like we have one mind.
Guest:And so we have one heart, one mind.
Guest:And then it said, you know, Alex, beat, who's using it tonight?
Guest:And I say, you don't have to put beat there.
Guest:I know there's a beat there.
Guest:I'm going to go get a fucking glass of orange juice, walk to the front of the proscenium, stroll over to her, stroll back, put the juice back in the fridge, come back and say, who's using it tonight?
Guest:And I'm going to bring the house down.
Marc:You knew the physical timing.
Guest:Don't write beat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'll take the beat.
Guest:There's a beat there.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:When you look at like, you know, the way you've handled your life in this, because there is some really touching parts in the book, you know, in terms of,
Marc:You know, your mother and Ireland, and then, you know, you had these two women who were your caretakers who were Irish.
Marc:And I've got a fascination with Ireland.
Marc:I'm a Jew, but for some reason I feel very drawn to Ireland.
Guest:I'm an Irish guy who feels very drawn to Judaism.
Marc:Yeah, it seems like it.
Guest:Your wife's Jewish?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But do you find some solace or some history in the kind of perseverance and ability for the Irish to kind of take the hit and remain sort of moving forward?
Guest:Well, I love the survivor thing.
Guest:I didn't even realize until I started writing it.
Guest:I watched it alone.
Guest:I like that show, that TV show about the guys that they put out in Alaska by themselves to forage and rot, and eventually it's going crazy.
Guest:But I like that survivor mentality, and I like that about the Irish dude.
Guest:They're indestructible.
Guest:They carry on in spite of everything conspiring against them.
Guest:Much the same as the Jews.
Guest:I mean, I have the same affinity for Jewish people.
Guest:It's just survivors.
Guest:It's just like, yeah, thank you, sir.
Guest:Can I have another?
Guest:Thank you, sir.
Guest:Can I have another?
Marc:Yeah, I think that the Jews are sort of more kind of, there's a different pitch to the complaining.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, it's like I described that.
Guest:I don't do very good dialects, but accents.
Guest:But there was two nurses that I had.
Guest:And one was the morning nurse who was very like, Michael, good morning, Michael.
Guest:And then I had the other one.
Guest:who had that kind of thing, both from Galway.
Guest:So there was no reason they just had different accents, but they did.
Guest:And the other one, everything was questioning.
Guest:Where do you think you're going?
Guest:What do you mean by that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:I just love that.
Guest:She's when I told her to go to the Grand Canyon.
Guest:She said, where were we at?
Guest:Grand Canyon.
Guest:I said, well, you should go.
Guest:My fellow wouldn't let me go.
Guest:We wouldn't want to go.
Guest:I said, go, go to Grand Canyon.
Marc:Did she ever go?
Guest:I got a big coffee table book at the end of the coffee table book for the Grand Canyon I could find.
Marc:Oh, that's beautiful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It seems like there has been like, you know, I'm not outside your family as well, but like I found that, you know, when you decided to quit show business because you didn't, you know, I mean, was that another moment of that you had to weigh, like, was it practical or were you feeling sorry for yourself?
Marc:What was the dialogue initially?
Yeah.
Guest:There were two kind of quittings.
Guest:There was one after Spin City, which was in 2000.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I retired and I said, you know, I'm going to start the foundation.
Guest:And then I started the foundation and I got going and got legs real quickly.
Guest:And after a couple of years, it was going well.
Guest:So I was getting, people were asking me if I wanted to do some acting.
Guest:And Bill Lawrence, who did Scrubs, asked me to come and do Scrubs and the Boston Legal.
Guest:And I did that.
Guest:I did Caribbean through that.
Guest:And I did all these, did Dennis's show.
Yeah.
Guest:rescue me.
Guest:And that was great.
Guest:And I started to get a lot of attention.
Guest:I get to Emmy nominations and Emmy.
Guest:And so I was like, wow, I have this second career that I didn't think about.
Guest:And I started doing Good Wife and did 26 episodes of that.
Guest:And it was a nice kind of career because there was no, there was no financial imperative.
Guest:There was no, it was just, it was just, I loved doing it.
Guest:And I could, I could find a better way to, to, to assimilate, to use my, um,
Guest:to use Parkinson's in a way like the, the affect of it, if not the essence of it, and let's play a guy with OCD to realize that I can't stop my hands from moving.
Guest:He gets off his hands from washing.
Guest:It's the same thing.
Guest:It's like, it's so, so I just, just live that and apply that.
Guest:And, and, and then I found I could get, I, I put Parkinson's to work.
Guest:I brought it into the family business.
Guest:I made it, I made it bust his ass and, and, and do some work and,
Guest:And I was with a good wife.
Guest:I played a guy who had heart of dyskinesia, which is like Parkinson's.
Guest:And he used it to manipulate people.
Guest:And I loved the opportunity to show that disabled people could be assholes too.
Marc:Yeah, no, I think that whole lesson, when Dennis Leary brought you in and challenged you to a certain degree to play a guy that wasn't a Parkinson's guy and he was kind of an asshole,
Marc:And, you know, that your initial response, you know, was resistance.
Marc:But it seems to me that like not unlike many other episodes in your life that, you know, that your brain was, you know, trying to to sort of work with this disease, accept the disease, you know, integrate it and have sort of a strange partnership with it of acceptance.
Marc:And it seems like those roles really helped you kind of, you know, see it for what it was, but also see the power of it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's exactly right.
Guest:And then what happened with what you're alluding to is the second quitting or the second retirement.
Guest:I did a couple of things just after my back surgery.
Guest:So I'd been somewhat...
Guest:It was a different kind of disability than the Parkinson's.
Guest:The two don't get along really well because Parkinson's wants to move my body and freeze it in different places and my spine wants to not send energy to places.
Guest:So it's kind of dead energy.
Guest:It's kind of weird to work with.
Guest:So I was doing these other things.
Guest:I did a Kiefer show that there's an 80 survivor.
Guest:And I did an episode of The Good Fight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a hard time for some reason.
Guest:I was always, when I did Family Ties and I did stuff when I was younger, I could look at the script and I could look at it for five minutes and go, I got it.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:I could just download it.
Guest:Before I knew what downloading was, I would just download this shit.
Guest:I would know it.
Guest:And it kind of always stayed with me that I had that ability to spin zitty and stuff.
Guest:And I started to do these shows and I couldn't remember my lines.
Guest:I couldn't.
Guest:get them.
Guest:I couldn't, and I couldn't, and I couldn't, when I was so busy trying to recover them that I couldn't speak them in the way that, the way that I wanted to, according to what I had, what I had in mind for the character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I just, and it was about that time that, that, um,
Guest:That I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And the great scene with Leo when he goes in that he can't remember his lines on the show and he goes into the dressing room and he berates himself and just kills himself.
Guest:I had that moment.
Guest:I walked in and I said, no, this is when I'm supposed to yell at myself in the mirror and say, you fucking idiot.
Guest:You don't know.
Guest:I just went, eh.
Yeah.
Marc:This is where I'm at.
Marc:I can't do this anymore.
Marc:That's certainly better.
Marc:You waited until you fell on the floor and broke your arm to berate yourself.
Guest:Yeah, that I berated myself.
Guest:That was after.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, like I can't like it's really hard for me.
Marc:Like when I read the book, you know, there are these this sort of, you know, your humor, your sense of humor and your your your your your sort of like, you know, almost desperate need to navigate and maintain this relationship with your body.
Marc:You know, in an intellectual way, you know, you you know, the way you confront it, it seems was never sort of like I'm fucked, but it was sort of like, OK, this is doing this now.
Marc:So now I've just got to do this to counter this.
Marc:And then I can walk, you know, it's just this ongoing sort of vigilance of working with this partner that is a degenerative illness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I've never like I don't know many people with these kind of illnesses, but but I mean that in and of itself, it would seem that, you know, the desire to sort of give up would be sort of always pending.
Marc:But I never got that sense from the way you discussed it, even and also the fact that you just kept doing shit.
Marc:I mean, that trip to to where was it?
Marc:Well, before Africa, even just to Kathmandu.
Marc:Is that where it was?
Guest:Yeah, Kathmandu is on the way.
Marc:I mean, it's like, what are you doing?
Marc:Like in my mind, like I won't do that just because I'm nervous about food in other places.
Marc:But here you're dealing with this disease and you're like, you're on a plane to fucking Bhutan.
Marc:I'm like, holy shit.
Marc:I'm afraid to go to Arizona.
Guest:It's a little familiar now in Arizona.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just, I've just, life is better than the alternative.
Guest:And so if I'm here, I'm going to enjoy it.
Guest:And I want to, and I don't want it, but I don't want to brush over stuff.
Guest:And I don't want to like not acknowledge stuff that's real.
Guest:Like again, it's, it's, it's trapped in sense and it's, and it's understanding what my situation is.
Guest:And so I just like, I look at it and like, that's the thing.
Guest:I always, I,
Guest:When I pile all that stuff up, it would never match how much I like life and how much I love the people in my life.
Guest:And then it was that moment under the phone on the floor, I would say, the phone was above me and I was on the kitchen floor.
Guest:The arm?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was on my arm and I just feel sorry for myself and I moaned.
Guest:And I thought at that point, the pile was too big.
Guest:I said, now the pile is too big.
Guest:Now I don't like this.
Guest:I don't want to accept this.
Guest:I don't want to take it.
Guest:And I don't want to try to understand it.
Guest:And I don't want to try to make it better.
Guest:I don't want to push any face on it.
Guest:I just want to be...
Guest:Out from under this phone, off this floor, and fucking better.
Guest:And then just not have to deal with this shit anymore.
Marc:But you deserve that.
Marc:I mean, you have the right to be fed up at some point.
Guest:I mean, I don't... Well, what was great about it was, again, it led me to this place where I really thought about it.
Guest:And I thought about...
Guest:I just started to get it reorganized again and get it.
Guest:But it came from different places.
Guest:It came from different things.
Guest:It didn't come from, I want to feel better.
Guest:I want to do better.
Guest:I want to beat this.
Guest:I want to live with this.
Guest:I want to make this, put a good face on this.
Guest:If I listened to this message of gratitude that came from my father-in-law, who was a very influential man in my life, and
Guest:And I listen to, and I look at relationships and I look at, I look at things like, like, what if I, what if I get dementia?
Guest:What if, what if I lose my, my, my cognitive abilities?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That mean.
Guest:And so I, so I thought about that.
Guest:So I thought, and I actually had this moment that I talk about in the book.
Guest:It was a real wild moment.
Guest:I was watching an ad for Duplazid, which is a Parkinson's drug for Parkinson's dementia.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's a drug we were involved early on in the development of it.
Guest:But this guy is...
Guest:in this season this pastoral kind of yard of this beautiful home and he's got he's looking at his dog and then he's got two dogs yeah and his wife is coming now his wife's with some man he doesn't understand didn't know when he gets all anxious and it's about those kind of delusions and um the first time i saw the commercial i'm standing in my office and i'm watching and then i i turned to my left and i said the man who wasn't there what did you think of that
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I actually did that.
Marc:But you know, like you talked a lot about some of the hallucinations you had in the hospital, you know, after the back surgery, but you don't, you don't deal with that.
Marc:You don't deal with that stuff on a regular basis, do you?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:What I get is, um, I get things that are easy to explain about, which is like peripheral stuff.
Guest:Like, like, uh, if I have my glasses on the frame of my glasses, uh,
Guest:I'll see it until someone's moving it, but then I know it's the frame of my glasses.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:I also think like another thing that you seem to do, which is beautiful, is that from all your life experiences, you kind of build these metaphors that function for you.
Marc:Like, you know, with golf, with leopards, you know, with...
Marc:Like the like I don't know how I never understood golf, but it seems like you have a passion for it.
Marc:But you drew some analogy, you know, between, you know, golf and and and and brain surgery like you you you take lessons from it.
Guest:Yeah, like I like I really like it in my writing because I'm not a writer, but I love metaphors and I love cliches and I love to just bust up cliches and bust up metaphors and make them all crazy because it's interesting to me.
Guest:And I always find I think I think in metaphors and I think like like.
Guest:Things apply to things you wouldn't think they apply to.
Guest:I don't know how to explain this, but like trying to learn to walk again.
Guest:So I had all these things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Put the heel, stretch with the heel and bring the thing, transfer the weight from the thing, get the hips out front and all this list of things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I have to think about it every time I go to the fridge.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And then I get to figure out how to manipulate the stuff.
Guest:And I made a pivot to put it on the counter to go back and get the other thing.
Guest:And then my daughter, my daughter breathes through, grabs the coconut water, closes the door with her hip and bounce out the door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think then I think about golf.
Guest:Golf, I have to do the same thing.
Guest:I have to get my feet set, get my look down at the ball, get all that list of things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's about golf.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:So what's more annoying, like doing that with golf?
Guest:If I have to do it for walking, I'll do it for golf.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And the leopard thing was pretty scary.
Marc:Like, you know, to be stuck in a watering hole in Africa and then realize the connection of the leopard in the tree and then realize, like, I could be food.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My only hope is that I'm not that delicious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you're not going to be able to get away necessarily.
Guest:No.
Guest:Leopardy, they bite back in the neck and you're up hanging from a tree in a second and they're licking your hair off.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but the analogy you drew in terms of your life was that there's the leopard that you see, and then there's the one that you can't see, and then there's the one that prowls around in your dark place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The one that you can't see that probably isn't there, but it shows the shit out of you.
Guest:Well, yeah, they talk about like I'd be on the safari, and I'm seeing all the animals and all this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we did, we had this thing where we broke down at the watering hole.
Guest:And I was thinking, I was saying, take my family back and I'll wait here for the truck to come.
Guest:And I'm thinking I'm going to die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to be eaten by a leopard who's up in that tree that I can't see now.
Guest:And he's just waiting for, because I'm going to taste, I'm the slow old one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can't move that well and I'll be easy to take down.
Guest:So wait for those young ones to leave and they get me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but then the truck came and we were rescued.
Guest:But when we got back to the camp,
Guest:We're in these tents, you know, these kind of glamping things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We have the poor poster bed and desk and post-Africanalia horns and antlers and skulls.
Guest:And I have to make, and it's in a tent in the middle of the attic.
Guest:I go pee and I got to go to this thing at the end of the tent, which is this kind of...
Guest:latrine thing yeah bathroom is not really a word for it and i have to surf through like the dark i have this i have these reading lights on that i have a light on another set of my head so i look like one of those fish in the in the in the the mariana trench the angord fish yeah yeah i'm feeling my way through this this this antique store
Guest:And I realized that I can't lean on anything.
Guest:I can't lean on the wall.
Guest:If I lean on the tent, the whole tent comes down.
Guest:It comes down to my wife and then it comes down on me.
Guest:And the nearest hospital is like in Kenya or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the scariest part.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's the most potentially lethal thing I do in that whole trip.
Marc:Is go to the bathroom.
Guest:Is go to the bathroom at night.
Yeah.
Guest:And so I put that in perspective.
Guest:There's a leopard.
Guest:You see there's a shit that you're really afraid of it and you can see him and he's scary.
Guest:But yeah, you'll take it.
Guest:You're in these big vehicles and they don't see individuals in a vehicle.
Guest:They'd see the vehicle, which is a big monolithic monster that they don't want to mess with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Unless you get out of the vehicle, then you've then you've exposed the fraud.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You become lunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when I was stuck at the waterfall, I was processing that position because I was out of the Jeep because the Jeep was sinking in the mud.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The scariest thing was being in Santa at home and having to pee.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just the practical thing.
Marc:So what do you kind of see as the thoughts that really got you out this last time?
Guest:Well, I had a few things.
Guest:I had the golf thing was cool.
Guest:I had like these little side trips I took in the book, like golf with my buddies and people that I like.
Guest:And I kind of like George Stephanopoulos and
Guest:Harman Coben, the mystery writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This strange little trio of guys that go up there.
Guest:This is going to happen.
Guest:Headphones and Parkinson's don't go.
Marc:Headphones and Parkinson's don't go?
Guest:Yeah, because my hand is flying around all the time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I had to stay with the mask.
Guest:I finally said, can I put the mask on?
Guest:It's like a librarian thing, like a librarian's glasses.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And just have it hanging down.
Guest:Pop it on, pop it on.
Guest:But I would break the chain all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We might be able to finish it up without the headphones if they keep... Okay, so you had good friends.
Guest:And so that was a big thing.
Guest:That was important.
Guest:And then these moments in my family that...
Guest:just a little moment so it's just like i didn't write about spectacular well my daughter was the one thing she was there the night the night before i i had my accent she begged me to let her stay and get me off in the morning and i said no this is something silly go home go home yeah and the next one i did this she still isn't over we still talk about it all the time right um and uh and and and with tracy and with
Guest:And then it was a big deal with my father-in-law.
Guest:He was always saying it gets better, and he was always talking about gratitude.
Marc:And he was battling cancer, right?
Guest:He was battling cancer.
Guest:And we had this moment that I talk about in the book where I'd go over and visit him, and we'd have lunch, and I'd bring him eclairs and his mystery novel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we'd just hang out, and they see he had a cat that would come down and walk down his arm, a little miniature cat that would drink out of his water glass, walk back up his arm.
Guest:And we went into the room, the TV room, watching CNN.
Guest:We were talking about Trump.
Guest:And then the doorbell rang.
Guest:In fact, the service entrance, I went back in with the guy from the hospice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he had all the hospice equipment.
Guest:And I brought him in, and it was kind of awkward because Steve, you know, I didn't know how I feel about this.
Guest:And so I gave the guy a tip, and he gave his directions.
Guest:And he said, which one do you do as a patient?
Yeah.
Guest:It's the last time I've heard Steve really laugh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think the point you make towards the end of the book about what Steve said to you about gratitude being the foundation of optimism, what exactly was that he said?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, he just talked around that.
Guest:I mean, I put it in, I expressed that as saying, with gratitude, optimism is sustainable.
Guest:But he would say that, he would talk around that, that if you can't, unless you have gratitude, unless you're grateful for being there and you're grateful for what you're taking in,
Guest:And you don't have to automatically be grateful.
Guest:You find a way to be grateful.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Especially when you're an alcoholic.
Marc:I have to force myself to do it because I'd rather be sort of miserable.
Marc:You have to make a choice to be grateful and make the list and all that shit.
Guest:And then it's worth it.
Guest:But yeah, it's much easier to just go.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:What's on TV?
Guest:Let me watch a show where there's people sitting in a tent for 10 months and rot.
Marc:Well, I thought that was interesting.
Marc:Interesting that, you know, because I found a little of that during the pandemic, like that you when you were in your most depressed this last time that you just fell into the rabbit hole of never ending television.
Marc:And you found some comfort in that.
Marc:And you're sort of tripping out on all the different decades available and all the weirdness available.
Marc:But there's that moment where you talk about, like, you know, realizing that you're part of this world.
Guest:I'm going to be survived by rerun.
Yeah.
Guest:I was watching these game shows, these old game shows, which are horrendously racist and misogynist and just like, you know, Native American will come on and be like, jeez, big wumpum wumpum, just like, are you kidding me?
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:And the lady would come on and they'd go, you know, wolf whistle and say, is it Mr. or Mrs.?
Guest:It's Mrs. Oh.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the thing I also noticed was everyone is dead.
Guest:Yes, everyone is dead.
Guest:Everyone is dead.
Guest:Every talk show host, every game show host was dead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ironic, I understand the best talk show host, a game show host of all time has just passed away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So a Canadian and a great guy.
Guest:Yeah, Alex, yeah.
Guest:Alex.
Guest:Go Canada.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, but yeah, so that it's sort of interesting that that kind of brought you up against your mortality, because I would think that, you know, like a lot of one thing I don't really hear or see from you or in the book is that this sort of impending sort of doom and gloom that you don't you know, you I don't there's no real language around like, you know, this is going to kill me or, you know, I'm afraid of death or any of that.
Guest:30 years from now, dead.
Guest:30 years from now, dead.
Guest:30, 30.
Guest:At least I give you 30, but if it happens before, then I say in the book, the last thing you run out of is the future.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's the last thing you have is the future, and then you don't have it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you don't notice.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I'm not too worried about that.
Guest:That doesn't freak me out.
Guest:Except to the extent that I have...
Guest:My relationships are solid in my life and that I haven't left anybody any messes to clean up or any any holes to fall into.
Guest:And so, you know, whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't worry about my dog.
Guest:My dog was there.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Oh, there he is.
Marc:You're more worried about your dog than your mortality.
Guest:Yeah, my miserable life.
Marc:Is that the same dog that's in the book?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You love it.
Marc:You love that dog?
Guest:He's a great dog.
Guest:And then after I wrote the book and I wrote about worrying about his mortality and how unfair it was that there's a sea urchin in the South Pacific that lives to be 250 years old.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And my dog probably won't make it to 12.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And how fair is that?
Guest:Red crick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think there's not a lot of fairness to it all when you break it down.
Guest:No, you might as well enjoy it.
Guest:Just like a little Parkinson's, a little brain, spine paralysis, a little broken arm, a little...
Guest:Yeah, it seems.
Marc:Yeah, it's very like it's very.
Marc:I mean, you hear that all the time, but it is great to talk to you and it's inspirational that you're able to maintain this.
Marc:And, you know, even reading your books, it helps me.
Marc:And I think that that moment, like the one thing I know from doing a regular show where I speak my mind and deal with talk about sobriety or depression or whatever, is that there is an amazing moment.
Marc:where I didn't anticipate, and I don't think you did either, that your experience can truly help people, not just sobriety, but your experience with Parkinson's, back surgery, brain surgery, spine surgery.
Marc:But it makes a profound difference.
Marc:In some people's lives to know they're not alone with things and to know that that someone else can get through it.
Marc:And that's just a byproduct of the lives that you're living and in some respects in the life I'm living.
Marc:But it's an amazing gift, I think.
Marc:It's nothing I asked for.
Guest:Well, I want to tell you that I am glad you gave me the opportunity to say this.
Guest:I saw a comedy special of yours about three years ago, about three or four years ago.
Guest:And that, in a lot of ways, gave me strength to write the book.
Guest:I mean, I saw you just bare your soul and still be funny and talk about shit that even I wouldn't talk about, and I'd talk about anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, this is great.
Guest:This is so powerful, and it's so...
Guest:I relate to it so much because of the substance abuse and just the craziness of being a mind that wants to get everything out of life, wants to embrace life and soak in everything.
Guest:There is soak in, but then there's this shit going on.
Guest:It's showing up all this flack and you can't fight your way through it.
Guest:It's just really inspiring.
Guest:I wanted to thank you for that.
Marc:Oh, thanks, man.
Marc:That means a lot.
Marc:Thanks, Michael.
Marc:And thank you for your book and thank you for talking to me.
Marc:And, you know, I'm glad you're still having a good time.
Guest:Yeah, that's good.
Marc:Take care, buddy.
Bye-bye.
Marc:That was amazing.
Marc:It stays with me now, that conversation with him and seeing him and having that time.
Marc:The book is called No Time Like the Future, An Optimist Considers Mortality.
Marc:It's available now.
Marc:As I said earlier, I'm not a songwriter.
Marc:But for some reason, one came out of me.
Marc:I play music here all the time.
Marc:This is a little more vulnerable.
Marc:I know it puts me into the zone of being ridiculed, criticized, and hurt.
Marc:But I wrote a song, and I'm going to play it.
Marc:It's tentatively called I'm Done.
Marc:This is a workshop here.
Marc:Just me and a guitar, an acoustic guitar, which I don't do much.
Marc:Who knows what it'll become?
Marc:It may never become anything.
Marc:So, yeah.
Guest:I don't do this.
Guest:I don't do this.
Guest:These are the times you're not alive with me Your boots are still here And the hat that you wore still hangs by the door When dreams of you come
Guest:They're just that you're here I weep with relief and wake up alone in a cradle of grief You're gone, I'm done I knew love and that's enough That's enough for me to go on
Guest:When I disappear forever I'm in the eternal way
Guest:We'll be together Not knowing we're gone Not knowing it's all done All that is known is love was enough For us to go on
Guest:Bye.
Guest:the room where you were I go in there sometimes just to open up lines and sit with your things and cry for a while if you were here now I know we would have lasted I loved you too much and now I cling to your absence which will always be true
Guest:When I disappear forever In the eternal way
Guest:We'll be together Not knowing we're gone Not knowing it's all done All that is known is love is enough for us to go on
Guest:Lynn lives.