Episode 132 - Blaine Capatch
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Marron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck not?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:Whatever you want to call yourselves.
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:You are listening to it.
Marc:I'm grateful for that.
Marc:I'm happy you're getting so much out of what it is I do here.
Marc:I believe I am too.
Marc:According to you guys, I am.
Marc:Seems like things are okay, right?
Marc:I don't know about that.
Marc:You know, things... Look...
Marc:Look, life throws us many fucking curveballs.
Marc:And, you know, sometimes I just I don't know what the hell to do.
Marc:But I tell you, by doing this podcast, I I don't know.
Marc:I find strength in it.
Marc:I like doing it.
Marc:I'm sort of addicted to doing it.
Marc:I'm out here.
Marc:I got the heater going.
Marc:It's cold in L.A.
Marc:I know that to some of you, you're thinking, oh, is it, Mark?
Marc:Is it cold in L.A.?
Marc:How cold is it?
Marc:Like 58 degrees cold.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:You know, hold on.
Marc:I'll check.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like 56 degrees cold.
Marc:It's not that cold, but I don't know.
Marc:There's a chill to it.
Marc:Maybe I've become a pussy.
Marc:Have I become a pussy because I live in Los Angeles?
Marc:I was just in New York and people are complaining about, oh, it's getting really cold.
Marc:It wasn't even that cold there.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Who the fuck knows?
Marc:I got the heater going.
Marc:That's all I know.
Marc:Hey, you know, I want to plug a gig.
Marc:that it's sort of specific because I don't really know how many people are out in my hometown in Albuquerque, New Mexico, listening to my show.
Marc:But on December 26th at the Cell Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I will be doing a Boxing Day show, which is kind of funny.
Marc:I had posters made.
Marc:I told the guy that does my artwork, it's Boxing Day, so maybe you can come up with a theme.
Marc:And he didn't know what that meant, so he created a poster with a boxing theme.
Marc:And I don't really know what Boxing Day is, but it's something to do with...
Marc:You know, in English culture, old English culture, when there was a class system, when as if that's not over, you know, that the help would get the day off the day after Christmas and they'd get a little bit of a bonus or, you know, you know, they get to.
Marc:maybe spend time with their kids.
Marc:I don't think it has a, it's a somewhat noble history to Boxing Day, but I'm not exactly clear what it is.
Marc:But whatever the case, I'm doing that show in Albuquerque on the 26th with Nato Green and Alex Kroll.
Marc:Now, you all know my dad.
Marc:Now, here was the interesting thing about this particular gig is the guys who I'm doing it with are from San Francisco and they've got family there.
Marc:They called me.
Marc:They said, why don't we do a show there?
Marc:Are you going to be there over Christmas?
Marc:I said, well, it would give me an excuse to go there.
Marc:You know, my father and his insanity is not always enough for me to go out there.
Marc:So I figured this would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone, do a show, pay for the trip, see the old man, deal with that thing, do a show for him just to get through it.
Marc:You understand how it goes.
Marc:You know my dad a little bit.
Marc:You've heard him on the show.
Marc:So I tell my dad I'm doing it.
Marc:So, of course, he immediately makes it about him.
Marc:And he thinks like, well, hell, I can fill that room.
Marc:We can get a bunch of my patients to go.
Marc:That's all I need is a bunch of my dad's pain management clinic patients, a bunch of people that I could probably just as well, you know, walk into any AA meeting and get them to go.
Marc:So I said, yeah, don't worry about it.
Marc:Yeah, I got friends there.
Marc:We're going to see what we get.
Marc:But I'll be nice to see you.
Marc:A few weeks ago, I get a call from NATO Green comic up in San Francisco, who's sort of organizing this thing.
Marc:He says, I got a call from the theater.
Marc:He wants to know whether or not we'd be interested in selling the entire show out to a single patron.
Marc:So I immediately think like, well, no, I mean, it's not a private event.
Marc:Who is it?
Marc:What kind of is it?
Marc:A corporate group?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:We don't know what it is.
Marc:And I want people to be able to come see us, old friends of mine and and make it for everybody.
Marc:And he said, yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I didn't do any research.
Marc:Let me talk to the guy at the theater.
Marc:So I get off of that email and I'm sitting at home and I'm doing my business and I realize, oh, fuck.
Marc:You got to be kidding me.
Marc:So I call my old man and I say, hey, pops, you know, did you get tickets to the show?
Marc:He says, yeah, I got eight tickets.
Marc:I go, yeah.
Marc:And anything else?
Marc:No, I got eight tickets.
Marc:Yeah, I asked the guy how much the place held.
Marc:And I'm like, uh-huh.
Marc:Anything else?
Marc:And he goes...
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I asked him what it would cost to, you know, to maybe buy the whole show out.
Marc:And I go, uh-huh.
Marc:He goes, yeah, you know, it didn't cost that much.
Marc:I could probably do it.
Marc:I'm like, Dad, this isn't about you.
Marc:This isn't your event.
Marc:This isn't your show.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:that you'd like to, uh, to make it about you.
Marc:And I certainly appreciate that in some twisted narcissistic way.
Marc:This is pride, but you can't buy out the entire theater.
Marc:All right.
Marc:You just can't.
Marc:He's like, all right, you know, I'm sorry.
Marc:I, you know, I just, you know, I thought it would be, you know, I got a lot of patients and a lot of people I want.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Can we just, you know, could you not do that?
Marc:I love you.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:But could you not do that?
Marc:So then I had to call NATO back and say, it was my dad.
Marc:So that show again at the Cell Theater, Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 26th at 8 p.m.
Marc:Come down, make the trip.
Marc:It'll be fun.
Marc:Albuquerque's beautiful.
Marc:Looking forward to it.
Marc:Thank you for the gifts that are coming in.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I have to say again that I have very interesting fans and they send me very interesting gifts relative to things I talk about on this show sometimes.
Marc:I think I got one of the more interesting gifts.
Marc:I guess I talked about sponges.
Marc:Does anyone remember me talking about sponges and stinky sponges and how they get stinky?
Marc:I don't know, but I got a Christmas card, very lovely card, snow scene on the front, season greetings.
Marc:Happy Hanukkah.
Marc:Here are the crocheted dishcloths I promised.
Marc:Now you can throw away your sponges from Dawn and Colin.
Marc:So now I've got crocheted dishcloths, which are white, which are going to get pretty ugly once I start washing dishes.
Marc:But thank you.
Marc:Then I got some other things.
Marc:I got a envelope filled with buttons that said in 1087, the bones of Santa Claus were stolen by pirates.
Marc:That's the button.
Marc:Look, I'm no stranger to big ideas.
Marc:We nerd cock shirts.
Marc:Anyone remember nerd cock?
Marc:So I get this letter from this guy, Soren.
Marc:Hey, Mark, earlier this year, I learned a historical fact that's got me saying what the fuck all through the holidays in 1087.
Marc:The bones of Santa Claus were stolen by pirates.
Marc:I shall explain.
Marc:St.
Marc:Nicholas was a Greek born in 270 AD, died 343 AD.
Marc:He was a patron saint of Asia Minor, and when he died, his bones were kept as holy relics in a monastery in the city of Myra, near what is now Demra, Turkey?
Marc:Am I saying that right?
Marc:I'm not sure.
Marc:In 1071, the Roman Empire lost a battle to the invading Turks, yielding control of that area in the monastery and the bones to the Turkish Muslims.
Marc:This worried the Italian Catholics...
Marc:So in 1087, some Italian sailors translated the bones from Myra, Turkey, to Bari, Italy.
Marc:In other words, in 1087, the bones of Santa Claus were stolen by pirates.
Marc:That is the kind of world we live in.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:I mean, that's 1087.
Marc:I would hope that we've moved forward a little bit since then.
Marc:But thank you for the buttons that say in 1087 the bones of Santa Claus were stolen by pirates.
Marc:And now, like, if I really want to explain it, when people go, what the fuck does that mean?
Marc:You'll have to do a little more research, more than just saying this is the kind of world we live in, because then they'll look at me like I'm a lunatic.
Marc:Another email that I enjoyed, if I could, you don't mind me sharing.
Marc:And this is sort of a testament to...
Marc:I guess the creative journey...
Marc:Years ago in San Francisco, I took an acting class at a place called Mark Monroe Studios.
Marc:My teacher was a woman named Shari Carlson who opened up her own studio here in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, Shari Carlson Studios.
Marc:I haven't heard from her in probably 10 years.
Marc:And that was one of those classes where, not unlike many acting classes, there is sort of a kind of wise teacher slash, you know, almost cult leader slash guru who runs the acting class and just guides a bunch of, you know,
Marc:relatively anxious, crazy, raw, usually confused people through this emotional obstacle course to get them to express themselves.
Marc:She teaches voices as well.
Marc:And I took this class for maybe a year or so.
Marc:And it was one of those classes where you do scenes and usually...
Marc:Generally, someone would cry in the scene, no matter what the scene is.
Marc:It could be a Neil Simon show.
Marc:It could be you can't take it with you.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:At some point when you're starting out as an actor in these type of classes, you cry.
Marc:And there's always a reason to cry, either during the scene or during the sort of post-mortem of the scene where you're getting instruction from, in this case, it would be Shari.
Marc:And I know at that time I was with a woman that became my first wife.
Marc:We weren't married yet.
Marc:And I was, you know, in trouble and spiraling.
Marc:And, you know, and my wife was or my girlfriend at that time was taking the class.
Marc:So I took the class and did my own.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't cry.
Marc:Usually I would find a reason to to rage around and scream any sort of intensity, any sort of kind of.
Marc:And cry for help in the form of building a craft, which I'm not saying isn't building a craft.
Marc:I definitely had a great experience.
Marc:I can't say I didn't learn anything, but I did have a lot of emotions around that process.
Marc:And certainly in acting classes, you learn.
Marc:you know, how to be public with your emoting, which I seem to have taken way too far.
Marc:But nonetheless, so I get a letter from Shari saying hi and basically saying, you know, look, you know, I could use a little bit of help at the studio.
Marc:You know, the economy's kind of, you know, hurt the arts and people, you know, I could use, you know, a little attention and maybe some students if and we do this by word of mouth.
Marc:And the interesting thing about this letter was without even thinking,
Marc:It was almost like I was switched on like a Manchurian candidate, you know, like, you know, that all of a sudden this woman who I haven't talked to in a long time that had a place in my life as a teacher and guided me through some relatively profound emotional exercises in this acting class.
Marc:You know, I literally read three sentences and something in my main, you know, in my mind just clicked.
Marc:I must help Shari must do must do what's necessary for Shari.
Marc:And it's just interesting the impact of past emotional experience that it has on your life and that it really guides your life or can be switched on or off at any given point in your life to good results or bad results.
Marc:But I learned something recently that self-awareness, once it becomes intellectualized, once we're, you know, you can actually say in conversation, yeah, my mom was like this.
Marc:My dad was like this.
Marc:I'm like this.
Marc:You know, this is my struggle.
Marc:You know, sometimes I do this because my mom did this or I, you know, I grew up with this or whatever.
Marc:That that patter, that emotional dialogue actually insulates you from from feeling the feelings around that shit.
Marc:Like self-awareness, you know, can just be another shield of armor because then you can just say, oh, yeah, that's because of this.
Marc:So what are you doing about that?
Marc:Well, I don't fucking know.
Marc:I know about it.
Marc:I know I have it.
Marc:But hopefully one day something will shake you to your core and connect all of that self-awareness to actual feelings in your guts and force you to make a change.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I hate growing.
Marc:I hate emotional upheaval.
Marc:And I cannot stand knowing that I'm fucked up in a deeper way than I might have imagined.
Marc:It's just the way life is.
Marc:It's not easy.
Marc:If you live a life out in the world and you want to live that life, it's very hard to sort of take responsibility for your part in shit.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Let's read another email.
Marc:Subject line, WTF accidental text to my boss.
Marc:Maren, I just accidentally sent my boss a nasty text about her.
Marc:I wrote about how she only hires people to fire them and that her Vicodin addiction only fuels her delusional God complex.
Marc:How is that an accidental text?
Marc:Like, you know, I mean, you write something in a text box and you send it.
Marc:Well, I get it.
Marc:It was an accident.
Marc:You know, this guy was pissed off and he wrote this shit down and he looked at it and he hit send.
Marc:I know that feeling.
Marc:It's a great feeling in that moment, followed by a horrendous feeling of panic and despair.
Marc:She was pretty pissed and I wrote her an apologetic email after which I immediately vomited all over my integrity.
Marc:The moment of fear and the shame I had for having to kiss her insane pharmaceutical filled ass made me realize what an important moment this is.
Marc:The fear and awfulness of the moment I hit send on that sniveling, shameful apology email.
Marc:I just thought of how what you and other stand up comics risk and have to endure to do what you love on your own terms.
Marc:How you guys may have had moments like this, but use them as motivation to get out of there and risk everything because it's so much better to be heckled and impoverished.
Marc:but able to tell the truth on stage without apology, then get a steady paycheck with a dental plan just to lie through your teeth.
Marc:Sincerely, Kim, the Asian who fucking gets it.
Marc:Well, thank you for making me feel better about my...
Marc:nervousness around Asians and also believe me Kim I've sent plenty of those texts you know these little viral nightmares that you know you send one text it's amazing the power of you know either a well-placed penis will have and also a well-sent bit of malignant text man that can unravel everything well I'm glad you did damage control and I hope it didn't hurt too much
Marc:Blaine Kapatch, I'm going to talk to him here in just a minute.
Marc:Blaine is a guy that I really love.
Marc:He's a guy that I moved to San Francisco with, not with him, but we showed up in the area at the same time, him and Patton Oswalt and myself.
Marc:And me and Blaine became pretty good friends.
Marc:And he's just a sharp guy, got a great way of talking, and he's able to put things into perspective.
Marc:And I'm happy to talk to him.
Marc:So let's do that.
¶¶
Marc:Alex Bennett, man.
Marc:Remember when we'd go sit for three hours and listen to him talk about his bowels?
Guest:I would just look at his dandruff.
Marc:He had dandruff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, he had dandruff.
Guest:I just remember.
Guest:Jesus Christ, he had dandruff.
Marc:By the time we got to San Francisco, which Blaine Capach is in the garage here at the Cat Ranch, who I knew, it was a weird thing, because me, you, and Patton all ended up in San Francisco within weeks of each other.
Marc:You came out with him, right?
Guest:I came out two weeks before he did.
Guest:You came out, I think, a week after I did or 12 days or something, didn't you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was Patton Oswalt, Blanket Patch, Marc Maron were there to reinvigorate, bring new life to what was a dying comedy scene in San Francisco circa 1992.
Guest:That was June 1992.
Guest:June 1992?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're a man of dates.
Guest:I just remember a few.
Marc:Well, you're married, right?
Marc:And you're happy.
Marc:Yeah, I'm married.
Marc:It'll be five years next week.
Marc:And she's sweet, and you guys are doing well.
Marc:I've been married twice, and now people are having kids around me, and some of them have 15-year-old kids.
Marc:And do you ever have that moment where you're like, holy shit, what's the point of all this?
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I usually have that thought between 6.30 a.m.
Guest:and 7.45 a.m.
Guest:Then I go back to sleep for about 20 minutes, and then I wake up and pretend it didn't happen.
Marc:It was that same dream.
Marc:The one where I'm awake.
Guest:Last night I had a dream where I was fat.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I had a dream where I had this big flabby belly and my belly button went in really deep and I was like, what the, whoa!
Guest:Because I had eaten a poquito of moss really late last night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, oh no!
Guest:I just keep waiting to turn into, because my dad looked like Donald O'Connor.
Guest:He had that skinny guy that got fat, like Paula Poundstone says, the rock on toothpicks look, like a Maury Amsterdam dude.
Marc:That's generally alcoholism.
Marc:So you're just talking about age?
Marc:Because alcoholics can have that when they're young.
Marc:They can get that weird kind of distended belly, thin arms, and the yellow skin.
Guest:No, that wasn't... Well, my dad didn't drink.
Guest:No, so it was just... So he was just a fast food guy.
Marc:Well, you're a lanky motherfucker, and I always used to be jealous of you because you could just eat and eat.
Marc:What did you used to say?
Marc:I could just eat and eat and eat and not gain any weight at all.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:I've tried everything.
Guest:I've tried eating.
Guest:I've tried lack of exercise.
Guest:I've tried joining the tea party.
Guest:I just can't seem to gain any weight.
Marc:I...
Marc:But this is the other thing that fascinated me.
Marc:You grew up in, what was it, like some rural Pennsylvania or something?
Guest:Dallastown, Pennsylvania, outside of York, PA.
Marc:And what is that?
Marc:Is this a town?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is it Amish-ish?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, my parents lived in, they lived in central Pennsylvania, and then they moved to New Holland, which was Amish, and they had Amish friends.
Guest:What does that mean, Amish friends?
Marc:Do you have to turn the lights off when they come over?
Guest:Yeah, hide the zippers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:flip the nothing no radio higher than ham nothing higher than ham yeah uh but uh they uh then they moved to to dallastown when they had my brothers and then uh they were sort of out the outcast from my family because they moved away from from this little central pennsylvania this little cold dusty thing and they it was a mining town or anything
Guest:I don't know what they did up there.
Guest:It was really bleak.
Marc:But I remember that your dad was like a roadside barber, right?
Guest:He was a barber.
Guest:He was the town barber.
Guest:Barber on Main Street.
Guest:We had the barbershop in the front of our house.
Marc:So the barbershop was in your house?
Marc:It was in the front of our house, yeah.
Guest:I would go in there, and he would be cutting hair.
Guest:There would be people waiting to get their hair cut, and I would sit there with my cans on listening to the box tops on an 8-track because he had a nice stereo receiver in there.
Guest:In the office?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, in the shop?
Guest:In the barbershop.
Marc:So he'd be the lanky kid sitting there listening to the box tops?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And all the locals were like, there's his son, Blaine, the weird one.
Marc:There's the weird one.
Guest:The weird kid.
Guest:That kid.
Guest:Oh, man, that kid's a little... And he had the scissors and the blue juice?
Yeah.
Guest:He had the scissors and the blue juice, yeah.
Guest:The whole nine yards.
Guest:He was a Navy barber.
Guest:He was a World War II barber.
Guest:And he was on a destroyer that was torpedoed when he was, I think he was 16 or 17.
Guest:And he was in the water for two days with all these other guys.
Guest:And he was watching his shipmates get plucked out of the water by sharks.
Marc:Was he on that one that they talked about in Jaws?
Guest:No, I don't think he was on that one.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I didn't hear about that story until his funeral and the priest told it because he never told me or my brothers any of that stuff.
Guest:Those World War II guys are really quiet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't talk about any of that stuff, even when you ask them.
Marc:Well, I guess there was a sort of sense of the sense of duty was a little deeper than it is now in terms of what the war meant.
Marc:And I think they just looked at it with something that they they had to do.
Marc:They got through and you stuff it down and you and, you know, and that's that.
Guest:Yeah, it's not like- Gather around, everybody.
Guest:Let me tell you about that time I mowed the lawn.
Guest:I did it thousands of times.
Marc:But I got to assume that there was just as much post-traumatic stress disorder and all that other stuff, but they didn't talk about it at all.
Guest:Yeah, they just drank it or smoked it or beat their kids out of their system with it.
Marc:So at his funeral, that's when you heard the shark story?
Marc:Because that's like one of those stories that kids would fucking love.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you mad?
Guest:Sort of like, you know, why didn't you tell us about the shark?
Guest:No, it's like, you know, it was then that you started going, oh, I should have asked him about this.
Guest:I should have asked him about that.
Guest:Should have talked to your father.
Guest:Yeah, there's not.
Guest:Yeah, I should have talked to my father.
Guest:There's not like a Google dad, like, hey, I'm going to, hey, dad, what was the name of that guy?
Marc:Search.
Marc:I think you just invented something.
Marc:Google dad.
Marc:Google dad.
Marc:For all those of you who can't communicate with your dad.
Marc:Simple dad responses.
Guest:uh hey dad there's a girl in class i really like shut up go ask your mother no hey dad i'd like to see which questions would come up with each letter that you would type what the auto guess would be did did i did i fuck up when i bought this car did i make a mistake not going to vocational school i'm sorry dad i wrecked this um
Marc:So here's the famous story about me and Blaine outside of the fact that I was a drunken animal and constantly- No, you never drank when I knew you.
Guest:You were- All pot.
Guest:Yeah, we would smoke a lot of pot and I was smoking cigarettes back then too.
Marc:You were?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I kind of remember.
Guest:And then I remember you got the staples in your ear because you tried the hypnosis or whatever.
Marc:The acupuncture.
Guest:Yeah, you had a monk come over and swirl some incense around your head and then scare you or something.
Guest:I think I got rid of your hiccups, but not your smoking.
Marc:I went to a monk.
Marc:No, I went to a guy in the Castro, some acupuncturist.
Marc:All right, just lay there and try to lose consciousness.
Marc:Yeah, and hope nothing happened.
Marc:That was bad and wrong.
Marc:Count backwards from 100.
Marc:Yeah, and he stuck those tacks in my ears, and it didn't fucking work.
Marc:Nothing fucking worked.
Marc:You would just grind your teeth.
Marc:But we were just talking in the kitchen about we took mushrooms to go to the Halloween parade in the Castro.
Guest:In the Castro, which at the time- Challenging.
Guest:This was 93.
Guest:It was still-
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was still like it wasn't bad then.
Guest:It was still just like there would be 60 or 70,000 people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody's in costume.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of groups of women dressed like cats for some reason.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And gay men dressed like gay men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot more women here tonight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You would think.
Guest:But it was spectacular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We choked down those mushrooms in the car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we just started looking for parking.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it took about an hour and we started a trip.
Marc:And I think I said, are you ready?
Marc:What was it?
Marc:Are you about to rock?
Guest:I said, hey, Kapatch.
Guest:I said, what?
Guest:And you go, are you about to rock?
Guest:Because if you are, I'll salute you.
Guest:And then we realized we would never ever park.
Guest:And we drove back to my apartment and parked in front of my apartment and walked.
Marc:I just remember we were walking around and we were tripping and we ran into some people we knew and there was a woman, Javanka Steele.
Marc:Do you remember her?
Guest:I remember Javanka Steele.
Marc:She was dressed as a garbage bag.
Marc:I remember that costume, yeah.
Marc:And to me, like, because I was tripping, I was like, oh my God, that's so revealing and horrible.
Marc:Like, I...
Guest:She thinks of herself as a garbage bag, or at least a friend of Tom Bosley.
Marc:Yeah, and it was just awful.
Marc:And I remember it was just heartbroken, and I had to walk away.
Marc:And I don't know how we ended up separating that night, but I ended up wandering around with Liz White, and we were in an alley.
Marc:and and some guy and i was smoking pot and some guy came up and said can i use your pipe and i go sure so i give him the pipe he loads it with something he takes a hit and then he goes you want something i'm like sure and i take a hit he splits and then like within five minutes i start sweating my my vision goes fucked up like literally and and i guess i don't know what it was whether probably crack probably just crack i think it was dust or something
Guest:Well, if it was dust, you would have hulked out and thrown police cars around.
Guest:I did.
Marc:I threw police cars around.
Marc:No, I had to sit down and reevaluate my entire life.
Marc:Because Liz White was there.
Marc:I hardly knew her.
Marc:And here I was having a meltdown.
Marc:Like, I need something.
Marc:And we go to the gas station across the street.
Marc:I think I need liquid.
Marc:I don't know what's happening.
Marc:And I'm starting to black out.
Marc:And I sit down.
Marc:It's embarrassing to have a bad drug experience in front of somebody you don't really know that well.
Marc:Because you feel like you've just shit your pants.
Yeah.
Marc:And she goes, are you going to be all right?
Marc:Yeah, I guess so.
Marc:And she walked away and that was a long walk home.
Marc:One of those sort of like, I almost died.
Marc:Yeah, I probably didn't.
Guest:No, you didn't even get close.
Guest:It was probably just crack.
Marc:Yeah, you're probably right.
Marc:And I'm glad that I didn't know that and I didn't take to it.
Guest:They didn't follow it up?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to smoke some crack and see if that's the same buzz.
Guest:You know what it is?
Marc:It is.
Marc:Good.
Guest:I'm going to try different grades of crack and see if those are good.
Marc:I have found my thing.
Marc:This is my new thing.
Marc:Me and crack.
Marc:Me and crack.
Marc:Forever.
Marc:But you also said one of the many things that I... Well, actually, one of the few things I remember that I quote you fairly frequently, because I remember the first time I saw you do comedy at Combs Comedy Club, you had really smart jokes.
Marc:You were strange.
Marc:And I said...
Marc:How do you sell that shit on the road?
Guest:And you go, I know how to wrap it around a bat.
Marc:Do you remember saying that?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I remember that one.
Marc:That is pretty ballsy.
Guest:I kind of like that one.
Guest:I just said fuck more when I was on the road, and I did more dick jokes.
Guest:That's what I got from Bill Hicks, because Bill and I were friends, and he would come into Baltimore, and we'd just go out to eat and have lunch someplace, and he would just tell me stories.
Guest:The one thing he said that stuck with me was, never leave dick island.
Guest:Just says, you can swim offshore.
Guest:Always make sure you know where it is.
Guest:There's Dick Island.
Marc:It's so funny that people have, I'm sure, much deeper, more relevant Hicks quotes.
Marc:But never leave Dick Island, I think, is probably... Never leave Dick Island.
Marc:I don't think anyone's ever said that.
Marc:I'm going to quote Bill Hicks on this.
Marc:But it's true.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:I don't go to Dick Island enough, I think.
Marc:I fear.
Marc:Because I even watch, when I watch CK sometimes, I'm like, that's a really smart joke, and it's filled with ass and cock and mother's vaginas.
Guest:But but and I don't I don't know if this is going to sound like a cop out, but I think that a crowd if you go to a crowd in a club, they're going to they've gone out there paying to drink.
Guest:They're all adults.
Guest:They want to hear people swear into a microphone.
Guest:They want to hear people talking about shit and farts and tits and talking about it.
Marc:But if I hear all that stuff, if I say fuck too much, it starts to sound like a percussive annoyance to them.
Guest:Yeah, that's very true.
Guest:You have to be, I mean, you have to choose it wisely.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to talk filth or to use filth to amplify jokes, but just to use fuck as a punctuation becomes annoying to even younger people.
Guest:Yeah, well, I do notice it when I saw a guy doing it, a guy who I like, and he was just sort of riffing a joke, and it was fuck this and fuck that, and it was like, ooh.
Guest:It really takes you out of it, because that's all you hear after a while.
Marc:That's right, and I've got to fucking be aware of that.
Marc:Hold on, let me make note of it.
Marc:Note to self.
Guest:Stop saying the F word.
Guest:By the way, the F word means fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when somebody on TV says the F word, they're saying fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's just a thing to remember.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Here's the other thing that Bill Hicks told me that was kind of profound that I did remember.
Guest:And he said, always have fun on stage because if you don't have fun and they hate you, then nobody had fun.
Marc:If you don't have fun and they hate you, then nobody had fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've certainly seen him turn midway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He started having fun.
Guest:Well, it's like he was sort of like a Jekyll and Hedonist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he would be like a nice, he would be like a really great club comic and then something would happen and it's like, oh no, that was his snap word.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tonight it's a guy sneezing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:Cover your mouth, you motherfucker.
Marc:And then they're off.
Marc:And then 20 people leave.
Marc:20 people leave and he's crouching, screaming at a woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I think that's another thing that I don't like that people take away from Hicks is, and maybe I'm generalizing, but there's comics that go, man, he would walk a room on purpose.
Guest:That's so cool.
Guest:It's like, no, it wasn't cool.
Guest:It was him battling something that you couldn't see and the audience leaving because of it.
Guest:He would hate fuck audiences occasionally that would deserve it, but all they take away from is, yeah, man, spike the microphone, make people leave, yeah.
Guest:It's the afterimage of that influence.
Marc:Well, you know what's weird is that I don't know how much stand-up you're watching anymore, but I don't see anybody...
Marc:coming close to the intensity that would make a crowd leave in droves.
Marc:Because that's not just about something you say.
Marc:Have you ever seen Robert Klein?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I think you really need to rethink that statement.
Marc:For the wrong reasons.
Marc:But you know what I mean?
Marc:When we were starting out, and even by the time we got to San Francisco, no one really did it in San Francisco.
Marc:They were very rare people.
Marc:It sounded like Mark Voice in his prime, when you knew him, might have had some of that, where the intensity was so...
Marc:It wasn't even about necessarily... They weren't walking because they're like, you know, I don't get it or I'm bored.
Marc:They were walking because, like, this shit is out of control and he's fucking out of line.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, I try to explain to my wife, and she's 10 years younger than I am, and she... Good for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she always watched comedy and stuff, and she knows these people that she used to watch on Comedy Central.
Guest:And I tell her about people leaving when Bill Hicks would talk about the devil fucking John Davidson and ejaculating a cloud of silverfish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People would get up and leave.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you can't, I mean, that was like 86, 87.
Guest:He blew their minds.
Guest:mind really genuinely blew their minds and you can't do that anymore because people have heard everything and the people that haven't heard anything will still get up and leave if you go out to the suburbs if you go out to like the the uh the the langhorn improv or whatever it is someplace uh uh people are going to get up and leave if greg barrett does something a little weird do you know what i mean i wonder people that can snap i think that's one of the the disadvantages of of kind of boutique
Marc:Culture in that everybody has people who have a following have found their people.
Marc:You know, look at somebody like Stan Hope, who definitely is, you know, self aware of the fact that he's part of this Hicks legacy and that he's going the same path in some ways.
Marc:But he now surrounds himself with people that love him.
Marc:Which is fine.
Marc:You know, it's a way to make a living.
Marc:But I think one of the reasons why Hicks was so effective at blowing minds and scaring the shit out of people in walking rooms was he was relatively unknown and he was still showing up at comedy clubs where people are like, we're going to go see comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then he would be able to just fucking brain fuck them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he wasn't he wasn't preaching to any choirs.
Marc:There weren't any choirs.
Marc:It was harder to find a choir.
Marc:He had to go to England to find a choir and die to find the rest of them.
Guest:I think that's a fantastic way of describing the boutique comics.
Guest:Because you do see people that cultivate crowds.
Guest:Like Carlos Mencia, he goes out in front of his audiences.
Guest:Glenn Beck goes out in front of his audiences.
Guest:These guys handpick their stuff and they go out and go, man, I killed.
Guest:Of course you killed.
Guest:They want you to kill.
Marc:But there was, and I guess at a different time, there was a general sense of like, you know, everybody was getting roughly the same entertainment delivery.
Marc:Like, you know, when there were only a few networks and there was no fucking internet, it's like everybody knew the guys who were doing what they do.
Marc:And either you like them or you didn't.
Guest:Don't you think it's kind of like a generation of artists giving up instead of saying, man, we're going to be the next Beatles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Man, we're going to be huge.
Guest:We're going to rule the world.
Guest:We're going to walk around like Oasis or Guns N' Roses.
Guest:We're going to own this place.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then you just get bands going, hey, we play our shows and we have people that come and visit our web stuff.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And we make a living.
Marc:We got our two
Guest:Yeah, we do secret shows and we sell a lot of t-shirts.
Guest:I mean, they're just as valid, but then you get into what Johnny Rotten said when he said the Sex Pistols were always on major labels because that's where the distribution was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you can reach more people if you use the machine against itself.
Marc:Yeah, I just don't know.
Marc:I think that this is just the way capitalism has polluted the whole thing in the sense that now everybody is very self-aware of their personal brand, of the strategies they need to engage in to define their people and then to make their little living.
Marc:And I think what that creates is like, fuck everybody else.
Marc:We've got our thing.
Marc:And in that sense, I don't think it's necessarily a positive thing.
Guest:Well, let's pretend that Dane Cook is just a comic that doesn't have any sort of reputation.
Marc:As opposed to what?
Guest:As opposed to a source of comics talking for hours online about it.
Guest:Let's pretend that he's just a comedian who's successful because he has this web presence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his web presence came out and supported him and made him a millionaire.
Guest:He's been working for how many years?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's done TV and movies.
Guest:He's been, you know, whatever.
Marc:I just saw on Forbes he makes $22 million a year now.
Guest:$22 million a year now.
Guest:That's probably just gigs, not merchandise.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or Larry the Cable Guy or any of those guys.
Marc:He makes like $19.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's... God damn it.
Marc:What the fuck are we doing?
Guest:Is that hurting...
Marc:us that they're limiting themselves or is that hurting them that they're limiting themselves it's i i don't know i'm talking around no no i don't know if it hurts anybody in this only in the sense that what it does for if you want that kind of audience how do you find them and how do you you know i don't even want to get into that conversation you can't make people like you
Marc:And certainly I know from my personal life that I'm not going to be able to do anything that's going to change me to where everyone in the world goes or $22 million worth.
Marc:Maybe go, I love that guy.
Marc:We're doing a different thing.
Guest:Well, maybe you'll find your catchphrase.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was some guy who was telling me this, a guy in Boston.
Guest:Oh, Ken Ober told me this.
Marc:Oh, sorry.
Marc:Rest in peace, Ken Ober.
Guest:Yeah, Ken's great.
Guest:He said there was a guy in Boston, he was like a little Wally Cox type dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his jokes were all right, but then every now and then he would go, he would tell his joke and his punchline was, I'll never learn.
Yeah.
Guest:And people would erupt.
Guest:And he said people would just light up.
Guest:And he'd go, I'll never learn.
Guest:And people would just go crazy and carry him out of the room on their shoulders.
Guest:And they would always go, you've got to end every joke with, I'll never learn.
Guest:That'll be your hook.
Guest:You're going to be huge.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't really like that joke too much.
Guest:So he wouldn't use it all the time.
Guest:And he just kind of went nowhere.
Guest:He never learned.
Guest:Yeah, never learned.
Marc:I've seen so many people do stuff like that.
Marc:Then there's the people that change to the singular name.
Marc:You know, back when we were starting out.
Marc:Blaine.
Marc:Yeah, just Blaine.
Marc:Or, yeah, they try hooks or they try outfits.
Marc:Fuck, I don't know.
Marc:You know, I just know that to bring it back around, that it's weird.
Marc:After witnessing Hicks and witnessing Kennison sort of hands, you know, first, you know, up close.
Guest:Being there for it.
Marc:Yeah, and actually seeing Stanhope, people who go out of their way to push an envelope so hard, which is I think I started out wanting to do that, but now I choose to push it with making people uncomfortable with personal information as opposed to trying to.
Guest:Shifting in seats is better than people leaving their seats.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But but there's there's an electricity to it.
Marc:And I had not seen it in a long time.
Marc:And I only saw Stanhope live once.
Marc:And I've talked to him before.
Marc:And I respect the guy.
Marc:But when you were sitting there watching Kennison, there was such an electricity to the intensity of whatever the fuck he was doing.
Marc:And he was more mainstream than any of them.
Marc:I mean, Kennison was, for most practical purposes, a mainstream act.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, like a dirty rock and roll band.
Marc:I mean, he was a big act.
Marc:Hicks was not because, you know, Hicks was eloquent, lyrical, intelligent, had depth, and was attacking things that required some thought and ability to connect abstract thoughts.
Marc:You know, as Steve Pearl said, Kennison was, you know, two short screams followed by a long scream.
Marc:Oh, oh, oh!
Marc:You know, but on some level, that was his hook.
Marc:But oddly, the first time I saw Lisa Lampanelli in Vancouver...
Marc:It was equally as fucking menacing that the last time I actually experienced that type of electricity of someone creating a morally bankrupt free-for-all.
Marc:It was hurt.
Marc:Yeah, just people going, wow, should we be laughing at her talking about this?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Like, what the fuck is happening in here?
Marc:And I just don't see it that much.
Marc:And even with Stanhope, who pushes the envelope, is executing points.
Marc:He's got a point.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he's he's he's showing hypocrisies and he's and he's a contrarian.
Guest:But just like creating just sort of like, you know, this is really wrong and we're just bathing in it.
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:I don't see a lot of that.
Guest:I miss it.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Well, you would see guys that would tell you how edgy they were on stage.
Guest:You know, there was there was that wave of that was like the angry guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a 90s kind of thing.
Guest:Hey, man, I think I was.
Guest:I think up all this.
Guest:I think up this crazy stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you can't deal with it, maybe you should just get out.
Guest:oh really your joke about airline peanuts is so edgy that I have to leave yeah because they explode they're exploding airline peanuts that only kill Christians oh man that's so edgy the way he picked those words out of a Chinese menu and strung them together to get a rise out of the audience I never liked those machete comics all edge and no point
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Guys that are just out there, man, I'm going to blow your mind.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Stop telling me you're going to blow my mind.
Guest:How about some jokes?
Guest:How about blowing my mind with your jokes instead of your boasting?
Marc:I worry about my jokes lately.
Marc:How are your jokes?
Guest:You know, my jokes are, I found that all my jokes are now more like tweets.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, my bits tend to ramble on.
Marc:What is that great joke you did?
Marc:Come on, let's do some old Blank and Bash jokes for old time's sake.
Marc:Do the poem.
Marc:What was the poem?
Guest:Oh, uh...
Guest:This is called Fish.
Guest:Super duper grouper trooper.
Guest:Now the fish have guns.
Guest:Man has infected the sea.
Guest:Sea war.
Guest:Sea war, kill.
Guest:Kill war, kill.
Guest:Go fish.
Guest:What was the other one?
Guest:Oh, this is called Ode to Kansas.
Guest:Flatness.
Guest:Flatness.
Guest:Flatness.
Guest:Hey, what's that over there?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Flatness.
Yay!
Guest:You remembered him.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, like you press a button in your head and they all just zip right back out.
Guest:You know, you do that, right?
Guest:You get more sense memories now that you're older, don't you?
Marc:In terms of like a smell reminds me of a joke or a thing I did wrong?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Girl's perfume reminded me of the time that I was really mean to my mom.
Guest:When I was a kid, I yelled at her and made her cry.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Jägermeister is ass sex.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Oh, I just need some Glade plugins.
Guest:I'll look at lists of my old sets from 10 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll see the same notation like antloaf or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like, wow, I use this every night for months and months, and I don't know what the joke is.
Marc:I got this.
Marc:Here's a stack of shit right here.
Marc:I don't even know.
Marc:That happens all the time.
Marc:Yeah, the fucking lists.
Marc:Cultural embarrassment.
Marc:I don't know what the hell that means.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:After Ikea, what else can you buy?
Marc:See, I don't know what this is, but I have those lists where I look and I strain to remember the joke, and I can't fucking remember the joke, and I know I did it like 15 times, 20 times, 100 times.
Marc:It's very fucking annoying.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:How much stand-up are you doing?
Guest:You know, I'm trying to do more because I was working on the show Web Soup.
Guest:You know that show with Hardwick?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And it was a lot of fun.
Guest:It was a real blast and it did okay, but the network doesn't have any money for it, so it's not coming back until May.
Marc:I just talked to Jonah Ray about that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's a drag.
Guest:Jonah Ray's awesome.
Marc:Yeah, I like him.
Marc:He's a nice guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's a very great guy.
Guest:So you're working on that?
Guest:I was working on that.
Guest:It was supposed to be back last month, and now it's not going to be back until May, so I'm sort of free-floating.
Guest:I'm going to try to do more.
Guest:I always say this.
Guest:I'm going to try to do more stand-up and write my movies and write TV shows and pitch that kind of stuff.
Marc:Are you still friends with Patton?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Does he ever take you out?
Guest:Yeah, I did the improv in Irvine with him a couple of weeks ago.
Marc:How was that?
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:We were talking about this earlier about hand-selecting your crowd, bringing your own choir.
Guest:But Patton, I'll say this, Patton consistently brings out smart crowds,
Guest:that know that he brings good comedians with him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they appreciate, they come out to see good comedy.
Guest:That's what I do love about Patton shows.
Marc:Well, I think he is sort of invented, not invented, but invented the market of the comedy nerd.
Marc:I think that somehow or another, I'm serious.
Marc:I think that the comedians of comedy on Comedy Central, him and Zach Galifianakis really invented this audience in a lot of ways.
Marc:Dimitri Martin a little bit, but I think Patton and the comedians of comedy really made a lot of smart, nerdier kids go, oh, these guys are like us.
Marc:It's a big shift.
Guest:It went from alt to nerd.
Marc:Alt was never real.
Guest:Alt was just the word for what they had before it was nerd.
Marc:I guess, no, because there were a lot of regular stand-ups, mainstream stand-ups that did alt-comedy.
Marc:I guess you're right, but it seemed to me that the Comedians of Comedy and the statement of it against the rednecks, or what was the other one?
Marc:The Kings of Comedy or whatever.
Marc:Yeah, Kings of Comedy.
Marc:There was a sight, tongue-in-cheek, there was an arrogance to it that was sort of pompous, but the choice of comedians, I thought, opened up this whole market of the alt-nerd thing.
Marc:I don't think I'm really a nerd.
Marc:You're kind of a nerd, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, I can... But you rock.
Guest:Yeah, I rock.
Marc:But some nerds rock.
Guest:Yeah, well, Weezer rocks.
Marc:Weezer nerds.
Marc:Weezer nerds.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of rockin' nerds.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, I don't try to rock.
Guest:I just try to go up and make the crowd laugh and try to make myself happy.
Guest:I try to remember my jokes and try not to look at my list because I always flake out.
Guest:I try to keep an eye on my time.
Guest:I work on all the shit that I should have taken care of 10 years ago in my stand-up stage stuff.
Guest:Because I'm just lazy.
Guest:I like to have fun instead of work.
Guest:And I do have fun.
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:Is you have fun doing comedy and you forget that it's work.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you ever find yourself just laughing at yourself up there?
Guest:Yeah, I've done that a couple times.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:I always apologize immediately.
Guest:I hate that.
Guest:I don't want to be the guy.
Guest:I'm so great.
Guest:Yeah, well, look at me.
Guest:I'm having a good time.
Guest:How about you people?
Guest:Yeah, woo.
Guest:I used to do that a lot when I smoked pot.
Guest:Well, you know, I've been hosting the Lucha Vavooms, and I'm announcing at the Derby Dolls, these roller derby matches.
Marc:All right, so let's explain this to me, because I've not gotten on board to that.
Marc:Oh, you've got to come to one of these.
Marc:No, I've been to one, and there's a specifically, they're really popular in L.A.
Marc:There's this weird confluence, is that the word I want, between Mexican wrestling, stand-up comedy, burlesque dancing, and roller derby.
Guest:Yeah, well, they're all sort of intertwined.
Guest:The Derby is sort of off on its own thing, like a Saturn dealership.
Marc:But it took a while to build that.
Marc:But Roller Derby is now, it's sort of like, it comes from this whole, where does it sprout from, this type of, it's sort of hot rod culture slash rockabilly culture.
Guest:Custom with a K. Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it come from Robert Williams and Coop and Von Dutch and all the dudes.
Marc:It's a California thing.
Guest:A juxtaposed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The juxtaposed art magazine.
Marc:So, you know, outsider art and Latin culture mixed with hot rod culture and you get this.
Guest:Yeah, well, the Lucha Vavum came out of Velvet Hammer, and that was a burlesque troupe.
Guest:It was neo-burlesque, and it wasn't like Pussycat Dolls or the new stuff that you see where it's like... Because modern burlesque is usually just like karaoke for MILFs.
Guest:You know, it's just women that feel empowered, and they get drunk, and they don't have routines.
Guest:But Velvet Hammer was really good.
Guest:The girls made fantastic costumes, and they all had the right smile on their face, and they were really cool acts.
Guest:And I did comedy with Ron Lynch and Craig Anton.
Guest:We would do baggy.
Marc:I remember that.
Marc:I saw that show.
Marc:Yeah, baggy pants stuff.
Marc:The Egyptian or somewhere.
Guest:Yeah, the El Rey or whatever.
Marc:Right, the El Rey.
Guest:And then the Velvet Hammer kind of split up and Rita D'Albert, you know Rita.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I worked with Rita in the Veldhammer, and we were in White Trash Winslotto together, and we were in that band, the Buxotics, and all that stuff.
Guest:So when she... They started doing burlesque girls in between this Mexican wrestling film festival because one of Rita's friends, Liz, was dating one of the wrestlers.
Guest:Liz produced Guar for years.
Guest:She was their road manager.
Guest:Guar.
Guest:Guar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you like to get moist at the House of Blues.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they did this show with Mexican wrestling and some burlesque girls in between the matches.
Guest:And Rita said, hey, can you host it?
Guest:And it just turned into the show.
Guest:So it was all very organic.
Guest:It wasn't like people said, let's get tab A and slot B and we'll do a sprinkle of this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's just sort of subcultures coming together.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it turned into a big thing.
Guest:And it's a great, it's a super fun show.
Guest:It's like we get, I'll host them and then we have- So what is this show?
Guest:The show is there will be a girl doing something on a trapeze, and then there will be some chickens wrestling some midgets.
Guest:And then there will be a girl doing some sort of weird giant banana act, and then there will be a guy on a pogo stick stripping, and then there will be more Mexican wrestling.
Guest:And then the whole time it's me and a guest comedian like Tom Kenny or Dana Gould or Patton or Kathy Sorbo.
Guest:We just do play-by-play mystery science style, and it's just a lot of fun.
Marc:On the wrestling?
Marc:On the wrestling.
Guest:Well, yeah, we don't make fun of the girls.
Marc:Well, I saw I went to one of those shows and the woman from Faster Pussycat.
Guest:Oh, Teresa Tana.
Guest:I remember that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She was there and trying to do the twirling pasties.
Marc:Get her pasties going.
Marc:And it was really one of the most sad things I'd seen in a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, is that part of it?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:You know, we try to keep the sadness.
Guest:We dial the sadness down lately.
Guest:So the difference.
Guest:But it was just cool to see touristy town.
Marc:No, it was the difference between burlesque and just straight up stripping and and whatever these pussycat dolls are doing is that that's sort of a Vegas version.
Marc:of burlesque, the Pussycat Dolls.
Marc:It's sort of amplified fake tits, Carmen Electra kind of bullshit.
Marc:It's really just stripping.
Marc:And the difference between burlesque and say Jumbo's clown room is that they're loftier in their intent.
Marc:They're not there to make money by sitting on guys' laps or getting smelly breath on them.
Marc:They're there to honor some sort of tradition of showing your tits.
Guest:Yeah, well, we went out on a quote-unquote field trip.
Guest:We went out to Glendora, to Mamie Van Doren's museum, and we watched these tapes, and they brought out all her old fans and her ostrich blooms.
Marc:Fan dancing.
Guest:Yeah, fan dancing.
Guest:And so like, and the girls were just sitting there riveted looking at all this stuff.
Guest:And it was, it was really cool to see there's, there's a genuine, it's like a love of the craft and stuff.
Guest:And like I said, they had the girls in the velvet hammer would have the right looks on their face.
Guest:They would be smiling.
Guest:They would be kind of detached, but they were always putting on a show.
Marc:And like, if you look at- And they weren't doing it for drug money.
Marc:They weren't doing it for drug money.
Guest:Their dads fucked them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's not like a tattoo on their belly that's cut in half with a C-section scar, like a jumbos.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I guess it's just weird to me so that because I know there's friction on some level between, you know, what you know, like what strippers working strippers do for a living and this idea that like, well, that's really cute with their dancing with their feathers and things, but they're not artists.
Marc:You know, they're just strippers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, the thing about strippers, too, and a lot of burlesque is strippers are usually in good shape.
Marc:Burlesque, not so much?
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, some of them are... There's some of it where it can get... The empowering of women can get to the point where it's just like, oh, Jesus, please.
Marc:Maybe you should empower yourself to the gym a bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to be that guy, but I am that guy.
Ha!
Guest:seriously you should uh you should do some crunches and i don't mean the nestle's type no heath bar crunches because you've done enough of those is that the point yeah but you know what then again there's a uh i have seen awesome girls like there's a girl from new york named uh world famous bob and she's she's a larger girl and she has that look on her face that you trust her and you watch and she puts a shaker in between her boobs and she mixes up a martini and pours it out and then pulls an olive out of her crotch and dips it in there and drinks it and that's her
Guest:It's really cool.
Guest:It's the kind of stuff that Dean Martin would tip for.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'm not condescending to it.
Marc:When it's well done, it's fantastic.
Marc:Yeah, I think I would appreciate it.
Marc:And I have nothing against large women either.
Marc:And I don't mind the whole... I think I should go see more of it.
Marc:Because...
Marc:in a culture that we live in now, you know, stripping and, and porn and everything else is really about this sort of like feeding this need.
Marc:Like, you know, I need to connect.
Marc:I need someone to sit on my lap.
Marc:I need a boner.
Marc:I need to, I need to feel like somebody likes me.
Marc:Whereas this is something that is reaching back in time where there was a sophistication to the presentation of the, of the, of this femininity of this sexuality.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a titillation involved.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I saw it in like,
Marc:the right stuff did you see the right stuff the movie the scene where all the astronauts are at that big you know lbj cookout in dallas or wherever the hell it was and there's a long slow motion scene of a fan dancer a feather dancer yes and and that was the way it went then because there was a moment there where everyone you're actually watching going this is a little inappropriate for the situation
Marc:And then you realize that what it represents is something elevated about about female, about the feminine spirit and about sexuality.
Marc:And then the idea that it's equally as unattainable as seemingly the moon was.
Marc:But they all went and I'm reading into it.
Guest:That was one with Chuck Yeager walking away from that explosion, right?
Guest:Exactly, man.
Guest:That was awesome, man, when that thing exploded.
Guest:Yeah, he went too high up.
Guest:He almost went into space.
Guest:He had a bail.
Guest:Dude, man, planes are awesome.
Guest:They are fucking cool, man.
Guest:They're really cool.
Guest:He almost killed them.
Marc:So, now, the other thing I want to talk about with you, because I remember this happened, and I've had Carlos on the show, and it created quite a stir, but I remember asking you at some point what you were doing, and you're like, I'm writing a Mencia.
Guest:I did two seasons as a writer-producer on Mind of Mencia.
Guest:I did seasons two and three,
Guest:And I worked with wonderful people and I had a good time.
Guest:And I got to be in a few things when I was in the union.
Guest:We struck and went union on the show.
Guest:So yeah, there you go.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Well, that's the weird thing about that.
Marc:And I don't think people I talked to Tom Lennon a little bit about this, too, is that, you know, sometimes if you're a comic, if you're a joke writer, if you're a guy that wants to work in show business, you're right.
Marc:And you write to make money and you may write for things that you don't like.
Marc:And it may make you uncomfortable.
Marc:It may not be what you want to do.
Marc:But, you know, comedy needs writers.
Guest:Yeah, it does.
Marc:And did you do a lot of, were there times where Carlos would take things that you wrote and then ruin them?
Guest:I saw where you were going with that.
Guest:Yes, he did.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:It was Mind of Mencia and not Mind of Capach.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, it's the one thing I came away from it sort of proud of myself in that I was able to just sort of keep my head down.
Guest:Write what I was supposed to write.
Guest:You know, it's like I know I learned that on Mad TV.
Guest:I learned how to write for the show.
Guest:It's like I'm not here to make myself look good.
Guest:But if I'm and I'm, you know, I'm going to be given like they would give me stuff that I didn't want to write that was that I thought was ridiculous or unfunny or whatever.
Guest:So it was like, well, I have to write this.
Guest:I have to be happy with it.
Guest:So I'll try to get.
Guest:some jokes in that i like at least so you end up writing stuff within somebody else's coloring in somebody else's lines but you get better at what you do because of that because you know it's like oh i'm now i can sit down and i can write literally 50 jokes on something i could just crank out jokes like nobody's business i could never do that when i was just a road comic can you do it for yourself you know what i can't do it for myself see that's a weird catch unless unless i give myself a character
Guest:If I'm writing for a character, like, I do more characters than I've ever done.
Guest:And it's just because they're goofy and fun and it's not me doing stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's easier to write jokes.
Guest:If I pretend I'm Emo Phillips, I sat down once, I was doing Emo Phillips at a show.
Guest:I sat down and wrote 15 minutes of great jokes.
Guest:I was like, why can't I do this for Blaine Phillips?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you sell them to Emo?
Guest:No, they were all about fucking Judy Tenuta.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the weird thing because coming up on material for me takes a long time and evolves over time on stage and some jokes don't get written for a year.
Marc:They don't finish themselves.
Marc:But I just think it's interesting that a lot of people in the way they view show business is that it's just a business in a lot of respects and a lot of people within that business are not doing their dream job.
Marc:They're feeding the machine.
Guest:I think there's some idea that people in show business are like, you guys are in show business.
Guest:It's fucking red carpets and Cristal all the time.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:I've got to fly to D.C.
Guest:in two weeks to do an interstitial thing where I'm at the St.
Guest:Elmo's Fire Bar going, wow, look at this.
Guest:For what?
Guest:For a Starz network.
Marc:You're doing interstitial stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:It'll be fun.
Guest:It'll be nice.
Guest:I went there before.
Guest:I just want to see if I can get away with calling it Stelmo's Fire the whole time.
Guest:Stelmo's?
Guest:That'll be my little joke to myself.
Guest:We're here in the bar of where they filmed Stelmo's Fire.
Guest:What are they doing?
Guest:They're showing the movie or something?
Guest:They show the movie, and then it'll be me at the location.
Marc:How many of those are you doing?
Guest:I think it's just this one.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Are they trying you out?
Marc:Is it one of those things?
Marc:Let's see how Blaine does.
Guest:Let's see how Blaine does.
Guest:And maybe he can do- Yeah, I'm gonna try to knock on your formica here.
Guest:I think it might be- Hope it works.
Guest:At least part of it's wood.
Guest:I think it's a wood veneer.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I went in on that audition.
Guest:I went in for a Mark Rivers show.
Guest:the cartoon the cartoon yeah uh i went in and it was it was uh it's always awkward auditioning for friends yeah but i could not have eaten it more if i was in a like an eating contest i was at the house of pies at that thing and then later i went over to beverly hills and i auditioned for the stars thing and i was like just like ah who cares i was hot no air conditioning done yeah i just wanted to get my hair cut because it was really hot and my hair was long and it was getting all sweaty yeah like i just want to get my hair cut and then i get i booked it
Marc:Yeah, because you weren't thinking twice about it.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Overthinking is the worst.
Marc:Well, yeah, you just, you got to show up for the thing, you know, and it's a little intimidating.
Marc:And I, you know, I don't know.
Marc:The dream is like, you know, they're like, I know what Marc Maron does.
Marc:Let's just hire him and let him be him.
Marc:Yeah, but then they never want you to be you.
Guest:They always want you to be that cartoon that... Yeah, what they think you are.
Guest:You bring in Eddie Pepitone.
Guest:It's like, oh, Eddie, you'll beat this guy, and he'll say it like this, and then Eddie will do something, like he'll play it quiet or softer, and it's like... Yeah, what's wrong with Eddie?
Guest:It's not the Eddie we knew.
Guest:It's not the Eddie I wrote.
Guest:I'm sure you've seen the Don Rickles documentary.
Marc:Um, the problem I have with, uh, with, with, with Don Rickles and that show is like, there was a moment that we was talking about Lenny Bruce and he condescended him.
Marc:Like, you know, I think he was doing that thing with the drugs and the filthy and, uh, you know, and it's just sort of like, really, even at this point, you know, he was just like a, some renegade to you guys.
Marc:It just was like, you know, he was dirty and he didn't, uh, you know, we didn't like him.
Guest:Yeah, well, Rip Taylor asked me at Mel's.
Guest:He said, do you work blue?
Guest:Rip Taylor?
Guest:Yeah, and I go, yeah, I'm a little of my age.
Marc:Yeah, you don't have to work blue.
Marc:Has he said that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:The first thing he said was, he said, what's your name?
Guest:I said, Blaine.
Guest:He said, what do you do?
Guest:I said, I'm a comedian.
Guest:He said, sit down.
Guest:And I sat down, and he said, the first thing he said to me, he goes, I just got to tell you, there's room for everyone.
Guest:There's plenty of room for everyone.
Guest:And that was a great thing for him to open with.
Marc:Yeah, I said that before.
Marc:I said that to Colin Quinn once.
Marc:There's plenty of pie for everyone.
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:And for years he would say to me, like, how's it going with the pie?
Guest:You know what, dude?
Guest:There's lots of room at the bottom.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You can put your feet up at the bottom.
Guest:There's plenty of room at the bottom.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So now you were working with Drew Carey?
Guest:Well, you know, I knew Drew from doing stand-up in San Francisco.
Marc:Yeah, how come you knew him?
Marc:I mean, I know he'd come around.
Guest:Well, he would do the punchline, and I would be the host for the nights, and we just became friends.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he called me up a couple years ago, I guess, called up Dave Anthony.
Guest:You know Dave Anthony.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, he's been on the show.
Guest:And he said, hey, I'm sick of the Showcase Showdowns.
Guest:They're written by these guys that are, you know, they've been on the show.
Guest:They're 85-year-old dudes.
Guest:They've been on the show for 30 years, and they write, you know, trip down Main Street with your avocado refrigerator freezer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he would get a list of the prizes, and then we would go to his office, and we would listen to Garage Rock on Sirius FM, and we would just write jokes for the Showcase Showdowns.
Guest:And they tried to make it a... And he would pay us under the table.
Guest:It was very cool.
Guest:Drew's a great guy.
Guest:And he was like, man, this is working out so good.
Guest:I'm going to get you guys hired, make you producers, whatever.
Guest:It'll be fun.
Guest:And then the Writers Guild came in.
Guest:Or no, CBS came in and CBS said...
Guest:hey, we don't like the Writers Guild, so you can't hire these guys.
Guest:We're going to hire guys that aren't in the guild to do the show.
Guest:So we got kind of gilded out of a cool gig.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Yeah, WTF, like your show, man.
Marc:Holy shit.
Guest:But Drew's a great guy, and in July he calls me up, and he co-owns the Seattle Sounders, the soccer team.
Guest:He's a big soccer fan.
Guest:He was in South Africa for the World Cup.
Guest:And he texts me, he goes, hey, you want to come out down to Cape Town for the World Cup?
Guest:I went, yeah.
Guest:Dave Anthony is a soccer freak.
Guest:And I just, I'm the court jester.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Drew flew us down to Cape Town.
Guest:Cape Town was great.
Guest:It was gorgeous.
Guest:Beautiful birds every place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was right on the, right in the, on the South.
Guest:So you could see the waters were really choppy.
Guest:We went out to Nelson Mandela's.
Guest:We went to Robben Island to see his, his jail cell.
Marc:How was that for you?
Guest:First thing we did, it was kind of a, kind of a real pick me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not a bummer at all.
Guest:The tour guide was an ex-prisoner.
Guest:Oh, this was great.
Guest:He was this old guy and he gave us a tour of the cell and was very intense about everything.
Guest:And at one point, I think, Drew said, hey, I have to ask you, what did you do?
Guest:What was your crime?
Guest:Why were you in here?
Guest:Because he was in there for like 10 years or something.
Guest:And he kind of looks around, he goes, let us say I was a product of 1976.
Guest:it was like oh yeah you were yeah it was whatever that meant in 1976 it got you in prison on an island for 10 years what does that even mean yeah but i got it i knew what he did it was like he was just he was just a rabble rouser he was a political rabble rouser at the time of apartheid oh right i mean we drove by district six which was like the cursed area we drove by the shanty towns it was unbelievable and the only people in south africa that were assholes were white it was weird
Marc:Why is that weird?
Marc:Isn't that the legacy?
Marc:Weren't they really big assholes for a really long time?
Guest:Yeah, I kind of think so.
Guest:You know, now everybody thinks it's just de Antwoord, you know?
Marc:But I can't even imagine what it was like there.
Guest:I can't imagine what it's like now because I don't know a lot about- It seemed like it was like a second world country, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's a huge tourist destination.
Guest:It was definitely modern.
Marc:And then there was a lot of real estate owned by the Dutch, correct?
Marc:Yeah, it all came from Dutch slave trades and mercantile trades.
Marc:And they basically oppressed completely and denied the blacks any right to anything.
Guest:Yeah, well, they were the Afrikaners.
Guest:They were like the Republicans of South Africa.
Guest:They were the guys that were against anything that wasn't them.
Guest:And not all white people are like that, but all white people are the same to the black South Africans.
Marc:Now, was there a sense of tension still?
Guest:You know, we had a security detail with us.
Guest:We had five guys that Will Smith recommended to Drew, three American commandos and two South African dudes that were like martial arts killers.
Marc:So you had mercenaries with you?
Guest:Yeah, we had mercenaries with us all the time.
Guest:To protect you from what?
Guest:To protect us from, you know what?
Guest:Rabid Price is Right fans?
Guest:I took my iPhone out to take some pictures at a market, and I noticed three guys watch me put my phone into my pocket.
Guest:I was very nervous down there, and it wasn't just because I was paranoid.
Guest:There was reason to be nervous.
Guest:So there's extreme poverty still.
Guest:There's poverty and there's a lot of crime, a lot of street crime.
Guest:And the game was security checkpoints and electric wire all over everybody's properties.
Guest:And they said that after the game that people were going to go into the townships and kill white people.
Guest:That was the word on the street.
Guest:There was a huge security lockdown in the townships.
Guest:So Invictus is not really true.
Guest:I didn't see Invictus.
Guest:I heard it was long.
Marc:It was long.
Marc:It was like the English patient.
Marc:It gave me the impression that everything was okay now.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know what?
Guest:I mean, I had a wonderful time and Dave Anthony ate kudu and impala.
Marc:What is kudu?
Guest:It's antelope.
Guest:Oh, that animal?
Guest:Yeah, because down there it was on all the menus.
Guest:It's the food down there.
Marc:And impala?
Guest:Impala.
Guest:He didn't like impala.
Guest:He said it was fatty and had a weird texture.
Guest:It was very soft.
Guest:But he liked kudu and he liked wildebeest and the springbok.
Guest:I would get steak, I'd get fillets, and I'd get them well done and get some potatoes.
Guest:I wasn't fucking around because I have a glass stomach.
Guest:And I know that Drew and Dave got Godzilla-ria from some kind of nasty chicken at the casino in Johannesburg.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, it was nasty.
Marc:But the game was cool?
Guest:The game was great.
Guest:Mandela came out and did a little drive around.
Marc:Did you do a few minutes?
Guest:Yeah, he did a What's Up with Airline Peanuts?
Guest:Because everybody has a few Airline Peanuts minutes.
Guest:Type three?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, as you can see by the vuvuzel, it's time to wrap it up.
Marc:Well, it sounds like it was a good time.
Marc:He's a sweet guy.
Marc:Drew Carey is a good guy.
Marc:You got some burlesque coming up?
Guest:We're doing Lucha Vavum in October, a Halloween run.
Guest:I think we're going on the road a little bit with it.
Guest:We'll go up to Seattle again.
Guest:We do it in San Francisco at the Fillmore.
Guest:It sells out.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:Fuck, dude.
Guest:Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Guest:See a midget jump off a balcony into a crowd.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's surreal.
Marc:Do they mind me calling midgets now?
Marc:I mean, when you're actually working with midgets?
Guest:They prefer the term little midgets.
Guest:They do?
Guest:Are they like little midgets?
Guest:And they don't speak much English, the minis, because they're all from Mexico City.
Guest:I mean, like the wrestlers are serious Lucha Libre guys.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And we tour with them, and it's just walking around with all these Spanish-speaking dwarves.
Guest:People lose their mind.
Guest:I remember we did a show in Toronto, and we went to somebody's house for a party, and one of the Suki was dancing on a tabletop, because a coffee table made him as tall as this.
Guest:Suki?
Guest:Suki.
Guest:T-S-U-K-I.
Guest:Who was that?
Guest:Just one of the minis.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And he's standing on a coffee table, so he's tall enough to dance with this hot Japanese chick.
Guest:And the people that lived in Canada that were at the house were in a circle around them.
Guest:And it was that thing where you couldn't believe what you were seeing.
Guest:It was like going back to 1970 and showing somebody Otto and George.
Guest:I would see those guys walk around.
Marc:You know, it's like vaudeville, man.
Marc:It's old style.
Guest:Yeah, but now it's more like Vaude City.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's bigger.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:No one has that triple threat thing going anymore.
Guest:There's no more comedians that can sing and dance and entertain.
Guest:That whole thing is gone.
Guest:The variety act.
Guest:It's all boutique now.
Guest:I'm a comedian that doesn't act.
Marc:That's been gone for a while, but some guys in Vegas do it.
Marc:Barry Diamond still does it.
Marc:You know, I mean, there's some guys I think that will still close with a song like Don Rickles, but it's of a different era.
Marc:I mean, what would a guy of our generation, even younger, like, I mean, you know, Nick Thune plays guitar, but it's not the same.
Marc:You're saying like, you know, here's a couple of jokes.
Marc:Now, Bobby, let's do that tune.
Marc:And then you sing a few.
Guest:yeah there's a couple of one lines because then it's not really about comedy those aren't stand-up guys those most of the guys that did that i think were singers that's a cabaret act that's entertainment right that's what i learned in vegas too the when the guy the manager of the club told me he said hey this isn't a this isn't a comedy this is entertainment this isn't show business this is entertainment what was that about that was about me doing my uh san francisco comedy act in las vegas
Guest:That was when Evel Knievel, but I was doing my act in Vegas, which was going over like my act in Vegas.
Guest:And the manager came up to me, because first night he goes, I was wearing Chuck Taylors.
Guest:He goes, hey, you wear hard shoes tomorrow night.
Guest:If you're not wearing hard shoes, you're done for the week.
Guest:This is a hard shoe gig.
Guest:And I had hard shoes with me, which was weird.
Guest:And so I wore those and they were too big.
Guest:And then later- You didn't say wear clown shoes.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And then later I was doing my poems.
Guest:I was doing the fish and the flatness and all that stuff.
Guest:And he goes, the manager's name's Kazzy, and he's got one of those buffer type tuxedos on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, hey, you know that bit you do in your act with the coffee shop poems?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:He said, when you get to that part of your act, stop and bring on Robert Hawkins.
Yeah.
Guest:Don't do it.
Guest:Just bring on Robert Hawkins.
Guest:And then he goes, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but these crowds don't want to see what you do.
Guest:This isn't show business.
Guest:This is entertainment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it made perfect sense.
Marc:I think we can end on that.
Marc:Blaine Kapatch, thanks for coming.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Okay, that's our show.
Marc:That's Blaine Kapatch.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Again, thank you for listening.
Marc:Thank you for my presence.
Marc:Thank you for all your support.
Marc:I certainly appreciate it because it feels good.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Do the $250 one-shot premium.
Marc:podcast donation package i'll send you a couple t-shirts uh few cds the exclusive best of wtf volume one cd some stickers got new shirts at wtfpod.com you can we now have a distributor that deals in american apparel uh so no more shirts that smell like cats or coffee or have been sitting in my garage
Marc:Go to punchwinemagazine.com for all that.
Marc:Go to wtfpodshop.com for the premium episodes.
Marc:The last one is great.
Marc:With Eugene Merman, Kristen Schaal, John Glazer.
Marc:Good times.
Marc:Sam Seder.
Marc:Again, mostly good times.
Marc:I love Sam.
Marc:I want to congratulate my brother for getting a job.
Marc:He was among the unemployed for months and months.
Marc:And what a godsend, if you believe in that kind of stuff.
Marc:I'm just grateful that he got work.
Marc:And I know a lot of people out there are struggling.
Marc:And there is hope.
Marc:There are good people in the world.
Marc:I have to believe that is true.
Marc:Does that mean I'm getting better?
Marc:Does that mean I'm... I don't know.
Marc:I'll talk to you next week.
you