WTF with Marc Maron Podcast Transcripts

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Episode 13 - Jerry Stahl / Mort Mortenson

Episode 13 • Released October 14, 2009 • Speakers detected

Episode 13 artwork
00:00:00Marc:Lock the gates!
00:00:07Marc:Are we doing this?
00:00:08Marc:Really?
00:00:08Marc:Wait for it.
00:00:09Marc:Are we doing this?
00:00:10Marc:Wait for it.
00:00:12Marc:Pow!
00:00:12Marc:What the fuck?
00:00:14Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
00:00:16Marc:What's wrong with me?
00:00:17Marc:It's time for WTF!
00:00:19Guest 1:What the fuck?
00:00:20Guest 1:With Marc Maron.
00:00:24Marc:okay what the fuckers welcome to the show thank you so much for being here thank you so much for listening to this podcast what the fuck with me mark maron i appreciate your support i certainly appreciate all the subscriptions and donations that are coming in you can go to wtfpod.com to get involved with that this is a bi-coastal machine now folks
00:00:48Marc:I'm doing the show from the garage in L.A., and I'm also doing the show, as you know, under the radar late at night at the Air America studios, if we still can get away with that.
00:00:59Marc:Thank God I still got a key.
00:01:01Marc:You know what I'm saying?
00:01:02Marc:Don't tell anybody.
00:01:04Marc:On the show today, Jim Earl will be on in one manifestation of Earlism podcast.
00:01:09Marc:Or another.
00:01:10Marc:I guess we'll find out.
00:01:12Marc:And out of the gate, I really need to say that I think it is amazing and wonderful.
00:01:17Marc:I read this morning, I'm sure you will have read it by the time that this show is on, that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded the best overall award award by the people that award that kind of thing.
00:01:31Marc:And I just think that is spectacular because it deserves it.
00:01:35Marc:It really is the best overall award as far as awards go.
00:01:39Marc:I also want to share a strange but I think thematic story with you because today on the show we're going to have my friend Jerry Stahl, the author of Permanent Midnight, of I Fatty, of Perv, A Love Story, of a couple of other books, his newest one, Painkillers.
00:01:59Marc:Many of you know him as a famous...
00:02:02Marc:heroin junkie because of the permanent midnight movie and the book but he is a a man a decent man a guy with a lot of stories a guy with a sensibility that is dark like mine I am proud to call him my friend and have him on the show
00:02:19Marc:But, you know, we all have weaknesses, man.
00:02:21Marc:I mean, what the fuck?
00:02:22Marc:I mean, how are you supposed to get out of your life?
00:02:24Marc:How are you supposed to get out of it?
00:02:27Marc:How are you supposed to get out of your body without engaging in something that takes you out?
00:02:31Marc:I know exercise is healthy.
00:02:33Marc:I understand that.
00:02:34Marc:I know maybe you should write a few things down.
00:02:36Marc:That's great, too, if you can keep a journal or be creative.
00:02:39Marc:I know there's things you can do at work.
00:02:42Marc:You can take care of other people.
00:02:43Marc:You can help out or you can do drugs.
00:02:46Marc:or you can drink coffee, or you can stuff your face with food, or you can gamble your life savings away.
00:02:51Marc:I have done all of those things, but only a couple to excess.
00:02:56Marc:I have an addictive personality, and I'm not proud of it, but it is the way I'm wired.
00:03:01Marc:And I think a lot of people don't quite understand that if you've got the bug, if you are an addict, if you can't help yourself, it is a sickness.
00:03:10Marc:And it amazes me how how much you see of this in the culture on television of people's broader understanding of it.
00:03:16Marc:But there are still people that think like, hey, you know what?
00:03:19Marc:Why don't you just stop doing that?
00:03:21Marc:Why don't you just give that up?
00:03:23Marc:Kick it.
00:03:24Marc:You know why?
00:03:24Marc:Because there is something, there is a mouth in our soul with things and a never-ending appetite that needs, just needs.
00:03:34Marc:And I experienced that.
00:03:36Marc:I've got about 10 years sober, 10 years and change.
00:03:38Marc:It wasn't easy.
00:03:40Marc:But I did a tribute show down at the Comedy Store, a tribute for Sam Kennison.
00:03:45Marc:Sam Kennison was a guy that I spent about a year of my life with after college when I had moved to Los Angeles from Boston to become a comic.
00:03:58Marc:I became a doorman at the comedy store and I met Sam Kennison.
00:04:02Marc:I did my graduate work in cocaine use with Sam.
00:04:05Marc:It was an intensive year-long survey course.
00:04:09Marc:very intensive, a lot of hours.
00:04:12Marc:They weren't cumulative.
00:04:13Marc:You actually had to put 18 to 25-hour shifts in in order to do the graduate work.
00:04:20Marc:So I did this Kennison tribute and it just made me think of a couple of stories, a serious what the fuck story about some of the times I'd spent with that guy.
00:04:31Marc:Now, I'm not condoning drugs.
00:04:33Marc:I don't think drugs are good.
00:04:35Marc:I was always attracted to drugs from when I was very young.
00:04:39Marc:I remember my parents had Janis Joplin's
00:04:42Marc:Pearl album in their collection when I was like 11 or 12 years old I remember looking at the picture of Janice on the cover beautiful picture of her on that chaise lounge and asking my mother you know who is this woman and my mother said she died of a heroin overdose so all I ever associated heroin with in my early age at my early age 12 or 13 was what Janice Joplin looked like and the the guys on the back of the album
00:05:10Marc:why is the name of that band eluding me?
00:05:14Marc:Big Brother and the Holding Company.
00:05:16Marc:But they were the human manifestations of heroin for me.
00:05:19Marc:But when I heard her sing, I was like, what is this heroin?
00:05:22Marc:Because this stuff makes me feel insanely good and I can feel my emotions moving.
00:05:27Marc:And it kind of stuck in my craw, the whole heroin idea and the whole drug idea.
00:05:32Marc:And I just remember when I was a kid going to malls and finding myself in the smoke shops looking at cigarettes.
00:05:37Marc:I found myself looking at pipes and bongs when I got old enough to do that.
00:05:41Marc:And I didn't do drugs when I was that young.
00:05:43Marc:I think I started a bit smoking pot and drinking, certainly in high school.
00:05:47Marc:But I always was geared that way.
00:05:49Marc:All my heroes were always drug addicts.
00:05:51Marc:William Burroughs, Jim Morrison, Keith Richards, Lenny Bruce, Bukowski.
00:05:57Marc:Hunter S. Thompson.
00:05:58Marc:They always had that mystique.
00:06:00Marc:They were always the drug addicts.
00:06:02Marc:I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm just happy I survived whatever it is I went through.
00:06:07Marc:So now I've got to do this Kennison tribute.
00:06:10Marc:And this was a guy when I moved to L.A.
00:06:12Marc:I didn't really think much of him.
00:06:13Marc:I thought, well, he screamed and so what?
00:06:15Marc:And I was not that impressed with his comedy.
00:06:17Marc:But
00:06:18Marc:As it so happens, he was a doorman too.
00:06:21Marc:And I eventually sort of got taken in by Sam.
00:06:24Marc:And he started to mentor me in comedy and in drugs.
00:06:29Marc:And I was a 21-year-old kid.
00:06:31Marc:The first time I met Sam Kennison,
00:06:34Marc:I'd met his friend Carl first, and he'd set up the meeting.
00:06:37Marc:And I was living in the house behind the comedy store called Crest Hill.
00:06:40Marc:It was owned by the woman who owned the comedy store, and she housed several comics up there over the years.
00:06:47Marc:I was living in Andrew Dice Clay's old room, and there was a few other people that lived up there, the Fat Todd and Tamayo.
00:06:54Marc:That was the three of us.
00:06:56Marc:And what eventually started to happen was Sam used to come up there to party because it wasn't his house.
00:07:02Marc:And I became the proprietor in a way of the parties.
00:07:04Marc:I'll explain that in a minute.
00:07:05Marc:But the first time I meet Sam Kennison.
00:07:08Marc:He comes up to the house with a bunch of coke.
00:07:10Marc:It's just me and him.
00:07:11Marc:No one else is around.
00:07:12Marc:It's probably about 1230 at night.
00:07:14Marc:And we start doing lines of coke.
00:07:16Marc:And Sam starts telling me about Sam, the gospel according to Sam, how Sam thinks comedy should be done.
00:07:23Marc:And then he starts talking to me real intensely.
00:07:26Marc:And he's looking in my eyes and he says, look me in the eyes, Maren.
00:07:30Marc:I like a man who can look me in the eyes.
00:07:32Marc:It's already, it's weird.
00:07:33Marc:And we're doing this blow.
00:07:35Marc:And then out of nowhere, Sam goes, you ever burn money, Marin?
00:07:37Marc:You ever burn money?
00:07:39Marc:I'm like, I have not.
00:07:40Marc:I have not burned money, Sam.
00:07:42Marc:He's like, let's burn some money.
00:07:44Marc:And I'm like, okay, it's your money.
00:07:45Marc:Let's burn it up.
00:07:47Marc:So we sat there burning $100 bills.
00:07:50Marc:And it just keeps getting weirder.
00:07:51Marc:And the conversation goes on to like 3 in the morning.
00:07:54Marc:And then we're out of Coke.
00:07:55Marc:And we're drunk.
00:07:56Marc:And we're jacked up at the same time.
00:07:59Marc:Sam's a little out of his mind.
00:08:00Marc:And he's like, we got to get more Coke.
00:08:02Marc:And I'm like, I don't know.
00:08:03Marc:I've only been here for a week.
00:08:04Marc:I don't know where to get more Coke.
00:08:05Marc:He's like, I do.
00:08:06Marc:Let's go.
00:08:07Marc:So we get in my car, my little Toyota or Honda or whatever it was.
00:08:10Marc:And we're driving through Hollywood at 3.30 in the morning.
00:08:14Marc:And Sam's passing out in my front seat.
00:08:16Marc:And all of a sudden he jumps up and he looks at me and he goes, hey, I don't even know you.
00:08:20Marc:You could kill me.
00:08:21Marc:I'm like, well, I think that goes both ways, my friend.
00:08:24Marc:And we end up at this apartment building on Crescent Heights in Hollywood.
00:08:28Marc:And we go upstairs.
00:08:29Marc:Someone buzzes us in.
00:08:30Marc:I grew to learn that this guy, he was a hairdresser by day and a Coke dealer at night.
00:08:35Marc:So Sam knocks on his door.
00:08:36Marc:He opens the door of this guy and he's wearing his bathrobe.
00:08:39Marc:He's like, what?
00:08:39Marc:What do you want?
00:08:40Marc:Don't wake up my roommate.
00:08:41Marc:Sam's like, we need some Coke.
00:08:42Marc:So we burst into this guy's apartment.
00:08:44Marc:I don't know him.
00:08:45Marc:It's awkward.
00:08:46Marc:I'm like, hi, how are you?
00:08:46Marc:My name's Mark.
00:08:48Marc:And Sam, we go into this guy's bedroom.
00:08:49Marc:And Sam's, you got it?
00:08:50Marc:And he's like, yeah, just hang on.
00:08:51Marc:He's like, you got anything to drink?
00:08:53Marc:I need something to drink.
00:08:54Marc:And the guy's like, I don't have anything.
00:08:56Marc:Well, I got these miniatures.
00:08:57Marc:I took off the airplane.
00:08:58Marc:So Sam all of a sudden kind of slides down a wall.
00:09:00Marc:And he's sitting on the floor.
00:09:01Marc:And he's got a miniature Smirnoff vodka.
00:09:03Marc:And he's drinking it.
00:09:04Marc:And he looked like he was a giant.
00:09:05Marc:He should have been surrounded by little rock and roll people all around him going, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam.
00:09:11Marc:And then all of a sudden he just passes out like he's out.
00:09:15Marc:And I'm like, all right, dude.
00:09:16Marc:Well, sorry, man.
00:09:17Marc:I guess I'm going to split.
00:09:18Marc:And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:09:20Marc:You're not leaving him here.
00:09:21Marc:You're not leaving him here.
00:09:23Marc:I'm like, I don't.
00:09:24Marc:Why not?
00:09:24Marc:Let him sleep here.
00:09:25Marc:He's like, no, he's not going to pull a Belushi on me.
00:09:27Marc:Get him out of here.
00:09:28Marc:This was the biggest star in comedy at the time.
00:09:30Marc:And I had to wake him up, walk him outside and let him sleep on my floor at the house that I was living in.
00:09:37Marc:But truly, the weirdest story about drugs.
00:09:41Marc:And I guess I'm telling you this because drugs are a problem for a lot of people.
00:09:46Marc:And a lot of people do a lot.
00:09:48Marc:I mean, you can be addicted to anything.
00:09:51Marc:And it doesn't become really an addiction until it destroys your life.
00:09:55Marc:So if people say, I'm addicted to coffee or I'm addicted to reading books or I'm addicted to whatever it is, it doesn't really matter if they're not destroying their life.
00:10:03Marc:It's very hard to destroy your life drinking coffee.
00:10:07Marc:It's very hard to destroy your life if you're addicted to salad.
00:10:13Marc:It's not hard to destroy your life if you're addicted to drugs or food or gambling or sex.
00:10:19Marc:Those things will blast it all wide open.
00:10:22Marc:You find yourself in rooms hanging out with gypsies, freaks, pirates, actual pirates.
00:10:28Marc:I guarantee you, folks, if you've ever been up for three days doing cocaine in a room, at some point during that three days, you're going to turn to somebody and say, dude, why is there a pirate here?
00:10:39Marc:And they're going to look at you and go, just be cool.
00:10:41Marc:He brought the Coke.
00:10:42Marc:And then you're probably going to say, all right, the pirate can stay, but the talking parrot's got to go.
00:10:46Marc:It keeps going.
00:10:46Marc:Someone's got a drug problem.
00:10:49Marc:And then that guy's going to say, Mark, you've been up for three days.
00:10:51Marc:There's no parrot.
00:10:52Marc:It's your conscience.
00:10:54Marc:You need to get clean.
00:10:56Marc:The story that sent me over the top, and some of you may know this if you've read my book, The Jerusalem Syndrome.
00:11:02Marc:What used to happen is on Monday nights at the Comedy Store, it was no cover.
00:11:07Marc:It was just a clusterfuck of freaks that would come out of the woodwork to fill the Comedy Store.
00:11:13Marc:Porn stars, rockers, losers, drug fiends, freaks.
00:11:17Marc:And that was the night that Sam Kennison would go on stage at 1230 in the main room...
00:11:21Marc:And all these freaks would converge on the Kennison experience.
00:11:25Marc:He was a piece of work, Kennison.
00:11:28Marc:He had a charisma that you could feel coming a mile away.
00:11:31Marc:I could be at the comedy store and I was so tapped in to the coked up, freaked out scene that I'm like, oh yeah, he's coming.
00:11:37Marc:He's on his way.
00:11:38Marc:So I was the guy that Sam on a Monday night would give about 200 bucks to about 1230 when he got there and he would send me or I would go volunteer actually to set up the party.
00:11:52Marc:So I would go to the pink dot or to a liquor store and I'd be I'd get like a couple of fifths of vodka, a couple of fifths of Jack Daniels, mixers, cigarettes, a bunch of smaller pints to hide because I knew that once the main freak show ended, there'd still be some stragglers and we needed to hide some stuff.
00:12:07Marc:That's some people would call that alcoholism.
00:12:09Marc:I call it planning ahead.
00:12:11Marc:Now, before this particular Monday where this happened, Sam's HBO special had premiered on television and he had brought all his guitars and amps up to the house so we could have a jam session.
00:12:22Marc:So we had this big jam session out on the patio.
00:12:24Marc:And then he left his equipment up there.
00:12:26Marc:So I stuck it in my room.
00:12:28Marc:And that was like on a Thursday or a Friday.
00:12:31Marc:So Monday night comes along and it's freak show night at the comedy store.
00:12:34Marc:And it's going to be a party that could go on till Thursday at the house that I was living in.
00:12:40Marc:So I was losing my mind, by the way.
00:12:42Marc:Now, there used to be this guy that hung around the comedy store.
00:12:44Marc:His name was Dave.
00:12:45Marc:He looked kind of like Christopher Walken.
00:12:47Marc:He was a Satanist, a self-declared Satanist.
00:12:51Marc:He had a pentagram tattooed over his heart.
00:12:54Marc:He had the mark of the Illuminati.
00:12:56Marc:I don't even know what that means.
00:12:57Marc:Tattooed on his arm.
00:12:59Marc:He had 666 tattooed on his ass, I think.
00:13:02Marc:He was a Satanist.
00:13:03Marc:He was annoying.
00:13:04Marc:He was a freak, a junkie that used to hang out, and you couldn't get rid of him.
00:13:09Marc:Satan's irritating, and he's very difficult to get rid of.
00:13:12Marc:And Sam hated this guy just because he hated him.
00:13:15Marc:He was annoying.
00:13:16Marc:He was irritating.
00:13:17Marc:It's sad that, you know, you think, Satan, that's scary.
00:13:21Marc:No, this guy was irritating.
00:13:23Marc:So that Monday night when the freaks converged on the house, Dave London was up there.
00:13:27Marc:And Sam hated this guy.
00:13:29Marc:And we all used to sit around this table and we'd do cocaine off of a framed picture of the cast of Todd Browning's freaks.
00:13:36Marc:My choice.
00:13:37Marc:Just thought it was fitting.
00:13:38Marc:Don't know why.
00:13:39Marc:And in the middle of this particular event, drug event...
00:13:44Marc:Dave stands up and gets right up in front of Kennison and says, I'm going to tell Anton LaVey about you.
00:13:51Marc:You're not a real Satanist.
00:13:53Marc:It was ridiculous.
00:13:54Marc:And Sam, the beast, so-called, says, fuck you.
00:13:58Marc:And he threw a drink in his face and punched him.
00:14:01Marc:Punched Dave right in the face and it got into a little fight.
00:14:05Marc:And Dave's shirt got all ripped open.
00:14:06Marc:It was battling Satanists.
00:14:08Marc:It was tremendous.
00:14:08Marc:Very exciting.
00:14:10Marc:And I get up and I'm like, Dave, just get the fuck out.
00:14:12Marc:Just go.
00:14:12Marc:Just get out of his face.
00:14:13Marc:And Dave's like, I'm not fucking leaving.
00:14:15Marc:And I'm like, well, get out of his face.
00:14:17Marc:Get out of here.
00:14:18Marc:Go into my room.
00:14:19Marc:Just shut yourself in my room.
00:14:22Marc:And I had to go.
00:14:23Marc:You see, I had to leave because my buddy Bill was flying into LAX, and I had to pick him up and take him to the hotel.
00:14:29Marc:And I'd been telling Bill about everything that was going on and the party and the insanity, and he was excited to come to LA.
00:14:35Marc:So I shut Dave the Satanist in my room because, as I said, Satanists are very hard to get rid of.
00:14:40Marc:He wouldn't leave.
00:14:41Marc:As you know, all of Sam's equipment, musical equipment, is in my room, and now Dave's in my room, and I leave.
00:14:48Marc:I got to pick up Bill.
00:14:49Marc:So I go to pick up Bill.
00:14:51Marc:I take Bill to the hotel.
00:14:52Marc:We end up talking, hanging out at his hotel, and I end up crashing over there.
00:14:56Marc:So then we, me and Bill, drive over back to the house the next day so I can show him where I'm living.
00:15:01Marc:But of course, the freaks are still up.
00:15:03Marc:They're still at it.
00:15:04Marc:They're still doing the blow.
00:15:05Marc:I walk in.
00:15:05Marc:There's only a few freaks there.
00:15:06Marc:There's Sam at a table.
00:15:08Marc:And there's a couple other people I won't name because I'm sure they don't want to be implicated.
00:15:13Marc:And I walk in with my buddy Bill and I walk to my bedroom first and the door has been kicked in and all the equipment's gone and something happened on the bed.
00:15:23Marc:It wasn't blood, but something happened.
00:15:26Marc:And then I walk into the dining room where Sam's sitting with a couple other people with the framed picture of the freaks all coked up, been up all night.
00:15:34Marc:And he looks at me and he says...
00:15:37Marc:Hey, Maren, I pissed on your bed.
00:15:38Marc:I pissed on your bed, Maren.
00:15:42Marc:You want to know why?
00:15:42Marc:I'm like, yeah, I do want to know why, Sam.
00:15:48Marc:Why'd you piss on my bed?
00:15:50Marc:He says, because you let that freak sweep with my guitars.
00:15:55Marc:And without missing a beat, I turned to my friend Bill and I said, I told you I knew him.
00:16:08Marc:i'm as comfortable as a man can be in a wooden chair that's all i got is a wooden chair all right so uh right now i'm very excited my guest is uh in the garage is jerry stall the author of permanent midnight i fatty plain clothes naked per of a love story collection of stories the new book painkillers and he's sitting right here right across from me how are you jerry i'm fine thank you how's it feel to be in the garage it's cozy right
00:16:36Guest 2:Well, as you know, if you read Permanent Midnight, I lived in a garage for quite some time, so I'm very happy to be here.
00:16:44Marc:So it's like home.
00:16:45Guest 2:It's kismet for me.
00:16:46Marc:Oh, good.
00:16:47Marc:Everything that goes around comes around.
00:16:49Guest 2:Except that mine didn't have pictures of you naked like this one does, but that's fine.
00:16:52Guest 2:I can get used to that.
00:16:53Marc:Yeah, well, you know, it's some extension of my narcissism that I think is important that I have naked pictures of myself.
00:16:58Marc:It's fine.
00:16:59Marc:As I get older, it just reminds me of how I once looked.
00:17:02Guest 2:And it was pretty damn good.
00:17:04Marc:Yeah, you're referring to that picture, I think, of my brother and I at my brother's wedding where I am in a towel and he's in a tuxedo.
00:17:11Guest 2:That's it.
00:17:12Guest 2:Yeah.
00:17:12Marc:Yeah, that's the only naked one.
00:17:14Marc:The rest, I should probably take that one of the ex-wife down.
00:17:16Guest 2:Well, because I didn't know it was your brother.
00:17:17Guest 2:I just thought it was a little left turn you made somewhere in your past, and I don't judge.
00:17:22Guest 2:It just gives you more depth for me.
00:17:24Marc:Let me ask you a question about this judgment thing.
00:17:27Marc:Because I was in San Francisco and I say that a lot and we say that a lot.
00:17:32Marc:Like don't judge.
00:17:33Marc:And I think that life would be far less fun if I wasn't judging constantly.
00:17:38Guest 2:It's no doubt true that you have fun judging, but it is equally true that all judgment is self-judgment and fuels your despair, which, like I say, is fun.
00:17:49Marc:But I think that part of tolerance is not so much about not judging.
00:17:53Marc:Okay, I'll tell you what happened.
00:17:54Marc:I saw a woman with a beard.
00:17:58Marc:Okay, it's fine.
00:17:59Guest 2:That old routine?
00:18:00Marc:Yeah, yeah, the old beard shtick.
00:18:02Marc:But it was a real beard, and you've probably seen them.
00:18:04Marc:Is this one who goes to my local supermarket routinely?
00:18:08Marc:Right.
00:18:09Marc:This woman I gleaned was a lesbian, a young lesbian girl.
00:18:13Guest 2:Was this the next morning you noticed the beard, or was this at the show?
00:18:16Guest 2:I wasn't going to get into that.
00:18:17Guest 2:Okay.
00:18:18Marc:I didn't notice the beard.
00:18:20Guest 2:Maybe she was just walking on her hands.
00:18:22Guest 2:But first of all, like what happened?
00:18:23Guest 2:What happened?
00:18:24Marc:Well, nothing happened.
00:18:24Marc:I just saw her and I realized that like I did judge immediately and that I was like that in my mind.
00:18:30Marc:I was thinking that's a little ridiculous, but I guess if it makes her happy, I don't understand the point of a woman having a beard, but they've obviously worked something out with it.
00:18:37Marc:The two of them.
00:18:38Marc:And I think half of tolerance is just not saying what the fuck is with the beard.
00:18:43Guest 2:Well, perhaps a bit of enlightenment might be, why am I threatened by her beard?
00:18:47Marc:Okay.
00:18:49Marc:I can ride with that.
00:18:50Marc:Why am I threatened by her beard?
00:18:51Guest 2:It's the same question.
00:18:52Guest 2:It's just the flip side.
00:18:54Marc:Maybe that's true.
00:18:56Marc:I'm trying to figure out how to get this right.
00:18:58Guest 2:Am I lisping at an improper distance from the microphone?
00:19:01Marc:No, you're not lisping.
00:19:02Marc:I'm trying to figure out how to do it and make it right.
00:19:05Guest 2:And you can't fire your engineer.
00:19:07Marc:I can't because it's me.
00:19:08Guest 2:I know.
00:19:09Marc:Oh, wait, maybe that did something.
00:19:11Marc:I didn't have a switch on.
00:19:12Guest 2:The chair just got really comfortable.
00:19:14Marc:I didn't have a switch on.
00:19:16Marc:And maybe this is everything.
00:19:17Marc:Maybe everything's going to resolve itself right now.
00:19:19Guest 2:I feel good now.
00:19:20Marc:You do?
00:19:20Marc:Do you feel better?
00:19:21Guest 2:Everything's different.
00:19:22Guest 2:It is different.
00:19:24Marc:Oh, you know what?
00:19:24Marc:Something was going on.
00:19:26Marc:And now it's like it's all different.
00:19:27Guest 2:Is there a name on that switch or is it just a random switch?
00:19:30Guest 2:It was a switch in the back.
00:19:31Guest 2:It's called the switch in the back.
00:19:33Guest 2:I think there's a metaphor there.
00:19:34Guest 2:Yeah.
00:19:37Guest 2:If we could just reach behind ourselves and hit that switch in the back, we wouldn't be threatened by women in beards.
00:19:44Marc:I don't know what it was.
00:19:45Marc:Maybe I was threatened.
00:19:47Marc:I guess that probably is true.
00:19:48Guest 2:Well, it's you know, the other is always scary.
00:19:50Guest 2:It's why O'Reilly doesn't like brown people.
00:19:52Guest 2:That's his women with beard.
00:19:54Marc:Well, that's what I say on stage.
00:19:55Marc:I say I'm not racist, but I'm nervous.
00:19:57Marc:Fair enough.
00:19:58Marc:And that's that's admitting that it's about you.
00:20:00Marc:It's about oneself.
00:20:01Marc:Right.
00:20:01Marc:It's phase one.
00:20:02Marc:I've thought it's phase one of what could become racism, but isn't.
00:20:06Guest 2:Well, it's also phase one of what could be enlightenment, which is I know it's about me, not the fact that I'm looking at a woman with a beard.
00:20:12Guest 2:So.
00:20:13Guest 2:All right.
00:20:13Marc:So here's what I was going to sort of talk about, because I want this.
00:20:18Marc:I want to talk about drugs and I want to talk about this thing that we talked about the other day, which is somehow or another.
00:20:23Marc:You made the list of the top 100 junkies on what is it?
00:20:26Marc:NNRB.
00:20:27Marc:What is that site anyways?
00:20:29Guest 2:uh nlrb i don't know nrbq uh i made the top 50 i'm not sure why i didn't apply uh an ex-junkie friend of mine from las vegas of all places who used to live in new york yeah to me and said hey man congratulations
00:20:45Guest 2:Just what you wanted to hear.
00:20:46Guest 2:And you know, sure.
00:20:48Guest 2:Was I busting my buttons about being on a list with Keith Richards and Hendrix?
00:20:53Guest 2:Yeah.
00:20:53Guest 2:But you know what made it for me?
00:20:54Marc:What?
00:20:55Guest 2:Spanky.
00:20:56Guest 2:Oh.
00:20:57Guest 2:From our gang?
00:20:57Guest 2:Yeah.
00:20:58Guest 2:Old school.
00:20:59Guest 2:Old school.
00:21:00Guest 2:Yeah.
00:21:00Guest 2:Because I think he was using then.
00:21:02Guest 2:Yeah.
00:21:02Guest 2:He was like five.
00:21:04Guest 2:Yeah.
00:21:04Guest 2:Strug out.
00:21:06Guest 2:He had to have a handle or shoot him up back then.
00:21:08Guest 2:He was crazy back then.
00:21:10Guest 2:It was the speed balls.
00:21:13Guest 2:Oh, God.
00:21:14Guest 2:But, you know, what I don't... I didn't mean to brag.
00:21:17Guest 2:I thought you would enjoy that.
00:21:18Guest 2:I didn't mean to cavell as we Yiddish people would say.
00:21:20Guest 2:No, no.
00:21:20Guest 2:I wanted cavell because... I thought it was funny.
00:21:22Marc:That's what I come from in my mind when I was a kid.
00:21:25Marc:Lenny Bruce.
00:21:26Marc:All of them.
00:21:27Marc:Keith Richards, William Burroughs, anybody who was fucked up.
00:21:29Marc:Charlie Parker.
00:21:30Marc:Anyone who was fucked up, I'm like, there's the doors to perception.
00:21:33Marc:That's the key.
00:21:33Marc:That's the answer.
00:21:34Marc:Leif Garrett.
00:21:34Marc:He was a big one.
00:21:35Marc:Sure.
00:21:36Marc:I guess the question is, and I had emails with some people about this, is the idea that drugs don't make the genius or that drugs don't do this, drugs don't do that.
00:21:46Marc:You don't need drugs.
00:21:48Marc:And I'm of the mind that some people need drugs.
00:21:51Guest 2:I clearly do because my creativity is just, you know, it's in the toilet.
00:21:56Guest 2:No, that's not true.
00:21:57Guest 2:Well, I work twice as hard to compensate.
00:21:59Guest 2:For me, what drugs did, if we can get unfunny for a second, like if I was trying to write or, well, that's all I ever did.
00:22:05Guest 2:You know, if I was trying to write or have sex or do anything, it's like you're on the high wire and...
00:22:11Guest 2:Drugs help you forget there's no net right and subsequent to getting off of them and not shooting up in my neck routinely It's just about being able to operate without thinking about that because when you do let's face it You don't work as well.
00:22:28Guest 2:You get kind of hamstrung
00:22:29Guest 2:They're looking down, like in the cartoons when they tootle off the cliff.
00:22:32Guest 2:As soon as they look down, they're fucked.
00:22:34Marc:Right, and I think that creative people and talented people, especially really creative, really talented people, are hypersensitive, and they have a propensity towards self-sabotage and insecurity, and that some people just need to be liberated for a period of time.
00:22:49Guest 2:I don't disagree.
00:22:50Guest 2:It never made me more creative, but it shut off the voices in my head that told me I wasn't.
00:22:55Marc:I argue with people because I don't, you know, some people say like, well, you should know how to play guitar before you do the heroin.
00:23:04Marc:Once the heroin starts.
00:23:05Guest 2:And I did play lousy guitar and it didn't sound any better on heroin.
00:23:08Guest 2:It wasn't one of those people where like, you know, Ornette Coleman, there are no wrong notes.
00:23:12Guest 2:There are a lot of wrong notes.
00:23:13Guest 2:Fuck Ornette Coleman.
00:23:15Guest 2:I love him, but he was wrong in my case.
00:23:16Guest 2:That's all I'm saying.
00:23:18Guest 2:But also in the beginning, when you haven't done anything and the insanity,
00:23:22Guest 2:Of living in New York City on like a, you know, an eighth floor walk up with the Puerto Rican Queens down the hall in the common bathroom because you don't even have your own toilet.
00:23:29Guest 2:And like, I'm going to be a novelist.
00:23:31Guest 2:It was insane.
00:23:32Guest 2:So, and I knew it was.
00:23:33Guest 2:So to block that out, I didn't have the, you know, Nietzschean faith in myself to just like, I am genius.
00:23:40Guest 2:I'm, you know, I had to.
00:23:41Marc:Yeah.
00:23:42Marc:You know, I don't think that really talented people generally have that.
00:23:46Marc:I think the Nietzschean faith is now fairly commonplace with mediocre talents.
00:23:49Marc:And all you need is Nietzschean faith to brand yourself properly.
00:23:53Guest 2:And a certain questionable lust after your own sister, in his case.
00:23:56Marc:Yeah.
00:23:57Marc:Well, he invented it.
00:23:57Guest 2:But who are we to judge?
00:23:58Marc:Well, he's the inventor.
00:23:59Marc:So he's the inventor of Nietzschean faith.
00:24:01Marc:He doesn't have to have it.
00:24:02Marc:Fair enough.
00:24:03Guest 2:Yeah.
00:24:04Guest 2:Yeah, got it.
00:24:04Marc:So when you started, you were in New York and you were writing for, didn't you, you wrote for Screw for a while or no?
00:24:10Guest 2:I didn't.
00:24:11Guest 2:Thank you for asking though.
00:24:12Guest 2:No, I did write for a number.
00:24:13Guest 2:I was probably working my way up to Screw.
00:24:15Guest 2:Yeah.
00:24:16Guest 2:I worked for everything from Club International to, I don't want to name names here.
00:24:22Guest 2:Right.
00:24:22Guest 2:I mean, I don't want something I'm trying to impress you.
00:24:24Guest 2:I worked for Beaver.
00:24:26Guest 2:Yeah.
00:24:26Guest 2:I did work for Beaver Club International, I think I said.
00:24:30Guest 2:Jugs with two Gs, I believe I might have dipped into.
00:24:34Guest 2:But at the same time, on the other side, I wrote the fake sex letters for Penthouse.
00:24:38Guest 2:My girlfriend is into scars while I fart.
00:24:41Guest 2:And then I would run around to the other side of the desk and answer the questions.
00:24:44Guest 2:Strangely enough, I was having no sex at the time while I wrote those but at the same time You know I was winning like a literary awards or like pushcart prize and I was publishing short stories writing for the village voice So I had this sort of half and half existence where I couldn't make any money off the quote-unquote good stuff So I basically apprenticed myself and learn how to write by just cranking out a lot of
00:25:08Guest 2:Copy and then I ended up living in the YMCA in Columbus.
00:25:11Guest 2:I want to get out in New York because I drug problems in Columbus, Ohio.
00:25:14Guest 2:Yes, because that's where Hustler was.
00:25:16Guest 2:Okay, I answered a want ad and I got a job as you know kind of like their humor editor and I was the guy when people sent in vaginally shaped rutabagas from North Dakota who wrote the copy and
00:25:30Guest 2:For the picture?
00:25:31Guest 2:They would show the picture, and I'd write the little joke.
00:25:34Guest 2:So I cut my teeth in the vegetable and fruit wing of literature.
00:25:39Guest 2:You wrote for Penthouse?
00:25:41Guest 2:Did I write for Penthouse?
00:25:43Guest 2:I wrote for Penthouse Forum.
00:25:45Marc:But you didn't write any of the Call Me Madam, the Xavier Hollander?
00:25:49Marc:No, I think Xavier Hollander wrote those.
00:25:51Guest 2:She did?
00:25:51Guest 2:Though, oddly enough, I did write a column called His Turn when I got to LA for Playgirl.
00:25:57Guest 2:my name was john andrews and uh when they would send me a check in my name and i would cash it at the bank they would all like check out my basket because they said oh i got a check from playgirl yeah and then turn away with vague disappointment maybe you were projecting uh or not projecting enough as the case may be
00:26:16Marc:Now, once you start working in that industry, because you did a lot of that.
00:26:20Marc:I did.
00:26:22Marc:One thing leads to another, and you just keep working in that industry?
00:26:26Guest 2:You could, but I was on a two-track system, so I was failing mightily.
00:26:31Guest 2:I had written six unpublished novels, but I'd get...
00:26:35Guest 2:I sort of wormed my way into legitimacy.
00:26:38Guest 2:I got a couple short stories in Playboy, which at the time published Nabokov, and I say defensively, not at all, and other places, and some literary magazines, for what little that's worth.
00:26:50Guest 2:Yeah.
00:26:51Guest 2:I just kept at it, and I did a ton of journalism.
00:26:54Guest 2:I ended up being like a feature journalism guy, running around writing all sorts of stuff.
00:26:59Guest 2:I was that guy whose beat was the offbeat, so I would have a column called Outer Limits in Los Angeles Magazine and Bad Liver in LA Reader.
00:27:14Guest 2:Really?
00:27:14Guest 2:That's a good one.
00:27:15Guest 2:I had another one called A Year to Live in some magazine called Bikini that I can't even remember.
00:27:19Guest 2:And what were the angles on these?
00:27:21Guest 2:Year to Live was a health column, oddly enough.
00:27:25Guest 2:But no, it was great.
00:27:27Guest 2:I patterned myself.
00:27:29Guest 2:I was always years too late for who I wanted to be because that was no longer in fashion.
00:27:34Marc:Mike, who are your heroes?
00:27:35Guest 2:Well, yeah, in terms of journalists like the Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe guys, I would go do a thing for Singles World in California Magazine, which used to be New West, which subsequently became something else.
00:27:47Guest 2:I would do like 10,000 words and I would go do like naked singles weekend at Elysium up in Topanga and go and like hang out and like get weird rebirthing experiences where I was handed off from like Zuftag homely woman to like mustached guy.
00:28:03Guest 2:Yeah.
00:28:03Guest 2:and go to like the potluck dinner, which is always like the table is just on a level with everybody's like schlong and pussy.
00:28:11Guest 2:So you're like, wow, what is that in my yam?
00:28:15Guest 2:That's not a yam.
00:28:17Guest 2:Sorry.
00:28:18Guest 2:And it was always like, and you'd have to do this dancing.
00:28:20Guest 2:I'll never forget this.
00:28:21Guest 2:You had to like disco and then they would lift the needle off the records, back records.
00:28:26Guest 2:That's how old it is.
00:28:27Guest 2:And I remember they were playing the theme song to fame, not the David Bowie fame, the uncool TV show.
00:28:32Guest 2:Yeah.
00:28:33Guest 2:Yeah.
00:28:33Guest 2:And you'd have to dance with the guy next to you.
00:28:35Guest 2:If it was a guy, you just had to dance.
00:28:38Guest 2:So you're naked, clasping some old Jew named Irv with a pot belly.
00:28:44Guest 2:But that's when drugs helped.
00:28:45Guest 2:I couldn't have done that without drugs.
00:28:47Guest 2:Are you kidding me?
00:28:49Guest 2:I'm having a hard time imagining it without drugs.
00:28:51Guest 2:I'm sweating like a pig just thinking about it.
00:28:53Guest 2:Now, what was those?
00:28:53Guest 2:Were those swinger parties?
00:28:55Guest 2:Or what were they?
00:28:55Guest 2:It was a single sort of nude encounter, new agey event.
00:29:00Guest 2:So we're talking like 77?
00:29:02Guest 2:It was like late 70s, early 80s.
00:29:04Guest 2:Yeah, I guess late 70s.
00:29:06Guest 2:Chronology is a little sketchy, but yeah, I was like a magazine king back then.
00:29:10Marc:And then the first, well, the funny thing, like Permanent Midnight, it's called a seminal narco memoir.
00:29:17Marc:By who?
00:29:18Marc:By people.
00:29:18Guest 2:By the people who say such ridiculous things, yeah.
00:29:20Marc:Well, that's what it's called, and I never thought of it that way.
00:29:23Marc:What exactly does seminal mean?
00:29:25Marc:I think seminal means it's an important one, that it's one of the big ones.
00:29:30Marc:There's only a few.
00:29:31Marc:There's really only a few.
00:29:32Guest 2:I don't know if, well, you know, that suppressed one by Mr. Rogers is unbelievable.
00:29:38Guest 2:Was he a dope fiend?
00:29:39Guest 2:Oh, man, when he got off the stuff, I mean, he was soaking through his cardigans.
00:29:43Guest 2:It was insane.
00:29:44Guest 2:But, you know, he hung in, but it never got published.
00:29:48Marc:But you've heard of it.
00:29:49Marc:You know it's out there.
00:29:50Marc:Yeah.
00:29:50Marc:What about all those novels you wrote that you finished?
00:29:53Marc:Are they gone?
00:29:53Marc:Did you lose them?
00:29:54Marc:What about them, huh?
00:29:55Marc:No, but I mean, did you lose them?
00:29:56Marc:Did you have manuscripts that you've lost?
00:29:58Marc:Because that would drive me nuts.
00:30:01Guest 2:You know, I've just had to make... I've lost everything so many times.
00:30:05Guest 2:This was pre-computer.
00:30:07Marc:Yeah.
00:30:07Guest 2:And I certainly never got it together to find them and scan them.
00:30:11Guest 2:But the first chapters of a couple appeared in Playboy.
00:30:14Guest 2:One of them, oddly enough...
00:30:17Guest 2:showed up in this massively non-selling collection of short stories that I had come out a couple years ago.
00:30:22Guest 2:And some kid, some guy, uh, Justin Bartha, who was in like the hangover.
00:30:26Guest 2:Right.
00:30:27Guest 2:Nice guy.
00:30:28Guest 2:Uh, I wrote it.
00:30:29Guest 2:One of the stories was called Finnegan's Waikiki.
00:30:31Guest 2:And he's like, I got to do this as a movie.
00:30:32Guest 2:So, you know, he's playing around.
00:30:34Guest 2:That's who the hell knows.
00:30:35Guest 3:Right.
00:30:35Guest 2:But the novels themselves, to answer your question, uh,
00:30:40Guest 2:Who knows?
00:30:40Guest 2:Gone.
00:30:41Marc:Gone, gone, gone.
00:30:42Marc:I think my favorite book that you wrote, honestly, is I Fatty.
00:30:46Guest 2:Thank you.
00:30:47Guest 2:Thank you so much.
00:30:48Marc:And we were working together when you wrote the new book, and I know it almost killed you.
00:30:54Guest 2:Which had nothing to do with the quality of the prose, I might add.
00:30:57Marc:No, I mean, you literally almost gave your life for the book, and it was very commendable.
00:31:02Marc:It was noble.
00:31:03Guest 2:It was noble for the...
00:31:04Guest 2:That was a 3602 people who actually shelled out for it.
00:31:08Marc:That's not nothing.
00:31:09Guest 2:No, it's not And now after after you appear here on what the fuck No, we're gonna be like I got to get that book and we're gonna read some of it in a second It was kind of a cheat too because I think a lot of them who bought it online actually thought they were getting painkillers And then my book showed up so it was kind of like a marketing ploy on my part Maybe you should have sent some with the book if I had that kind of control Yeah
00:31:30Marc:But iFatty is great because a lot of people who listen to this are comedy people.
00:31:36Marc:And I think there's a lot of people that are comedy fans now that their history, their sense of comedy sort of starts at Mr. Show with Dave and Bob.
00:31:44Marc:It literally starts in the 90s.
00:31:45Marc:Which is a great place to start.
00:31:47Marc:It is a great place to start.
00:31:48Marc:But Dave and Bob came from Monty Python and there's a whole history of that.
00:31:54Marc:But I don't think anybody really thinks that...
00:31:57Guest 2:You know someone like fatty Arbuckle who few people know who it was the biggest star of comedy in Hollywood Correct at that time one of them he as there was no Hollywood before those guys they were inventing Hollywood He was the first guy to get a million a picture He was the first guy to have creative control over his own comedy and to write his own scripts
00:32:16Guest 2:William Scripps before that.
00:32:18Marc:And he was the guy that only people, if people who do know any of the morbid history of Hollywood, he's the guy that raped the girl with the champagne bottle.
00:32:25Marc:Yeah, he's the Coke bottle.
00:32:25Guest 2:Coke bottle.
00:32:26Guest 2:Yeah, which wasn't true.
00:32:27Marc:He got set up.
00:32:28Marc:And the thing that's great about that book is it's done in a first-person sort of narrative.
00:32:34Marc:And you must have researched the fuck out of that.
00:32:36Marc:I did.
00:32:37Marc:Yeah.
00:32:37Marc:And you get a history of early Hollywood and the politics of early Hollywood and the sort of firsthand experience of your sense of what a junkie fat clown would be.
00:32:48Marc:Yeah.
00:32:49Marc:And that's a, you know, that that original title, by the way, junkie fat clown.
00:32:54Marc:Yeah.
00:32:54Guest 2:But the publisher was like, no, no, they didn't want anything.
00:32:57Guest 2:We'll go with I, Fatty.
00:32:58Guest 2:Yeah, Junkie Fat Clown.
00:32:59Guest 2:Pretty much every novel I've written has been originally called Junkie Fat Clown.
00:33:02Marc:And having known you for a few years and knowing the plight that we have as comics who seem to, or comic voices, that seem to plunge into the darker depths of what it is to be alive and the pain and excitement of being bleak, as I've been called.
00:33:18Guest 2:Made darker and bleaker by the fact that we are choosing to take that plunge and try to work in that...
00:33:25Guest 2:field as voices which are not necessarily easily embraced by the masses who love Dane Cook.
00:33:32Guest 2:God bless him.
00:33:33Marc:Dane Cook, even that love, even talents that are more acceptable to some of the listeners of this podcast.
00:33:42Marc:I don't know.
00:33:42Marc:I don't understand what it is, but I can't do it any other way.
00:33:46Marc:I don't have the experience to where I can't lighten it up that well.
00:33:50Marc:I can't, you know, I can't change myself.
00:33:51Guest 2:You and I are different.
00:33:54Guest 2:That's why I have the mainstream hugeness that you can but dream of.
00:33:59Guest 2:I just remember, man.
00:34:00Guest 2:When I write stuff, they just say more, more, more.
00:34:03Marc:Yeah, this is great.
00:34:04Marc:It's like ice cream.
00:34:05Marc:Oh, it's great.
00:34:06Marc:Can I have a second, please?
00:34:09Marc:When we turned in that first treatment for the script we did for HBO.
00:34:11Guest 2:Oh, boy, howdy.
00:34:13Marc:The kudos.
00:34:13Marc:but oh but the shock on their face because it was this monster of a treatment and we'd we'd pitch this fairly simple show and then they're they're like you know uh you you we we had written in a character that was a transvestite hooker that you know you wanted to make sure that we saw his huge cock underneath the uh the tights did i really want to say huge cock are you sure you're not just projecting there
00:34:35Marc:well no it wasn't a matter of huge but it was just what is for you the description and then i made up the idea that he was a trans uh transsexual that used to be a marine right that was a great idea i i like that idea but boy hbo was like i don't know this uh this landscape is a little much and you know what kills me what their series next year they have that marine tranny no for 2011 get out no i'm just kidding oh god that would kill me
00:35:00Guest 2:I love that.
00:35:00Guest 2:It will kill you because I guarantee it will fucking happen.
00:35:03Guest 2:It'll show up somewhere.
00:35:04Guest 2:But see, that's my fault for not warning you that the reaction I get is never just rejection.
00:35:09Guest 2:It is literally spray the couch cushions with raid after we leave.
00:35:15Marc:Oh, I tell you, I'm going to have to share this with the people that listen to this, because for some reason, because of permanent midnight, you still get associated with this.
00:35:23Marc:You know, you're the junkie guy who wrote for Alf.
00:35:26Guest 2:No, it's not even that.
00:35:27Guest 2:I'm the junkie guy who invented and created ALF.
00:35:30Guest 2:That's better in a way, but it's not true.
00:35:32Guest 2:It is, but a little sadder considering that if I were that guy, I would own like a string of vacation hotels in Rio.
00:35:38Guest 2:How long did you actually write for Al?
00:35:40Guest 2:I think I wrote about two.
00:35:42Guest 2:I was never on staff.
00:35:44Guest 2:I got the gig because I slept my way to the middle, married a woman who needed a green card.
00:35:49Guest 2:Nice lady.
00:35:49Marc:Yeah.
00:35:50Guest 2:We ended up getting married and having a kid.
00:35:51Guest 2:Yeah.
00:35:52Guest 2:Even lived together once.
00:35:53Marc:Yeah.
00:35:53Guest 2:And she showed some short stories to the guy who ran, at that time, a show called You Again with Jack Klugman.
00:36:00Guest 2:Before ALF.
00:36:01Guest 2:Oh, I don't remember.
00:36:02Guest 2:And he hired me on the basis of those short stories.
00:36:04Guest 2:Long story short, well, it's already long, can't be short now.
00:36:07Guest 2:It's okay.
00:36:07Guest 2:But I ended up writing a couple ALFs.
00:36:10Guest 2:And that was it?
00:36:11Marc:That was it.
00:36:11Marc:And the book has that in it?
00:36:14Guest 2:Well, the book was originally, I don't know if I've ever told this story, but I wasn't familiar with computers.
00:36:19Guest 2:So when I turned the book in, it was a whopping 500 manuscript pages, but it wasn't double spaced, it was one and a half spaced.
00:36:26Guest 2:So it was basically like a 900 page book.
00:36:28Guest 2:Permanent Midnight.
00:36:29Guest 2:Yeah, of which they cut out everything that wasn't sort of yuppie adjacent.
00:36:33Guest 2:So it looks like yuppie gone bad.
00:36:34Guest 2:Right.
00:36:35Guest 2:They didn't have the living in MacArthur Park.
00:36:37Guest 2:They didn't have all that crap.
00:36:38Guest 2:They didn't have the real junkie stuff.
00:36:39Guest 2:Well, or the quota.
00:36:41Guest 2:They didn't have the stuff that wasn't sort of Hollywood adjacent, which whatever.
00:36:43Marc:Right.
00:36:45Marc:They wanted to be a show business story that could happen to anybody in some way.
00:36:48Guest 2:They wanted sort of a you'll never have lunch again in this town-ish kind of thing, which it clearly wasn't.
00:36:54Guest 2:Anyway, so that was featured.
00:36:56Guest 2:And then the movie came out, because most people,
00:36:58Guest 2:Probably haven't even read the book.
00:37:00Guest 2:They've just seen the movie.
00:37:00Guest 2:And there was Mr. Chompers was like a big thing.
00:37:02Guest 2:And everybody thought Alf.
00:37:04Guest 2:And that was it.
00:37:05Guest 2:Suddenly it's this apocryphal story that I am Alf.
00:37:08Guest 2:And you had a great part in that movie.
00:37:12Marc:You were the doctor.
00:37:13Guest 2:I played myself telling me that I would never get clean.
00:37:15Guest 2:Yeah.
00:37:16Marc:The moment that I want to share with people is that we, Jerry and I, went down to Long Beach to... If you don't mind.
00:37:24Marc:No, please.
00:37:24Marc:Only because I know you.
00:37:27Marc:It wasn't that I found the moment funny, but I just... It was pretty funny.
00:37:31Marc:We go to Long Beach because Jerry's going to read from the collection of stories that came out.
00:37:36Marc:What was that?
00:37:36Marc:What was that called?
00:37:37Guest 2:Originally called Uncool, Changed to Last Minute for Reasons I Still Regret, to...
00:37:42Guest 2:Love Without.
00:37:43Guest 2:Love Without?
00:37:43Marc:Yes.
00:37:44Marc:All right.
00:37:44Marc:So that's the book.
00:37:45Marc:And he's got a following, obviously.
00:37:47Marc:There's people there waiting to see Jerry.
00:37:49Marc:Yeah.
00:37:50Marc:You know, a few freaks.
00:37:51Guest 2:Some of them are actually upright.
00:37:52Guest 2:Yeah.
00:37:53Marc:Some of them are.
00:37:53Marc:You have some good fans.
00:37:54Marc:I got some droolers, but I got some lovely people.
00:37:57Marc:And we walk in, and the woman who runs the Long Beach Barnes and Nobles, or I think it was.
00:38:02Marc:Was it a Barnes and Noble, I think?
00:38:03Marc:I don't know.
00:38:04Marc:Yeah, she's very excited that Jerry's there, and she's like, oh, we're so thrilled that she came down, and it's daytime.
00:38:10Guest 2:Yeah, it's daytime.
00:38:12Guest 2:That's all you need to know.
00:38:13Guest 2:It was daytime.
00:38:14Guest 2:That's right.
00:38:16Marc:And we walk in, and we're walking through the store, and she's like, we've got to show you this.
00:38:19Marc:One of our young employees set up this display, and she's very excited about it.
00:38:25Marc:And we're walking back to the back of the store, and there's the display.
00:38:28Marc:It's all of Jerry's books.
00:38:30Marc:beneath an entire shelf of all the seasons of ALF on DVD.
00:38:35Marc:With some puppets and some stuffed animals.
00:38:38Marc:And then when I looked at it, I knew you well enough to know, like, oh, my God, this couldn't be a worst thing to happen in that moment.
00:38:47Marc:And you literally said, oh, that's terrific.
00:38:49Marc:It's good, because someone might actually mistake it as literature if you hadn't done that.
00:38:53Marc:Yeah, thank you.
00:38:54Marc:And it sort of flew by her.
00:38:56Guest 2:Went by her, but I was talking to you.
00:38:58Guest 2:somebody might confuse me with literature thank you for doing that yeah but you know it's a small cross to bear got me in the game yeah no I I know and a lot of people don't know that you do do you talk with any sort of pride about your TV work
00:39:13Marc:Because I tend to like, there's a couple episodes of that show that you used to like.
00:39:18Marc:CSI?
00:39:18Marc:Yeah.
00:39:19Marc:No, I'm very, I love the CSI stuff.
00:39:21Marc:I mean, the one with the, what was the one with the baby guy called?
00:39:24Guest 2:King Baby.
00:39:25Guest 2:King Baby.
00:39:26Guest 2:With the LSD-laced enema while he's in a diaper.
00:39:29Guest 2:Yeah.
00:39:30Guest 2:That was the crime.
00:39:31Guest 2:And you know what?
00:39:33Guest 2:CBS, family hour, nine o'clock Thursday night, I got away with more fucked up shit.
00:39:39Guest 2:I really love that.
00:39:41Guest 2:But idiot that I am, egotist, delusional, wannabe artist, I'm a novelist, I never took a staff job on that show.
00:39:48Guest 2:If I had, I would never have to work again.
00:39:50Guest 2:But I decided to quit that and write iFatty.
00:39:54Guest 2:iFatty's a great book.
00:39:55Guest 2:It's great, but come on now.
00:39:56Guest 2:I know what you're saying.
00:39:57Marc:You know what I mean.
00:39:57Marc:But the King Baby thing, like, does that... I mean, I think I've asked you this before because I am not...
00:40:04Marc:I wish I was more perverse in my sexual appetites.
00:40:07Marc:I'm sort of old school.
00:40:10Marc:I just want to connect on as deep a level as possible.
00:40:13Marc:Toys and things and costumes, I just don't do that.
00:40:17Guest 2:Well, perversion isn't necessarily about toys and costumes.
00:40:19Guest 2:That's the square end of things, I think.
00:40:21Marc:Okay.
00:40:22Marc:So what would you define as?
00:40:23Guest 2:I think it's just more of you have this weird bent in your head.
00:40:26Marc:Right, like I need a toe in my ass.
00:40:28Guest 2:Okay, yeah, I'm there enough because remember we started talking with judgment.
00:40:33Guest 2:I don't judge I know you don't judge but I noticed you were squirming whose toe was that?
00:40:36Marc:I don't know but I didn't realize it would remain there but uh at least they trimmed her nail but that whole world of Baby infantilization or an air that is a legitimate that's legitimate I I first noticed it while I was writing for British Esquire.
00:40:52Guest 2:I did a story on Pandora's box
00:40:55Guest 2:Is that a woman?
00:40:56Guest 2:No, it is an S&M parlor of sorts in New York City.
00:41:04Guest 2:And that documentary filmmaker whose name escapes me, but he did one on... Is it the guy that did the thing on Nirvana too?
00:41:12Guest 2:That guy, Nick... Yeah, Nick Broomfield?
00:41:14Guest 2:Yeah, that's it.
00:41:15Guest 2:Nick Broomfield.
00:41:16Guest 2:It was by Nick Broomfield in relation to that.
00:41:18Guest 2:I went to that place and they had a whole playroom
00:41:22Guest 2:giant, giant play pens.
00:41:27Guest 2:So it was literally a... It's a real thing.
00:41:28Guest 2:A nursery for grownups.
00:41:30Guest 2:Well put, yes.
00:41:32Guest 2:And I'm not going to name the names because we don't want you to get sued, but they told me who was into this, some deceased, some alive.
00:41:38Guest 2:And it's pretty amazing.
00:41:40Marc:And what is required when you're into this?
00:41:43Guest 2:You love to suckle.
00:41:44Marc:Okay.
00:41:45Marc:For one thing.
00:41:45Marc:But do you shit your pants?
00:41:46Marc:Do you pee in your diaper?
00:41:48Marc:Do you have to be changed?
00:41:49Marc:Me personally?
00:41:50Guest 2:Okay.
00:41:52Guest 2:I've never partaken.
00:41:53Guest 2:Okay, all right.
00:41:53Guest 2:But I guess you do.
00:41:55Guest 2:I guess you like make a mess and then mommy cleans you.
00:42:00Guest 2:You poop and pee and gaga and goo goo and rattle and crawl around and then mommy lets you suck her tit.
00:42:07Guest 2:But you know, that being said, I'm going to bust a name here and I don't think he was an infantilist but George Bernard Shaw drank human breast milk every day of his life because colostrum is considered one of the great life-sustaining, age-defying
00:42:20Guest 2:But that's different, right?
00:42:22Guest 2:Well, I don't know how he, I don't know what the engine of delivery was.
00:42:25Guest 2:I don't know if he got it from like a milkmaiden every morning outside his house.
00:42:30Guest 2:But what these women did who worked in his place is they would like stay pregnant or have a baby.
00:42:35Guest 2:And then just, I guess, deny the baby the milk and go feed like the people who worked at Pandora's box.
00:42:40Guest 2:I don't know.
00:42:40Guest 2:I'm not going to name that place specifically, but I know other places.
00:42:43Guest 2:That's how they would actually squirt.
00:42:45Marc:This is probably an immigrant workers job.
00:42:48Marc:I don't know that.
00:42:49Marc:I know you, Bill O'Reilly.
00:42:50Marc:I don't know if it's an immigrant workers.
00:42:52Guest 2:I'm just saying that like they I wasn't saying it in a proactive way.
00:42:56Guest 2:I mean you think there's legions of Mexicans who come over the border and like squirt and white guys faces Maybe you're right.
00:43:01Marc:I mean it's possible.
00:43:02Marc:I mean I wasn't saying it.
00:43:04Marc:I don't know I wasn't saying it in a negative.
00:43:05Guest 2:I wasn't judgmental I I wouldn't think it was I mean unless I mean it could be an immigrants job They were great-looking immigrants because I mean there is a certain level of attraction I think you know now it's got to be women with nice tits who have can milk not for me But I think if you work as a sex worker
00:43:20Guest 2:Although who knows, you know, my grandfather used to say every kettle has a lid.
00:43:24Guest 2:Yeah applies to everything.
00:43:29Guest 2:So I just want to work it in there.
00:43:30Marc:It's a good one.
00:43:31Marc:All right.
00:43:32Marc:So let's let's get into painkillers now because like I was working with you during this was during the writer's strike.
00:43:38Marc:We couldn't write our script and I would call you and you'd be like, I haven't slept in four days.
00:43:43Marc:I don't know if I'm going to make it through this book.
00:43:45Marc:What a drama queen.
00:43:46Guest 2:It was tough because I was immersing myself in some very bleak, weird material.
00:43:51Guest 2:And unlike other subjects, it's not just about getting the information, being interesting or being funny.
00:43:59Guest 2:You have the mildly additional pressure of six million dead, not wanting to look exploitative.
00:44:07Guest 2:I didn't want to be springtime for Hitler guy.
00:44:09Guest 2:I wanted to really get it out there in a way...
00:44:13Guest 2:That just showed the absurdity and the connection between America and the fact that Rockefeller and others were financing Mengele's experiments.
00:44:20Guest 2:So it set up the story of the book.
00:44:24Guest 2:Basically, the setup that I had was Joseph Mengele is alive at 97, living in Reseda, and he's really pissed about it.
00:44:31Guest 2:Because he's not getting the honor that he thinks he deserves, that guys like...
00:44:35Guest 2:Von Braun got for like going to the moon and becoming Kennedy's friend because after the war Eugenics people were the scientists who worked in race quote-unquote science like Mengele were tossed aside Thrown away by an operation paperclip America brought all the rocket scientists and engineers to America because suddenly Russia was our enemy and we needed rockets, right?
00:45:00Guest 2:So that's the backstory and in this
00:45:03Guest 2:Mengele is living at San Quentin being paid to do experiments for big pharma and this guy detective named Manny is hired to go and see if it's really him and what the hell is going on that's awesome because there's politics there's everything in there yeah I've actually been spending days and days and days of Larry Charles working on trying to come up with a movie for it do you have a section that you read publicly
00:45:27Guest 2:As opposed to those I do only in private for a select few.
00:45:30Guest 2:The private Jerry Sessions.
00:45:32Guest 2:The setup is they're looking for Mengele, who at one point was in Reseda, and he apparently might have had sexual relations with a born-again hooker whose name was Kathy.
00:45:46Guest 2:So Manny and his ex-wife, who was managing...
00:45:49Guest 2:for a while yeah the uh stable of evangelical born-again sex workers have to take this tweaky up for six days methadrine addicted born-again sex worker named kathy put her in their car and drive to the place where she thinks she remembers mangala lives when they did it when she did a trick there
00:46:14Guest 2:Does that make any sense?
00:46:15Marc:It makes a lot of sense.
00:46:16Marc:That's the setup.
00:46:17Marc:That is a celebration of the Jerry Stahl imagination.
00:46:21Guest 2:And the human spirit.
00:46:22Marc:Yeah, I think so.
00:46:23Guest 2:So Kathy is the born-again hooker.
00:46:26Guest 2:Manny is the guy.
00:46:27Guest 2:The detective.
00:46:29Guest 2:Manny is the detective guy slash protagonist.
00:46:32Guest 2:And his wife is named Tina.
00:46:35Guest 2:Tina sat sideways in her Prius, holding hands with Kathy, who vibrated in the back seat.
00:46:40Guest 2:I drove aimlessly down Van Nuys Boulevard while my ex tried her patented tactic of compassion and slaps to try to get the girl talking.
00:46:48Guest 2:She was still trying after half an hour.
00:46:50Guest 2:Remember the German doctor, honey?
00:46:52Guest 2:Slap.
00:46:53Guest 2:Kathy?
00:46:54Guest 2:Smack.
00:46:55Guest 2:Sweetheart, you really need to pay attention.
00:46:57Guest 2:This is, by the way, the only voice I do.
00:46:59Guest 2:Okay.
00:46:59Guest 2:So all characters will sound that vaguely high, genderless voice.
00:47:03Guest 2:Fuck, I interrupted.
00:47:04Guest 2:It's already six o'clock.
00:47:05Guest 2:Manny, just drive.
00:47:07Guest 2:Yeah, Manny Pants, just drive.
00:47:09Guest 2:Finally inspired to speak, Kathy lapsed into a bad Marilyn.
00:47:12Guest 2:The hair doctor, she giggled.
00:47:15Guest 2:Tina laughed along with her.
00:47:16Guest 2:You mean he asked you to call him hair doctor?
00:47:19Guest 2:Uh-huh.
00:47:20Guest 2:He's the hair doctor.
00:47:22Guest 2:What color was his hair?
00:47:23Guest 2:I dyed it blonde.
00:47:25Guest 2:He lived close, right?
00:47:26Guest 2:Reseda, you remember the address?
00:47:29Guest 2:On Seaview, I remember, I think.
00:47:31Guest 2:Suddenly, Kathy screamed, her voice charged with some kind of divine passion.
00:47:36Guest 2:My vagina is a gift from Jesus.
00:47:39Guest 2:I nearly swerved into a bus.
00:47:41Guest 2:It's one of the reverend's slogans, Tina said.
00:47:43Guest 2:The reverends are pimp.
00:47:45Guest 2:Kathy had begun to sway in the back seat like a human metronome.
00:47:49Guest 2:The swaying got faster and faster until Tina reached out of the seat and pulled out a short dog of old Mr. Boston, cherry brandy.
00:47:57Guest 2:I keep it for cold, she said, before grabbing Kathy's face and pouring some down her throat.
00:48:02Guest 2:Yum, the girl mumbled, just south of a slur.
00:48:06Guest 2:Then she blurted.
00:48:07Guest 2:I took the virginity pledge four years ago after Laura Bush came to our high school and opened her white first lady Bible to 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, 2, 4.
00:48:18Guest 2:Yea, though I walk through the condo of meth.
00:48:21Guest 2:God wants you to be holy, so he shall keep thy female chalice free of sin and foulness.
00:48:27Guest 2:That's where I remember the hair doctor's address, because it was 4, 3, 2, 4.
00:48:31Guest 2:It made sense to her, which was all that mattered.
00:48:36Marc:My guest has been Jerry Stahl here in the garage.
00:48:39Marc:I hope that if you're on your treadmill or perhaps in your car, that you have a little mental food, a little brain food to go into work with or to go into the locker room with.
00:48:51Marc:Either way, we know what your head is filled with.
00:48:53Marc:Thanks a lot for being here, Jerry.
00:48:55Marc:It's been an honor.
00:48:56Marc:Thank you.
00:48:59Marc:Thank you.
00:49:00Marc:Jerry Stahl's book, Painkillers, is available on Amazon.
00:49:04Marc:What's Left of the Hard Covers is available on Amazon.
00:49:08Marc:This is an underappreciated book, my friends.
00:49:10Marc:I know what it took him to write it.
00:49:12Marc:So check it out.
00:49:21Marc:Well, the big what-the-fuck story that I have for my personal life over the last couple of weeks, and I'm going to share it with you.
00:49:31Marc:I'm going to be candid.
00:49:32Marc:Look, I watch porn occasionally, okay?
00:49:35Marc:I'm not a porn addict, I don't think.
00:49:38Marc:I don't watch it for hours.
00:49:40Marc:I watch it sometimes.
00:49:41Marc:I don't feel good about it.
00:49:44Marc:I'm not proud of it.
00:49:45Marc:I...
00:49:46Marc:I can't even explain.
00:49:48Marc:I can't make any excuses.
00:49:50Marc:There's just part of me.
00:49:51Marc:I'm a pretty good guy.
00:49:52Marc:I'm a sensitive, neurotic, slightly angry man.
00:49:56Marc:But occasionally there's something inside of me that requires that I spend maybe 15 to a half an hour watching strangers have sex for my entertainment.
00:50:05Marc:I'm not promoting it.
00:50:06Marc:I think porn is a destructive force in our culture.
00:50:09Marc:It's much too easy to get.
00:50:11Marc:It really is.
00:50:12Marc:I mean, when I was a kid, if you I don't know, I don't even understand what kids were 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, who know how to operate their computers better than their parents.
00:50:23Marc:I mean, they must be getting a head full of this porn.
00:50:26Marc:And my head would have exploded.
00:50:28Marc:I mean, in order to get porn when I was a kid, you either had to know a kid who had a creepy older brother who had a collection or a dad stash out in the garage or you had to find a page of porn under an overpass.
00:50:39Marc:And then you ended up going back there like every two days to see if the rest of the magazine appeared because it didn't quite make sense with just the information you had.
00:50:46Marc:And you weren't sure where that stuff was coming out of or how that thing was going in there.
00:50:50Marc:And I just remember it blowing my mind, blowing my mind, not necessarily a good way.
00:50:57Marc:Well, here's my it was sort of a what the fuck moment, but it was a complex moment.
00:51:02Marc:I was in my apartment in New York.
00:51:04Marc:Now, because I'm alone, I generally have several different machines operating all at once.
00:51:08Marc:I have a NPR blaring in the kitchen.
00:51:10Marc:I generally have the TV on.
00:51:12Marc:I've got the computer on and I'm not really multitasking.
00:51:15Marc:I just like feeling like I have friends in the apartment.
00:51:18Marc:So I'm sitting on my couch and I'm watching the Rachel Maddow show because I love Rachel Maddow.
00:51:23Marc:I think she's great.
00:51:24Marc:I think she is the only lefty pundit.
00:51:27Marc:I don't even know if you'd call her a pundit.
00:51:29Marc:I think she is a broadcaster in the purest sense of the word.
00:51:32Marc:She makes things understandable that most people don't understand.
00:51:37Marc:And it's not just preaching to the choir either.
00:51:39Marc:She finds information.
00:51:40Marc:She presents it to you.
00:51:42Marc:And you understand things that are denser than you might even be interested in.
00:51:46Marc:Anyways, love her.
00:51:47Marc:Love Rachel.
00:51:48Marc:Love everything she represents.
00:51:49Marc:So I'm watching Rachel.
00:51:51Marc:I'm learning.
00:51:52Marc:I'm getting educated.
00:51:53Marc:I'm proud of her because I knew her.
00:51:55Marc:I worked with her.
00:51:56Marc:And then I go over to my desk, check my email.
00:51:59Marc:So I'm checking my email.
00:52:01Marc:I got Rachel on the TV, NPR in the other room, a lot of things going on.
00:52:04Marc:And somehow or another, I found myself on a porn site.
00:52:09Marc:So now I got the porn going, I'm watching the porn and I got Rachel on the TV and it doesn't feel right.
00:52:14Marc:It's it, I feel dirty about it.
00:52:17Marc:Cause I, I mean, Rachel, Rachel is like the, the, she is the standard.
00:52:23Marc:She is a progressive, uh,
00:52:25Marc:out brilliant woman in a big job doing a great job she is an example to women so I got Rachel on the TV and I've got you know some woman blowing a guy on my screen and I feel guilty and I'm ashamed and I didn't know what to do so what I decided to do was what I had to do which was you know turn Rachel off
00:52:53Marc:finish what i had to do with the woman who is not an example of what all women should be and uh and then feel bad about myself and i and i finished what i had to do and i sat down on my couch and i wanted to turn rachel back on so i could apologize to her but it was too late chris matthews was on and that was a horrendous post self-coital experience to have
00:53:15Marc:Chris Matthews blathering at me where I really wanted to make an amends with Rachel for what I had done against the sisterhood by being a man who does not stop himself when it comes to porn, even though it's horrendous.
00:53:42Marc:Well, you asked, folks, and now you get.
00:53:44Marc:Unfortunately, my friends, it's that time of the week when we take a moment at this time of sorrow to reflect in our weekly remembrance.
00:53:53Marc:Here now, WTF's grief correspondent, Mort Mortensen.
00:54:02Guest 1:Oh, jeez.
00:54:04Guest 1:Are you okay there, buddy?
00:54:07Guest 1:Oh, it's just depressing here.
00:54:08Guest 1:A lot of rain.
00:54:09Guest 1:Yeah.
00:54:10Guest 1:A lot of raining death.
00:54:11Guest 1:Yeah.
00:54:12Guest 1:A lot of dead people.
00:54:13Guest 1:People dying left and right.
00:54:14Guest 1:It happens every day.
00:54:16Guest 1:Yeah.
00:54:16Guest 1:You have a tough job.
00:54:17Guest 1:But, you know, I got to do it.
00:54:19Marc:Yeah.
00:54:20Marc:What do you got?
00:54:20Guest 1:I got Gerard Damiano, director of the film Deep Throat.
00:54:26Guest 1:Gerard Damiano, director of the film Deep Throat, is now deep-sixed.
00:54:32Guest 1:Word of his death came as a shock to loved ones who found the news hard to swallow.
00:54:36Guest 1:You could say they were all choked up.
00:54:41Guest 1:The director suffered a stroke in September, 34 years after Linda Loveless suffered hundreds of strokes in her windpipe.
00:54:50Guest 1:Oh, no.
00:54:51Guest 1:Yeah.
00:54:51Guest 1:That's horrible.
00:54:53Guest 1:It's a sad story.
00:54:54Guest 1:Very sad.
00:54:54Guest 1:Yeah.
00:54:56Guest 1:It goes on.
00:54:56Guest 1:Oh, yeah.
00:54:57Guest 1:Friends recalled how on a typical shoot, the playful director loved gags.
00:55:04Guest 1:Oh, no.
00:55:04Guest 1:Gags.
00:55:05Marc:Yeah, forget it.
00:55:06Guest 1:Yeah.
00:55:08Guest 1:There's a lot more.
00:55:09Marc:Yeah, let's do it.
00:55:11Guest 1:Off the set, he liked to take life by the balls and jam it into your mouth.
00:55:17Guest 1:Released in 1972, Deep Throat was the first porn picture to be shown in cinemas since Ben-Hur.
00:55:26Guest 1:You all right?
00:55:27Guest 1:Yeah.
00:55:28Guest 1:There's a lot of mold in your garage.
00:55:32Marc:Yeah, yeah, there it is.
00:55:33Marc:Yeah, I apologize.
00:55:35Guest 1:The film created such a sensation that it was followed up with deep butt and the less successful deep hand.
00:55:42Guest 1:I missed that one.
00:55:43Guest 1:Yeah, conceptually off on that one.
00:55:49Guest 1:Damiano's three marriages ended in divorce, but not before each wife asked, what do you mean you don't work at GM?
00:55:57Guest 1:The deceased asked that his remains be swallowed without any bullshit whining from you.
00:56:01Guest 1:Okay, bitch?
00:56:05Marc:Oh, yeah.
00:56:06Marc:You need a Kleenex?
00:56:06Guest 1:Yeah, do you have any here?
00:56:08Guest 1:Yeah, there's a box right next to you.
00:56:09Guest 1:Oh, thanks.
00:56:09Guest 1:Yeah.
00:56:12Guest 1:God.
00:56:16Guest 1:You still have cats, don't you?
00:56:18Guest 1:Yeah, I do.
00:56:19Guest 1:I'm sorry about that.
00:56:19Guest 1:I do have a few cats.
00:56:23Guest 1:Second one here.
00:56:24Guest 1:Susan Atkins, born-again Christian.
00:56:27Marc:Oh, yeah.
00:56:28Marc:That's how you're going to call it.
00:56:30Guest 1:That's my angle.
00:56:31Guest 1:Yeah.
00:56:32Guest 1:Susan Atkins, whose fame stems mainly from the fact that she's not nearly as cute as Squeaky Fromm, is now dead.
00:56:41Guest 1:Atkins lived a quiet, middle-class existence during her early years, singing in her church choir and helping out with numerous charity stabbings.
00:56:50Guest 1:After running away from home, the teenage Atkins was fortunate enough to meet up with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who asked her to live with him at Spahn Ranch.
00:57:00Guest 1:It was there that Jesus taught her the finer points of robbery, murder, and pitching songs to music executives.
00:57:07Marc:It's a difficult business to crack into.
00:57:09Guest 1:I hate the music industry, don't you?
00:57:10Marc:It would have been a different world if only Charlie Manson had been signed to that deal.
00:57:15Marc:I'm sorry to interrupt.
00:57:15Guest 1:That's okay.
00:57:17Guest 1:I like that, what you just said.
00:57:18Guest 1:It was very touching.
00:57:21Guest 1:You all right?
00:57:24Guest 1:Yeah.
00:57:24Guest 1:Atkins bragged that at the crime scene, she tasted the blood of Sharon Tate.
00:57:28Guest 1:But Tex Watson secretly replaced the blood of Tate with that of coffee heiress Abigail Folger.
00:57:34Guest 1:And believe you me, she could tell the difference.
00:57:38Guest 1:Folgers, Christmas.
00:57:40Marc:Yeah, I get it.
00:57:41Marc:That's an oldie but goodie.
00:57:44Guest 1:Brings back like 20 years ago.
00:57:46Guest 1:Relatives and loved ones can console themselves with the thought that Susan's now up in heaven giving gonorrhea to Brian Wilson.
00:57:53Marc:Wait a minute, Brian Wilson's still alive.
00:57:57Marc:Dennis Wilson.
00:57:57Guest 1:Dennis Wilson.
00:58:01Guest 1:Oh, God, he's alive, thank God.
00:58:07Guest 1:Man, what a relief.
00:58:08Marc:Yeah, yeah, woo, boy.
00:58:10Marc:Imagine, I just relieved some of your grief.
00:58:12Guest 1:Oh, yes.
00:58:13Guest 1:Anyway, this has been this week's Morning Remembrance.
00:58:18Guest 1:This is Mort Mortensen saying,
00:58:22Guest 1:God, what happened to my life?
00:58:25Guest 1:Oh, yeah, who's chopping onions?
00:58:28Guest 1:Jesus, thank you, Mort.
00:58:38Thank you.
00:58:39Marc:I'd like to thank my guests, Jerry Stahl, Jim Earl.
00:58:43Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your What the Fuck podcast needs.
00:58:49Marc:You can link to the show.
00:58:51Marc:You can link to our Twitter.
00:58:52Marc:You can donate.
00:58:53Marc:And please donate.
00:58:54Marc:I know that...
00:58:56Marc:you get it for free but you know what I'm not going to beg do what you're going to do I was just hoping to make a living off of this so I could be here 100% all the time doing the work maybe expanding it maybe building a what the fuck building a large corporate hub with WTF on the top that's my dream that's my nightmare I have got to stop drinking so much coffee

Episode 13 - Jerry Stahl / Mort Mortenson

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