Episode 135 - Carlos Alazraqui
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest: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 fucking nots?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:Mary, what the fuck miss?
Marc:How's that?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:The day after a couple of days after what the fuck miss?
Marc:But I hope I hope everything went well.
Marc:I hope you got what you wanted.
Marc:I hope you made it through your day or two with your family.
Marc:You might still be in that.
Marc:And my heart goes out to you.
Marc:Maybe it's a good thing.
Marc:Maybe you're having a wonderful time.
Marc:I don't know if that makes sense, but it made sense to me in the moment.
Marc:I want to thank you guys for sending me all the great Christmas cards and Christmas gifts.
Marc:I got one here that is addressed to the Cat Ranch family from a fan out there named Micah.
Marc:And it's actually an announcement for his graduation.
Marc:Candidate for the degree of Bachelor in Fine Arts and Creative Writing.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:He said, you've been an inspiration to me for years.
Marc:Thanks, I think.
Marc:Micah.
Marc:Well, good luck with the creative writing thing.
Marc:We need them.
Marc:We need that.
Marc:It's a tough field.
Marc:I don't know what you're going to do with it, but writing is good.
Marc:People like to read, and the deeper you go, the better it is.
Marc:I'm not very good at congratulating.
Marc:No, good for you, man.
Marc:Getting a degree is an important thing.
Marc:I want to thank Andy Richter and family for his lovely card.
Marc:I want to thank Amy, superfan Amy, for her lovely card and CD.
Marc:John Montagna, the guy who did our theme music, sent me a picture that's got a triptych of his child.
Marc:Look at kids.
Marc:Look at them.
Marc:People have them, and it looks fun.
Marc:I went to a Christmas party over at Al Madrigals and they asked me to dress up as Santa.
Marc:I just couldn't muster it up.
Marc:Couldn't pull it together.
Marc:Couldn't feel right about it.
Marc:Not for religious reasons.
Marc:Just couldn't quite do it.
Marc:Brendan Walsh was there.
Marc:He said, if you were Santa, you would say, how can I expect you guys to believe in me when I don't believe in me?
Marc:which I thought was funny.
Marc:Brendan Walsh is funny.
Marc:Someone, who's this, a fan?
Marc:Maria sent me a Nietzsche card.
Marc:Merry Christmas.
Marc:LOL, just kidding.
Marc:God is dead.
Marc:Love Nietzsche.
Marc:But that, I think she wrote that in.
Marc:Anyways, Nietzsche Christmas card.
Marc:Gotta love it.
Marc:All right, moving on.
Marc:Getting through the holidays.
Marc:Getting through a breakup.
Marc:Getting through the heartache, the loneliness.
Marc:I'm okay today.
Marc:Not every day is good, but you know how that goes.
Marc:I let somebody in.
Marc:And it didn't work out.
Marc:And now I'm dealing with me, which seems to be the greatest fear in my life.
Marc:And everything becomes... Oh, by the way, Carlos Alzaraki is on the show today, the voice from Rocco's Modern World or Modern Life or whatever.
Marc:The Chihuahua on the Taco Bell commercials at Reno 911.
Marc:He's been in a lot of things, and he's an old friend.
Marc:And he actually beat me in the San Francisco comedy competition not long ago.
Marc:Well, yeah, long ago.
Marc:93, maybe.
Marc:Was it 92?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:We'll talk about it.
Marc:He came in first.
Marc:I came in second.
Marc:But I think he deserved it.
Marc:I'll talk to him about that.
Marc:Now, getting back to metaphors.
Marc:Metaphors, like everything becomes a fucking metaphor.
Marc:It's a romanticization.
Marc:of reality unbelievable what my brain will do i mean i'm sitting here i'm alone in my house there's a deluge is that the right word a deluge a monsoon the rain seemed like it was never going to stop i didn't know if my tiny old house up here at the cat ranch was going to hold up under the constant barrage and pummeling of the rain i don't even have a rain gutter there's one hole on my roof for the rain water to come out of and that gets clogged with pine needles i get a
Marc:I get a surprise when I reach for a coffee mug to have my justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Oh, I think I shit my Christmas pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com.
Marc:Enjoy.
Marc:Get the WTF blend, and I get a little kickback on the back end.
Marc:So anyway, so everything becomes a metaphor.
Marc:Water falls out of the cabinets.
Marc:Didn't happen.
Marc:I was up on my roof several times wearing moccasins, slippers, climbing up ladders in my sleeping pants, my howling wolf sleeping pants that I have that I bought at Target.
Marc:They got little wolves on them.
Marc:eating a lot of bowls of cereal, soothing the heart, eating the cereal.
Marc:How come comfort foods always eventually make you feel uncomfortable because they're always so fucking filling and bad for you?
Marc:How much cereal can I eat?
Marc:You'd be surprised.
Marc:But I'm sitting alone in my house watching television.
Marc:Rain is pouring down.
Marc:Cats are frightened under the bed.
Marc:Everybody's freaked out.
Marc:When is it going to stop?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, the giant light fixture in my living room that has several small, almost Christmas tree style bulbs on it, maybe 60.
Marc:It was a wall mount piece that we got at a thrift store somewhere years ago.
Marc:Someone, some woman bought it.
Marc:An X.
Marc:It just surged with light, like literally frightening, like white light experience light.
Marc:Like it just all of a sudden that light fixture just lit up as if it was going to explode.
Marc:And all of a sudden I saw the lights in the bathroom surging with light.
Marc:Like all of a sudden there was no regulation in the number of voltage or the amount of volts or amps or watts or whatever the fuck comes in through the wires could not be stopped by anything.
Marc:The breakers.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't understand electricity, but there's a surge of light.
Marc:It freaks me out.
Marc:Then there's a popping sound.
Marc:and then i smelled something burning so in essence i believe my house had a stroke it had a stroke or an aneurysm it seemed that something went wrong with the brain with the circuitry with the wiring of the house so then all of a sudden that light goes out the big fixture of all the bulbs that goes out the lights in the kitchen are now on one of them is out two of them are very dim and the light switch doesn't work it won't turn them off anymore and
Marc:So I run around the house turning switches off, trying to find where the burning smell was.
Marc:I couldn't find it.
Marc:And then I found it.
Marc:It smelled like it was in the fixture, in the fixture in the bathroom.
Marc:So I turn those lights on and it looks like a landing strip.
Marc:They're so bright.
Marc:I don't know if it's going to explode or melt or what.
Marc:It's fucked up.
Marc:And I'm freaking out because it's raining.
Marc:I don't know what's burning.
Marc:I don't know how dangerous it is.
Marc:And this is just the kind of thing, especially if I'm alone.
Marc:I don't know about you.
Marc:But if there's someone else around, just so you can say, what the fuck?
Marc:What do we do?
Marc:And even if you know what to do, it's always good to involve someone else in your panic because then it takes the edge off.
Marc:Hence the reason why my relationships are fucked up.
Marc:Can I just make you an extension of my misery?
Marc:Would you like to do that?
Marc:Could I just make it so I don't have to deal with me by making you fucking crazy and then hating you for it and then feeling bad for making you upset and then me being upset?
Marc:Very complicated.
Marc:Much more complicated than just trusting.
Marc:and being capable of true intimacy.
Marc:So there I am in the dark in my house.
Marc:Lights have exploded.
Marc:I've turned the switches off.
Marc:I have no recourse.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck to do.
Marc:It's raining.
Marc:The plugs still work, though, so the TV was on.
Marc:The TV was on, so I had company.
Marc:We were okay.
Marc:Me and the television, whatever was on the television.
Marc:I'm one of those weird people.
Marc:I watch what's on the television.
Marc:If I'm watching TiVo, I feel like I'm detaching from whoever's running the controls.
Marc:I actually believe that there's some guy switching switches.
Marc:putting shows on and that I want to be with him.
Marc:I think that we should appreciate his work, even though that person doesn't even exist anymore.
Marc:But nonetheless, I'm feeling comforted by the television.
Marc:I'm sitting in the dark and I'm trying not to panic because it's 10 at night.
Marc:What am I?
Marc:I got to call an emergency electrician, right?
Marc:Of course, emergency electrician.
Marc:Like they exist in the pouring rain.
Marc:And I preemptively start worrying, well, what if an electrician comes out here and then fucking get shocked in my front yard and he dies?
Marc:Am I covered for that insurance wise?
Marc:Is he covered for that?
Marc:How does that fucking work?
Marc:So I get on the phone.
Marc:emergency electricians it's not in this state to network she says i'll page the guy that we got in your area and i'll go and then what happens he calls you and you make an appointment or he comes over i'm like okay how much is it gonna cost don't know 150 bucks just for him to come over so i'm like all right i'm in i'm in the crisis there's burning smell okay so
Marc:No call.
Marc:11 o'clock.
Marc:No call.
Marc:1130.
Marc:No call.
Marc:Shit.
Marc:Do I sleep?
Marc:Is my house going to burn down?
Marc:What has happened to the brain of my house?
Marc:What has happened to my brain?
Marc:What has happened to my heart?
Marc:See, it all becomes one.
Marc:See, my house has an emotional meltdown, has an aneurysm, has a profound illuminating moment followed by a burning smell.
Marc:What have we learned, me and my house?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know anything about electricity.
Marc:So I get into bed, hoping my smoke alarms work well enough to wake me up and continue reading a large stack of books on codependency that I'm keeping next to my bed.
Marc:Real proud, real proud to have the stack of codependency books and my cat sitting on my bed.
Marc:I am officially becoming a cat woman.
Marc:Anyways, trying to help me, I will do it.
Marc:Despite some of the commentary I got on some of the blogs,
Marc:Saying that I'm rationalizing, I'm using psychobabble to justify something.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Psychobabble.
Marc:And they're telling me to read a David Foster Wallace book about a character that he created who used psychobabble to justify his womanizing.
Marc:Yeah, I'll get to that book.
Marc:That was written by a well-adjusted guy that obviously you made the right decision in life.
Marc:Not taking anything away from his genius.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is, whatever fucking works, if you require psychobabble to make sense of your issues, and that psychobabble gives you some sort of pathway, some sort of methodology, some sort of process to guide you through whatever is fucked up in your wiring, then use it.
Marc:There's no answers for this shit.
Marc:So what does that mean?
Marc:Am I doomed?
Marc:Suck it up.
Marc:Stiff upper lip.
Marc:People don't change.
Marc:That's your lot in life.
Marc:Fuck that.
Marc:I've changed too much about myself to believe that shit.
Marc:So meanwhile, I'm in bed, my codependency books and my cats, wondering if my house is going to burn down.
Marc:I get up the next day, got my moccasins on, my ridiculous furry swipper moccasins that were a gift from some other woman.
Marc:My house is now, like someone said, aren't you sad with all that shit in your house from your ex-wife and this and that?
Marc:I'm like, I never thought about it that way.
Marc:Thanks for helping out.
Marc:So now I've got my sad shoes on.
Marc:I'm in my sad house because of the sad white fixture that I, you know, just days before thought was beautiful and never attached to.
Marc:to my past, just appreciated it as furniture.
Marc:And I'm supposed to have, you know, Chris Hardwick's coming over to tape the Nerdist with me in my studio.
Marc:So I'm like, now I got to call an electrician.
Marc:So I call an emergency electrician.
Marc:I don't know what language the guy's speaking.
Marc:He's like, hello.
Marc:And that's just a general, that's not even an accent.
Marc:He says, hello.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, hello.
Marc:And he's talking, it's hard for me to understand.
Marc:I say, how much is it going to cost?
Marc:He says, I'll come over for the $49, for $49,
Marc:That's sort of Mexican, though.
Marc:No, I can't do an accent.
Marc:Well, I go, OK, whatever, man, I'm in trouble here.
Marc:So he comes over him and another guy in the pouring rain.
Marc:They say it's forty nine dollars.
Marc:And then to troubleshoot.
Marc:Turns out they're Bulgarian to Bulgarians.
Marc:Forty nine bucks.
Marc:I figure that's a deal to troubleshoot if he finds anything wrong.
Marc:It's $595 to fix it.
Marc:So it's sort of a gamble.
Marc:I said, well, what if you pop open a switch and it's that?
Marc:He goes, well, then we'll fix it.
Marc:That's this different.
Marc:This different.
Marc:We'll figure out price.
Marc:And I'm like, okay.
Marc:So these guys are there for seven fucking hours.
Marc:And there's nothing worse.
Marc:There's nothing that makes you feel like less a man than not being able to understand your own fucking house, not being able to understand how to get, I mean, obviously electricians have a specific job, but I find it very emasculating.
Marc:And it turns out he had every goddamn light fixture in my house out, wires dangling everywhere, every switch out, every so often, every time they popped open a panel or pulled a fixture out of the wall, I would hear like, oh, fuck.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:Fucking shit.
Marc:This is terrible.
Marc:That was Bulgarian.
Marc:It was just a disaster.
Marc:So I'm like, did the rain cause this?
Marc:He's like, no, no, it's not rain.
Marc:This is not rain.
Marc:And I'm like, but what happened?
Marc:He's like, this is shit.
Marc:Who did the wiring on this?
Marc:It's shit.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't fucking know.
Marc:I mean, I have one guy do it, but who knows?
Marc:It could be 30.
Marc:So 45 years, 50 years.
Marc:Of handymen.
Marc:See, that's what we do in this culture, especially in Los Angeles.
Marc:I got a guy.
Marc:Got a guy who does a thing.
Marc:He can do it.
Marc:He got tools.
Marc:I got a guy with tools.
Marc:He can do that.
Marc:So you get all these guys with tools that are wiring things, putting light fixtures in, putting new switches in.
Marc:They don't do it properly.
Marc:This Bulgarian pulls a piece, a light fixture off the wall, and the shit is burnt inside.
Marc:He goes, this is very dangerous.
Marc:What is wrong with you?
Marc:I'm like, what do you mean?
Marc:Fix it.
Marc:I don't need a moral judgment here.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:Get in there myself.
Marc:And so seven hours, he's up in the crawl space.
Marc:There's wires everywhere.
Marc:They track it down.
Marc:Apparently, even though I live in a small bedroom house, electricity is fairly complicated.
Marc:Not unlike the brain.
Marc:And I kept thinking, it's like, is there some sort of equivalent here?
Marc:Can I get a couple of Bulgarians that'll take seven hours and rewire my fucking brain?
Marc:So at least functions properly.
Marc:But he's up in the crawl space.
Marc:They rewire everything.
Marc:They get everything working.
Marc:And it's $600.
Marc:But I tell you honestly, it was $600 well spent.
Marc:Because if that was a hustle, if that was a smaller problem, they definitely put on a show.
Marc:There was a lot of cussing, a lot of Bulgarian, a lot of tools, a lot of things coming out of walls.
Marc:Switches open.
Marc:He put a new switch on.
Marc:But I'd gotten paid that for a gig or more.
Marc:And I figured that was a hell of a show if that was just a hustle for $600.
Marc:But everything's working fine.
Marc:But then he told me that there's certain things not up to code.
Marc:I need a new box.
Marc:He tells me that the outlets in my kitchen are
Marc:You know, they should have these switches on them because the breakers won't stop it if I get locked into an electrical shock situation where I'm, you know, holding my coffee pot and my cone filled with just coffee dot co-op available at WTF pod dot com or just coffee dot co-op.
Marc:And, you know, and I get current jolting through me.
Marc:It will not go off.
Marc:I need new outlets.
Marc:So now it's added an extra bit of menace to my morning rituals.
Marc:And also it makes me understand that homeownership is a never-ending repair, fix, make work situation.
Marc:Not unlike mental health to follow through on the metaphor.
Marc:Let's get this out of the way.
Yeah.
Marc:So you stole it from me.
Marc:It's really what happened.
Marc:It was 1993, the San Francisco comedy competition, my second year in it.
Marc:Mine too.
Marc:So I think I placed like 13th or 14th that first year.
Guest:39th for me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:39th?
Guest:39th.
Marc:Oh, so I guess maybe you deserved it.
Guest:Yeah, it could have been one of those Hollywood makeup calls where Cher didn't win it for Silkwood, but they decided to give it for Moonstruck when Holly Hunter should have won for Broadcast News.
Guest:I think this was that version of that because Broadcast News was a much more intelligent movie, although I do like John Patrick Shanley.
Guest:And I've always felt this sort of Ving Rhames.
Guest:If I could have done the Ving Rhames thing with Jack Lemmon when Ving Rhames gave Jack Lemmon his award, I would have done that.
Guest:I would have given it either to you
Guest:or Patton Oswalt, just so I wouldn't have to live with the guilt that I've been living with all these years.
Marc:Yeah, I really don't think it's weighing on you too hard.
Marc:Carlos Alsraki is my guest.
Marc:You know him from, he's here at the Cat Ranch in the garage.
Marc:You know him from Rocco's Modern Life, Reno 911.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Too many credits to even mention.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what are your big credits?
Marc:Like if you say like, hey, who are you?
Marc:What do you say?
Guest:And well, it would always refer back to show business rather than my own personal accomplishments in terms of what I've done in therapy and how far I've come.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To be able to get married is pretty huge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I wouldn't list that as my credits.
Guest:I would say Reno 911, Taco Bell Chihuahua, both Happy Feeds, Happy Feet 1 and 2.
Guest:Taco Bell Chihuahua.
Guest:Yeah, bought my house.
Guest:The dog bought your house.
Guest:Vivo gorditas.
Guest:Here, lizard lizard.
Guest:Bought a two-story house in North Hollywood for me.
Guest:You know what I remember is Bobcat Goldwaite, this acting fucking crazy shit, pay for your fucking braces.
Yeah.
Marc:Is that my fucking phone?
Guest:That is your fucking phone because my fucking phone is off.
Guest:And as you can see, I've white trashed the back of it with some gaffer's tape.
Guest:Let's do this now.
Guest:I got show business here.
Marc:Hello?
Marc:For the Comedy Store, my availability... I'm sorry, I'm doing my podcast right now, so this has to be part of it now.
Marc:I'm available...
Marc:I'm available all week, but, yeah, that's fine.
Marc:Yeah, I'll take anything you got there.
Marc:Let them know I beat you in the competition, though, if they need me.
Marc:I mean, I'm talking to, you know who Carlos Siles Rocky is?
Marc:Oh, he did the voice for the Chihuahua, the Taco Bell Chihuahua.
Guest:Reno 911.
Guest:See, I can list my credits.
Marc:Yeah, the guy from Reno 911.
Marc:Yeah, I'm talking to him right now.
Marc:And not that that's important to you, but we might use this on the podcast.
Marc:So, yeah, I'm available Friday.
Marc:Yeah, let's see.
Marc:Yeah, let's just see what he gives me.
Marc:Put it all in there.
Marc:Thank you, man.
Marc:Bye.
Guest:Guy was impressed.
Marc:He was.
Marc:You know, when I said Taco Bell, Troy goes, oh, from Reno 911, so he knew you.
Marc:He linked them.
Marc:So let me just set the stage.
Marc:Both you and I were living in San Francisco.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was 92, 93.
Marc:It was a San Francisco comedy competition when it had some integrity.
Marc:The final five are a year.
Yes.
Marc:Was me, you, Patton, Rick Kearns, and... Stephen B. Stephen B. Holy shit.
Guest:Rick Kearns, another great comic.
Guest:Down at the liquor store.
Marc:I thought... And he was white and he talked like that.
Guest:Yeah, I thought, yeah, the most intelligent brands of comedy were coming from U3.
Guest:Steve and I were more sort of the entertainer voice guys.
Guest:I had a little bit.
Guest:I wasn't as political back then.
Guest:I would say I was a good performer.
Marc:Great performer, great bit.
Marc:You closed with The Scottish Devil.
Guest:yeah yeah classic yeah and it was at the masonic auditorium yeah and i knew it wasn't my night it was a performer's night it had it been like an eclectic holy city zoo fillmore type place with the more discerning crowd right i probably would not have done as well but um you know it i it's kind of a curse to be first place in the competition because there's not many first place competition winners that went on to do
Guest:Fantastic thing.
Marc:You've had a very active and lucrative life in show business, Carlos.
Marc:I'm not going to take that shit from you.
Guest:Yeah, but it's because I did not let that night's victory fool me.
Marc:Oh, you just went ahead and worked against it.
Marc:You didn't let it spoil you and say, this is it, I've arrived.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you would have been maybe living in the same building as Johnny Steele.
Guest:Exactly, but what I did, I took that money and I invested it in property in San Francisco with my brother and a married couple.
Guest:We bought tenants in common in this place.
Guest:near the Presidio, and we still own it today.
Guest:So I was very frugal.
Guest:You bought property in 1993 with the money you won?
Guest:From the competition, yeah.
Guest:Which was like 15K?
Guest:10K.
Guest:10K.
Guest:I put that, and I just said, here, Ed, take this as part of my down payment of half of two units, which were upstairs and downstairs.
Guest:We did a tenants in common, and then after a couple years, we each condoized, so we owned the units separately.
Guest:there sometimes yeah i lived there for six months and then i moved to la in january 94 because won the competition phone calls phone calls phone calls was there big probably literally the flavor of the month after 30 days you know i went showcase william morris bunch of suits went and did all my showcases uh that's it it's over closing up shop power off wait but you got an agent out of it i got an agent out of it and then uh about a year later 1995 i got the stephanie miller show as uh when she had a talk show
Guest:Sure, that lasted a few minutes, right?
Guest:It lasted 13 weeks, and we were canceled during Christmas.
Guest:All the Who's were out on the Paramount lot.
Guest:Merry Christmas.
Guest:Hasutare, you've been canceled.
Guest:I heard it in a Boris Karloff voice, too.
Guest:How could Christmas come when they've been canceled?
Guest:That's what I heard.
Guest:So a lot of ups and downs, but it started the rollercoaster going, and I had Rocco's Modern Life, too, at that point, too, with Tom Kenny.
Guest:Also a San Francisco guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Kind of.
Guest:Tomcat, via Syracuse and Boston.
Marc:Yeah, via Tomcat, Bobcat, best buddies.
Guest:Best buddies growing up.
Marc:Upstate New York, right?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And they moved to San Francisco.
Marc:Were you doing comedy during that whole renaissance?
Marc:No.
Guest:I was in San Francisco from 87 to 94.
Guest:Doing comedy.
Guest:Doing comedy.
Guest:Yeah, and really just working at two different health clubs, the Telegraph Hill Club, which is now gone, and Coal Valley Fitness, which is right by the- It's good for you to plug the health clubs.
Marc:I appreciate that.
Marc:Yeah, Coal and Parnassus.
Marc:We don't usually do plugs on this show, but I mean, I think it's fine for you to go ahead and plug health clubs that are out of business.
Guest:Retroactively, yes.
Guest:because I didn't do it during the day.
Guest:I didn't have the ability to.
Guest:So if time travel is possible, I've just done some good plugging for it.
Marc:Yeah, so if anyone can get into that time machine and go work out at those places in San Francisco, Carlos will be working there.
Guest:Make sure you stop by the Tassajara Bakery, which is Kitty Corner from Coal Valley Fitness.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:But you remember the other cafe, the Anjuta used to pull by?
Marc:A little before, a little before me.
Marc:I got to San Francisco in 93, 92.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you literally left right after I sort of got planted there.
Marc:So I did deserve to win the competition because I pay my dues.
Marc:I live there.
Marc:I paid the high rent.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, I think what you're saying is that the San Francisco comedy competition favored local guys to win first place, even if it wasn't theirs to win.
Marc:And I think that's what you're saying.
Marc:And I'm sure I can respect that.
Guest:And I think at one point Patton was my roommate.
Guest:I met Patton Oswalt in Richmond, Virginia.
Guest:He was attending William and Mary College out there.
Guest:And I worked this gig.
Guest:And here comes this young Amadeus kid that just, what the, he's like 20 years old.
Guest:And I was, oh my God, who is this guy?
Guest:He was on the show with you?
Guest:Yeah, I was Salieri forever.
Guest:And he was Amadeus.
Guest:I just had to, I cannot compose shit like that.
Marc:Yeah, but you have a very specific talent.
Marc:And I don't know how you do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you're a voice guy.
Guest:Is that bad?
Guest:I'm a voice guy.
Guest:That's not bad.
Guest:In my older years, I've started to emulate the people that I liked and thought were brilliant, such as yourself and Patton, and said, you know, I can inject a little bit of political shit in here and throw my voices in at the same time and say, I can paint with this brush a little bit.
Guest:I can, the Doug Stanhopes and the Dana Goulds and, you know, I just watch everybody.
Marc:Yeah, but the thing is, is like the great guys, like even guys like Lenny Bruce was a great mimic.
Marc:I mean, he used more voices than anybody you just mentioned, certainly.
Marc:I mean, on any given bit of Lenny Bruce bit was they did what it was called peopling the stage.
Marc:Like there were guys that could do that.
Marc:Bill Cosby could do that where you'd have longer stories.
Marc:But the characterizations and the voices used really brought out a bunch of different personalities on the stage.
Guest:Yeah, and I kind of try to integrate it.
Guest:I do a Chris Rock bit where I do Chris Rock beat, and it's basically my theory is that world peace cannot happen until people return shopping carts, pick up cigarette butts, and flush their own shit.
Guest:And it turns into Chris Rock going, you got to flush your fucking shit.
Guest:Unless your shit got titties on it, I don't want to see your fucking shit.
Guest:And then I tell people, flush your poo, and then we can talk about world peace.
Guest:And so, I like that.
Guest:What other comics do you do?
Guest:What other comics do I do?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:That's a good question.
Marc:Because, I mean, it's different being a voice guy and being an impressionist.
Marc:It's two different things.
Marc:I mean, sure.
Guest:You know what I do?
Guest:I do Billy Crystal because I've done all the Monsters, Inc.
Guest:merchandise for about...
Guest:Five years now.
Guest:So anything that's a Tory, that's a Mike Wazowski, that's me.
Guest:So technically, I'm not doing Billy.
Guest:The real Billy Crystal's probably a little bit lower, about right here.
Guest:And I've done him for the podcast for Feldman.
Guest:Didn't I do that?
Guest:And of course, Maury Amsterdam.
Guest:Who does Maury Amsterdam?
Guest:You didn't ask about recent comics.
Guest:No, Maury Amsterdam's fine.
Guest:So I'm golden.
Guest:If anybody ever needs a corporate gig where they need a Maury Amsterdam or a Billy Crystal.
Guest:If you ever get that call, let me know.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Marc:But so now when you walked in, you were having an issue with the casting call.
Marc:I mean, now what's that stream you have to swim against there?
Guest:I'm a white salmon in a pink brown salmon world.
Guest:You know, I'm never going to get to spawn with my name.
Guest:Carlos Jaime Alastraqui, Sephardic Jewish last name with a Spanish first name.
Guest:Are you a Jew?
Guest:Way back when, I'm a watered-down American now, but on my father's side, that's where it started.
Guest:Spanish Inquisition said, Alas Rockies, you gotta get out of Spain.
Guest:Die or go.
Guest:Die or go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Alas Rockies go from Spain to Turkey.
Guest:Izmir is the...
Guest:the barrio, the ghetto where they live.
Marc:And they go from there to- Turkish, Jew, Spanish, Jew, ghetto.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:The Turkish, Spanish, Jew, ghetto.
Guest:Spanish, Jew, ghetto.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They go from there to France, from France to Argentina.
Guest:Then it all starts to get watered down.
Guest:And my mom's an Episcopal minister and Methodist priest.
Marc:So whoever moved during the Inquisition had a hard time finding Jews to continue the line with.
Marc:Probably.
Marc:And said, let's just fuck whoever we want.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That happens in Argentina, man.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:They're gorgeous people.
Guest:They have nothing to do.
Marc:And your family comes from Argentina.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you're stuck in this predicament where he's Latino.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I try to equate it.
Guest:I go, Heidi, what's happening is that they always want me to play a gardener.
Guest:And I go, that's like me being Jewish and playing a tailor, a lawyer.
Guest:Oh, look at those.
Guest:A bagel salesman.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Those pants need to be taken up a little bit.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Because I think, you know, there's a quota out there where they have to say, well, we brought in these Latin actors to play this role.
Guest:I've gone out for a role like Something Wild.
Guest:It's the one with Will Arnett.
Guest:And the role was Migo, his sidekick.
Guest:And it's very quixotic or quixotic.
Guest:Sancho?
Guest:Quixotic, I guess.
Guest:Sancho Panza?
Guest:They needed a Sancho Panza role.
Guest:And they literally, I went in.
Guest:I don't look like what, and they went with a shorter, pudgier, darker looking guy.
Guest:And I feel that this is going to be the same way.
Guest:And they always say, well, no, if you're funny, they'll do it.
Guest:And we talked about this in your kitchen.
Guest:I'm like, I'm not going to be Charlton Heston in A Touch of Evil.
Guest:I'm Inspector Vargas.
Guest:Oh, man, that's bad shoe polish, dude.
Guest:It's embarrassing.
Guest:You can't do that, right?
Guest:Not unless you're, you know, Rob Schneider, who's a brilliant comic, kind of gets away with doing some of that stuff.
Guest:Does he?
Guest:I'm Hawaiian, man.
Guest:Look at me, I'm Hawaiian.
Guest:Does he, though?
Guest:Because he's got the Filipino parents.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, does he is the real question.
Guest:Does he really get away with it?
Marc:I mean, Robert Downey in Tropic Thunder was insanely hilarious.
Marc:And that actually satirized the idea of that brilliantly.
Marc:But just to do it and not draw attention to it, without any irony whatsoever, it's a hard sell these days, I would think.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:And especially when there are lines in the script where my character is supposed to be saying, oh, I love to fool the white people.
Guest:I am fucking white.
Guest:And that's just going to look stupid coming out of my mouth.
Marc:Well, I've recently had this weird realization that and from fan email, you know, saying that when I have someone and when I have a black person on or when I have a woman on that I do this thing or even a Jew or it's sort of like.
Marc:So is it hard for, you know, you because you're a woman or is it hard?
Marc:I create a separate space for them, which is antithetical to the equality idea.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what I'm starting to realize is that the American thing that you identify yourself first and foremost.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're Americans.
Marc:And that's sort of better than saying, you know, I'm an Argentinian American necessarily.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you just are.
Marc:Have you ever been in a situation where you've been asked to be more?
Marc:Mexican or put or more Latino or put or actually wear dark or darken your skin or?
Guest:I'm trying to think.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of the show Las Vegas.
Guest:I played a janitor named Juan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they literally put a shoe polish because they needed to do it quickly and something that could wash out every day.
Guest:A really cheap dye on my beard, and they darkened my beard a little bit, combed my hair back, added some darkness to it, so I would look more, I guess, closer to Puerto Rican or something like that.
Guest:So yes, wasn't asked to, advised to, but I play a character on Big Time Rush, a little kid's show, the Marcos del Posey, and all it is is a wig, and I can be light-skinned.
Guest:I told my manager, look, I can play Latin, I can't play Mexican or El Salvadoran or Puerto Rican.
Guest:I can play Latin American.
Guest:Kind of like what Hank Azaria does.
Guest:He's a Sephardic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know, he did in Birdcage or he did in American Sweethearts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Spanish guy with this accent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I try to, it's always pretty obvious to me when people go, hey, you're fucking white, man.
Guest:Speak Spanish.
Guest:Pardon me.
Guest:Spanish is a white European language.
Guest:I don't know if you know anything about history.
Guest:You're speaking the language of your white conquerors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I don't know if you want to find the irony there.
Marc:But then you'd have to really sit them down and give them a lesson and say, this is how it goes.
Guest:You might want to speak Mayan or Aztec.
Marc:Now, do you see yourself, I mean, are you like, you do cartoon voices.
Marc:Is there a community of guys that only do cartoon voices?
Marc:I mean, are there guys, you must be called out for everything.
Guest:I wish I was busier.
Guest:There's guys like John DiMaggio, Tom Kenny, Jeff Bennett.
Guest:Those are like your top tier guys that are doing stuff every week, like three or four times a week, maybe five times a week.
Guest:I'm in like a second tier thing, but I do swim with those guys in the same swimming pool.
Guest:There's Tara Strong.
Guest:There's Gray Delisle.
Guest:There's Nika Futterman.
Guest:There's so many talented people.
Guest:Darren Norris that you do run into on a concert, and it is a small pool.
Guest:And once they use you and if they like you, you know, you can get like five voices out of one octave.
Guest:So you just.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:So it means like I started out with Rocco on Rocco's Modern Life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he sounds like this.
Guest:Then I went into Winslow, hey, cat dog, which is just a bit more pinched off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then that went into Laszlo and hey, hey, Scoutmaster Lumpus.
Guest:And so I'm almost getting three voices right there out of the same octave.
Marc:I always thought that they made that.
Marc:I didn't know that you guys made it that.
Marc:I thought they sped it up or something to get that done.
Guest:On some they do, but no.
Guest:And then Tom Kenny's like, hey, SpongeBob.
Guest:Hey, Patrick.
Guest:It's just, you know, you pinch your voice off.
Guest:You can swim in that.
Guest:When are you going to do this shit?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Here's what I think happened.
Guest:My parents are from Argentina.
Guest:The joke in my act is my dad goes to British schools, does not have an accent.
Guest:My mom could peel wallpaper with an H. Hello.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:So no me digas, Carlos, Carlitos, you have to listen to me.
Guest:So I grew up with that.
Guest:I go over to my best friend Kevin's house when I'm a kid.
Guest:They're all from Glasgow, Scotland.
Guest:Let me tell you this, Carlos.
Guest:You're not going to get successful by lying around.
Guest:So as a kid, I'm soaking it up.
Guest:It's like wind instruments, right?
Guest:Literally, your throat is a wind instrument.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So if you watch the way somebody manipulates their mouth.
Guest:So if you watch this guy, John...
Guest:And Glasgow, they all have that stiff upper lip, and it's tight, and it pushes air out a certain way.
Guest:So if you make your face like that, you're able to push the air out.
Guest:And if you're talking in Spanish like that, no me digas, it's different lip movements or whatever.
Guest:So if you're attuned to that, like a lot of the VO people are, you're just like, okay, I want to make my mouth move like that, and I think I can do it, and it just comes out.
Guest:You're just manipulating that little muscles in your mouth.
Marc:But you're manipulating them in a fairly, almost there's a, I'm going to properly use the word histrionics.
Marc:There are histrionics to it, theatricality to it, and also a way of working your mouth as an instrument that you actually culturally have decided that Scottish people do something with their mouth.
Guest:I've decided that whether it's factual or not.
Guest:I remember I was learning Australian when I first did Rocco because I wanted to get it right.
Guest:How do you learn Australian?
Guest:The guy was a linguist that said everything comes out of your nose and you shove your tongue up to the roof of your mouth and you just go, you flatten everything out.
Marc:13 14 15 16 get i all that stuff it comes through your nose huh it's all this and you listen to this on a tape or what i listened on a little cassette tape you know i did that once with janine garofalo who had to read for a russian character and we had to stop and pick her up russian tapes i didn't listen to the tapes with her yeah but i i don't think she ever used the accent but you have to have a knack for this shit i mean you can't it's not like anybody can do this like what what are your accents what what what are your strong suits
Guest:I think because I grew up with it, Glasgow for sure.
Guest:And probably because I'm a huge Anglophile and watch a lot of bottom and stuff like that.
Guest:I love Hugh Laurie, the old stuff on Blackadder, probably British, Argentinian.
Guest:But can you do nuanced British, like the different regions?
Guest:You know who's really good at it is Jim Ward.
Guest:So if you're upper class, you know, certainly...
Guest:This is different from, like, aye, you fucking slag.
Guest:I will fucking end your life right now.
Guest:Right fucking now.
Guest:Don't even look over here.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:And Glasgow's a wee different than Edinburgh.
Guest:You've been to Edinburgh.
Guest:Our good friend Eric Moore is here from Edinburgh, and it's a lot softer.
Guest:Well, Glasgow, you have to, it's hard.
Guest:Can you make it so I can't quite understand you?
Guest:Uh, yeah.
Guest:What's up?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Rod Nisbitt, Gregor Fisher, is an actor that was the manager in Love Actually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he plays a character in Love Actually.
Guest:I'm a water man.
Guest:Hey, Marty, three days ago, you sent me out the pot.
Guest:You gave the sausage.
Guest:I got the sausage in my pocket, Marty.
Guest:You get right into it.
Guest:Hey, she wins.
Guest:You get down to it.
Guest:Hit down.
Guest:Did he say something?
Guest:Yeah, he says, when it comes right down to it.
Guest:Well, it comes right into it.
Guest:It's the winds that drive you crazy.
Guest:When it comes right down to it, it's the kids that drive you crazy.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Rabsy Nesbitt takes place in Govan, which is a poor suburb of Glasgow.
Guest:And it's raunchy.
Guest:It's physical.
Guest:They're poor.
Guest:They're desperate.
Guest:They're never going to make it.
Guest:And I love it because that's what's missing.
Guest:The sadness is missing from all American comedy.
Guest:Even the subtle difference.
Marc:Have you seen, sorry, the Men of a Certain Age?
Marc:I have not seen that.
Marc:There's some sadness there.
Guest:This I will tune into.
Guest:I love... But I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your point.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:My point is... Sadness.
Guest:Well, we started with the difference between Glasgow and... Well, I think your point... Well, it's a broader point about what makes...
Marc:I think comedy from the UK, different.
Marc:You're saying that we avoid sadness here.
Guest:In the UK, their attitude is, my life is shit.
Guest:I'll go down to the pub and I'm going to die one day.
Guest:It's that Pink Floyd lyric, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Guest:Fritter and waste the hours.
Guest:Here, it's like, we're not dying.
Guest:We don't die.
Guest:We don't die.
Guest:We can get younger.
Guest:If people get sick, we move them out of the house.
Guest:It's a problem we don't have to deal with.
Guest:Don't even have to look at it.
Guest:No dying here.
Guest:Yeah, and that, to me, that's the difference between the American office and the, and I think Greg Daniels had said it once, we take out the sadness.
Guest:Because America believes we can be number one and achieve.
Guest:We can always achieve, and the English aren't like that.
Guest:I work at a shitty fucking slough paper company.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:I'll never get Don because she's going out with me.
Marc:But you're right.
Marc:There's a humanity to it.
Marc:But I think that also has to do with the nature of the American cultural spirit.
Marc:I think there's something about accepting your place in life that Americans really refuse to do unless it's beaten into them.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And that there's something about, I think, also history of... I found it in Ireland, too.
Marc:I don't know if it's a class issue or what, but it seems that people realize...
Marc:Not everybody thinks they're going to be a fucking millionaire or a superstar in other countries other than America.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's something about the American disposition that's sort of like, it could happen, man.
Marc:I could be a billionaire tomorrow.
Marc:Yeah, they're saving for their plot on the moon, you know?
Marc:Yeah, but it's unbelievable.
Marc:But it doesn't exist in other people.
Marc:And because of that, their humanity is a lot more... It's deeper.
Marc:It's deeper.
Marc:It's deeper.
Guest:I loved Norman Lear.
Guest:I loved All in the Family.
Guest:I watched a little bit of Good Times, but that humanity was always there.
Marc:But that humanity was sort of, that was essentially a kind of American working class attitude that you don't see much anymore, really.
Marc:You saw it a little bit on Roseanne, I guess.
Guest:Yeah, and this will segue into something else because I'm dying to talk about this, but it's athletes.
Guest:I always write, I'm a big sports nut, and I'm with the LeBron James and the Kobe Bryant.
Guest:There's no more Frodo's.
Guest:There's no more George Bailey's.
Guest:Nobody wants to write it out.
Guest:Everybody wants the ring.
Guest:They want the fucking precious.
Guest:If Frodo were an athlete today, he'd go, no, fuck the Shire.
Guest:I'm not playing for the fucking, I want to fucking win that fucking ring and I want to play for Sour Man.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:This ring is about me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then this references into the Pat Tillman story.
Guest:It's called the Tillman story, which I put on my Facebook.
Guest:You have to run to see this film.
Marc:I followed a lot of that while it was happening because I was doing political radio.
Guest:Fucking heartbreaking and frustrating.
Guest:But this is the guy that he was the real item in terms of if you want to believe his family, which I do.
Guest:He's like, I don't want any fucking publicity.
Guest:I think what happened on 9-11 is sucks.
Guest:I want to quit football.
Guest:I don't want any fanfare.
Guest:I just want to go fight for my country.
Guest:And he puts on his little certificate.
Guest:I don't want a fucking military burial.
Guest:I want to fucking be dead.
Guest:Put my body in the ground.
Guest:No fanfare.
Guest:And I don't want to be politicized for this fucking war.
Guest:And of course they did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that type of character is just devoid now in our culture.
Guest:We celebrate the Kobe Bryans and the LeBron James and the whoever, you know, winning.
Guest:And the John Boehner types with the fake tans and the hair.
Guest:It's all about screaming and winning and there's no subtlety.
Marc:But how do you feel about it?
Marc:You know, I mean, like, I find that, like, you know, dealing with age, dealing with getting older...
Marc:dealing with um you know some dealing with disappointment is is not something i'm great at and and those are all the things that that make people's humility it's what those are the seeds of humility is accepting your limitations you know understanding your reality and behaving like a person in relation to that not denying it all i mean do you find yourself you know up against that you're a little older than me
Guest:Three years.
Guest:I'm 48.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think at once, that's a biblical quote, right?
Guest:You got to die to yourself to live someday.
Guest:And I think that's pretty true if you go through therapy or whatever.
Guest:If you realize, like you said, that you're going to die,
Guest:you really kind of go, God, all of this shit is bullshit.
Guest:A lot of it is bullshit.
Guest:It still doesn't kill your competitive thing.
Guest:I think it's still okay to be competitive.
Guest:But in terms of chasing fame, from my own point of view, maybe I'm fooling myself.
Guest:It's nice.
Guest:I've been on red carpets before and Reno 911 and we had a premiere and yada yada.
Guest:And that's very alluring.
Guest:But at some point you're just like, what's the point?
Guest:You can only get so many toys.
Guest:So I think that does come with age.
Guest:Hopefully it comes with age.
Guest:But learning to be an adult,
Marc:and and realizing that you always you won't always get your way or people won't be who you want them to be if you can just realize that it kind of mellows you out a little bit yeah it's it's a little heartbreaking and i know it's like oh i thought yeah and also like the toys thing i'm not a big toys guy but like what i in my competitive sense like it sounds to me like you were you've always been in good shape that you you are were you a sports guy yeah did you play
Marc:I played sports.
Marc:So you can lose without feeling like your life is being threatened?
Guest:I always could.
Guest:I remember in high school football, we lost the game, and I was a junior, and I got two plays, and I was happy because I got to play.
Guest:And they're like, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong, Al Zaraki?
Guest:What are you so happy about?
Guest:I'm sorry I got to play.
Guest:I fucking lost, dude.
Guest:It's not that I'm not a team guy.
Guest:I am, but I'm sorry.
Guest:I saw the lights, and I caught a ball.
Marc:You're supposed to be able to lose with some dignity.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I guess in this day and age, you're fucking patsy, fucking pussy.
Guest:What's wrong?
Guest:Don't you want to win?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What do you win?
Guest:That's what I think.
Guest:Because these people are like, you know, my team won.
Guest:We won the championship.
Guest:I have friends that are like, I want to win an Oscar.
Guest:What do you win?
Guest:It's a statue that goes on a mantle.
Guest:That doesn't guarantee that you won't get divorced or die of a coke overdose.
Guest:That guarantees nothing.
Guest:It guarantees that you've won something that you can put on your shelf.
Guest:You know, the Hilary Swanks of the world, that didn't keep her from getting divorced.
Marc:Because then you start to really, if you really look at this, the...
Marc:the span of history and what stays relevant and what doesn't, almost nothing stays relevant.
Marc:You know, Oscar winners, and when you watch In Memoriam on the Oscars and you see these actors that won, you know, 1940 who died or 1930, and you sit there like, I have no idea who that is.
Marc:I guess it's relative to your personal accomplishment, but I think the idea that it changes things, we think that.
Marc:It really just becomes a pride thing.
Guest:It is a pride thing, and it's like, Citizen Kane does not apply to me.
Guest:You're going to have your rosebud moment whether you like it or not.
Guest:You're going to realize, I just love that fucking sled.
Guest:What the fuck was I talking about?
Guest:Now, did your parents, when you grew up, they stay married?
Guest:They did not.
Guest:They got divorced in 81.
Marc:So you were older.
Guest:I was older.
Guest:High school.
Guest:Probably could have happened earlier, but they said, you know what?
Guest:We'll stay together for the kids.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:Let's live a lie a little longer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the kids don't realize we were living a lie.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I had that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just talked to this guy, Derek.
Guest:Same thing from Scotland.
Guest:He says, parents got together.
Guest:Good story, though.
Guest:Happy ending.
Guest:14 years apart, he said.
Guest:And now they're back together again, about to move in.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:14 years apart they were.
Guest:I like that you told the story in the accent.
Guest:In the accent, because that's the way I remembered it.
Guest:It was just the other night.
Guest:And did you actually spend a lot of time in therapy?
Guest:I still am.
Guest:I'm fascinated by it.
Guest:I'm fascinated by even, I could go deeper, but it's the Batmobile thing.
Guest:You let a little bit in a time, then you close up again.
Guest:I like the results.
Guest:I like who I've become because of it.
Guest:Well, what were your issues?
Guest:Let me see.
Guest:If I could generalize, the issue was not letting people in.
Guest:I don't want to need anything because then it could be taken away, in a nutshell.
Guest:Right, fear of being hurt.
Guest:Yeah, obviously when a child sees their parents get divorced, you can't escape that type of thing.
Guest:So I would say that's in a nice general reductive package.
Guest:It's probably a lot more complex than that.
Guest:Indeed is more complex than that, but that would be a nice way to put it.
Guest:Does that speak to your creativity at all?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think it speaks to most comics' creativity.
Marc:But your specific creativity, it's like, I'm not even me.
Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, here's another place you could go.
Guest:You know, here's a, yeah.
Guest:This is easier to dance in this little body to pretend.
Guest:And for me, skydiving, I've done all these things, skydiving and scuba diving, and I can do this.
Guest:And that was all to protect myself from, I can just make myself big.
Guest:If I can make myself bigger and I can be a skydiver and a scuba diver and get fame, like Citizen Kane, then all that other stuff can't touch me, you know?
Marc:Well, you're afraid specifically of being abandoned or being, like, because my fear is, like, I'm very sensitive.
Marc:And I'm easily, like, I get hurt pretty easy.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:I mean, I'm 46 years old.
Marc:I've been throwing myself up in front of, like, rooms full of, you know, drunk strangers for more than half of my life.
Marc:But I'm still so fucking sick.
Marc:I can read one bad email from somebody.
Marc:I don't read that shit.
Marc:But, I mean, not reading is one thing.
Marc:Being able, not unlike a healthy competition, to say, it's just one idiot.
Marc:It doesn't mean anything.
Marc:As opposed to letting it hurt my heart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't escape that.
Guest:That's who you are.
Guest:And I do that on Facebook.
Guest:I started a fight on Facebook with all these political things.
Guest:And then I finally realized I'm wasting my fucking time.
Guest:I'm not going to change anybody's mind just because I say so.
Guest:But it hurts.
Guest:It hurts when somebody doesn't agree with you.
Guest:And comedy is very personal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's different if a guy's not listening and drunk.
Guest:You can deal with that.
Guest:But if somebody says you're not funny or that bit's not, what the fuck?
Guest:How dare you?
Marc:And then you're like, why?
Marc:Explain to me why you don't think I'm funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'm like, you know, I can turn you around.
Guest:Maybe you didn't hear it right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, fuck it.
Guest:It's evil the way that that can happen.
Guest:I think comics in general are sensitive.
Guest:And anybody who says differently is selling you something, to quote Carrie Ullwes from The Princess Bride.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Life is pain, Highness.
Marc:Well, I think that when I first met you, I was always impressed that you're always sort of positive and you're always full of the juice, full of the beans.
Marc:You didn't seem to me like I had any access to being pals or whatever, but you're always pretty nice.
Marc:You're a nice guy, but I always did get that feeling.
Marc:It's like, what's going on inside that guy?
Marc:It must be dark and full of weird heads.
Guest:Probably is, yeah.
Guest:Lot of rage.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah, man.
Guest:Just frightening rage.
Guest:Hitting walls and fucking screaming.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Dogs running outside going, oh, man, that master's angry.
Guest:Yeah, and with the facade of a happy, positive guy.
Guest:Hey, I'm happy, positive.
Guest:But if you don't address that stuff, it just stews.
Guest:Well, how'd your rage manifest itself?
Guest:Like, did you hit a wall?
Guest:Oh, I've hit walls.
Guest:Over what?
Guest:Losing keys.
Guest:What are my fucking keys?
Guest:God, motherfucker, stupid, fuck, God, sports teams.
Guest:Don't fucking punt the ball.
Guest:Fucking go for it.
Guest:It's like, oh my God, it's frightening.
Guest:And then, you know, I'm getting better, but it still happens.
Guest:It's like, and I talked to my wife.
Guest:She goes, I'm really frightened when this happens.
Guest:I go, honey, I can't guarantee it'll change.
Guest:I can say I'm going to change.
Guest:You do it in front of her or do you rage at her?
Guest:I never rage at somebody.
Guest:I have done it in front of her.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's not a comfortable thing.
Guest:And I go, you're right.
Guest:But I can't flip a switch and say that I'm never going to do it again.
Marc:right but okay so what you know just for my own i'm just asking for my own uh help because i do rage at people and i do rage in general you don't want to it's when you have an audience it seems to have more effect and and you can go on for longer because like you know it's a show oh yeah you know when you're by yourself you're just like fuck it god damn it all right
Marc:There's no one around to make me feel like the child I am or take care of me.
Marc:So how long does that last?
Marc:But when you feel it coming, because if you're a real rager, once it starts, it's going to run its course.
Marc:It runs its course.
Marc:How do you stop it?
Marc:What do you do?
Guest:What are your tools?
Guest:Help me out.
Guest:I, I've been able on a couple of occasions.
Guest:It's not as trite as count to 10, breathe in, breathe out.
Guest:It's just try to see it through.
Guest:What does this mean?
Guest:Cause I start to get it.
Guest:I start the temperatures.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:Mother.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:What does this really mean?
Guest:And what are you really mad out?
Guest:And can it wait?
Guest:You know, what is it?
Guest:What is it?
Guest:There must be a common theme.
Guest:The common theme is feeling powerless.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And why is that power important and what is the perception of that power?
Guest:What's beating you down right now?
Guest:Is it really something that's tangible or are you making it up?
Guest:Is it something like, you know, why can't I have what I want right now?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's childish.
Marc:Early childhood feelings.
Marc:Right.
Marc:well that's the fucking thing that's so scary is that you know i get that too and what you're really dealing with is the emotional spectrum with this kind of need i'm like you know five-year-old but now i've now we've got 40 years of cynicism and weird life to fuel this weird need of a five-year-old and it's evil yeah it can be fucking evil it's like the crystal from superman's planet was put into us as a child and it still glows green no matter how we dress it up around it yeah green crystals inside it yeah
Guest:And it's going to come out.
Guest:It's fucking bizarre.
Guest:You cannot dress it up with intelligence or books or whatever.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:It's just like, I want what I want now.
Marc:Fuck you.
Marc:Fuck this.
Guest:Where's my things?
Guest:And I think it's kind of eloquent and beautiful when it comes out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that is being human.
Guest:So now that when I see it in other people, it doesn't frighten me as much because I go, oh, I get what they're doing.
Guest:I do that.
Guest:The rage thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you grow up with it?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:My dad would save it, save it, save it, and then kapaya.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here it is.
Guest:Here's your present.
Guest:Frightening as a kid, for sure.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So that's why I'm trying to get better at that.
Guest:But I think it's being human.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I think it's part of it.
Marc:But I think that the thing that I find is that there's certain behavior
Marc:That you're just not supposed to do.
Marc:And that's being human, too.
Marc:You know, like there's certain behavior.
Marc:It's sort of like, you know, this might hurt somebody or we're outside.
Marc:There's other people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was at Fordham University with Cedric Yarbrough and we did not read our contract carefully or weren't explained language stuff.
Guest:Fordham is a Jesuit school in right by the Bronx Zoo.
Guest:Oh, I know.
Guest:So I go there, we do the gig, and people are digging it.
Guest:And Reno's a dirty show, so people make suggestions, and we follow them, we do an improv scene.
Guest:And after the show, the girl has, she goes, I can't give you your check tonight.
Guest:I said, well, what happened?
Guest:Well, there's some language things, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:So instead of going, do you know who you fucking are?
Guest:And I went, okay, here's a situation that's not gonna help if I get angry.
Guest:So I said, can I just ask you something?
Guest:Do you have the check with you tonight?
Guest:She goes, yes.
Guest:Okay, I understand that, but you're saying that you're going to punish us and withhold that check.
Guest:I go, I just want to say to me, it doesn't make sense.
Guest:I go, you're going to say, are you going to deduct any amount from that check?
Guest:She goes, no.
Guest:I says, that doesn't make sense for you not to give me the check right now.
Guest:If you're doing it to slap my hand, then I think that's not the right thing to do.
Guest:I think that's being childish, but that's all I'm going to say.
Guest:And she kept the check and it came 10 days later.
Guest:But I was able to communicate- Was this a grownup?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was one of those student college things that says, I'll show them.
Marc:But after you'd put on a good show- Great show.
Marc:She decided to honor this contractual clause and deny you the money on a contractual point because she had the power to do that.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:and oh my god what a fucking i held it together i held it together i knew i thought she was wrong but i wasn't going to be a moment where i'm like i'm a 40 something year old let me show this girl up in front of the other students because that doesn't serve the purpose other than to feed my own power so i just went ah fuck this is hard to do all right i think you're wrong and uh we'll get the check when we get it
Guest:And Cedric was, motherfucker.
Guest:I felt better about doing it.
Guest:Do you ever take out anger in voices?
Guest:Bloody fucking hell.
Guest:No, but I mean, like, have you used a voice?
Guest:Have you ever used one of your funny voices inappropriately?
Guest:I don't think so.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:That's sort of like a karate thing.
Marc:Sorry, I could kill you, but I'm not going to.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I can't use my funny voices in an evil way.
Guest:Can't use my funny voices, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can't do it.
Marc:There was a guy that used to, I always thought it was just so interesting.
Marc:There was a guy, one of the most fucked up guys I ever knew in my life, a guy named Chris Collins.
Marc:Did he live in San Francisco for a while?
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:He was a voice guy, but he was a complete fucking disaster, drug-addicted mess.
Marc:Just a really weird fucking guy.
Marc:And I always thought it was so oddly ironic that he was voicing cartoons for children.
Marc:That no one knew the reality of this monster.
Marc:He was a sweet guy, but there was a lot going on there.
Marc:And I don't know if that stuff sinks in or not.
Guest:no that's it's called acting you know that's it's what's weird is when somebody thinks they know you through your character or through your voice and so kids are kids are smart they get it like I do little children like wow wow wubs you know oh no Walden yes yes yes and Felipe the screwdriver on handy money and so when a little kid sees that coming out of a human they don't it's a complete disconnect you're not you're not Felipe yeah you're not Walden oh they're sort of like why are you do where's the
Guest:Where is it coming from?
Marc:Yeah, right, right.
Marc:You can't be that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It has to be what they see on the TV.
Guest:And the same applies for maybe you as a stand-up.
Guest:You're Mark.
Guest:I know you, dude.
Guest:I follow your career.
Guest:And you're like, oh, that's me on stage.
Guest:And yeah, to some extent, I bring a lot of me on stage, but you don't know me.
Marc:Yeah, and then they listen to the podcast, and then they really know me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I can't hide anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, they do.
Marc:It's bizarre.
Marc:I mean, what am I going to do?
Marc:This is what I do.
Marc:I'm not making things up.
Marc:I'm not telling fairy tales here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm trying to process my own thoughts.
Marc:And now these people come up like a guy the other night, he's standing by me waiting for my car.
Marc:And he's like, wow, this is really too much because like, I feel really close to you.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:And, and you don't really know me at all.
Marc:And I'm like, it's okay, man.
Marc:I'm good with it.
Marc:So where do you work?
Guest:You know, you were good with it.
Marc:yeah yeah i mean i it's the type of it's the type of thing i'm doing so i i understand that and i can only handle so much of uh like i don't know like it's hard to sort of make up for that space yeah you know but but i i i try to make them comfortable so yeah you expose yourself and you're comfortable with the the exposure i am to some extent when so i'm flattered when when somebody comes up to me
Guest:Hey, man, I like your work.
Guest:Can I have your autograph?
Guest:I'm like, yeah, you can aim higher, but what the hell?
Guest:But that's crazy.
Guest:I mean, you're like one of the guys.
Guest:You're like an important guy.
Guest:What do they usually come up to you for?
Guest:I'm most flattered when they come up for Rocco because Rocco was such a long time ago.
Guest:But usually Reno 911.
Guest:And if they know my stand-up from like a Comedy Central special or Late Nights with Craig Ferguson or whatever...
Guest:then they don't have to go, you're Garcia.
Guest:But if they know me just from Reno, it takes them a while to think that I am Garcia, because I don't look anything like that character.
Marc:How many seasons did you do of that?
Guest:I did five seasons in a movie.
Guest:Are they doing, is it done?
Marc:It's done for now.
Marc:Could always come back.
Guest:Now, when you tour with that, like you said, you went out with, who'd you go out with?
Guest:Cedric Yarbrough.
Guest:What do you do?
Guest:We do a two-person show, and it's literally, it's almost vaudevillian.
Guest:I come out first, I do my stand-up, 15 minutes later,
Guest:Whoa, what's that noise?
Guest:Out comes Cedric.
Guest:We do this thing called the impression off, and it's literally, I can do anything better than you can.
Guest:No, you can't.
Guest:It's like, oh, yeah?
Guest:Well, listen to this impression.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:What does the audience think?
Guest:Well, do your impression.
Guest:And then he ends up doing CeeLo.
Guest:I remember when, I remember when I lost my hand.
Guest:He does a great CeeLo, and I'm off stage.
Guest:He does some stand-up.
Guest:We show a clip, I come back, we're in our uniforms, we bring a student on stage.
Guest:We do the planned improv thing, and we discovered this one night.
Guest:Because when you bring a student on that isn't an improv person, it's better to bring a girl, first of all, a woman, because guys are like,
Guest:Fucking fraternity, man.
Guest:Fucking Reno.
Guest:Okay, that's a mistake.
Guest:So we started bringing up one woman at a time.
Guest:So the out was Cedar could always flirt with this woman.
Guest:And that went all right.
Guest:And one night we bring up two women because they're friends.
Guest:And some woman says, blah, blah, blah, get in the scissors position.
Guest:And they wouldn't do it.
Guest:So Cedric and I go, here, here's what we mean.
Guest:Two cops getting in a scissors.
Guest:Big laughs.
Guest:Light bulb goes off in our head.
Guest:We will always bring two women up and we will always get it to a point where we are going to illustrate the scissors position.
Guest:Guaranteed laugh.
Guest:And it's worked.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You guys got a scissor every time.
Guest:Somehow we got to get it to scissors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not ashamed of that because, you know, the college kids want to be entertained and now they know the secret.
Guest:And who came up with that act?
Guest:I mean, when you do that, I mean, did you guys just decide to try it?
Guest:I came up with it because he was like, what am I going to do?
Guest:I'm just an actor and I've done some stage things.
Guest:I go, we'll figure it out.
Guest:They're going to be happy enough that you just showed up.
Guest:Now, the shelf life of our Reno 911 has been offset by the popularity of Jersey Shore.
Guest:So that at the last National NACA convention, which I could not make, we could have gone and gone to the convention.
Guest:NACA is for the college showcases.
Guest:For listeners, yeah.
Guest:There was a two-hour line for Snooki from Jersey Shore.
Guest:So that's what we're competing with.
Guest:The kids' attention span.
Guest:A non-performer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the Reno is not as popular anymore.
Guest:It was going to have a short shelf life.
Guest:But maybe in a couple years, it will come back again where people go, hey, that show's been off the air.
Guest:It'd be cool to see the Reno guy.
Guest:What do you want to do?
Guest:I don't want to audition for Latino Gardner roles anymore.
Guest:I want to be doing what Hank Azaria has been able to do and be a good character actor.
Guest:And I want to write my own stuff.
Guest:I want to do, I've pitched, I'll get a couple of things that I've pitched that are coming up to, I've got a CBS and a Showtime pitch.
Guest:But I want to continue acting.
Guest:I want to still scuba dive and skydive occasionally.
Guest:You skydive by yourself without a guy on your back?
Guest:I've been doing that for a few years now.
Guest:When can you do it without the guy on your back?
Guest:After one lesson.
Guest:You can do it right away if you want to without a guy on your back.
Guest:It's called an AFF, Accelerated Free Fall.
Guest:You do that?
Guest:I do what's called a fun jumper.
Guest:I have 733 jumps.
Guest:And I just did my first balloon jump, jumping from a hot air balloon, two weeks ago.
Guest:And that was posted on Facebook.
Guest:That was really bizarre.
Guest:Do you have your own chute?
Guest:I have my own gear.
Guest:Yeah, my own parachute and everything.
Guest:So I think the short answer is I want to do something creative.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I want to act, maybe develop my own show.
Guest:I want to develop an animated show and do the things that I like to do with family and friends.
Guest:So if fame is an offshoot of that and there's a red carpet in my future,
Guest:that'll be cool but hopefully if I'm well adjusted that won't be the end all be all end all so the skydiving thing oh that's a topic of therapy that has where we've just shelved and put that in a public storage thing for now why because at first skydiving thing was to be big bigger than everybody oh yeah you're show business guess what I fucking do I can fucking jump out of a plane yeah coming from a childish perspective now it's just like it's not to be big anymore so I don't go as much anymore but I like it
Guest:I enjoy it.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:This ethereal playground of 363 degrees of air, a wall of air around you.
Guest:It's fast.
Guest:It's adrenal pumping.
Guest:It's an intangible.
Guest:I can't explain it to you.
Guest:So you just dig it.
Guest:So I guess if I did drugs other than alcohol, it might be like an acid trip.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It might be...
Guest:Mushrooms, it might.
Marc:Now, how do you go about doing that?
Marc:Do you have to know people with planes or do you pay a guy to fly you up?
Guest:You go to schools.
Guest:The most popular schools in Paris, 1-800 skydiving, Paris Valley.
Guest:And if you want to go through your lessons, levels one through eight in accelerated free fall, you don't have to do a tandem to start with.
Guest:It's recommended.
Guest:Or you can go to iFly, Universal Studios, the indoor skydiving tunnel, to learn how to get acclimated to air blowing in your face first.
Guest:It's a good place to go.
Guest:We go there a lot.
Guest:And then you just call.
Guest:You go through your lessons.
Guest:If you complete levels one through eight, you rent gear and you go on your first solo jump.
Guest:And you are on your way to filling your logbook.
Guest:That's when you decide your own pull time?
Guest:That's when you pull by yourself by level five of accelerated free fall.
Guest:You have an instructor that flies with you, levels five through eight, and then they watch you as you go through your stuff, make sure that you pull at a certain altitude.
Guest:Some people are sort of like, I don't want to pull.
Guest:I don't want to pull, man.
Guest:They have death wishes.
Guest:It's rare.
Guest:There's been those things where people have done that.
Guest:Where they just push it to the edge?
Guest:Yeah, or pull it all and they've left a note behind, you know?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Like on their first or second jump?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm going to take lessons and she left me and I'll skydive and I'll take the lessons.
Guest:Do you ever get afraid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've had one reserve ride, which means I had to pull my main chute because it wasn't very good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a fright that I had afterwards.
Guest:So you pulled your chute and it didn't open?
Guest:It opened, but it was spinning.
Guest:I had several line twists and was spinning faster and faster and faster.
Guest:And at the time it's happening, I'm going, God damn, motherfucker.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Guest:Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Guest:And I pulled my main and then I pulled my reserve and I got down on the ground.
Guest:And then about an hour later, I was like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:I'm fucking scared.
Guest:You know, very emotional.
Guest:Fuck, that could have been it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's only afterwards.
Marc:So you're up there and there's no, the main shoot's done.
Marc:It's fight or flight, baby.
Marc:No, there's no, I mean, you're already flying.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But so all you have is the reserve?
Guest:All you have is the reserve.
Guest:Have you seen anyone die?
Guest:I have not seen anyone die.
Guest:I've seen somebody break a hip in front of me that slammed to the ground I thought was dead because they lay motionless and the ambulance came out.
Guest:I was like, oh, this is not fucking good.
Guest:Not a good day.
Guest:Not a good day.
Guest:And they took him to the hospital and we were waiting to find out.
Guest:A good friend of ours, Eli Thompson, passed away in Switzerland about a year ago.
Guest:In August, he was doing a Red Bull flying feature film, and he's doing what's called proximity flying, where they put on the wingsuits, base jump off a cliff, and then fly through canyons and angle their bodies along the contours of a canyon so that they can actually fly sideways past the canyon, reach out and touch it with their arm.
Guest:With wings?
Guest:With wingsuit, with a wingsuit.
Guest:And he had a pilot error, and he didn't make it.
Guest:And he's a young 36-year-old kid with a second child on the way, and
Guest:And it's tragic.
Guest:It's tragic, but it's part of what happens when we push the envelope with that sport.
Guest:A regular skydive, if you're out, for example, like we do at 13.5, you're altitude aware, you break off at 4,500 feet, so you get away from everybody while you open, and you pull at 3,000, 99% of the time, things are going to go fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's when you decide, I'm going to jump off this building.
Guest:See how low I can make it.
Guest:Or I'm going to jump with this suit on or see if I can go between these cliffs.
Guest:Every time you up the ante.
Guest:Same with anything.
Guest:With drugs.
Guest:Comedy.
Guest:Comedy.
Guest:Let's see if I can get away with this bit.
Guest:I'm in an all black comedy club.
Guest:Let's see if I can get away with this.
Guest:Shoot didn't open.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bang, bang.
Guest:They Apolloed me, man.
Guest:They Showtime at the Apolloed me.
Guest:All right, man.
Guest:Well, Carlos, be careful.
Guest:It was great talking to you.
Guest:Great talking to you.
Guest:Talk to you soon.
Marc:Yeah.
Thanks.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:That's the show.
Marc:Who knew?
Marc:Carlos Salsrocki, skydiver.
Marc:Thank you all.
Marc:Again, merry, happy holiday thing.
Marc:I hope that's all working out for you.
Marc:Go to WTF Pod.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Kick in a few bucks.
Marc:Buy some merch.
Marc:Got new merchandisers.
Marc:American Apparel t-shirts.
Marc:Same price.
Marc:Good shit.
Marc:And they won't smell like cats.
Marc:And maybe you want that.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Thanks again for all the lovely well-wishing.
Marc:And look forward to the past episodes being put up soon on iTunes for you to enjoy.
Marc:Is that all I need to say to you?
Marc:Oh, WTFPodShop.com for our premium episodes.
Marc:Bunch of nice premium content up there.
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:Okay, that's all the energy I have.
Marc:Pretend like I'm not alone.
you