Episode 1333 - Marc Goes To Washington w/ Dr. Dwandalyn Reece and Lance Mion
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fuck stirs how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it if you haven't been here before this is going to be an interesting episode i think i've been doing stuff
Marc:I've been out in
Marc:As I'm recording this, I'll be doing Philadelphia tonight.
Marc:But also, as many of you know, as I fly in and I drive around for hours and hours to these shows with no opener, just me in the car, thinking about things, thinking about my life, looking to the future, looking to the past, just trying to figure out how I'm situated in this world, in my body, in my mind, in my heart, asking the big questions of myself.
Marc:And also thinking about the past and thinking about the nature of memory and what do we really remember about ourselves?
Marc:What does memory serve?
Marc:Why do we even have it?
Marc:It's very, it's malleable.
Marc:I don't know if malleable is the right word, but over time it shifts, it changes.
Marc:You may not remember things quite right.
Marc:You may not have been at that place or been in that house or actually did the things you think you did.
Marc:It's a strange thing, memory, as you get older.
Marc:And certainly as I watched my father lose his, he realized that, you know, what are you really left with and what do you really have when it comes to memory?
Marc:So it's this is sort of about kind of reckoning with personal history a little bit.
Marc:And it turns out like it's also reckoning with with a collective history, because I was in I was in D.C.
Marc:And what do you do in D.C.?
Marc:What what do I talk about?
Marc:A lot these days is where we're heading as a country and what I feel is important or not important culturally and how culture has been hijacked, which is clearly true by by nefarious forces.
Marc:For the most part, some just blatantly capitalistic forces, but certainly some nefarious forces when it comes to expression of of of history.
Marc:of marginalized people's history.
Marc:And I've just had sort of an interesting experience lately that's sort of expanding my mind around this stuff.
Marc:I just spent a week in Tulsa working on a television show created by, written by, produced by, acted by Native Americans, which is really a first generation
Marc:in the history of this country.
Marc:And it is a true form of American expression, of human expression that has been sort of denied us by the forces that have dictated what we take in culturally.
Marc:I went to DC, I didn't know what to do.
Marc:I've been going to a lot of museums of all different kinds.
Marc:And I decided I would go to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the Smithsonian.
Marc:And I had a profound experience there, which one should have.
Marc:But I also ended up touching base with my college roommate, Lance, Lance Mayan.
Marc:who I lived with on and off.
Marc:I lived with him for four years, two in student housing and two after the student housing.
Marc:And then there was never any sort of problem or rift between us, but I missed almost all of his life.
Marc:And I would touch base with him occasionally, maybe three or four times in the last 35 years.
Marc:But it's interesting what I have found in touching base with people from my past, certain people, is that there isn't that much distance between us as human beings or our experience of each other, that there's some parts of us that remain the same, it seems.
Marc:And there are some things that aren't quite, that I don't remember about myself and that he may not remember.
Marc:So I ended up talking to him and putting some pieces together and having that experience of wondering who we were and how we got to where we are and just reconnecting like that.
Marc:So there was sort of a personal history.
Marc:And also in New Jersey, ended up spending time with the other two guys that Lance and I lived with for two years, Anthony Calabrese and Brad Stoneberg.
Marc:It was kind of a profound and fun experience to reconnect with these guys because they're all very familiar to me, even though it's been, what, 35 to 40 years since I've seen these guys.
Marc:It was just very interesting to me.
Marc:But moving back...
Marc:The museum, I don't know if you've been there, but the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is relatively new.
Marc:It's new to me.
Marc:It's right on the National Mall.
Marc:It's right down the street from the Holocaust Museum.
Marc:I mean, I would imagine that doubleheader would be profoundly overwhelming and heartbreaking and horrific.
Marc:But one thing I started to realize, sadly,
Marc:These are two museums that are monuments, memorials, and also archival collections, and to some degree, both are a reckoning.
Marc:These should act as sort of a sobering warning, but also these should be both the things that those two museums represent.
Marc:The worst type of murderous, genocidal,
Marc:anti-Semitism, and then the worst type of human bondage, slavery, and then the ongoing systemic racism that has been a problem in this country and continues to be one.
Marc:Both of these should have been in the past.
Marc:We should have evolved as a culture, as a civilization, as a country beyond what these two museums represent.
Marc:But sadly, it seems that new exhibits will be added
Marc:uh in the years to come and hopefully the point of view remains appropriate of both these music museums but we don't know ultimately how this country is going to go but the fact is this is an ongoing concern the design of the museum itself is this sort of triptych it's it's like got three levels and it's based on a nigerian piece of head of headgear from a sculpture from several sculptures
Marc:And I love architecture that sort of infuses all of the things that it represents.
Marc:The sort of steel work on the outside, I guess it's steel lattice work, is sort of based on some of the work of the blacksmiths that were trained and were artisans in New Orleans post-slavery who had learned these crafts while they were slaves or working as slaves.
Marc:indentured servants.
Marc:And so just the aesthetic of the place.
Marc:And there was a thoughtful kind of, there's a, I believe a reflecting pool, but there's also something that represents a porch in the architecture as a communal meeting place and place where stories are told.
Marc:So it's a fascinating sort of design just on an architectural level.
Marc:And as I talked to Dr. Dwandolin Reese, who is the curator of music and performing arts at the museum,
Marc:And she's been there since 2009.
Marc:That was before the physical museum wasn't even opened, which opened in 2016.
Marc:But what is amazing about the reality of not only the subject matter of the museum, but that there was an effort to get this museum open for the past 100 years.
Marc:A museum to represent the African-American contribution to this country.
Marc:A hundred years.
Marc:And now it sits in proximity to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House.
Marc:And the way she kind of talked about it and the way it sort of made sense to me that it is in a silent conversation with all of these symbolic spaces.
Marc:Like I felt something about that.
Marc:You know, like when I got, I've been to DC with different states of mind.
Marc:When I was younger, when you get there and you see it for the first time, the monuments are overwhelming and you realize this is supposed to be overwhelming.
Marc:It's supposed to represent the sort of glory and the stature and the mythic importance of, of the U.S.,
Marc:democracy and what this country represents.
Marc:But at different times, you know, I've been there during protests where you realize like you're just being dwarfed by the mythological importance of what this country is supposed to represent.
Marc:And you're actively trying to push back against it or work within it to make change.
Marc:And then I went there during the Trump years where it represented something gray and dark.
Marc:And you realize that it could be gutted and emptied and used for completely nefarious and corrupt purposes, which it has been since the beginning of U.S.
Marc:government.
Marc:And then when you go into this museum and experience the history of slavery in a way that you will never experience it, you realize that it was completely unparalleled.
Marc:supported at different points in time by this government.
Marc:And then a blind eye was turned or legislation wasn't created to make things correct, to make things right.
Marc:It was a slow, slow process that is backtracking.
Marc:It's falling back.
Marc:And the way it's designed is you go, there are several floors downstairs, which sort of represent the history of African-American people in the 1600s, where the entire sort of global history of slavery, you know, heading into the Americas before it was even the United States of America.
Marc:But it was so specific and so in-depth, and I couldn't take it all in.
Marc:How do you really get it?
Marc:It's very hard to be...
Marc:Truly empathetic.
Marc:It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes without knowing where they walked in from.
Marc:to truly understand the depth of it.
Marc:And when you go to this museum, you understand the depth of it.
Marc:Even if you see the shackles, you see the boats, you hear testimonies and read testimonies, you see the founding fathers and the history of early slavery in this country and the bloody, horrendous, inhumane treatment of human beings by other human beings, which really stood out to me
Marc:It's very hard for me to understand, but it's as consistent with world history as is civilization.
Marc:It's this horrific, violent, completely demeaning treatment, murderous treatment of human-on-human interaction, enslaving.
Marc:What I found going through it is that I had a visceral and human experience and that my empathy expanded into something human and not just an idea or just a knowledge of.
Marc:It expanded.
Marc:because of the museum and the process, because you go through those bottom floors and you see the struggle, moving from like the 1600s all the way up through now, through the Civil Rights Movement, through the Voting Rights Act, through everything.
Marc:And even without being able to put the amount of time necessary to take it all in, my entire brain was sort of reconfigured in terms of the depth of empathy possible.
Marc:and an understanding and respect.
Marc:for that struggle.
Marc:And the way I noticed it, oddly, because when you go upstairs, the upstairs is really about the African-American contributions in music, fashion, literature, dance, theater, commerce, design, all of it.
Marc:And it's beautiful.
Marc:And you kind of really move through it.
Marc:But if you spend the correct amount of time in the darkness, in the basement, and you come up into the world of accomplishment, then
Marc:you are deeply informed and empathetic to where it all comes from in terms of African-American expression.
Marc:Like I went to have an amazing visual art exhibit at one of the galleries called Reckoning, I believe it's called, and it's painting and sculpture.
Marc:And the aesthetic that like just even looking at modern art or paintings that represent African-American themes or by African-American artists,
Marc:because I was downstairs and because something happened in my brain and in my heart, the depth of my empathy and my understanding of the aesthetic
Marc:that informs all of the artwork.
Marc:Like it just expanded and gave me a sort of type of respect and type of empathy that I did not quite have before.
Marc:I had a sort of like, yeah, it's terrible.
Marc:You know, I feel bad.
Marc:You know, it was a terrible thing, but now it was living and active.
Marc:And now like, you know, my perception of the experience of black Americans
Marc:is totally different.
Marc:You know, this is a national museum and this functions as a museum.
Marc:It is not ideological.
Marc:It is a museum of history of the United States of America.
Marc:And the fact that, you know, in almost half of the states that have Republican state legislatures that you're not going to be taught this history, it's fundamentally anti-American, but is something worse than that.
Marc:It's a, it is a whitewashing.
Marc:It is a step backwards.
Marc:So I recommend going to the museum, but I was happy to talk to, um, Dr. Reese.
Marc:She goes by Dwan.
Marc:Uh, and we talked a bit about, uh, you know, the museum and, and, uh, it was profound to me.
Yeah.
Marc:What are you finding in terms of the visitor's experience?
Marc:What's been the experience watching people come in here for the past few years?
Guest:It is, you know, when we started, we ended up with the longest dwell time ever.
Guest:People were staying here five, six hours, whole days.
Guest:The typical average is maybe one an hour and a half in a museum.
Guest:So people are touched by the content.
Guest:What really I'll walk in the galleries from time to time.
Guest:I like I'm really heartened by the intergenerational dialogues that go on from the younger people from kids to young adults who didn't know a lot of this stuff and are visibly moved.
Guest:To people who actually lived it, to people who never got the grasp and how they feel about this history and being witness to it in this way.
Guest:It's a very powerful experience for people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think anyone walks out of there untouched in some way or another.
Guest:And that's heartening because it's giving people a chance to deal with difficult history and difficult stories, but also to affirm that what happened happened to real people.
Guest:That the transatlantic slave trade, we were dealing with people as commodities.
Guest:It's hard to not point out how horrific that system was.
Guest:And then what happened when you see in the other exhibits is the legacy of it that we're still grappling with today.
Marc:Yeah, that was what I realized that was sort of horrifying when I was coming over here is that, you know, between this and some of the other monuments and even the Holocaust Museum is that there's still an evolving history of this type of hatred and violence.
Marc:That it's not finished yet.
Marc:Like, this isn't behind us.
Marc:This isn't a memorial.
Guest:No.
Guest:It's very much, we'd like to say, our new director, living history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're living it at the moment.
Guest:And I bet there's any moment that we're dealing with right now that you could find someplace in the museum where you feel like it's history repeating itself.
Marc:And also some of the stuff that I found to be like, I don't think I ever had a full picture of not just necessarily what slavery built or what it did to this country, but how much of skill sets and everything that they didn't, that weren't here until these people were kidnapped and brought here.
Marc:I didn't know so much of that stuff.
Marc:And I don't know that I know it now, but I do know that I have a much broader understanding of what happened historically.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think even in school, you're not taught that.
Guest:I don't remember hardly anything in school.
Guest:But there's a basic, even, you know, I was in high school in the 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of a basic narrative.
Guest:All these intricate stories, whether you're dealing with African Americans, Native Americans, and the different point of view.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Nothing.
Guest:That's never elevated to the point where you have a complicated but nuanced understanding of how our history played out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I think that's why they have, I guess, entire majors in college that are based on that.
Marc:I mean, it's hard to bring all that together, but I think they did it here to some degree, you know?
Marc:I mean, it's all down there, but it's like you can only, I mean, I had no idea about the expansiveness of the global slave trade.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:We've got a center for the study of global slavery.
Guest:We're working with other collaborating partners.
Guest:We'll be doing an exhibit about that in about two to three years because it's a global concern.
Guest:It's an ongoing and still contemporary concern.
Guest:Isn't that crazy?
Guest:And we don't.
Guest:We're not particularly attuned to that.
Guest:We weren't taught that way.
Guest:I mean, I think the concept when I was growing up, just American slavery, I never thought about the global nature.
Guest:And even I love the prehistory that we get before we get to the transatlantic slave trade about just globalism and building societies and capitalism.
Guest:It just all plays out.
Marc:That's the thing that really comes through in the lower galleries is that by all this sort of accounts of the experience of slavery or people writing about it who were there all the way through now even, but I mean the lynchings and the assassinations and stuff, is that when I'm down there, I can't understand how another human being can do that to somebody else.
Marc:And the fact that it exists
Marc:makes me very frightened for the future, in a sense, that people are capable of the worst possible things you can imagine.
Marc:And I think it's hard to wrap your brain about that.
Marc:You know it if you read it in history books, but to go down there and see it like you guys have laid it out here, you feel it.
Marc:And I don't know that that's always possible.
Guest:So let me ask you this question.
Guest:The seeing versus the knowing.
Guest:What was the difference for you in that gallery?
Guest:Was it the knowledge, the exhibition, the objects?
Guest:What made it real for you?
Marc:I don't think it was.
Marc:I think it was the way it was laid out and the thoroughness of the history.
Marc:And in terms of like when you really think about, I think some of the nuances around the idea of people being...
Marc:literally taken from their homes, from their communities, from their family, and then on through families being separated in slave auctions and whatnot.
Marc:And I knew it, but seeing it written and then seeing some of the artifacts, like, yes, certainly the shackles, and I'd seen the pictures of the ships before, but there was something about the narratives and the immersive experience of being in there, the voices even, that all contributed to me having a more human sense of it, a human interaction with it.
Guest:Yeah, and I think that's why it works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Abstract to human beings.
Guest:And then you, in certain ways, when you start to hear these stories, you try to imagine what would it be, you know, if I were separated from my parents as a child, forcibly.
Guest:I mean, you can't imagine it.
Guest:You can't imagine it.
Guest:And the pain and the... Right.
Marc:It's very hard to get in touch with the correct amount of empathy because it's almost devastating.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There was something about not only the inhumanity of of how people were treated, but the fact that they couldn't get this place built as a monument to African-Americans contribution to American life and culture up until a few years ago.
Marc:I mean, it's still not right.
Marc:I mean, you know, here you've got this entire rice business built in the Carolinas by African farmers who knew how to do it, and they got nothing for it but misery and enslavement.
Marc:And that concept, that idea of not giving credit where credit's due and not, you know, having a just society exists.
Marc:Why would this be a question to put this place up?
Marc:10 years ago 20 years ago even i mean it's crazy you know things move slowly you know there are things that are happening today and it's like this should have not been an issue at this point i know and it's like why i come out of there thinking like there is some serious part of the civil war that has not been resolved
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, it's just as we have not reckoned with some of the negative aspects of the country.
Guest:I mean, the discussion over race, the civil war.
Guest:I mean, there's these images.
Guest:And if you can't acknowledge something, it's really difficult to heal.
Marc:I mean, I went to that museum in Alabama.
Marc:I haven't been to that one yet.
Marc:To the lynching museum with the hanging monoliths.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That leveled me.
Marc:In the same way that, for some reason, the art really connects with me.
Marc:Even those bricks behind Jefferson downstairs.
Marc:I mean, it's a similar kind of thing where you have this representation, these symbolic representations that put the numbers in perspective, you know?
Marc:So how does this, in terms of when you have conversations about how the museum evolves, what are those conversations?
Marc:Are you going to be constantly curating new exhibits?
Marc:Like the painting exhibit and the art exhibit upstairs, the Reckoning, is that something that gallery is going to change quarterly or every year?
Guest:It won't quarterly.
Guest:That was a big redo when we opened that last year.
Guest:So it was a re-visioning of that gallery.
Guest:It was a permanent gallery.
Guest:I envision more incarnations of showing the artwork and engaging it with the rest of the subject matter of the museum.
Guest:We generally rotate objects on a yearly basis.
Guest:Of course, COVID put that on hold.
Guest:We have temporary exhibition gallery.
Guest:At some point, we may think about redoing the permanent exhibits, but that's still a ways off.
Guest:But we're also investigating new places to have more space to do more content.
Guest:A lot of that's going to take place digitally because the possibilities, not only getting the content to out of people, but what we can do with it.
Guest:Even with an exhibition, you can only do so much.
Guest:So we have something now that we just launched this fall, the Searchable Museum, which takes that slavery and freedom gallery, but makes it a digital online component and helps establish some of the relationships and stories that you really couldn't do spaciously.
Guest:So you may want to check that out.
Marc:So you can just sort of like do little bits and pieces of shifting up the exhibits a little bit.
Marc:I noticed some some pieces were missing, but obviously, you know, some of the larger things are going to stay there because they're permanent.
Marc:But there's artifacts that you can just move in and out.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, and that's our key purpose is to make the collection accessible to the public.
Guest:And so the exhibits are just one way.
Guest:A lot of the research that goes on, publications.
Guest:We have a partnership with Smithsonian Folkways.
Guest:We do recordings.
Guest:Oh, the recordings.
Guest:Yeah, we just did the hip hop anthology last year.
Guest:With them?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Is that out yet?
Guest:Oh, yeah, it came out in August.
Guest:On vinyl?
Guest:I couldn't afford to do it online.
Guest:Oh, sorry.
Guest:You know, people ask that.
Guest:It was a whole thing.
Guest:How many?
Guest:We had 129 tracks.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Nine CDs.
Guest:And I know the CDs are obsolete, but it's a 300 page illustrated book with photographs, objects and essays, but really putting a history around hip hop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we did that kind of, it was kind of ground up project where we really brought in
Guest:you know the hip-hop community to select the tracks oh yeah and everything like that i gotta look for that it's so weird that that's the jefferson monument right there right yes you can just see it uh-huh and it's hard not to to you know the that kind of yeah if you sit here yeah you think about that you saw that jefferson statue and there it is right here and these conversations these spaces you know just they're instantly in dialogue with one another
Marc:So now, how do you feel about, in terms of the museum, like you're talking about this online presence, but we're now at this place in history where they might not allow that in half the schools in this country.
Guest:We're a resource.
Guest:We're a resource for the public.
Guest:And we will keep providing this kind of content, engaging in a variety of issues, and that is part of our mission.
Guest:We're the public's institution, and this is the work we do.
Guest:So we will always be doing that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And what separates it from a philosophical thing is that it's an archive.
Marc:It's a historical museum.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:It doesn't have an agenda other than to educate and to represent the history of the country.
Guest:educate represent the history of the country from an african-american diasporic point of view thank you for talking to me sure thanks for visiting and you have to come back well i'm gonna have to come back to finish
Marc:So I don't know really what to say about this other than I've been going to a lot of museums and I've been reflecting on a lot of things.
Marc:And just because of, I don't know, wherever my heart is or my mind is or whatever my age is, I'm more available to be a little more empathetic, open-hearted.
Marc:And it's very heartbreaking and satisfying to engage on this level.
Marc:And I think it's important that we all engage with our shared history and not just rely on past memories or just chunks of information that informs our emotions that we can have control over.
Marc:Because if you go to this museum, it's profoundly human and profoundly horrific and dug in deep into our collective experience.
Marc:And and moving on from that, you know, I it just so happened that I'm in D.C.
Marc:And I'm kind of trying to put things together in terms of my sense of self and who I am and what what did I come from?
Marc:And it just seems to be going.
Marc:It's ongoing thing.
Marc:And I'm pretty clear on who I am.
Marc:But I'm kind of like, I don't know who I am from other people's point of view.
Marc:and uh you know it was just interesting because i figured like well fuck it let's just talk to lance i mean obviously there's a lot of people throughout my life i could talk to even people in my current life but i just i hadn't talked to lance for a while and we were very close but we lived together for four years and we worked together in places and uh we caught up and i recorded it this is me talking to my old roommate lance mayan
Guest:What's the matter with your life?
Guest:Retirement can kill you.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How long have you been retired?
Guest:Probably a month.
Guest:i'm already half in the grave what i mean what is it well you start doing stupid things so like uh you know i i'm retired from being a chef because i don't want to run kitchens anymore but right i still want to work and a buddy of mine's a landscaper and it's pretty physical work and yeah you know i'm 59 going to 25 but feeling like i'm 59 yeah and climbing in and out of a truck and i fell into the bed of his truck and then some fucking woman at the end is going are you okay and
Guest:I wasn't.
Guest:And so I've been in pain for like four days.
Marc:So this is your retirement.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is how I enjoy myself.
Marc:You did it.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I'm finally there.
Guest:You're at my age, right?
Guest:A little older.
Guest:I'll be 60 this year.
Marc:Okay, so I'm going to be 59 this year.
Marc:Yeah, so a year.
Marc:Because I think about retiring, and I think, because in my brain, even though I don't live a life that's like that, it feels like something that we're supposed to be working towards, to stop.
Marc:Wasn't that why I worked in the first place?
Marc:Yeah, so I can retire eventually.
Marc:Well, that's an old idea.
Marc:I mean, I don't know if that's really the idea still, but it's what we were kind of brought up with.
Marc:I'm good with it.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:You know, I've been working for over 40 years and man, it does, you know, and I've always been like, you know, the workaholic, you know, drive that shit into my kids.
Guest:And now they go, but you don't want to work anymore.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, I'm done.
Marc:But are you about face?
Marc:Then why are you fucking in a truck?
Guest:Well, you know, you're outside.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:And oh, wait, I didn't tell you this.
Guest:So the first week, I punctured my arm.
Guest:You can see what's left of it.
Guest:I punctured my arm with this cotter pin on the bottom of a wheelbarrow loaded into the same freaking truck I fell in.
Guest:And I had to get a tetanus shot.
Guest:So that was my first week.
Guest:And then this week, I fell trying to swing my leg over the top of his bed, and I fell right into it at a nursery.
Guest:And, you know, I look like an ass.
Marc:So, I mean, do you feel like you deserve this?
Guest:The pain?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Guest:Somebody's getting the revenge on me, that's for sure.
Marc:but here's the thing i don't i don't understand because i really feel like i could just do nothing because i feel like i do that most of the time only because i'm self-employed so it never it's not like i'm going to work right right so it's never felt like that for me but i worked my ass off but i really feel like i could do nothing but now uh talking to you i don't know well don't do landscaping that's the kind of fucking thing i would think i could do my father you know he retired for a while and he'd be tried to be a mailman
Marc:oh that's that's not easy no i know it's actually hard with dogs or the bag is heavy right but what are you doing you're moving i don't know i'm thinking i'm young you know i go to the gym yeah it's not the same no so i was trying to think like because what was the last time i saw you before how to be how to be uh before covid the last time i did this place uh yeah and we went out to dinner and we caught up it's so weird at the ritz
Marc:Because when I hang out with you, even though we never see each other, I did it with Jimmy, too.
Marc:Jim Loftus, I saw him.
Marc:And Cliff, you didn't know from my freshman year of college.
Marc:There's just that period in our life where I see you, and it doesn't feel different.
Marc:You don't feel that different to me.
Marc:I mean, I know we've had entire lifetimes, but the frequency's the same.
Marc:Am I the same?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm thinking like...
Guest:I was thinking about it today and right over here.
Guest:It's like, how long have we known each other?
Guest:I mean, sophomore year, it had to be 1983.
Guest:83, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it's like 36 years?
Marc:Yeah, it's like 36 years.
Marc:Yeah, it's a long freaking time.
Marc:It's fucking nuts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there's this whole chunk of it that, you know, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know where you... I remember I was thinking there's these bits and pieces after college.
Marc:I didn't see you that much.
Marc:But we ended up... We lived together for...
Marc:sophomore junior senior the senior we had the apartment together on junior and senior there's a videotape of us playing air guitar and air drums to an entire side of pink boys animals somewhere i'm sure we are you know there's some influence there but do you remember like i don't remember how
Marc:Well, I remember what happened at that apartment is like you started seeing Kathy and she moved in and there was, I just came home once and you did sectioned off half of the living room with a, with like a sheet.
Guest:Well, then you, my, my bedroom was the size of the bed.
Marc:I know that, but it was really small.
Marc:Walk in there.
Marc:Just a curtain cutting the living room.
Guest:Well, I'm not an architect.
Marc:there was no discussion it was just sort of like all right that was funny because your bedroom wake is a patio it was yeah it was it was tiny it was a porch yeah porch yeah when like do you remember us meeting like do you remember how we got no i do i remember i'm part with the park drive is that the street yeah that was on park drive oh yeah i had already gotten there i had yeah my folks yeah we got there and then uh patricia yeah
Guest:And then you showed up.
Guest:You were the first guy I met.
Guest:Right.
Marc:There's that weird awkwardness.
Marc:Like, what kind of guy are you?
Marc:What are we doing here?
Marc:No, we hit it off, though.
Marc:Yeah, we did.
Guest:And I do remember this.
Marc:Records.
Marc:It was about records.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you remember?
Guest:Do you remember going to... Remember they had an RA, right?
Guest:We had an RA for the building?
Marc:Right.
Marc:It was a woman.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know her freaking name.
Guest:I don't remember her name.
Guest:So she had, and I remember this is Kathy, now my wife, but her first impression of us was we showed up at the RA meeting with everybody else from the apartment, and you and I had bath robes on and cowboy boots.
Guest:And she just thought it wasn't a good look.
Guest:She wasn't impressed.
Guest:What were we doing?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Just being ourselves.
Guest:you know no one else we certainly didn't care what people thought you know remember we used to go down to the duck pond and yeah you know take shrooms yeah yeah and sit in the trees so we can talk freely now you're not worried about your kids here and they've already heard other shit yeah you had to come clean yeah yeah actually due to your show i know i remember what what's the story of that who how'd that happen uh a buddy of mine who listens to you regularly um i guess you mentioned it was when you had uh what the hell's his name
Marc:I'm sorry if it gets hot.
Marc:I just didn't want that.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Pauly Shore.
Guest:Oh, Pauly Shore.
Guest:You're interviewing him.
Guest:And then you came up with some story.
Guest:Well, it wasn't made up, but it actually happened.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Where the two of us were, I think we dropped acid on Halloween.
Guest:And we dressed like, well, not intentionally, but gay rockabilly.
Marc:We didn't know what to dress as.
Marc:We were pressured for a costume.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We wanted to go to parties, and we ended up just greasing our hair up.
Marc:And wearing, like, leather.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then we ended up in the basement of that apartment.
Guest:Well, we went to the apartment, and somebody must have pulled the fire alarm, like, as soon as we got there.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So everybody bailed, and then you and I were like, well, we're still in the fucking apartment.
Guest:So we went down to the basement and started running around with heating ducts on our heads.
Marc:Heating ducts on our heads, like, laughing our asses off.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then the fire department walked in with axes and shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And literally I said, take me to your leader.
Guest:And we ran out laughing like idiots.
Guest:Why wouldn't we?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, there's that story.
Guest:But then what happened was getting back to my kids.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:A buddy of mine listened to that episode.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then realized you're talking about me because you mentioned my name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, hey, you know, Mark Maron.
Guest:I go, yeah, Mark and I, you know, I've known for a year.
Guest:We went to school together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he made a copy of the CD.
Guest:He made a copy, right?
Guest:And gave me a copy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Back before you knew how to use an iPod or anything.
Guest:And then, of course, it got to some other friends of ours, which he gave a copy of it to.
Guest:And my wife is going, you know, the kids are going to find out.
Guest:I said, Nick, you know, they were younger, right?
Guest:My son was 17 at the time.
Guest:They don't know who Mark is.
Guest:They're not going to listen.
Guest:They have no idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was at our pool and one of Nick's friends came up to me and said, Mr. Mayan.
Guest:Oh, no, my wife came up to me.
Guest:She goes, you're busted.
Guest:I go, what?
Guest:She goes, Mark Maron.
Guest:I go, why?
Guest:She goes, you know, Kevin's friend of my son's came up to me and said, Mrs. Mayan, was Mr. Mayan Mark Maron's roommate in college?
Guest:And she knew him right away.
Guest:He must have heard that episode where you and I dress as gay rockabilly's on acid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so after that i couldn't say shit to my kids about anything i was like that was it i blew it yeah it's over yeah do what you want i but i wonder how i don't know i don't have kids but i guess that you really have to hide that shit in order to be disciplined there well yeah can't you still warn them and say like it wasn't good no all right yeah i know it sounded like fun way mark described the book it was terrible it was an awful experience and i only did it 10 more times yeah
Marc:We did do it another time.
Marc:It's so weird because I, I knew we spent so much fucking time together.
Marc:So you really do know people.
Marc:I was sort of trying to figure that out.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Cause the guy cliff who I was in freshman year with, I saw him a couple of weeks ago and like, I knew that guy for a year, but it's because it was that time in our lives.
Marc:We're just like, it makes an imprint.
Marc:And then those people get frozen like that.
Marc:And then you see them later and you're like, is that the same guy?
Marc:How is it not going to be the same guy unless you have a brain injury or something?
Marc:But you're pretty much the same.
Marc:I am.
Marc:I am.
Marc:I think I remember, dude, I think I got you into the food business.
Guest:You did.
Marc:Was that edibles?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was it edibles?
Marc:But then I started thinking, didn't we both work at the veggie cafeteria?
Guest:We worked at, was ARA?
Guest:Was that what it was?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:That was the food company, but we were in the veggie one.
Guest:I remember working for the cafeteria.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then serving, that was what I, but you weren't cooking back then.
Marc:We were just serving, right?
Marc:Probably.
Marc:You don't remember anything?
Marc:I don't remember anything.
Marc:I remember there was this.
Guest:I don't think I was cooking.
Marc:I don't ever remember handling a spatula.
Marc:I remember the black dude that was the head cook there.
Marc:And I remember I was in the veggie cafeteria because I used to name, we were just fucking joking around.
Marc:The veggie cafeteria, we weren't veggies, but it was better food.
Marc:And I remember naming some of the items and I put it up on the board.
Marc:You have to name the items?
Marc:Well, like they would have like, you know, mozzarella casserole or something.
Marc:And I put something on there, like the pride of Kings.
Marc:That explains it.
Marc:People would come up and go, I'll take the pride of Kings.
Marc:And I just laughed and laughed to myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It contains mozzarella.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you remember you were in a musical?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you had like one, I remember you had one scene where you did a noose thing.
Marc:You're like, yep, like this.
Guest:Yeah, I can't have some parts.
Guest:Steve Brill got me into that.
Guest:He did?
Guest:He told me to go try out for it.
Guest:For the musical.
Guest:For Chicago.
Marc:Because he thought, because you always were singing and drooping and dancing around.
Marc:Yeah, I'm a goof.
Marc:Yeah, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I did it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you did Chicago.
Marc:I remember like there was one night where, where the fuck were we?
Marc:We were in Boston and we were getting fucked up somewhere.
Marc:And I had that old, my brother's shitty Camaro.
Marc:And we were like, let's go to New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we had no money.
Marc:We had no money and no place to go.
Marc:And it was like one in the morning and we committed.
Marc:It was so dumb.
Marc:It was me, you, Brill, and I think Gaffney.
Marc:I don't know if Gaffney was there, but I remember we just go to my aunt's house in New Jersey.
Guest:Remember getting pulled over by the cop?
Yeah.
Marc:Kinda.
Guest:And I thought he was like McCloud.
Guest:He came up, he goes, how long do you plan to stay in town?
Guest:Like, who the fuck are you?
Guest:I mean, who asked that question?
Guest:This isn't the old Hollywood movie.
Guest:When we got into Jersey?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, we're just here to see his grandmother.
Guest:So I don't know, in a couple hours, sir, is that enough?
Marc:And then we crashed in her basement on the floor in that rug basement.
Marc:And then we're like, well, I guess we gotta go to the city.
Marc:Yeah, we went to Soho.
Guest:Yeah, and then we did nothing.
Guest:We ate lunch and left.
Guest:I think Brill paid for it.
Guest:I think he was the only one with a credit card.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think he bought us lunch.
Marc:And then you were like, I got to get to rehearsal.
Marc:So lunch was a start.
Marc:It was full circle.
Marc:Yeah, we had to go to work or something and drive back.
Marc:Do you remember that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:I remember not having any sleep.
Guest:And we ran every toll.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:That was crazy.
Guest:We couldn't pay for a toll.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It was just so dumb.
Guest:It was so dumb.
Guest:Yeah, because it was like 1 o'clock in the morning, we didn't know what to do.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like, well, let's go to New York.
Marc:It's not that far.
Marc:Do you remember when I wanted to do comedy?
Guest:Yeah, and you were doing open mic nights.
Guest:So you and I would go up to like, I don't know if it was Played Against Sam's, but there's another one that was up there in Austin area.
Marc:Played Against Sam's.
Marc:Yeah, Played Against Sam's was definitely up there.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So that was during college?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:When I first tried it?
Marc:Yep.
Guest:It may have been senior year, but I do remember it.
Guest:A couple of times.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was brutal, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you're better now.
Guest:You got to cut your teeth at some point, right?
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:But I kind of remember trying to do jokes.
Marc:I was interested in doing it.
Marc:Because I know that me and Brill did the team thing.
Marc:But you saw me by myself.
Marc:Because that was after he graduated.
Marc:So it must have been that summer.
Marc:But there was a night where I tried to do it for some college thing.
Marc:And I just remember, and I'll cop to it, I had one of my own jokes, and then I did one Woody Allen joke, and then I did anything to get through it.
Marc:But I kind of remember always being interested in it and doing that other shit.
Marc:It's wild.
Guest:Well, I do remember going to a couple of places with you in actual comedy clubs.
Marc:Waiting around?
Guest:Well, there was an open mic night.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you could just go up and you were able to do it.
Guest:You did a couple of minutes and it was rough, but I mean, you got better.
Marc:But was I fucking out of my mind?
Marc:Was I panicked?
Marc:It takes balls.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was I crazy and panicked?
Marc:I remember being panicked.
Guest:I remember you rehearsing to yourself prior to getting up there.
Guest:A lot of practice.
Guest:A lot of...
Marc:i can't i don't remember that part of myself i don't remember the rehearsing part yeah but i must have done it telling your jokes over and over in your head and yeah but you know when do we you did one where you kind of stacked up the chairs right i went to the museum of modern art is that what it was yeah yeah i put the mic stand on the top of the stool yes i think i hang something from the top and i'm like i was just at the museum of modern art and i just wanted to sit there to get the first laugh and it kind of worked i remember it remember that joke i do remember that joke so did i
Marc:that's pretty good that's six i remember i remember a couple of jokes from that set i just remember being out back smoking we were both smoking you don't still smoke right no yeah i quit a long time ago i mean i haven't like i got told i was on nicotine lozenges forever oh really yeah i just i couldn't get off them but i've been off everything now for a few years i don't even like the smell yeah i don't it's like yeah i notice it i don't know if i don't like it but i don't know uh how long has it been since he's
Guest:Oh, New Year's Eve, 1999.
Guest:Have you had any major health things?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Heart attack?
Guest:No, nothing like that.
Guest:I've injured myself several times.
Guest:I do a lot of that.
Guest:I play softball, and you think it's like there's this kind of a benign sport.
Guest:You know, it's a nice bunch of older guys getting together, playing softball.
Guest:I've had surgery because of it.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:fractured my finger last year uh but everything else is all right yeah health-wise other than that other than your mom's still around yeah yeah she's still doing really well she'll be 88 in july 88 yep yep she loves you oh yeah she saw you in respect oh yeah she goes i didn't realize you had such a big role yeah i remember them well i remember vick hyper vick oh yes how'd he pass away
Guest:ALS.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, that was a tough person to get that because, you know, he was so opposite.
Marc:So wired.
Guest:You know, I mean, yeah, he was nuts.
Marc:And your brother, Pat, and then the other one, Farron.
Marc:Farron, yep.
Marc:Farron, the giant.
Guest:Well, Pat was bigger, but Farron was the ex-Marine.
Marc:I just remember that time, man.
Marc:You remember that time.
Marc:I don't know why he stopped by the place when we lived on the second floor, and he had his guns with him.
Do you?
Guest:Because he goes everywhere with his guns.
Guest:Gotta have your gun.
Marc:But do you remember like, you know, I hadn't met him before and he stopped by and you and I were in the kitchen and he was in your room, which had that amazing bay window.
Marc:You had that corner room.
Marc:And we walk in and he's just sighting people.
Okay.
Guest:Oh, he wasn't really going to shoot anybody.
Marc:No, I know that, but it was just that moment where we looked at each other.
Guest:He did shoot a pan once.
Marc:A pan?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What do you mean?
Guest:Yeah, it's an odd story.
Guest:He's probably the only person alive who's ever done it.
Marc:Is he around still?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But he called me.
Guest:I'm a chef at this point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he called me up one day.
Guest:He goes, hey, Lance, I...
Guest:I bought a cast iron skillet.
Guest:He goes, and I'm trying to season it so it becomes, you know, stick, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:It's a chef's question.
Guest:Yeah, so he wanted it to be like nonstick, right?
Guest:So he goes, how do you season it?
Guest:He goes, you got directions, you can put oil in it, bake it, you can turn it on, let the oil get hot, do that sort of thing.
Guest:And there's a few ways you could do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and he goes all right so he does it it calls me up a couple days later he goes god damn because i season this pan i've done it like three different freaking ways because the shit still sticks to it because i'm really getting pissed i'm going okay try this try this try this and then i don't hear from him for a while and uh i don't know maybe a month or two goes by and he called me we're just talking hey by the way how's that you know your non-stick pan coming along he goes i shot it
Guest:You know what he goes.
Guest:Yeah, the fucking thing I got so mad one day I was putting us cooking fish in it and I did all the things right and I keep sticking so I got pissed off I took out in the back put against the tree shot my 44.
Guest:Oh my god Wow, okay.
Guest:Yeah for that thing So it went right through oh, yeah, so I said well, how are you cooking your fish goes?
Guest:I put the fish in the oil in the pan, turn the heat on.
Guest:I'm like, wait a minute, what'd you do?
Guest:He goes, I put the fish in the oil in the pan and I turned the heat on.
Guest:I go, so you put it in a cold pan.
Guest:He goes, well, it was going to get out.
Guest:I go, you can't cook shit in a cold pan.
Guest:It's going to stick every fucking time.
Guest:I go, you shot up an innocent pan because you're an idiot.
Yeah.
Guest:By the way, it doesn't make a Teflon.
Marc:It just helps.
Marc:I mean, you can't expect it to be like a nonstick pan.
Guest:And he truly bought it and believed that that's what was going to come.
Marc:It was going to be just like a Teflon pan.
Guest:And so that pan got what was coming.
Marc:What did that guy end up doing with his wife, Farron?
Guest:I went to work with my father and brother.
Guest:They took over the company.
Guest:Do they still got it?
Guest:They sold it two years ago.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So they're both retired.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Two or three years ago.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're older than me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:And everyone's got kids?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Two, two, and two.
Marc:wow yep so let's so let's catch up with that so after college like i went directly home and then you went but you didn't go immediately to culinary school i remember it was no 10 years 10 years before you did i was 31 where and what were you where were you working i was a photographer for a minute oh that's right yeah what were you taking pictures of
Guest:Uh, grip and grin stuff.
Guest:It was, um, I remember we had to do the Boston marathon and the owner of this guy was, he was a dick.
Guest:You're like a stringer.
Guest:So I mean, we had different assignments, but, um, he wanted, we had our jackets, you know, for the marathon.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That was cool.
Guest:Collateral.
Guest:And I remember that year.
Guest:So this guy, Mark, who was the owner,
Guest:um we weren't in the places he wanted us to be yet and then he literally told like the marshal or whoever of the marathon goes you gotta you gotta hold the marathon from starting the guy's like who the fuck are you we're gonna stop the boston marathon so you can get your photographers in place goes no you get you guys in place we're gonna go without you not or you know yeah so this guy had balls i mean he's just like he thought he could actually dictate how the boston marathon was to be run marathon and uh yeah they didn't listen to him of course so so you're a photographer and that craps out
Guest:Well, I ended up, yeah, sort of.
Guest:So I was doing stock photography, but it takes too much work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I sold some stuff.
Guest:I got, you know, I was in some magazines.
Guest:And I ended up going part-time at a camera store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they're like, well, after like a few months.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Underground cameras in Cambridge Square.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And after a few months, I said, do you want to just go full-time?
Guest:I'm like, yeah, all right.
Guest:I'm not doing anything else.
Guest:So I did.
Guest:And then they asked me if I wanted to be a manager.
Guest:And then I was doing that for like eight years.
Marc:You managed a camera store?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, for a while.
Marc:I have no fucking idea.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck.
Marc:Well, where was I?
Marc:It's so weird.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:We have these very specific college memories, but then there's all this huge swath of time where we didn't talk to each other at all.
Marc:I had no idea you were managing a fucking...
Marc:yeah therefore then those ritz camera bought them out and then i worked for ritz and then now they're out they're defunct they went out of business yeah because i remember staying at that apartment in the north end and you were trying to make aspic like you were in cooking school and you were sitting there trying no i couldn't have at the north end i wasn't in culinary school until i was here really yeah
Guest:Were you trying to be a cook then?
Guest:Because I always did stuff.
Guest:I mean, was I trying to make an aspic?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I just, that's sort of what I remember.
Guest:I had gelatin.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember it like you were working on it.
Guest:I must've gotten that.
Guest:I was probably doing some recipe.
Guest:I was going to make some shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember making a really bad, uh,
Guest:some kind of pie with with uh dried thyme and it's supposed to be fresh thyme yeah so it didn't work out it's fucking horrible my parents are coming over i made this you guys can't eat this oh my god so luckily we lived in the north end there are a lot of restaurants there were good restaurants yeah but so so you didn't when so when did you move here and why to dc i moved down here uh well we moved down here because uh i got transferred
Marc:For the camera store?
Guest:Yeah, to take on one of the bigger stores down here.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was in, I don't know, 90-something.
Marc:And then what makes you decide you're going to be a chef?
Guest:Well, I've been doing the camera thing for like eight years, and I was going, yeah, retail sucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After a while, I was like, I don't know if I can do this anymore.
Yeah.
Guest:kathy who of course you tell her something and she next thing you know you have a book yeah she's great that way but uh so i just happened to message because i always like to cook you remember you and i cooked and i just liked it yeah man and uh i just said i said to her i said you know what i don't know i think i might want to go back to culinary school oh i know what it was uh i went we went on vacation with my brother faron and his wife yeah and we went to st martin's or one of these islands yeah
Guest:And, you know, we're out on the beach.
Guest:It's a great restaurant.
Guest:You know, it just looked very cool.
Guest:I was like, man, I really think I want to go back to culinary school and open up some freaking Caribbean restaurant somewhere on the beach.
Guest:Caribbean restaurant.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:Big dream.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:Beach restaurant.
Guest:And a beach restaurant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was my, you know, what got me thinking about it.
Guest:Your white, white moment.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:you know it took a while but then i got we were back in uh down here and i just happened to say to her i was like you know i think i want to go to culinary school yeah so like i said sure enough there's a book and we're looking through shit and there was a good french school very close yeah i you know it wasn't like a four-year degree it wasn't like going to cia and doing all that kind of stuff i don't you know i've already got the degree so i just want to learn how to cook and that was a perfect school for me two years one year one year yep one year all you did was cook and you just went every day you learned new recipes and
Guest:uh i got an externship yeah basically it was mainly french yeah but you had to do um i got an externship at a french restaurant and i ended up staying there for almost five years at the restaurant yeah as a sous chef or no you start off as a nothing you're 650 an hour nothing with an extern yeah uh i stayed four and a half years because i i worked my way through all those stations yeah and i was the only one who ever did that restaurant you learned the business
Guest:No, I did.
Guest:I learned all the different positions.
Guest:I was a saucier, a poissonnier.
Guest:I did pastries.
Guest:I did all that shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I was there like four and a half years, and then it kind of plateaued.
Guest:Then me and the sous chef just kept drinking every day too much.
Guest:I was like, you know what?
Guest:This is going nowhere.
Guest:I can't keep doing this shit.
Guest:I mean, I'm going until 5 o'clock.
Guest:It's 5 o'clock.
Guest:I'm buzzed for a Saturday night.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The restaurant was called La Ferme.
Guest:It's still there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Busy as shit.
Guest:On a Saturday night, we could do 280 to 300 covers.
Guest:And it was me.
Guest:I was the saucier.
Guest:So I was on meats.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the sous chef was the poissonnier.
Guest:And then we just had a guy, a chef tournant, who would kind of help us plate stuff up.
Guest:And we had a girl, a garbanger, do that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we'd just get our asses handed to us.
Guest:I mean, it was fucking brutal.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and uh i mean i'm like i couldn't physically do that now right if i try to i'll just go back and be a cook somewhere no really no you can get on a truck with a mower oh yeah i'm a man yeah but the cooking thing is was crazy yeah i couldn't create that i'm just thinking about dupes that aren't stopping right now can make me panic when you just look up at that thing and there's nothing but tickets it's like what the how is this ever going to happen people want their pancakes
Marc:But I imagine it's horrible to balance.
Guest:Then the chef owner would be expediting.
Guest:He's calling all these fucking tickets.
Guest:Oh, that guy on the wheel.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Well, ours were up on, you know, they're up above us.
Guest:But, I mean, we could have 30, 35 tickets and they're just calling like, you know, but our stuff was like Chateaubriand and, you know, Dover, Seoul and all this kind of shit we're putting out.
Guest:And I had like, you know, all these different elements to each plate.
Guest:And it was like, oh, my God.
Guest:And I fucked up a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For a while I did.
Marc:I remember that just from working with you at edibles.
Marc:There was a moment where there were so many dupes and you just have this moment.
Marc:So I'm like, I don't know if I can do this.
Marc:I don't know if we're going to be able to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh my God.
Marc:But, um, so you burned out.
Guest:No, it didn't burn out there.
Guest:I mean, I was just a gut.
Guest:I kind of plateaued.
Guest:When did you have kids?
Guest:When I was there.
Guest:I was still in culinary school when Nick was born.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So he was born.
Marc:You got two.
Marc:I met one recently.
Guest:Not yet, Jill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What?
Guest:She still takes after a world man.
Guest:It's a problem.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:she seems like a character she is she's very funny too she did get my sense of humor yeah um she's yeah she's actually very witty is she all right yeah oh yeah yeah yeah she uh she came with somebody i can't remember who her boyfriend at the time oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and the girl there was some girl she was supposed to bring to see you yeah who is a you know fledgling comedian yeah uh who ended up getting so drunk the night before she couldn't make it to your show 200
Guest:Two hungover.
Guest:Two hungover.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was one of the whole points of seeing you was to have you meet this girl.
Marc:She was partying with this friend of hers.
Guest:Yep, and the girl's lightweight.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:All right, so you have Nick, and you're doing the cooking.
Marc:I don't know when you and Kathy got married even.
Marc:89.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah, we missed these big chunks.
Marc:Okay, so when do you take the control of the kitchen?
Yeah.
Guest:in terms of like an actual manager like a chef well okay so i did the the french restaurant for four and a half years yeah uh then i took a sous chef position down here yeah at the jockey club which was that's my first chef's job so a sous chef is the right hand man right it literally means under chef right right so you are under the executive chef the executive chef george mugger give us the last name but he had a bit of a drinking problem uh-huh and um
Guest:he would he and i were supposed to be working together yeah like you know and then he'd call me up and go i'm gonna go sit in the office and i just need you to make sure lunch is on i'm like so basically i was doing the lunch and he was like oh fucked up yeah sitting in the office restaurant business yeah sleeping it off yeah uh but unfortunately did catch up to him so they got rid of him and then this is like the millennial year right the the 2000 99 going to 2000 yeah and i was you know i mean i've been a cook and now a sous chef for like five months and they said you're the chef now
Guest:so like oh okay and by the way you have you know we have the 2000 coming up the y2k bullshit yeah and they had to do all these menus yeah so sink or swim yeah so um i i didn't get fired actually did a pretty good job got us through all that bullshit and then by april that year they brought an actual executive chef they brought from the company yeah to run the whole hotel because there's also a banquet side
Guest:Okay, so... I was too green.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But you were able to... How long did you hold it?
Guest:For the restaurant.
Guest:I was for the restaurant.
Guest:Five months?
Guest:Four months?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:From like November till April.
Marc:And then where'd you go?
Guest:Well, that was my foray into Starwood.
Guest:That was what got me into Starwood Hotels.
Guest:I was with them for almost 17 years.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, so then I moved around as a chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was at the Westin for 13 of those years.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Head chef?
Guest:Yeah, executive chef there.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:An executive chef you just run the whole kitchen?
Guest:Yeah, well, if you're the executive chef at a hotel, runs all the culinary.
Guest:Because you have banquet side.
Guest:You walk around tasting stuff?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was cooking, too.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I did a lot of pastry.
Guest:So we did a lot of weddings.
Marc:You make a good wedding cake?
Guest:Well, good funny story about that too.
Guest:It wasn't my wedding cake, but back in the rest of the French restaurant, I learned a lot of pastry from Alain.
Guest:Alain Roussel was the chef owner, right from France.
Guest:And we did a lot of weddings on the weekends, right?
Guest:So he had just, here's his menu.
Guest:This is what you get.
Guest:Don't ask questions.
Guest:This is how you're gonna get it.
Guest:So we provided these mousse cakes.
Guest:We always made these mousse cakes for the weddings.
Guest:Well, to make, I would always make the cake for him, right?
Guest:Then he would dress it with the fondant and do all that shit.
Guest:And you have to take acetate and you line the inside of the ring mold.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that's how you shape your layers, right?
Guest:Well, when you assemble the cake, you got to take the ring mold off and the acetate, right?
Guest:Because it's a strip of plastic.
Guest:Well, he didn't.
Guest:So it's the wedding, and we're in the kitchen, which is downstairs.
Guest:Also, we hear all this fucking commotion going on.
Guest:On every pan, though?
Guest:Say you do three layers.
Guest:Each one has to have this assay so he can take the mold off.
Guest:Yeah, but he didn't take them.
Guest:He didn't take it off of any of it.
Guest:He totally forgot about it.
Guest:So the bride and groom, they're cutting the cake.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and they're cutting like they're sawing through them they're like what is this shit there's fucking plastic in it so we had to take the whole cake back downstairs take all the fondant off and remove the remove the plastic you know the acetate and uh yeah he felt bad it was his you know he did it not me i'm like help hands up i didn't do it i just memorable i made it for you memorable wedding oh yeah yeah absolutely that video yeah the joke cake
Guest:Yeah, well, we also remember the sous chef, Scott, was doing, it's a very classic dish where you make a bisque or whatever, and you have this lion's foot bowl, and you put the bisque in it, and then you cover it with puff pastry, and you bake it.
Guest:So you serve it, they break through the top, eat the soup, and they get this nice puff pastry.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, we're busy shit for lunch and he's knocking these things out knocking these things out, right?
Guest:He had a text takes like 15 minutes.
Guest:Yeah from ordering.
Guest:Yeah Finally waiter comes down.
Guest:He's got this you know tray and there's this fucking bowl there with the Pacing a hole in it.
Guest:He goes chef.
Guest:There's there's no soup in it He totally he baked the puff but didn't put soup in the balls like surprise Nothing's coming out of this cake.
Guest:I mean the poor customer I think the customer so he got all mad at himself But I was laughing because it was kind of funny at the time but you never thought like I'm gonna open a restaurant
Guest:I have.
Guest:I've always thought about that.
Guest:Never did it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because another guy went to culinary school who was quite successful.
Guest:Opened a restaurant in, I don't know, what am I, 59 now?
Guest:So this has got to be over 10 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I stopped in.
Guest:I stopped in his place.
Guest:Hey, Damien, you know, and he's, there is a Sunday.
Guest:I'm like off from work, getting a haircut.
Guest:He's sweating.
Guest:He's fucking all, you know, he's like soaking wet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's in his place working.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he takes a break and he and I are just talking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was his first Sunday he opened for brunch and they were busy as shit.
Guest:And he's cooking omelets and doing all that stuff.
Guest:Man, I'm thinking to myself, God, I'm glad I'm not doing that.
Guest:And I was talking to him and I said, you know, I was thinking about opening the place.
Guest:Because at this point, I think I was mid-40s.
Guest:And I said, you know, you did it successfully.
Guest:What did it take for you to do that?
Guest:He goes, well, for the first two years,
Guest:I work from 9 in the morning until 2 in the morning.
Guest:Every day, seven days a week.
Guest:I'm like, count me out.
Guest:Fuck that.
Guest:I'm not doing that.
Guest:I work from 9 in the morning until 11 a.m.
Guest:Take a break.
Guest:I mean, give me a break.
Guest:I'm not doing that.
Guest:So he pretty much talked me out of it.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, that's a rough business.
Guest:well you know then you're you're counting on people showing up for work and that doesn't happen a lot for all the time and that's you know that's i mean i didn't own the place but i mean i've been managing kitchens for years and i mean i'd get these fucking texts at like four in the morning chef i can't come in my breakfast cook yeah so i'm going in at 4 30 in the morning i'm opening the kitchen cooking breakfast i'm like why am i doing that but you were working for the government towards the end oh i was with nih as a senior executive chef there yeah at the end but like was it did you like it
Guest:no no there i mean you know there's always takeaways right i mean there are i had people i liked i liked working with the you know a lot of the staff um i liked a lot of what we did because i was able to actually um introduce things like you know because i have a different background from a lot of the chefs that are in that kind of uh kitchen and uh so i was able to do things and they had never seen it before so i was like
Guest:That was fun to teach people or try something different with the clientele, and they'd be like, oh, this is fucking awesome.
Guest:It's nice to do that, but in the end, it's still a job, and NIH was rough because there's so many facets, and the client can be difficult, and
Guest:it's the national institute of health yep yeah right in bethesda yeah and that was the last job that was my last yeah right up until uh april 31st of this year yeah and who's where's your who got where'd you get your pension from from them oh i have no pension oh you don't no no i mean i've been a pretty grown yeah yeah yeah savvy investor so but the government you didn't work for them long enough to have no and i it wasn't um i didn't work for the government i was a contractor right so we were a private company
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And now you're doing landscaping.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:How old is his son?
Guest:God, he's going to be what?
Guest:27?
Guest:And he's married?
Guest:No.
Guest:And his daughter's not married?
Guest:No.
Guest:God, no.
Guest:No, she's young, though.
Guest:She better not be married.
Guest:She'll turn 23.
Guest:He turns 27.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's four years apart.
Marc:And it was challenging?
Guest:Yeah, big nod at the head.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You see that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you seem okay.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I love her, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But both of them, the son, he's like- Very different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Nick is Wharton grad.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Super, you know, straight.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Not straight, but I mean, in terms of- He's not straight, actually.
Guest:He's not straight at all.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:A gay kid for you?
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:Never bothered me.
Guest:Never?
Guest:No.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Didn't really faze me.
Guest:But did that surprise you?
Guest:That it didn't faze you?
Guest:That it didn't bother me?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm an upstate New York white guy.
Guest:You know, grow up with construction.
Guest:You'll think it would, right?
Guest:You'll think, oh, you guys must be a bunch of fucking rednecks.
Guest:But I don't care.
Guest:You know, just never really...
Guest:was ever an issue yeah real good kid yep swimming yeah yeah yeah yep um and kathy's doing good is she retired no i'm sure she wants to yeah uh yeah no she works hard she works her ass off uh national academy of sciences so she's an editor and uh for she's kind of like learning this as she goes because it's yeah technical stuff which i don't know what the hell that is how'd she end up there
Guest:uh it was a part-time gig she's been trying to do um you know juggle the kids for all these years and find jobs that kind of suited the balance yeah yeah yeah because clearly i couldn't yeah um so she had to unfortunately and uh you know
Guest:she did but she sacrificed a lot yeah and uh she's been she was working two jobs for freaking ever yeah and just killing herself so she left the one uh this year yeah yeah and now she's she took this one full time but it's still a lot of work wow yeah well she's not jumping into trucks right and taking out her hip but you know as she looks stressed and she you don't have to do that
Guest:i guess not but it's an option do you still play a softball with the fugazi guy yeah yeah uh ian yeah yeah a bunch of they're all all these old you know rockers the punk rockers from the from the dc scene you know ian fugazi and uh mike russell who's with uh shutter to think yeah um on kim kim coletta was a jaw box and she's actually still recording they're doing something now she's in the studio doing something
Marc:Yeah, I can't remember.
Marc:There's some things I don't remember about me.
Guest:Like duration of time?
Marc:Well, yeah, because I remember I lived in Somerville at Dave Cross's, at Bill Wilson's place when I came back, but I was sleeping in Dave's bed when he was at his girlfriend's, and I'd sleep on the couch, but I don't know how long that went on for.
Guest:So out of all the places you've lived at, what place do you have the most endearment to?
Marc:Well, it's weird as time goes on.
Marc:Like I just was in Boston and it's, I have, I never go there, but I remember it because I've, I've separate sets of memories from Boston.
Marc:I have the memories of us, you know, in college and shortly after college, then I have the horrible memories of going back there to start doing comedy and doing those rooms and, you know, doing Coke and doing all that whole bit.
Marc:And I'm like, it's traumatized.
Marc:When I go back there, I'm like, Oh God, this is where it happened.
Marc:you know there's that sidewalk exactly it's that kind of shit but it's a weird city and san francisco like i was kind of buzzed a lot and it sort of is surreal i i would say that new york i i was probably the best time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah once i i kind of got grounded there and and uh you know did did all the stuff i did i had a place out in historia with that woman uh who i married and then i fucked that marriage up and then oh yeah and then 9 11 happened yeah so how many times you've been married
Marc:Twice.
Marc:Twice.
Marc:Twice no kids.
Marc:I do joke about that.
Marc:Takes a special kind of asshole.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Marc:To have two wives and no kids.
Guest:Yeah, well.
Marc:I've brought that joke back several times.
Marc:I'm sure it's so good.
Marc:It's so relevant.
Marc:Yeah, I mean.
Marc:But yeah, I think New York and L.A.
Marc:'s been good.
Marc:I love my house in L.A., but everything's going to burn.
Marc:Everything's going to burn.
It's going to burn.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's fire season.
Marc:It is.
Marc:There's no water and it's burning.
Marc:It's like you just sort of wait.
Marc:But I love the fucking house.
Marc:Would you like where you live here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we have a great location because it's very close to downtown D.C.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, 10 miles, but everything is accessible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it a house or a condo?
Guest:It's a house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all the pricing went, you know, sky high.
Guest:So you're good.
Guest:Oh, fuck yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's nice to know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we've, you know, like I said, I've always been cheap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Definitely didn't live beyond it.
Guest:Oh, hell yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're always kind of proud of it.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Guest:you know yeah but um so we ended up buying yeah we've been in the house we're as old as as long as nick is old oh so we we moved in when he was like three weeks old and you didn't take out money against it no oh no no i i we ended up building on the back a little extending the kitchen knocking some walls out that kind of shit so we've done some work to it but oh it's good yeah i mean it's nice to have it been there for 27 years and
Guest:is it paid off oh yeah almost i got like you know some left not a lot but i mean at the time so we live in silver spring yeah and downtown silver spring back then was a look a look a fucking war zone yeah buildings boarded up yeah restaurants everything's closed yeah it was a dump oh yeah so it depressed the area well so we got a good deal on a house right because we didn't have it i was making 650 an hour at that french restaurant yeah like not making shit yeah um
Guest:And we needed a house.
Guest:So we've got a house for a very good price.
Guest:And within a few years, they started redeveloping downtown.
Guest:Now it looks like fucking Bethesda.
Guest:Now it's gone crazy.
Guest:So, of course, all the values have just gone.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:Like San Francisco, right?
Marc:Yeah, well, not anymore.
Marc:San Francisco took a big hit during COVID.
Marc:Oh, it did?
Marc:Yeah, because all that tech money, everyone realized they didn't have to go to work.
Marc:So everything that was holding that city together got pulled out from under it.
Marc:And it's a little scary.
Marc:It's a little weird.
Marc:um la's okay you know it's very spread out it's hard not to figure you know but but san francisco i don't know la my my house is you know it goes up it all goes up i was looking in new mexico i was going to go get a place in new mexico but that's on fire so like yeah go to town so is it nice up there it's beautiful but it's on fire like everything well i don't know what's on fire but a lot of new mexico's on fire and i just want to go someplace where there's no fire desert
Marc:Well, I was just in Tulsa and it's sort of like, I got to decide whether, what do I want?
Marc:Fire and drought or, or tornadoes and, and, you know, and winter.
Guest:What's Tulsa?
Guest:Tulsa.
Guest:Why, why would you, I was just there.
Marc:I did a TV show.
Marc:Well, there's all these little cities.
Marc:Like I was just in Pittsburgh too.
Marc:A lot of younger people are sort of coming back and building kind of creative communities and like kind of breathing life back into these cities.
Marc:What is kind of cool.
Marc:I mean, Pittsburgh, I was surprised.
Marc:It's fucking beautiful.
Marc:That city.
Marc:Have you been to Pittsburgh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:no it's beautiful and tulsa's i wouldn't say it's beautiful but it's it's it's its own thing but like uh you know all these little things are happening but like i might be i was just in cleveland too and i went to one restaurant i'm like oh my god cleveland's amazing but yeah cleveland can be i've always you know i think that i always got a bad rap
Guest:Cleveland?
Guest:Because the river would be on fire, that sort of thing.
Guest:But I mean, still, it's nice enough.
Guest:I'm sure they have nice parts in Cleveland that are freaking cool.
Marc:I was just in Detroit.
Marc:Yeah, everything.
Marc:Those were once glorious cities.
Marc:So the infrastructure is still there.
Marc:There's just nobody living in it.
Marc:And it's a little... But yeah, I don't know, man.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I can't wait till all these red states that are just these fucking insane red states.
Marc:Eventually, all the rich people on the West Coast, it's going to be unlivable.
Marc:So...
Marc:Unless they put up borders, they're all going to move there.
Marc:It's going to change the dynamic of all the states.
Guest:No one's going to want to go to California.
Guest:They're all going to get the fuck out, right?
Marc:Oh, it's a little scary, dude.
Marc:But look, it was good talking.
Guest:Nobody's going to have to fall in the ocean just to put out the fire.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You just look at that ocean and sort of like, can't you make that water work for us?
Guest:It's not Andrea's fault.
Guest:It needs to go now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, just knock it off.
Marc:I don't know what's going to happen, man.
Marc:It does get a little weird.
Marc:But I'm glad we're both healthy.
Marc:And it's good talking to you.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:So that was me and Lance.
Marc:And I told you earlier that I talked to Tony and Brad.
Marc:And it was just, it was like, it's not really a full circle feeling, but it's sort of like part of you.
Marc:It's almost like kind of reconnecting part of you.
Marc:Like not quite a whole appendage, but some part of your heart gets reconnected.
Marc:And you're sort of like, oh yeah, this is really a living part of who I am.
Marc:And I think that not unlike my experience with museums and not unlike these things, the reason you engage or redefine or check your memories or activate your sense of history is that it is a part of all of us.
Marc:And it certainly on the American level.
Marc:On the global level and on a personal level, I mean, you have to seek to find a place in how you fit into your own humanity, into the global humanity, into where your heart's at.
Marc:Sadly, a lot of times, conscience, empathy, doing the right thing are choices you have to make.
Marc:they're not natural and they're becoming less natural as people double down on horrific behavior as tolerance diminishes your democracy will crumble and the only bulwark we have against that is knowing who we are where we come from what's right and wrong and what we're supposed to represent here heavy heavy
Marc:I got no music.
Marc:I got the music in me, but I got no music for you because I'm on the road.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed this.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.
Marc:Everywhere.