Episode 160 - Bobby Slayton
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 Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckericans?
Marc:What the fuckanadiens?
Marc:What the fuckanauts?
Marc:I can't go on forever.
Marc:This is Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Welcome aboard.
Marc:You know, I've been really thinking about it a lot in terms of how great this format is and how much of a great time I'm having doing this show.
Marc:I'm so glad you guys dig it.
Marc:I just got back from Atlanta.
Marc:I know I talked to you from there after the Coca-Cola Museum.
Marc:I made it out.
Marc:I don't have diabetes.
Marc:I don't think that all my heart valves are clogged with gravy.
Marc:But, man, I got to stop.
Marc:Every time I come home, it's the same thing.
Marc:I go out.
Marc:I go to Whole Foods.
Marc:I buy maybe six things of kale, two things of cabbage, brown rice, quinoa.
Marc:I get some quinoa that I'm going to cook up, some fat-free yogurt, and I swear to fucking God that this is it.
Marc:I'm going to cleanse my entire system by eating only organic things and not eat any sugar at all.
Marc:And then I say, what's this fucking cookie doing here?
Marc:Who's who bought this chocolate?
Marc:How did this chocolate?
Marc:All right.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Tomorrow.
Marc:But that's not going to be the case.
Marc:I did it.
Marc:I went to the gym yesterday and I think I was on a slightly retarded treadmill.
Marc:I you know, I was in denial about it.
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:I said, this seems easy.
Marc:It can't be this easy.
Marc:I haven't done this in weeks.
Marc:And then you realize, hey, every treadmill's got its own personality.
Marc:This one's doing the best it can.
Marc:I don't believe that I was doing 6.5 mile or whatever that is, like an eight and a half, nine minute mile, but it said it was.
Marc:So I was willing to be codependent with that machine and enable it to think that because it was helping me.
Marc:It made me feel strong.
Marc:It made me feel like I was winning.
Marc:I'm not going to use that meme.
Marc:I'm not going to do it.
Marc:I will tell you this.
Marc:I had great shows in Atlanta.
Marc:Thank you for the... There was only a few baked goods.
Marc:Very nice people.
Marc:A lot of what the fuckers from the South came out.
Marc:Some people drove hundreds and hundreds of miles to see the show.
Marc:I really appreciate that.
Marc:I love you guys coming out.
Marc:Now, I'm trying to figure something out about myself.
Marc:I don't know if I'm becoming a nicer guy or what.
Marc:All of a sudden, I've got a little more empathy than I used to.
Marc:I'm not as hard on people as I used to be.
Marc:I like listening a lot more.
Marc:I hope this isn't a liability.
Marc:But I'll tell you one thing I'm starting to appreciate is my fellow performers.
Marc:There was something that happened in Brooklyn.
Marc:And I can't really explain it because I never really quite noticed it before.
Marc:Being that I am an entertainer, being that I am a stand-up comedian, I've been in show business a while, you sort of take it for granted that most of your friends are comics.
Marc:You find yourself in kitchens a lot.
Marc:You find yourself standing backstage in dressing rooms with bad cantaloupe on a tray.
Marc:You find yourself saying, what, there's no fucking Diet Cokes?
Marc:I mean, I don't even have a writer.
Marc:You can't put a Diet Coke in the goddamn thing.
Marc:You find yourself doing that.
Marc:But a lot of times you're just standing there along the side of the stage, looking out on the stage from backstage, watching one of your peers make a room full of people laugh.
Marc:You just take it for granted.
Marc:And I started to realize in Brooklyn when I had Otto and George on, for whatever you think about Otto and George,
Marc:they're they're professionals they've been around a long time they have a sort of infamy a mythic status and i was literally had this moment where i was on stage sitting next to auto and george and i realized holy shit i've got the best fucking seats in the house and then the next show bill hater fred armison there was all of a sudden this weird moment where i knew i was talking to these guys and they were my peers to some degree i mean obviously on a they're on a higher level than i am in show business
Marc:But there was that moment again where I'm watching Bill Hader talk to a room full of people.
Marc:I'm literally a foot and a half away from him.
Marc:And I'm thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, this is the best seat in the house for this guy.
Marc:And I don't know what the magic is, but I can definitely sense the magic when you see a guy so focused and so in their game and just, you know, make a room full of people laugh effortlessly.
Marc:It's a beautiful thing.
Marc:And the guy I'm talking to today, Bobby Slayton.
Marc:Look, this is another cat.
Marc:I've known about him for 20 years.
Marc:The pit bull of comedy was one of the biggest club acts back in the day.
Marc:I don't want to date him because he's a pretty vital motherfucker.
Marc:I'm not going to deny that.
Marc:And I've run into him a couple of times.
Marc:We never really talked that much until we were in Montreal and we talked a little bit.
Marc:But he's just one of those guys always going at this pace.
Marc:Everything's a mile a minute.
Marc:And I realized, you know, that's the pace that got me into comedy.
Marc:And also, I'm wired to emotionally connect to mania of any kind.
Marc:If someone is full of manic charm, there's part of me that's thinking, hey, you're kind of like my dad.
Marc:Can I just hang out with you?
Marc:And then I don't say anything.
Marc:And now I realize I haven't had Bobby Slayton on.
Marc:And I talked to him.
Marc:I ran into him.
Marc:He sent me an email.
Marc:And his email talks in that same tone of voice.
Marc:Hey, Marin, how come I'm not on the show?
Marc:When are you going to have me on this show, this pod thing?
Marc:When is that going to happen?
Marc:When am I going to do this show?
Marc:You want me to come on the show?
Marc:And I realized, hell yeah, I want you to come on the show.
Marc:I want to sit there for an hour with the best seat in the house to watch you and all your manic insanity come flying at me two feet away so I can be entertained on a cellular level.
Marc:Some things just resonate on a cellular level.
Marc:And Bobby's got a reputation.
Marc:for being inappropriate, being a little in the wrong.
Marc:But isn't that relative?
Marc:I mean, this guy's had his struggles.
Marc:He does his own thing.
Marc:He's always done his own thing.
Marc:He's committed to what he has.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I'm in this weird place where what determines wrong?
Marc:If somebody's got a good heart and you still think it's wrong, what is your place in that situation?
Marc:Do you say, hey, buddy, you're wrong?
Marc:And they go, whatever, whatever you think.
Marc:That's not where I'm coming from.
Marc:Do you believe them?
Marc:Do you believe the heart?
Marc:Do you feel the heart?
Marc:How much of your own baggage are you bringing to any situation, projecting onto somebody else?
Marc:God damn it, I do that all the time.
Marc:I do it all the time.
Marc:I assume people that are fucking crazy aren't crazy.
Marc:I don't know what the hell that comes from.
Marc:I guess it's from being brought up with the parents I was brought up with.
Marc:But I really want people to be what I think they are.
Marc:And then I'll make that assumption.
Marc:And sure enough, I'm proven wrong every time.
Marc:And then I'm all of a sudden stuck with this this illusion, this manufacture of what I think this person is.
Marc:And then I try to make them be that person.
Marc:Am I being vague?
Marc:Let me try to be more specific.
Marc:All of my relationships are.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Marc:Does that make sense to you people?
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I guess I'm getting to this point where...
Marc:I don't know if I'm not taking things as seriously or literally.
Marc:I'm very I've become very moved by by people and what's going on with them.
Marc:I've got some sort of sensitivity.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Marc:I used to only think about myself.
Marc:And now all of a sudden I'm finding myself caring a little more about other people.
Marc:That's supposed to be a good thing, right?
Marc:Why do I find that frightening?
Marc:Why am I?
Marc:How about I start doing a show where I don't talk about me at all?
Marc:How would that be?
Marc:How I just talk about the charitable things I did.
Marc:I worked in a soup kitchen all weekend.
Marc:I saved nine cats and now they're living in my bedroom.
Marc:I'm working on a cure for cancer in my kitchen.
Marc:Now, that would be a good show.
Marc:I think that would be a good show.
Marc:The other two, they're all right.
Marc:They're sweet, but I think if I could come up with a cure for cancer in my kitchen, that'd be awesome.
Marc:I think I am coming up with a cure for cancer in my kitchen.
Marc:Right now, it's in the crisper in my refrigerator, like six bunches of kale that have yet to be eaten.
Marc:I found a cure for cancer.
Marc:I'm just choosing to avoid it.
Marc:The thing is, I don't think there's any good Italian food in Los Angeles.
Marc:Am I wrong?
Guest:You're really wrong.
Guest:First of all, at my house, which you come over any time, I make... Really?
Guest:Well, you know, don't even get me started with food, because how long do we have?
Guest:Half hour, hour?
Guest:How long do we talk?
Marc:How do you fucking stay in good shape?
Marc:I'm sitting here hating my fucking self, because I can't stop eating.
Marc:Okay, I want to show you something, and of course this doesn't work.
Guest:Are you going to show me your abs?
Guest:No, this doesn't work on the internet.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Or, of course, on radio.
Guest:Are you going to lift your... No, no.
Guest:My stomach.
Guest:My wife and daughter teased me about this.
Guest:What?
Guest:There's nothing there.
Guest:There's nothing there.
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'm now 56 years old.
Guest:So I have the metabolism of a hummingbird.
Guest:So I don't stop moving.
Guest:I mean, I pop out a bit like a piece of toast.
Guest:I get up at six, seven o'clock.
Guest:I run around all day.
Guest:And if I have nothing to do, which is, by the way, I would quit doing stand-up comedy in a second and just stay home and cook and work out.
Guest:But I wind up doing nothing all day and I don't stop moving.
Guest:I mean, I cook.
Guest:Then I walk my dog.
Guest:Then I go for a swim.
Guest:So I just, even when I'm sleeping, I'm moving.
Guest:The bed on my side, I should talk to a doctor about this because I always get checkups.
Guest:I'm in great shape.
Guest:But the bed on my side, my wife, when I sweat at night, if I have a nightmare or something, my sweat will take the color.
Marc:If you have a nightmare or something.
Marc:You're talking about the regular thing.
Marc:When you sweat at night?
Guest:Well, I don't usually sweat.
Guest:Maybe sometimes I do.
Guest:If I drink a lot of something, if I put too many blankets, whatever.
Guest:But my wife, we have to get rid of sheets because my sweat, it's like something from an alien world.
Guest:It takes the color out of, I don't know what it is.
Guest:You can see it out like when a body, like the cop outline, it takes it right out of the sheets.
Guest:So there's something in my body that just keeps me thin.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:Well, it's a gift.
Marc:If you're sitting down in the morning and you think, what are my gifts?
Marc:That you'll never get fat.
Marc:You're going to be a lanky little Jew.
Guest:The old Jews always go, at least you have your health.
Guest:You have cancer.
Guest:Cancer is everybody's big fear.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:Besides that big fear of getting hit by a car, my dog getting run over, my big fear is getting fat.
Guest:And I was in Vegas for a couple of years.
Guest:By the way, you never told anybody who I am.
Guest:Don't you do an introduction for Michelle?
Marc:I'm sorry.
Guest:I figured it out.
Guest:This is what the fuck.
Guest:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:Don't you do a whole big thing?
Marc:Right now, in my garage, Bobby Slayton, one of the greats.
Marc:The Pitbull of comedy.
Marc:You probably said that about everybody, though.
Marc:No, I don't.
Marc:Have you listened to the fucking show?
Marc:No, first of all.
Marc:You listened to one show.
Marc:What, you read an article?
Marc:I get an email from you.
Marc:You're not going to make me cry like Louie?
Marc:No, no, okay.
Guest:Well, the thing of Rolling Stone.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I've known about your show for a long time.
Guest:Let me tell you something.
Marc:What?
Guest:Oh, I never listened to internet, a radio.
Marc:Sure, I don't listen to anything.
Guest:I'm barely listening to you.
Guest:In my car, I got my XM series, I got my Blue Station, a little Stevens on the ground garage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I'm home, I put on the blues.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So nothing.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:I don't listen to Hallinstein.
Guest:Did you get the new Greg Allman record?
Guest:I heard it's great.
Guest:No, I didn't get it yet.
Guest:No, no, I'm getting it.
Guest:That's on my list of things to get this one.
Marc:Oh shit, I just bought it.
Marc:Like, he really sings.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I mean,
Guest:I love all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And it's stuff that I love that was before my time that I love.
Guest:And my daughter, who's 22, I've tried to turn her on to all that stuff.
Guest:And you throw against the wall.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:A lot of it did.
Guest:I mean, I took her to see The Stones when she was little, but she was 11 and into Britney Spears.
Guest:I took her to see Social Distortion when she was 18, but she was into Christina Aguilera.
Guest:She appreciates this stuff and she gets it.
Marc:But kids today just aren't as smart as we are.
Marc:Well, I think that it doesn't have the same integrity that it had when we were younger.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And by the way, let's get back to the other thing.
Guest:This is more important.
Marc:The food and the skinny.
Guest:So, first of all, I'm a little upset that you've never asked me to do the show.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Marc:Never.
Marc:Ask you now.
Marc:You're here.
Guest:I called to ask you.
Marc:No, you didn't.
Marc:I talked to your publicist.
Marc:I had him call you.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:I'm here.
Marc:The last time I saw you was in Montreal.
Marc:I don't even think I was doing the show.
Marc:You weren't doing it.
Guest:No, you weren't doing it.
Marc:And that was the first time that you let me listen to you.
Marc:And...
Marc:I'm not sure what that means.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Let me tell you.
Marc:We've never talked before and then all of a sudden we were talking a lot for a couple of days.
Guest:It was good.
Marc:We had pizza together.
Marc:We had great pizza.
Marc:You're a guy that I know that you're going to come on.
Marc:I was looking forward to it because I figured it was going to be funny and I wouldn't get a word in edgewise.
Marc:But you don't need to.
Guest:By the way, let me tell you something else.
Guest:In the over 30 years I've been doing stand-up.
Guest:There's not been a morning radio show, podcast, TV show where I've not come prepared.
Guest:And I just said today, I have so many things to talk to you about.
Guest:And I know that you and I could just talk for an hour.
Guest:I'm usually have a list of stuff.
Guest:Either it's jokes or topical stuff.
Guest:What do you want to do that for?
Guest:Because, you know, it's always nice to be prepared because a lot of times, and you know this when you do shows and these guys have, you know.
Guest:You got to do the job.
Guest:You got to show up.
Guest:You got to have your jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, a lot of guys can't do that.
Guest:You know, a lot of guys, you know, I mean, you've done all that morning radio and a lot of times the jocks.
Guest:Oh, they want to fight with you.
Guest:They want to either want to fight and be funnier or they want a list of things to ask you.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I'm the kind of guy and you know that.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:And I can just go for hours and hours.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, but I've.
Guest:Can I smoke this horrible cigar?
Guest:It doesn't bother me.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So it's your house.
Guest:Studio, whatever you want to call it.
Guest:No, but anyway, you know what?
Guest:I knew once I asked you to do the show, you'd have me on.
Guest:The thing is, in this business, you have to ask people stuff, and I've never wanted to ask people for favors.
Guest:You know, the George Lopez show, I said to my publicist, well, you know what?
Guest:They're not using a lot of comics.
Guest:I call up George, of course we'll have you on.
Guest:Jimmy Fallon, we're not using a lot of comics.
Guest:I call up Jimmy, of course we'll have you on.
Guest:So it's the same thing.
Guest:You did Jimmy Fallon?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:What'd you do, sit down?
Guest:No, you know, that's the thing, too.
Guest:I love sitting down instead of doing stand-up on the shows.
Marc:I do, too.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:I did that on Conan two weeks ago.
Guest:It's just like this.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I had a bad experience with Conan, I got to tell you.
Marc:What are you talking about?
Guest:It was kind of my fault, but it was... When was this?
Guest:Oh, it was a long time ago, but he was on the other...
Guest:NBC yeah but it was when I did the movie the Rat Pack with Ray Liotta the HBO movie you know the Joey Bishop thing so that I was I think 1997 yeah so it's on 12 13 years right here's what I did okay and you know this as well as I do that when you do stand up on television you need to prepare the four or five minutes of course you need to really and you know you'll see comics coming to clubs all the time when you're working hey can I run my my Tonight Show 4 can you do my Letterman 6 and you know you really got to work it out yeah yeah work at
Marc:the time because like people like you it's a one joke is 10 minutes well I that's why I've never worked good in that kind of form yeah you're not people watch you would do a five-minute set and they're like yeah well until you see him live yeah but I've never been a five-minute guy no I know me neither and I don't like it's a trick it's well you know what I did it I didn't even eat the improv a bunch of times I did on the Joan Rivers show even Pat Sajak had a show I did on Arsenio Hall and it's it sucks because first of all I don't have a lot of and I don't consider a dirty material yeah but
Guest:I don't have a lot of clean TV material.
Guest:All these shows have rules where you can't do the drug jokes, and a lot of times you can't do topical stuff because Letterman just did it before you.
Marc:And you can't be dirty, and they don't want you to talk about people's races or activities.
Guest:You're like, what am I going to do?
Guest:And you see comics go on, and they talk about, well, I'm from Detroit.
Guest:I've seen people in Detroit.
Guest:Nobody gives a rat's ass about Detroit.
Guest:People who live in Detroit.
Guest:So you can't do local stuff.
Guest:Anyway, so you know the situation.
Guest:Okay, so I had done a bunch of those five-minute sets, and I did enough of those stupid Comic Live and Comic Street Live and Comedy Today and Evening at the Improved.
Guest:You've done everything.
Guest:So the Conan show, this was going to be one of my big breaks in show business, one of the many that never happened.
Guest:I'm angry, but not bitter, and I'll tell you the difference in a few minutes.
Guest:If I can get a word in.
Guest:I knew you wouldn't let me talk.
Guest:I knew, Maren, you wouldn't let me say a goddamn word.
Guest:I'm just waiting for you to cry, Slayton.
Guest:Okay, well, Louis C.K.
Guest:warned me about that before.
Guest:Louis said there's certain things.
Guest:Don't have them bring up, and I'm just going to try to stay away from that subject.
Marc:Come on, tell me about your mommy, Bobby.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:Well, we'll get to that, too.
Guest:But anyway, so Conan, here's where I really screwed up.
Guest:And this is totally my fault.
Guest:So I'm going to New York, do the Howard Stern show, the Rat Pack comes out.
Guest:If you don't care, this is going to be great.
Marc:You're playing Joey Bishop, which is weird to me because you couldn't be less like Joey Bishop.
Guest:But see, that's what's funny.
Guest:Have you ever watched Joey Bishop?
Guest:Yeah, I have.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:If I slow down and talk like Jackie Mason and they give me a... No, I'm not saying you can't act, but I mean...
Guest:What I do is basically what he did.
Guest:I mean, it might be... You're funnier than Joey Bishop.
Marc:Well, maybe it's funnier.
Guest:Maybe it's more modern.
Guest:But if you put me... Let me back up.
Guest:I should do a whole week of shows.
Guest:Before the Conan story, when I got to part of Joey Bishop... The Slayton episodes.
Guest:The Slayton tapes.
Guest:The Lost.
Guest:And we'll call them Lost so people think they rediscovered us.
Guest:It's a good selling point.
Marc:They are rediscovering you, believe me, right now.
Guest:Great.
Guest:We'll get to my plugs in a second.
Guest:So this is really funny.
Guest:When I play Joey Bishop, and your audience is hip enough where they know who he is, okay?
Guest:I had done a shitload of little movies and little TV parts, but I never played a real person.
Guest:And they looked at everybody in Hollywood before they came to me.
Guest:First they said I was too old.
Guest:And by the way, I was exactly Joey Bishop's age at the time.
Marc:He was old when he started, I think, wasn't he?
Guest:Well, I think I was 43 when I got it, and the Rat Pack days, they were about that age.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Joe Mantegna was Dean Martin, he was older than me.
Guest:Ray Liotta was my age.
Guest:I mean, everybody, there was something, so I dye my hair, I audition, I really want this part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I get the part, and I figure, I've never played a real-life person before, I've only played characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm getting this Robert De Niro raging bull, gotta gain weight, learn how to box.
Guest:I'm getting, you know, Meryl Streep, I gotta learn German and play the cello.
Guest:I'm gonna play a real person, I gotta do research.
Guest:I wanna become this person.
Guest:I wanna inhabit this acting bullshit.
Guest:So I said to my wife, I said to my wife, I'm going to the Museum of Broadcasting in Beverly Hills for the day.
Guest:I take a little lunch like it's my first day of school.
Guest:I have an apple, I have a little juice box.
Guest:I said, honey, I'm gonna be there all day studying Jerry Bishop.
Guest:I'm gonna get this guy down.
Guest:I'm thinking Emmys and Grammys and Tonys.
Guest:Things are going through my head, sugar plum fairies.
Guest:Okay, so I seriously, I get to the Museum of Broadcasting, I turn to the Joey Bishop show or a Rat Pack clip, and he's going, hey Frank, hey Dean, what do you eat?
Guest:What am I, chopped liver?
Guest:And I go, and I'm sending myself, hey Dean, hey Frank.
Guest:Okay, I got it.
Guest:And literally, 15 minutes, I never even touched the sandwich, I never opened the juice box, and I go, I get this.
Guest:Now, here's the funny thing when you say I'm nothing like Joey Bishop.
Guest:Joey Bishop was five foot nine, five foot 10, a comic from the Bronx, scrappy, you know, little kind of wiry guy.
Guest:So in a way, I'm exactly like him, except for the fact that I talk different, and I have better jokes.
Guest:So when I got that part, everybody goes, you were so great in that.
Guest:And I didn't do anything.
Guest:I really did jack shit.
Guest:I just slowed down.
Guest:I slowed down.
Guest:That's all I did.
Guest:I put on a sharkskin suit from 1962 with a skinny tie.
Guest:So the Conan story, when I make a hole for myself, I just keep digging and burying myself.
Guest:And I'm sure you've done that too.
Marc:Sure, I'm in a hole now.
Marc:You are?
Marc:Sure, I'm in my garage, and I'm talking to you.
Marc:Okay, make me feel worse.
Guest:It's like Wayne's World when they broadcast out of the basement.
Marc:People listen.
Guest:This is like Hogan's Heroes, right?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:King Shlomo in the bunker, the tree stump, you're on the ground, you try to reach the free world.
Marc:All we have to do is be entertaining, no one will kill us.
Guest:All right, right.
Guest:So here's what I did with Conan, and I don't think I was out of line.
Guest:I get Conan.
Guest:Frank Smiley calls me up a couple hours before I get on the plane.
Guest:I wasn't gonna do stand-up.
Guest:I said, I don't wanna do it.
Guest:I'd rather sit and talk like I'm talking to you.
Guest:I get stories, I'll be funny on the couch.
Guest:Smiley says, listen, Conan wants to know, we need a five-minute segment.
Guest:Do you mind doing stand-up tomorrow?
Guest:Like a cocky idiot that I was.
Guest:I've done stand-up so much, and I've done so many shows, and getting back to your original thing, well, you gotta plan out your four or five-minute set.
Guest:I go, sure, I'll do it.
Guest:I'll put together a set on the plane tonight.
Guest:I'll have a glass of wine.
Guest:I'll put together my five minutes.
Guest:And again, if everybody out there that doesn't do comedy, you got to know you got to run your set.
Marc:You just got to do it.
Marc:Because you're taking yourself out of your regular rhythm to do a tight set with punchlines that don't go where they usually go.
Marc:And you got to be done.
Marc:And with you, you probably got out there and said, what kind of haircut is that?
Guest:No, I put together my set.
Guest:Okay, here's what happened.
Guest:Frank Smiley says to me, you might not want to open it with that joke.
Guest:It's spring vacation.
Guest:There's a lot of college kids here, so it's not going to be our usual audience, and I don't think they're going to get that joke.
Guest:I'll tell you the joke in a minute.
Guest:I'll tell you in a second.
Guest:So that joke has killed everyone.
Guest:So I see Max Weinberg, and he's a fan, and the band is really cool.
Guest:And Conan couldn't have been nicer.
Guest:He came up and talked to me.
Guest:Never met the man.
Guest:A good 15, 20 minutes.
Marc:Did he call you Mr. Sweighton?
Guest:I don't remember what he called me.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:Yeah, he was so nice to me.
Guest:So here's what I do.
Guest:I go on the show, and my opening joke, and I look out there, and I swear to God, the audience was college kids, and it was too late to change anything.
Guest:My opening joke was this, and it was perfect for New York.
Guest:It wasn't too late to change anything.
Guest:The rocket had taken off.
Guest:I should have known.
Marc:You didn't listen to Frank.
Guest:I should have listened to Frank.
Guest:But here was my opening.
Guest:My point is that I should have done stand-up.
Guest:I should have said, no, I have no time to plan this out.
Guest:I know it's being magnanimous enough where, okay, Conan wants me to do it, I'll do it.
Guest:I was being a cocky dickhead where I go, okay, I should have gone to a club and planned this out.
Guest:So anyway, I go on, and my opening joke was, you need to come to New York, there's a lot of Haitian cab drivers.
Guest:This is before that thing in Haiti, so it's okay to make fun of them.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I said, you know, there's somebody, and the cab drivers, I'm going to slow it up for you, but I don't remember exactly how I did it, but the point of the joke was that they had this attitude, the Haitian.
Guest:None of them want to drive cabs.
Guest:They never say thank you when you tip them, or the air conditioning never works.
Guest:And I talked to this Haitian cab driver, and he says to me, you know, in Haiti, I was a doctor.
Guest:I said, in Haiti, I could be a doctor.
Guest:How hard is it to be a doctor in Haiti?
Guest:We need a chicken foot and a band-aid, ooga-booga, ooga-booga.
Guest:You do some voodoo.
Guest:Anyway, that joke kills.
Guest:It always kills.
Guest:Maybe not to open a show in front of college kids that don't know what the hell Haiti is.
Guest:So that joke dies, the band's laughing.
Guest:And the old thing in showbiz, when the band's laughing, you're screwed.
Guest:You really are.
Guest:So the band, they're cracking up.
Guest:My next joke, and I don't remember what it was, didn't get a big laugh, and the band's cracking up.
Guest:So meanwhile, I must have had 10 jokes, but the third, fourth joke, I got them.
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:But that happens, man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It happens all the time.
Guest:Anyway, the set ended okay.
Guest:I watched it that night.
Guest:It made me cringe because I want perfection.
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:I talked to Conan.
Guest:We sit in the panel.
Guest:Talked about Joey Bishop and the Rat Pack.
Guest:Whatever stories I'm telling him.
Guest:And we go to a commercial.
Guest:And I stand up and I'm kidding around.
Guest:I give the audience a finger.
Guest:I go, thanks for your help, people.
Guest:And I hold both fingers in the air.
Guest:And Conan goes, hey, hey, hey, man.
Guest:Don't flip off my audience.
Guest:Hey, hey.
Guest:But I was kidding around.
Guest:And I think they laughed.
Guest:I know the band was laughing.
Guest:Then, like an idiot the next morning,
Guest:I go on the Howard Stern Show and I tell that story.
Guest:Howard goes, you know, you'll never be on Conan again.
Guest:But when my agent or publicist, whatever, tried to get me back on the show, Frank Smiley said, no, you know, Bobby didn't do very well last time.
Guest:I didn't do very well because, and it was my fault, but I really think it's because I talked about it on Howard, and I really think I gave Conan's audience a finger to piss them off.
Marc:Who the hell knows?
Marc:It probably wasn't the Howard thing and probably wasn't the finger thing.
Marc:What are you, Jackie Mason?
Marc:The cameras weren't even on.
Marc:Well, let me ask you something because I don't know.
Marc:The weird thing about you is that I've known about you for so long.
Marc:We talked a few times here and there about this and that.
Marc:But every time I go to the fucking punchline in San Francisco, I get hung up on pictures.
Marc:This is a picture of you.
Marc:You look like you're 12.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the back of the dressing room?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, what year was that?
Marc:When did you start and where the hell did you come from?
Guest:Well, you know what's really funny?
Guest:That picture... Because I don't know.
Guest:I know you're New York.
Guest:Okay, I'm 55 now.
Guest:55.
Guest:I started doing stand-up when I was in my early 20s.
Guest:By the way, I know every comic's done that, and this guy's coming over to help me today.
Guest:He's a very good friend of mine.
Guest:I'm writing a book, and I know it's... I'm not trying to plug the book now, but it's going to be about stand-up comedy, what Anthony Bourdain did for the cooking industry.
Guest:Are they paying you?
Guest:Nobody's paying me anything yet.
Marc:You're just doing a book on spec?
Marc:I'm doing a book because... How long have you had this project going on?
Marc:In my head?
Marc:I have a lot of things going on in my head.
Guest:There's so many different voices in my head talking to me.
Guest:I can't listen to all of them.
Marc:So this one voice is going to write a book now?
Guest:I'm so antisocial, I even hate the voices in my head.
Guest:That would have been a great headburn joke.
Guest:I have so many stories.
Guest:And you talk about the beginning of the punchline.
Guest:And, you know, you read so many comics books, and they're autobiographies, and they're boring.
Guest:And a lot of comics have their great rants and raves, like Dennis Miller, George Carlin, or Louis Black.
Guest:Brilliant, guys, brilliant books.
Guest:And I'm just going to do something that I'm writing for the people in this business.
Guest:And again, as a template, I'm using Anthony Bourdain.
Guest:I don't know if you know who he is.
Guest:Of course I do.
Guest:The great food writer.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:I love that man with a passion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if I was a chef, that probably would have been my life.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You have the temperament of a chef.
Marc:Chefs are kind of nuts.
Marc:But I think there's something similar to being a chef, like the immediate gratification thing.
Marc:It's like, I flipped the egg.
Marc:Look, I made the omelet.
Marc:I made the sandwich.
Marc:There's the same sort of pace as comedy.
Marc:You get into a kitchen that's busy, and you're getting that shit out, and every time you hit that fucking plate, I mean, it's the same kind of temperament.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:It's also the same that people don't think is when you have, I think people know now because of all these cooking shows, but I think my father used to do this, go into a restaurant, see it's packed.
Guest:That lettuce costs nine cents.
Guest:How much money is this guy making?
Guest:He cooks.
Guest:I like to cook.
Guest:And they think, well, you realize, you know, with what, oh my God, with the insurance and the hassles, the spoilage and the theft, whatever it takes to make it.
Guest:But stand-up comedy really looks the same way.
Guest:You know, there are guys like Seinfeld, for example, whatever you think of Jerry, you know, when he goes on Letterman or, you know, it's beautifully put together.
Guest:You know, when he played in front of the president for the Mark Twain Awards.
Guest:Could you have done that?
Guest:I could have done it.
Guest:I mean, would he perform in front of Paul McCartney?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what I would have done, but I know, yeah, I would have done it with more than a day's notice.
Guest:If they would have called me up the night before, hey, by the way, Obama, I'm McCartney, I want you to do Seth tomorrow night.
Guest:I've learned from Conan not to do stuff like that.
Marc:But what do you think is the difference between, like, you know, because I know you've been doing it a long time.
Marc:I know what, you know, your place in the world in terms of your respected comic, you're hilarious.
Guest:I don't make any money, though.
Guest:The one thing that I have going for me is I think that comics love me.
Guest:Not all of them.
Guest:And I don't love all of them.
Marc:But you're a fucking character and you're hilarious.
Marc:But when you look at that generation of guys you came up with, what do you think the difference is between you and them?
Marc:the generation of guys... Like, you know, Seinfeld and dudes that, you know, you're contemporaries, and when they're playing for the president, and you're playing Hooters in Vegas... Right, right, right.
Guest:Okay, no, no, you see, that's the thing, though, but what I... Okay, first of all, I'm not gonna let, you know... And by the way, I'm not gonna start crying now like Louis C.K.
Guest:I know you're trying to make me cry.
Guest:I'm not falling for your crap, Oprah.
Guest:Hey!
Guest:Dr. Phil Marin.
Guest:You know what it is?
Guest:Is that I look at a lot of these guys, and I'm not gonna mention names, and I might in the book, but most really successful comics I started out with seem to have a lot of mental problems.
Guest:Not you, though.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You see, I always seem like I'm so neurotic.
Guest:I seem like, look, everybody is a little off whatever their little thing is.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I've been married for 23 years.
Guest:I got a great house.
Guest:My daughter is going to be a very successful singer.
Guest:She's 22.
Guest:Brilliant.
Guest:I have a perfect... God, I hope she makes some money, don't you?
Guest:Believe me.
Guest:More like the Barrymores.
Marc:Every generation makes more and more and more.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:No, but you know what it is?
Guest:Everything's fine because I look at the old punchline days.
Guest:When you mentioned those pictures at the punchline, when I was 22, 23, when I was starting out, I was an MC.
Guest:People always ask me, how do you get good as a comic?
Guest:And you know this as well.
Guest:That makes sense that you were an MC.
Guest:Yeah, that's one of the things I love to do.
Guest:I love to do radio.
Guest:because of the crowd interaction that you know you you know you're fueled by a crowd well you know what's great about an emcee is you go up there the bad thing is you're the first guy on and it doesn't matter how much you kill people will say to you should be a comic right sometimes they look at you as an emcee but what's great about being an emcee you go up there and the first one or two minutes is going to be very difficult because you got to get that crown but you do a few minutes you get them laughing and you can always bail and bring on the next comic and then you bail and bring on the next comic
Guest:All right, so it was a great way.
Guest:Plus, I got a lot of stage time.
Guest:And when people go, how do you become a great comic?
Guest:I say, the only way to become a good comic, the only way, and there's exceptions to everything, is to get a lot of stage time.
Guest:And you know as well as I do now, there's a million comics or wannabe comics and bullshit comics, fewer venues to do it, you know?
Guest:Or you make your own venues.
Guest:They're not getting their time.
Guest:So when I was a young comic, you asked me about these guys that I started out with.
Guest:I was the emcee and opened up for Elaine Boosler.
Guest:I'm going to try to remember every one of these names.
Guest:Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Miller.
Guest:These guys were all headliners.
Guest:Michael Keaton, Batman.
Marc:But they weren't big stars yet.
Marc:None of them.
Marc:No, I mean, this is 19 what?
Guest:It says 55, 65, 75, late 70s.
Guest:Late 70s.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The punchline was around the late 70s.
Marc:They opened up, I think, in about 79, 79, 79.
Marc:Why'd you go from New York to San Francisco?
Marc:I mean, New York was like comedy capital of the fucking world.
Marc:Yeah, but more cock in San Francisco.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:I just thought I'd throw that in.
Guest:Let's see if you were listening.
Guest:So I got good.
Guest:But you asked me about guys like Seinfeld, the guys I started.
Guest:But then there was Bruce Baum, Denny Johnston, Franklin Ajay, I think Leno came in, George Wallace.
Guest:So what I got to do is watch a lot of professional comics working, and I got a lot of stage time.
Guest:I've seen a lot of those guys go on to be big stars, and I've seen a lot of those guys fall to the wayside.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've seen a lot of those guys.
Guest:I mean, Ray Romano, you hear him talking on TV.
Guest:I love Ray.
Guest:He's a dear friend.
Guest:He's got OCD and nine kids.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I don't want that life.
Guest:I don't want to have to drive around the block and step on the crack that I missed and wave to the old lady.
Guest:I don't want to be like that.
Guest:There's a lot of guys I could really sit and bet.
Guest:He's got OCD and nine kids.
Guest:Well, he does.
Guest:He talks about it on TV.
Guest:He said he drove around a block and he has to go back and do this.
Guest:I don't want that kind of shit.
Guest:I cook, I'm healthy, I'm skinny, and I got a great wife, who I get to make fun of, who's not here right now, so I'm fine.
Guest:But anyway, the reason I went to San Francisco from New York, and you've talked to a lot of comics, so many comics, maybe even you, always wanted to be a comic.
Guest:Oh, I wanted to be a comic.
Guest:Okay, never crossed my mind.
Guest:Was I the class clown?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They're doing a documentary on me now, and I dug up footage of me.
Guest:I was like, Jerry Lewis.
Guest:I didn't realize until I looked at this stuff that pushing my brothers out of the way, pulling down my pants, doing the twist.
Guest:It didn't stop.
Guest:But when I moved to San Francisco, and the reason I moved there was because in 1968, 69, when Easy Rider came out, I always wanted to drive across country.
Guest:And when I was growing up in those days, I loved the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.
Guest:I knew they lived there.
Guest:I knew that everybody went through San Francisco.
Guest:San Francisco seemed like to be, you know, I started smoking pot when I was 14 and 69.
Guest:everybody that was the culture you're like start generation right no the summer of love it all happened ashbury right that's what my formative years you start so you were a hippie kid in a way plastic he grew up in scars but the same thing you know but that was what the culture looked like discovered pot in 69 when i was 14 you know lsd when i was 14 so i hendrix and all that stuff janice joplin it all either started san francisco or they went to sam it was a focal point so you
Marc:You were like a middle-class Jewish kid.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And you were like, fuck it, I'm going to hit the road and do the thing.
Marc:Look at you now.
Marc:I'm so happy to hear this part of you.
Marc:No, but I don't know.
Guest:What do you think I came from?
Guest:From the Bronx?
Guest:From the streets?
Guest:Yeah, why wouldn't I think that?
Guest:No, people think that.
Guest:And I say, when people go, where are you from?
Guest:And I always say, I was born of the Bronx.
Guest:So you play it up.
Guest:Why wouldn't I think that?
Guest:This voice is not a New York accent.
Guest:My vocal cords have been so damaged from yelling and smoking over the years.
Guest:I mean, they're okay now.
Guest:I mean, they're fine.
Guest:But if you listen to me when I started doing stand-up, I think the first evening at the improv, the comedy stop, the comedy shop with Norm Crosby, my voice was like a prepubescent Jay Leno.
Guest:hey, you know, my girlfriend, I got to throw you a county duty Jay Leno.
Guest:Yeah, you were a Jewish kid.
Guest:But it wasn't really a New York, that much of it.
Guest:And over the years, from the yelling and the screaming, I've just kind of settled into this kind of, like an old guitar, you know, you just kind of settle into a groove.
Marc:No, no, it sounds great.
Marc:So you go out there basically to be around your heroes and to live the counterculture life.
Guest:I went out there, the gay thing wasn't starting, the hippie thing wasn't over.
Guest:It was like, you know, it was a city where
Guest:So you're in between the gays and the hippies.
Marc:I'll tell you a funny story.
Guest:I didn't realize, and it couldn't have cared less, that San Francisco was such a gay city.
Guest:But in fact, in my formative years as a comic, I started doing gay jokes, which got me a bit of a reputation and a bit of infamy because the gay community was up in arms.
Guest:And I had this whole attitude, kind of this Lenny Bruce kind of rebel thinking, that there were gay comics making fun of straight people.
Guest:But I'm saying, wait, if you can make fun of me, I can make fun of you.
Guest:Don't tell me I can't do black jokes.
Guest:That has always been the basis of my act.
Guest:Because I can make fun of anything.
Guest:You might not like it, I might get my ass kicked, but it's funny, and it's worked, and it's kept me different.
Marc:But I think, like, because I've been thinking about this recently, because I just had this weird event happen with Gallagher.
Marc:The reason I think that you can do what you do is that you've got a vulnerability to it, that you come at it with a certain earnestness, and you do make sure that the entire audience knows that there's no hate in you about it.
Guest:Yeah, but it wasn't like that when I started.
Guest:Sam Kennison was always like that.
Guest:Sam Kennison was a brilliant man.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was the drugs and the anger, whatever it was, you know?
Guest:Sure, I knew him.
Guest:But it was just, you know, an angry, mean act, you know?
Guest:And I happen to like the guy being a comic.
Guest:I like that stuff.
Guest:But there were times in my early years where, you know, and I don't think it was a drug so much of the alcohol.
Guest:I mean, I've always done that stuff.
Guest:People always think that I was a major coke, you know?
Guest:I never did a lot of it.
Guest:You're a minor coke, okay.
Guest:I mean, I still do it now if somebody gave it to me.
Guest:I have no problem with drugs.
Guest:It's not part of my life that much.
Guest:I hate pot.
Guest:My daughter's boyfriend smokes in the house all day.
Guest:I take a hit once a month and go, this is making me paranoid.
Guest:And I lived down that shit in high school.
Marc:It's different shit now.
Guest:I don't like it.
Guest:Whatever my body changes.
Marc:You'll take a bump, you'll take a hit, but you can take it or leave it.
Guest:You used to smoke cigarettes, though?
Guest:A long time ago.
Guest:That's not been an issue.
Guest:Once in a while, I'll still have one because they're delicious.
Guest:I go to Montreal, I'll smoke a cigar because they're Cubans.
Guest:I'll have a glass of whiskey.
Guest:And the third of the way through the cigar, I go, what is this shit?
Guest:I hate those things.
Guest:It doesn't bother me if somebody else smokes them.
Guest:I don't like them.
Guest:But I was always a Coke guy.
Guest:I still drink a lot of booze.
Guest:I mean, last night, and this was a lot for me, I knocked off probably two bottles of wine.
Guest:It was up at 7.
Guest:I never get a headache.
Guest:I had a minor headache this morning.
Guest:But it's noon.
Guest:I'm ready to rock and roll.
Guest:I'm rocking.
Guest:but um so there you are you're causing trouble with the gays yeah okay but that's the thing that my act became because you know what when you don't have a lot of material you're not that sure yourself on stage yeah you know and people are heckling you can't handle it and maybe have another drink and they're all being assholes you know everything it's a lot of different factors yeah but in the last couple of years there is stuff for the most part and believe me when you walk with that line you do step over it sometimes and you do fall but there are words i use on stage that people come up to me go you
Marc:know you walk the line of what offending a type of person i mean or an ethnic the n-word i don't want to say it but yeah i mean we can say it but you know i a lot of comics try to get away with that and i'll see you guys opening up for me but you know what stand-up is and you know this as well as anybody it's like karate or guitar there's always somebody at any given moment better than you you can what does that even mean i mean you know you're a singular voice i mean they do something different we look at them as better because we are insecure people let me put it a bit different way uh
Guest:Maybe there's not somebody better, but as good as you are, you never think you're that great, and you can always be better.
Guest:You talk to B.B.
Guest:King or Eric Clapton, I've heard interviews where they both think they're okay guitar players, and they'll give you a list of guys that are better.
Marc:Well, they are okay guitar players.
Guest:Well, they're better than me.
Guest:But you talk to anybody, and you can always, and Keith Richards is one of my heroes, who's not a great piece of art.
Guest:But the difference between them, all of them, is that they are uniquely them.
Marc:And you're uniquely you.
Guest:Yeah, and what's happening now, though, when I really hate it more than anything, and it doesn't make me bitter, it makes me angry, there's a big difference, is that, you know, I'm still working my ass off.
Guest:I don't think anybody has more stage time than I do.
Guest:I have.
Guest:I don't think that anybody's put more miles on his ass than I. I mean, there might be maybe some guys that are still doing cruise ships and crap, but I mean, I played every place and that's why there's a book I'm writing.
Marc:You're not available to do those.
Marc:They don't want you, right?
Guest:The cruise ships?
Guest:No.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:There's only certain, I can only do so much.
Guest:That to me is a nightmare.
Guest:I had an experience once with the radio station and I don't understand cruise ships and I love to travel.
Guest:I don't get to do it like as much as I want and I'll buy the travel magazines and I see if you go on a cruise ship
Guest:that there's 100 people and it's fine dining, but you go in those fucking carnival things with all these fat people with matching t-shirts from their last cruise, and they just want to eat.
Guest:It's a horror to me.
Guest:And I did performing on these ships and seeing them the next morning, it's a nightmare to me.
Guest:It's a nightmare.
Guest:It's okay when we do the Montreal Comedy Festival.
Guest:You wake up and there's Marc Maron, there's Robin Williams, there's a friend, an agent.
Guest:You say hello.
Guest:These are these people you know.
Guest:You can say hello to them.
Guest:When you wake up, you know, I really liked it last night.
Guest:You know, last time we were on a cruise.
Guest:And I don't want to be an asshole to these people, but I just don't want to sit and listen to them.
Guest:It's just awful.
Guest:It's just awful.
Guest:That's what I like when I play.
Guest:I just went back to Hooters in Vegas.
Guest:I don't know if you knew this.
Marc:You were there for how long?
Marc:How many years?
Guest:I had a great gig.
Guest:in Vegas.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:About four or five years ago, and people still to this day don't know that Hooters has a casino right across from the MGM.
Guest:Hooters Casino, this is bizarre.
Guest:Hooters Casino, I was playing all these crappy comedy clubs, and the CEO, great guy, Gary Gregg, saw me at a party, and they were looking for somebody.
Guest:They wanted to put a showroom in Hooters.
Guest:They had an old martini bar.
Guest:They wanted to fix it up and put in a show.
Guest:And for some reason, and you know my act, for some reason, who just thought that my act would be perfect for them?
Guest:Because what casinos want to do is bring in women.
Guest:Women really run everything.
Guest:Women decide, you know, when your wife, what shows you're going to, that means you're gambling in that casino.
Guest:Where you're staying, women put money in the slot machines.
Guest:That's what keeps casinos going to the slots.
Guest:And women play those more than anybody.
Guest:So nobody was playing the slots at Hooters.
Guest:It was guys playing $2 blackjack, you know, these idiot college kids who go to Hooters, drinking $2 Budweiser.
Guest:They want to bring women in.
Guest:Women are bringing the husbands.
Guest:They want to bring a classier bunch of people.
Guest:They thought, my act, I don't know what they were thinking.
Guest:My act is going to bring in women.
Guest:Now, this is what's really funny.
Guest:It worked, because I didn't realize how many female fans I have out there, even though my act has been called sexist, misogynistic.
Guest:I don't think it is.
Guest:You know, I don't think it's racist.
Guest:I mean, by the parameters of what we decide, it's dirty, but yeah.
Guest:What makes you say that it's not racist or sexist?
Guest:I mean, what is it in you?
Guest:That's all conversation.
Guest:Sexist, you make fun of a woman, that's sexist.
Guest:If I make fun of a black guy, that's racist.
Guest:If that's what racist is to you, fine.
Guest:I do black jokes.
Guest:I do women jokes.
Guest:I make fun of Mexicans a lot.
Guest:If that's what society decides is racist.
Marc:But you like because I've talked about this a lot and like I've talked to people that do these kind of jokes And I think that the line with those kind of jokes is that there's somehow or another that there are people will do jokes like that with no blacks in the room Though people that do jokes about Mexicans with no Mexicans in the room and the way that they handle a joke like that is going to be dubious But you'll do it right in front of it Yeah, and then you'll say what well, okay?
Guest:Let me just give you an example I'm not gonna go through my whole act people can point to be Bobby my last Showtime special which they can buy an Amazon which I don't give a shit cuz I have to sell
Guest:a million units before I make a hundred bucks.
Guest:So I don't care if you, it's on YouTube.
Guest:I'm sure you can see it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:There's a joke.
Guest:Let me just give you a typical joke that somebody might find racist, but I've never had a problem with is that I'm talking about how fat America is.
Guest:And we're not the fattest country.
Guest:The fattest country is Mexico.
Guest:We're the second fattest country.
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Too many Mexicans.
Guest:Now that's a great joke.
Guest:Now you can sit there and argue with me.
Guest:Well, a lot of people are fat and whites are, yes, everybody's fat, but Mexicans are fat.
Guest:Most more fat than anybody.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's more about white people, but I mean, black people talk, it's my own act.
Guest:One of my first jokes, I think I did on my first CD, and people have done a million versions of this, and you can't argue with it, it still gets a laugh, that you can make a movie called White Men Can't Jump, but you can't make a movie called Black People Can't Seem to Shut the Fuck Up in a movie theater.
Guest:Now, go to movie theaters, yes, there's teenagers texting, and yes, there are people talking.
Guest:I don't go to the movies, because I just hate people so much, but black people are infamous for talking to movie theaters.
Marc:But I think that,
Marc:It seems to me the difference, because there is a difference between hurting people's feelings and demeaning a group of people.
Marc:But if you're sitting to their face, and they're sitting in the room, and you're saying, you know it's kind of true.
Marc:I mean, you know it's kind of true.
Marc:I do deflect it.
Marc:I mean, do you ever walk off thinking, like, I went too far?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then what happens?
Marc:And what's the situation where that happens?
Guest:Well, it doesn't happen that often.
Guest:You know, there were times where, and I don't do it as much anymore, but if there's, you know, tables of drunken women sometimes are insufferable and impossible to deal with.
Guest:A drunken guy, I mean, you've done stand-up long enough.
Guest:We know that if a guy's drunk, you can shut him up, he'll walk out of the club, he'll pass out, the cops will arrest him.
Guest:There's a million ways to get a guy to shut up.
Guest:Guys, you know,
Guest:but women drink, and it's like putting a gremlin in water.
Guest:It's like feeding Gizmo after midnight, this cute cuddly thing, who was kind of nuts to begin with, three glasses of white Zinfandel, and this monster, this is Mrs. Norman Bates, she's off the charts.
Guest:So there have been a few times where women have comedy to their bachelor party, birthday party, and I understand that they're drinking, and I understand they're in a comedy club to have a good time, and I really, but sometimes they won't shut up.
Guest:And I've gone after people where I've made them cry, and I've gotten a standing ovation, because this woman was just ruining the show for everybody else.
Guest:And after she'd go to the manager, me and my friend just wanted to have a good time.
Guest:And I'm going, yeah, she knows she's 22.
Guest:That could have been my daughter.
Guest:I don't think my daughter would have acted that stupid.
Guest:And then I felt a little bad.
Guest:And then there's a devil on my shoulder going, oh, fuck that little angel.
Guest:Kick and he'll beat him up and I'm back to beat me again.
Guest:I won't make fun of, if there's a big fat person in the front row, I mean, you know, I won't make fun of somebody's, you know, problems.
Guest:But if they start with me, you know, if they start with me, it can get, and I don't want to encourage people to do this.
Guest:I don't, I'm not a gunslinger.
Guest:I'm a comic.
Guest:I just want to tell jokes.
Guest:But there have been times where a person in the audience will say something.
Guest:I'll say something back.
Guest:They'll say something.
Guest:And I'll just go after them.
Guest:And I'll level them.
Guest:I'll just go into them.
Guest:And I'll only do it if the audience is laughing.
Guest:But the guy will go, okay, it's enough.
Guest:But it's not enough for me.
Guest:You started it.
Guest:It's like, for example, if I come home and you're raping my wife, you hit my daughter, I will pummel you.
Guest:And the guy goes, I give up and give up.
Guest:No, I'm going to keep kicking you until you die.
Guest:You started it.
Guest:I'm going to kill you.
Guest:I've never had that opportunity.
Guest:My wife, could you really think you could kill somebody?
Guest:I would love to kill somebody.
Guest:Not just walk down the street and pull a Tucson.
Guest:I mean, I'm talking about just kill them.
Guest:For a reason.
Guest:Can I do a 55 in the carpool lane?
Guest:Just, you know, cut them off and have the car burst into flames.
Guest:So important things.
Guest:Yeah, important.
Guest:But let me just ask you.
Guest:20 items in the express line.
Guest:15 you could do.
Guest:I'm not going to sit there counting.
Marc:You're going to die.
Marc:Not 20.
Marc:Not 20.
Marc:Okay, so let me just ask you this question because it's fresh on my mind then.
Marc:So, okay, there is some validity to stereotypes or else they wouldn't exist.
Marc:Granted.
Marc:Yeah, I mean.
Marc:All right, now, but when is it that, what's the difference between being a bully?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:and and and actually you know using you know the type of comedy you do to to relax tension okay we'll put it this way i can't be worried about every person that's out in that audience i mean you can talk to anybody out there and i'll see her people go i hated bill hicks i hate jerry seinfeld i hate jay leno take any company i hate louis ck okay there's not gonna be any comic that's gonna make everybody laugh okay i mean i love to cook i love to eat and it's mind-boggling to me i don't lose sleep over that there are people out there that hate garlic we're comedians there are people out there that hate the marx brothers woody allen and yeah
Guest:And Abbott and Costello.
Guest:So you're not going to make everybody happy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Now, what I do is I like to think that I'm making most of those people leave that show and come up to me and people go, you know, you're one of the best comics I've ever seen.
Guest:That happens a lot.
Guest:But there was one night, and this kind of answers your question in a way.
Guest:I can't worry about everybody if they're going to get pissed off.
Guest:But there was one night, and I've never seen this happen.
Guest:This is most mind-boggling.
Guest:And I'll never forget this.
Guest:I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.
Guest:Not a great town, by the way.
Guest:There's a place called the Stardome.
Guest:It's a horrible place.
Guest:The club's not horrible, but the people are just stupid.
Guest:I don't like the South.
Guest:So I'm doing a show, and it's going quite well, and I swear to God that within a minute, a guy comes up to me and says to me, I've been to this club since it opened.
Guest:You're the greatest comic I've ever seen.
Guest:And less than a minute later, a guy, usually a woman, a guy comes up to me.
Guest:He says almost the exact same thing.
Guest:He goes, you know, I come here all the time.
Guest:I've never seen anybody as unfunny as you.
Guest:You're really horrible.
Guest:But he said,
Guest:this is the same show they were at.
Guest:And this is, not one guy going, you're pretty good, you weren't that good.
Guest:You were a monster and you were the greatest.
Guest:This is within a minute.
Guest:And they both came up.
Guest:And I'm going, that was really weird.
Guest:So, you know, I can't worry about the people that are pissing me off, but you probably do this too.
Guest:And I remember Seinfeld once talking about this.
Guest:If you're on stage and you're killing and there's one guy not left.
Marc:Sure, you're going to focus in on them.
Guest:You focus in on that guy.
Marc:You actually see them.
Guest:If he's sleeping, it's okay because it's probably not you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What I found out, though, a lot of those times is that afterwards, and this happens a lot, is the guy just, his wife just died.
Guest:He came to the show.
Marc:Right, they're not thinking about you.
Marc:He just came back to the doctor.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:He's going to comedy show because he has cancer.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And he wants to laugh.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And he can't laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or the guy comic before you really pissed him off because he sucked because he has a $20 road comic opening act.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So,
Marc:I try not to.
Marc:I think the thing that separates you from somebody who would just be, you know, a racist or a bigot or an asshole is I believe and I feel it because I've hung around with you before that, you know, you got a good heart and then you want people to like you.
Marc:My daughter's boyfriend's black.
Marc:He lives in my fucking house.
Marc:Also, what is that the past?
Marc:You're going to put that on your promo material?
Marc:No, he's half black.
Marc:He's half black.
Marc:No, I mean, it's not like, you know, I mean, that's sort of like the thing is I got a lot of black friends.
Marc:No, but I don't know.
Guest:But if one's in my house, that makes up for 50 black friends.
Guest:One living in my house, nailing my daughter.
Guest:That makes up for you working with kids in the ghetto.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah, I'm even.
Guest:But that came later.
Guest:You know what though?
Guest:I'm just not a people person.
Guest:I really don't like people.
Guest:But you want them to like you?
Guest:On stage, I'm nice to everybody.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I recycle.
Guest:I eat often safe tuna.
Guest:I get out of the left lane of the freeway.
Guest:I've never hit my daughter.
Guest:I don't cheat on my wife.
Guest:I think I'm doing everything I have to do to be a decent person, but there are so many horrible people out there.
Guest:It's impossible for me.
Guest:That's why I don't go to the movies.
Guest:Living in Vegas, and I'm there half the time.
Guest:I told you I'm back at Hooters now for a couple of months.
Guest:You just see these dregs of humanity when you're walking down the strip, and you wonder,
Guest:And you keep reading these articles.
Guest:There's something USA Today last week.
Guest:I don't know why they keep publishing this, but it was another story about obesity and smoking leads to a shorter life.
Guest:Who doesn't know this by now?
Guest:I mean, every week they'll have an article like this.
Guest:McDonald's and high cholesterol.
Guest:Well, we get it.
Guest:But obviously people don't get it.
Guest:And you see that in Vegas.
Guest:I was in a buffet the other day.
Guest:You know, it's amazing.
Guest:The people stand in the buffet, and nobody wants to wait in line in Vegas.
Guest:Everybody wants to move.
Guest:They get on the moving walkway when they get off the plane.
Guest:Even though their fat ass has been on a plane for gone on so many hours, they can't walk.
Guest:They get on the moving walkway, and they stand there.
Guest:And then there's a moving walkway that takes you to Caesars.
Guest:And then the luggage comes around.
Guest:You don't have to go get it.
Guest:And then their taxi takes them their fat ass to the hotel where the elevator takes them to their room.
Guest:But they'll stand in line at the buffet, because these fat bastards know at the end of this rainbow, there's a giant pot of dessert.
Guest:I'm not making this up.
Guest:I'm there three days a week now.
Guest:I'm gonna keep plugging Hooters if anybody's listening.
Guest:Which is great, because I'm home four days.
Guest:But my opening act, Robert Duchesne.
Guest:I don't know if you know Robert.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:We go to a buffet, and I'm trying to take my eyes off this.
Guest:First of all, people will pile up their food.
Guest:You can go back.
Guest:You don't have to do it like Close Encounters, where we made that giant thing of dessert like the aliens were coming.
Guest:But that was amazing.
Guest:We go to a Chinese buffet, and for some reason, at the Chinese buffet, and I guess they do this for the children, they have garlic bread, frank fries, and pizza.
Guest:But when the kids look like the kids from South Park, they look like puffer fish.
Guest:You don't even look like kids.
Guest:They're like giant, they're just a pair of eyes in a circle
Guest:They're like the M&M.
Guest:You've seen the guys that dress up as M&Ms and they're on Las Vegas Boulevard?
Guest:They look like that.
Guest:The only thing you need is a Michigan State tissue with a big M and people will think you're an M&M.
Guest:Okay, so they're piling up, not even the good Chinese food, all the greasy shit on top of that.
Guest:French fries and garlic bread and pizza in one jar.
Guest:And they're so...
Guest:I can't tell you how fat.
Guest:And I'm going, you know what?
Guest:It's a stereotype, but there they are.
Guest:And I love people like this because it really helps me maintain my act and my belief in the hatred of mankind that I have.
Guest:How this country has let me down in every possible way.
Guest:This country, and I don't sit up and preach like Bill Hicks might have, but
Guest:Lewis Black will do this, too, but this country, really, we have more opportunities than anybody in the world, and we've thrown it away.
Guest:There's no reason to be fat now.
Guest:There's no reason.
Guest:In the old days, you live in the ghetto and eat, but you know what?
Guest:You can buy vegetables.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Not everybody, I'm lucky to be born with this.
Marc:So you sort of like take responsibility.
Marc:Take personal responsibility.
Guest:The reading in this country, the illiteracy.
Guest:And by the way, it's all the red states for the most part.
Guest:I mean, there's plenty of idiots here in California, too.
Marc:There's idiots everywhere.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:But what's really funny is they do, and this is not a Republican-Democrat Tea Party thing, but what's amazing to me is that they've done all these studies and that the illiteracy rate and the sham molestation, the rape, the murder, everything is all the South.
Guest:And we should have let those fuckers secede.
Guest:I said that from day one.
Guest:The Civil War-
Guest:You were alive then?
Guest:No, I was doing the same material.
Guest:I've only kept a few jokes.
Guest:Actually, I'm not the original Bobby Slade.
Guest:I'm like Lassie.
Guest:I'm the great-great-grandson of the original Bobby Slade.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:You've always been here, Bobby.
Guest:There's always been a Bobby Slade.
Guest:There's always been a Bobby Slade.
Guest:There always will be a Bobby Slade.
Guest:If I have anything to do with it.
Guest:But I'm just saying that we would have lost some of the slaves, collateral damage.
Guest:But if we would have let the South succeed, this country probably would have been a lot smarter.
Guest:But, you know, that's why the car industry went over to, you know, Japan, and people started, you know, because nobody cares.
Guest:The work ethic in this country is really... And again, I'm a comic.
Guest:I work an hour a night.
Guest:I don't have to work eight hours a day to factory.
Marc:But you've got to spend 23 hours in your head, so... Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, it's... It's a lot of work.
Guest:People don't realize that.
Guest:People don't realize when you're a comic that you just don't shut it off.
Guest:I'm not going to say I'm working at a coal mine here.
Guest:I'm not going to say, what size?
Guest:Is that an eight and a half shoe, you fat bastard?
Guest:I'll be right back.
Guest:Let me see if we have eight and a half in the back.
Marc:You're not in the back spitting on hamburgers.
Marc:I'll show this fuck.
Guest:I do that.
Marc:I'll do that when people come over for dinner.
Marc:I invite people I don't like.
Marc:That's very nice.
Marc:Now, what the hell did you come from to make yourself so angry and crazy?
Marc:I'm not trying to make you cry.
Marc:I mean, what did your dad do?
Marc:You grew up in Scarsdale, New York.
Marc:That's Westchester.
Guest:I had no problems.
Guest:Yeah, Westchester is beautiful.
Guest:I grew up in a really beautiful, I don't want to say white, ritzy neighborhood.
Guest:We actually had the poor part of Scarsdale.
Guest:We had a couple of Asians in a black family, but not, you know, just one or two.
Guest:But quotas, you know.
Guest:No, I had everything.
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I never played sports, so I was always a class clown.
Guest:um what business was your old man in carpets he was a salesman carpets yeah and there's nothing there that i think your average nutty you know it wasn't modern family i mean i'm sure that there was nothing there no alcohol was so crazy with food though was your mom an eater or not eater the reason i'm crazy with food is because i love to eat because let's stop and think about it the greatest thing i'm not i'm not a fan of sports i don't mind them
Guest:I don't know anything about them.
Guest:I might watch the Super Bowl for an hour.
Guest:I doubt it.
Guest:But you have to have some kind of passion in life.
Guest:And sex and food are the two greatest.
Guest:And travel.
Guest:And when I travel, I want sex.
Guest:The first two I don't think are hobbies.
Guest:I think they're necessities.
Guest:Travel would be a hobby.
Guest:Well, sex is not a necessity.
Guest:I'm married.
Guest:I've been doing it without for 23 years.
Guest:Is that really true?
Guest:Well, Jack, well, five times a day.
Guest:That's sex.
Guest:No, I mean, I don't, you know.
Guest:I mean, come on.
Guest:You still have sex with your wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:If she wasn't my wife, I'd nail her a lot more.
Guest:She's my wife.
Guest:It's only so much I can do with her.
Guest:And you're going to keep the material coming.
Guest:She's really hot.
Guest:You've got to come over to my house sometime.
Guest:You're telling me I can fuck your wife?
Guest:Well, I just want to get things done.
Guest:I find people go, you try it.
Guest:My wife's like Rubik's Cube.
Guest:If you can fix it, go right ahead.
Guest:Nobody's been able to accomplish it so far.
Guest:See if you have any better luck.
Guest:You guys get along now?
Guest:We get along pretty well, yeah.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:That's all another story.
Guest:But no, we get along fine.
Guest:We get along as fine as any husband and wife can.
Guest:I mean, you see husbands and wives walking down the street.
Guest:You're married, right?
Marc:Yeah, twice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No kids.
Marc:It's brutal.
Marc:It's brutal.
Marc:And you see people walking down the street.
Marc:Why is it brutal, though?
Marc:I mean, just because you don't communicate?
Marc:I see couples sitting in restaurants, and they're not talking.
Marc:They're both looking somewhere else.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, my God.
Guest:I talk to my, but you know what?
Guest:It gets difficult because after a while, you do run out of stuff to talk about.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:It's just a series of habits.
Guest:Well, if I'm not home, I call my wife five times a day and, you know, what's going on?
Guest:And she calls me.
Guest:And by the time I get home, we're pretty much all caught up with everything.
Guest:I mean, I talk about that in my act.
Guest:It's talking after sex.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:I have nothing to talk about.
Guest:Stop talking.
Guest:Stop talking.
Marc:But then what does it come down to?
Marc:Did you get the thing fixed?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Marc:Where's my shirt?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:We walk through the house.
Guest:We get along.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We don't need to talk that much.
Guest:We're very comfortable.
Guest:I've been with her for 25 years.
Marc:Do you have some laughs at least?
Guest:Do you laugh together or anything like that?
Guest:I make her laugh a lot.
Guest:All right, good.
Guest:I also, she goes, God, you're so annoying.
Guest:But I make her laugh a lot.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:That's one thing that my wife, I do.
Guest:I make people laugh, and I don't try to.
Guest:You've been laughing a lot.
Guest:You didn't have to laugh.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:You see couples that are either so miserable looking and horrible looking people.
Guest:I don't know why you need to be with a woman.
Guest:We can get a dog and porno.
Guest:I don't know why you need friends and somebody.
Guest:And then you see couples that are so pussy whipped.
Guest:They sit there in matching t-shirts holding hands.
Guest:Cruise ship.
Guest:Going to see Meryl Streep movies.
Guest:That guy to me is a girl.
Guest:You know, you're a little girl.
Guest:I love when guys hang out.
Guest:I love when there's like a bachelorette party and there's one guy hanging out.
Guest:My husband came along.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:There's gay people.
Guest:That guy's a faggot.
Guest:Homosexuals to me aren't faggots.
Guest:That's a faggot.
Guest:A guy that carries his wife's hatbox or cosmetic thing on the plane is a pussy whipped faggot.
Guest:It's nothing to do with homosexuality.
Guest:That's a faggot.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you would never call a homosexual a faggot, but that guy's a faggot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like homos.
Guest:And I was a champion of their cause.
Guest:When I started doing gay jokes in San Francisco when I was a young comic, I'd make fun of them more.
Guest:And then they realized these people, and I say this all the time, they're not hurting anybody.
Guest:They always dress nice for the most part.
Guest:They're good members of society.
Guest:They can cook.
Guest:They're clean.
Guest:They don't start wars.
Guest:They're not extremists.
Guest:They're just homosexuals.
Guest:They're democratic or they're liberal.
Guest:They mind their own fucking business.
Guest:And they probably give
Guest:Great blow drops.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:They're great.
Marc:So let's get back to this idea about, you know, about like Jerry Seinfeld, about performing for the president, about your sense of like the difference between you, because, you know, you're you know, you're still like a great club comic and these other guys.
Guest:Well, my act, and I, you know what?
Guest:Do you resent them?
Guest:Not whatsoever.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I, first of all, and Jerry will be the first one to tell you, and he's a perfect example of a guy who was a club comic until he got the show Seinfeld, which was a fluke.
Guest:It was a great show, one of the greatest shows in the history of television.
Guest:He did a great, great job, and I love Jerry Seinfeld.
Guest:But as you know, and anybody that knows the history of that show, it almost didn't go.
Guest:So that show didn't go.
Guest:I'm not saying Jerry would have continued playing clubs.
Guest:He probably would have become like a Louis Black.
Guest:Or, you know, he still would have been, because he's such a great comic.
Guest:He had a lot of popularity at the time, doing all the Tonight shows, the Letterman's.
Guest:He wouldn't have the monster.
Guest:Right, sure, sure.
Guest:But I remember Jerry and I once, way before he got the show, neither of us were great actors.
Guest:We're sitting at some audition.
Guest:And we both said, God, I can't act.
Guest:I hate acting.
Guest:This sucks.
Guest:And I was making probably a couple of grand a week.
Guest:He's probably making twice that.
Guest:You know, he was a club comic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And a lot of this has to do with, look, Bill Maher, you know, who I love.
Guest:Bill Maher and I, you know, when I was playing Vegas full time, Bill Maher was flying back.
Guest:A lot of these guys, this made me a little jealous, but I understand.
Guest:If it was Ray Romano or...
Guest:Jay Leno or any of these guys were in town.
Guest:They all had private jets.
Guest:They didn't own them, but they all had jets taking them home Saturday night after their show.
Guest:When I was at Hooters, I was there Sunday night.
Guest:So after Sunday night, I'd drive home because I had to get out of Vegas.
Guest:I couldn't fly home Sunday night.
Guest:And I was only home for two days out of the week.
Guest:I didn't want to wait until Monday morning.
Guest:After my show at 10 o'clock, it's a four-hour drive.
Guest:I'd get home.
Guest:Two days later, come back to Vegas.
Guest:But once in a while, these guys would work Sunday night.
Guest:Like Ray Romano and Kevin James would stay over.
Guest:There was a Super Bowl.
Guest:And Sunday night, they'd give me a ride back on the jet.
Guest:Leno said you can always have a ride back, but Leno will only work through Saturday night.
Guest:For some reason, Bill Maher always works Sunday night.
Guest:So, you know, I called it Air Maher, and I wanted to get my... Well, I was about to get frequent flyer points.
Guest:We were gonna start a program, but I quit Vegas.
Guest:But every Sunday night, when Bill was down a couple times a year, I'd fly back with him.
Guest:And one night, Bill says to me on the jet, he goes, you know, there's very few guys, I've been doing this for 30 years, we're still around.
Guest:I said, yeah, but you're playing whatever, the Mirage or the Hard Rock, making, you know...
Guest:I'm playing Hooters.
Guest:He goes, it's all luck.
Guest:I happen to get a TV show and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:So I'm saying that I never had... Bill's also great.
Guest:I mean, he's great at that.
Guest:So I'm not a political comic.
Guest:And like Jerry Stone, I'm not a clean comic.
Guest:So it's always been... I always say, what's it coming to the writing for me?
Guest:No Friends, where people come over, and I sit in the attic like Boo Radley, and I shoot people from the clock tower.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What kind of show they've given me?
Guest:I've been a character in a lot of sitcoms that never went.
Guest:And if those shows would have gone somewhere, I would probably have that success.
Guest:Now, you know, I was on a show for HBO for two years called Mind of the Married Man.
Marc:Yeah, I saw that.
Marc:Binder show.
Guest:Binder show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was on for two seasons.
Marc:What's funny, because... And you were kind of like the devil.
Marc:I played a guy named Slayton.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was really cool.
Marc:Yeah, you were the sort of the devil of the show.
Guest:I was kind of the guy like, come on, go to my place and smoke cigars in my basement.
Guest:My wife, so what are you doing down there?
Guest:Hey, shut up, you old bat.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And every week I was saying to myself, I hope I don't get more lines.
Guest:I don't like to do a lot of lines.
Guest:The less I have, the better.
Guest:Most actors look at the script, hope there's more stuff for me.
Guest:The more stuff they take out, the less shit I got to memorize.
Guest:Maybe my brain's just drug-addled.
Guest:I hate acting.
Guest:But it was a great gig.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was really weird was the two years that show was on, I thought it was going to be a tremendous hit.
Guest:It premiered the week, 9-11, when the towers went down.
Guest:What was really interesting, you want to talk about putting things in perspective, Mind of the Merry Man's coming out and was coming on between Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Sopranos, then our show.
Guest:They gave us a good push.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, this is a perfect time to be on.
Guest:Sopranos was big.
Guest:Curb was coming into its own.
Guest:We're going to go on between them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not only that, but that same week, that same Friday or Saturday night, 9-11 was on a Tuesday because I was flying to New York.
Guest:That same Friday, Saturday night, I was supposed to go to New York to do a premiere of Bandits, a movie I did with Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton.
Guest:Barry Levinson directed it.
Guest:It was a great movie.
Guest:Nobody saw it.
Guest:Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Willis, and me.
Guest:I was like Joey Bishop.
Guest:Ray Liotta, Joe Mantegna, Don Cheadle, and me.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I was with these guys.
Guest:Let me bask in their... So I'm going to... I should have kept this ticket.
Guest:I'm going to New York on Tuesday, and my brother... I was going to do the Howard Stern show.
Guest:I was going to the premiere of Bandits.
Guest:Mind the Married Man was coming on.
Guest:This was 10 years ago.
Guest:Big week for you.
Guest:Yeah, I said, finally.
Guest:Whatever 9-11 was, 10, 12 years ago.
Guest:I said, finally, it's my week.
Guest:I'm rocking.
Guest:I got to that Seinfeld.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Major motion picture, major HBO series, Howard Stern.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:My brother calls me up Tuesday morning.
Guest:He goes, your flight's probably been canceled.
Guest:They just bombed the World Trade Center.
Guest:And I thought, okay, maybe some small little thing.
Guest:Because it's happened before.
Guest:I see the two towers go down.
Guest:And for a minute, I got over very quickly.
Guest:I felt really bad for myself.
Guest:And for a minute I go, great, great.
Guest:Here it is, I got a series, I got a movie, I'm doing Stern, all canceled.
Guest:And then I saw the video of two people jumping out of the window.
Guest:And I said, you know what, it's okay.
Guest:The world is changing today.
Guest:My daughter wakes up, and I was crying.
Guest:Not like Louis C.K.
Guest:on your show.
Guest:But I was crying.
Guest:I mean, I was sitting there crying because not just New York, but the whole country knew it was gonna change.
Guest:I knew everything was gonna change.
Guest:And I was sitting there, my face must have been white, and my daughter goes... My daughter wakes up, she's about 10 or 11, 22 now, and said, my God, what happened?
Guest:I said, they just...
Guest:destroyed the World Trade Center.
Guest:She goes, oh, good.
Guest:I thought something happened to mommy, which made me hate my wife even more because I'd easily trade my wife's life in for the World Trade Center.
Guest:That's water under the bridge.
Guest:But anyway, no, she didn't get it.
Guest:She was just a kid.
Guest:She gets it now.
Guest:But anyway, so it's just that, you know, I've always been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Marc:Never a day late, a dollar short.
Marc:But like, so the sense is that because you're a talented guy, you've got a very defined character, but there is sort of an element of that.
Marc:It's interesting what Bill said because there's a lot of talented guys around and you wonder where the hell's their, you know, where's the hell,
Marc:Where's their piece?
Marc:Well, Billy Gardell, you know, Billy Gardell just got that fat show.
Guest:You know Billy Gardell?
Guest:What's that fat show called?
Guest:Him and his fat wife.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And all the fat people in the country.
Guest:But he's a funny guy.
Guest:No, no, he's not funny.
Guest:But what happened is Billy is probably close to my age.
Guest:Here's a guy's been kicking around for 20, 30 years.
Guest:Got a show.
Guest:Is he that old?
Guest:Maybe not, but I remember the name.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 55, so maybe he's 40, whatever.
Guest:But he's been around.
Guest:He's been doing comedy for 15, 20 years.
Marc:No, yeah, he's a comic.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Okay, road guy, who got a show.
Marc:Chicago guy.
Guest:George Lopez was a road comic until Sandra Bullock saw him, gave him that show.
Guest:And Lopez, it was a good show, he became big.
Marc:But there was also the element of like, Billy Gardell's playing a fat guy, because he's a fat guy.
Marc:You know, George Lopez is a Mexican, and he's, you know, there's something to be said about, that's his angle.
Marc:Now, you know, angry Jews who are nearing 60.
Guest:Keep it, but keep in mind, keep in mind that the idiots have watched television.
Guest:I mean, again, why this country's let me down.
Guest:There used to be great sitcoms on TV, a lot of great sitcoms.
Guest:And now a lot of writers over 40 can't get a job, even though they might have written on, you know, Seinfeld.
Guest:I know guys at Seinfeld.
Guest:Oh, it's an old show.
Guest:This is bad.
Guest:People wrote for friends.
Guest:And in those days, people wrote for Dick Van Dyke and who wrote Andy Griffith.
Guest:Honeymotors, you couldn't get anywhere because you're old.
Guest:Because today's generation, you know, that's why the Kardashians are famous.
Guest:That's why fat people watch these reality shows.
Guest:The Midwest, they sit home and watch TV.
Marc:As opposed to when?
Marc:Like, was there a different audience at another time?
Guest:No, but I think what it was before is we gave people better shows, and now they don't have to.
Guest:I think now, smarter people, there's the internet, people are doing more things now.
Guest:There's Netflix.
Marc:Got to find your own.
Marc:Yeah, you can find your own way.
Guest:You can find, yeah, back then.
Guest:How's that going for you?
Guest:It was just, I'm here.
Guest:No, but talking about luck.
Guest:Okay, talking about luck.
Guest:So 10 years ago, here's another little thing.
Guest:A Comedy World came on.
Guest:They were 10 years before that time.
Guest:It was Kevin Pollack, who has a big show.
Guest:You did a show recently, right?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:You get along with him?
Guest:Yeah, he's a good friend.
Guest:Pollack was at his house for New Year's Eve, actually.
Guest:It was really cool.
Guest:A whole nother story.
Guest:But anyway, Pollack has this big show, as you know, the podcast, the internet thing, the chat show.
Guest:But 10 years ago, Comedy World, there was Silicon Valley.
Guest:These guys had this big startup thing.
Guest:And down in Marina Del Rey, Playa Del Rey, one of Howard used his old aircraft hangers.
Guest:They've got a bunch of trailers.
Guest:And they said, we're going to start doing internet radio.
Guest:They paid me a quarter million dollars a year.
Guest:I was the anchor of that.
Guest:They got Beth LePeters, who kind of started at Largo.
Guest:My friend Ken Ober, who's dead.
Guest:Craig Shoemaker.
Guest:They got a bunch of people.
Guest:The Sklar brothers.
Guest:But they paid me the most.
Guest:And I was on from 4 o'clock in the afternoon to 6 o'clock, because I don't want to do a morning show.
Guest:And they put me on for two hours, paid me a lot of money, and nobody listened.
Guest:Because it was internet radio 10, 12 years ago.
Guest:Now, it's a brilliant idea.
Guest:They were 10 years ahead of their time.
Guest:And I called in every favor in the business.
Guest:I called in a lot of famous people.
Guest:Red Buttons, Carl Reiner, Alice Cooper, Billy Bob Thornton.
Guest:They all did phoners with me.
Guest:Some of them came in.
Marc:You were just a little too early.
Marc:A little too early.
Marc:Now let's, to sort of get closure on this, Bobby.
Marc:Now let's not, like, what do you want to happen?
Marc:What could happen right now that would make you happy?
Guest:i'm more happy than you already are of course i mean like what like in career wise because there's a lot of near misses you had a lot of opportunity but you know what it's just been you know what the way things turn out because you could be bitter and i believe you when you say you're not you may be disappointed i'm disappointed and i'm a little angry not because you know i made a couple of mistakes along the way but i'm more angry that people i love it when i play what do you mean mistakes along the way outside of the conan thing
Guest:Well, just people, nothing important.
Guest:But maybe I would have done things differently.
Guest:You know, probably not.
Guest:Let me take that back.
Marc:Wait, just for pride?
Marc:Pride reasons?
Guest:No, but when I'm in Vegas playing Hooters, which I'm there through April, I think, and Louis Black is over at the Mirage and making, you know,
Guest:As much in a weekend as I make in six months, half a year.
Guest:Maybe a year now things are so bad.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:That's a little bit of jealousy.
Guest:But I get together with Lewis.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:Robin Williams would be across the street.
Guest:Even Howie Mandela.
Guest:Even Carrot Top.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:People want to see Carrot Top.
Guest:It's not my kind of act.
Guest:But he puts on a great show.
Marc:I saw it.
Guest:Yeah, it's fine.
Marc:It's entertaining.
Marc:And I got no beef with him.
Marc:I'm not drawing any lines anymore.
Marc:There's no room for lines.
Guest:What I have a problem with is not Larry the Cable Guy.
Guest:and not those guys.
Guest:It's the people that go see them.
Guest:I have no problem with the TV evangelists.
Guest:I have the problem with all the fucking mindless idiots that give them money.
Guest:I must have no problem with the Ayatollahs.
Guest:It's the people that follow the city.
Marc:The Ayatollahs.
Marc:Let's upgrade it a little bit.
Guest:Ayatollahs.
Guest:Or the president of Iran or any of these idiots.
Guest:Just pick one of them.
Guest:It's a racket.
Guest:It's not them.
Guest:It's all these mindless people.
Guest:They come to your shows too.
Guest:Yeah, not enough of them.
Guest:You know what I do see at my show when people come see my show?
Guest:When people come see the pit bull of comedy.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:Most of them know what they're coming to see.
Guest:And even if they sometimes give away free tickets to get their asses in seats, there's a big sign at the box office, Bobby Slate.
Guest:There's antagonistic, vulgar, misogynistic, sexist.
Guest:It's almost like Disneyland.
Guest:If you have a high blood pressure or a bad back, you might not want to go on this ride.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then they put the reviews up and people go, God, this is great.
Guest:This guy is, you know, an equal opportunity offender.
Guest:He's a pit bull.
Guest:So when they come into my show, they know what they're going to get, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if very rarely.
Marc:That's so funny that usually on rides, if you have the right height with you, it's like, you know, if you're not too sensitive.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, that's exactly the same thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then people come to the show and usually they get it.
Guest:And if they don't, you know, they walk out.
Guest:But I don't really, you know, they're at Hooters seeing me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this one-two punch, it's not, you know, the Bellagio going to see.
Marc:So the jealousy is tempered by the fact that you love these guys and that, you know, you're in the same business and they like you and it's just the luck of the draw.
Guest:Well, if you go to my website, bobbyslayton.com, there's a video on
Guest:What I did when I did my show in Vegas, without a tiger, without a puppet, I have an opening act for 10 minutes.
Guest:I got to bring something to the table because Vegas is such a big showbiz town.
Guest:I called up almost every comic I knew that was in Vegas or coming to Vegas and had him do a video for me.
Guest:And every one of them, except for Seinfeld, he's too busy.
Guest:But Louis Black, Jay Leno, Robin Williams, the Smothers Brothers, Carrot Top, Rita Rudner, Penn & Teller, George Wallace,
Guest:Bill Maher, Frank Caliendo, I mean, Don Rickles, they all did this video.
Guest:And it's about 15 minutes long.
Guest:We started early so people can get drinks.
Guest:Every one of them that I called, said, will you do this for me?
Guest:In a minute.
Guest:They returned my phone calls.
Guest:I called Jay at NBC, called me right back.
Guest:They all did it.
Guest:So it is a testament.
Guest:So if people don't know me, they go, wow.
Guest:He knows all these people.
Guest:It kind of gives you a little credibility in the business.
Guest:But the fact is... Or they're saying, oh, wow, all these people feel bad for him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, they really did all rip me into an asshole.
Guest:I mean, Louis Black was hysterical.
Guest:He'd find himself at Hooters, seen for Bobby.
Guest:I mean, Brad Garrett goes, you playing Hooters, Bobby?
Guest:What, the Olive Garden Lost at stage?
Guest:But that's a roast.
Marc:You got it coming.
Guest:Yeah, it's fine.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I don't want people talking about how great I am.
Guest:Alice Cooper mispronounces my name.
Guest:It's just great.
Guest:There's a TV show which I think might have just been canceled on the Disney Channel called Sonny with a Chance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have you ever heard of it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, Sonny with a Chance is the biggest show or was the biggest show at Disney next to Milli Vanilli Cyrus, whatever that little pro's name is.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So Steve Marmel, comedian, is an executive producer, calls me up and asks me if I want you to write a part for me.
Guest:Paulie the polar bear.
Guest:I have to spend a week in a polar bear costume playing a disgruntled kiddie show host.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And of course, when you get stuff like that, my manager goes, oh, it's great.
Guest:A million people watch it.
Guest:They're 11 with their fat mothers.
Guest:Who's coming?
Guest:They're not coming to my show.
Guest:Oh, like Quentin Tarantino's going to be there with his granddaughter, his niece.
Guest:Hey, that guy, I can use him for my next movie.
Marc:So this is the thinking that might have hurt you in the past.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:This was over the summer.
Guest:But if you Google Paulie the polar bear, I think there's clips on there, two of me dressed up in a polar bear costume.
Guest:Anyway, so I'm sitting there in the dressing room, and you know, it's a Disney show.
Guest:It's mindless, you know, but it's Disney.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:And I know a lot of kids are going to see this.
Guest:So I'm sitting in my dressing room, and I'm in a polar bear costume, and I got to pee, which means I got to take the gloves off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm sitting there and I'm going all week long, dressed like a polar bear.
Guest:And it's so hot on the stage.
Guest:Usually the sound stages are cool.
Guest:But all these kids, it's too cold in here.
Guest:So these little prima donnas, these Disney kids.
Guest:So I'm sweating.
Guest:Now I'm drinking more water.
Guest:Now I've got to pee every 10 minutes.
Guest:I've got to take apart my costume so I can take a goddamn leak.
Guest:And all week long I'm thinking, you know, I don't care how you look at it.
Guest:I'm still in the same business as Robert De Niro.
Guest:We're in the same business.
Guest:I mean, we're talking about the other end of the spectrum.
Guest:I'm up there with this.
Guest:Maybe I'm ahead of the Tilt-A-World guy at the State Fair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or you with your fucking podcast, but it's still pretty.
Guest:I'm a bottom feeder.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You're even doing better than Paulie the polar bear.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So anyway, Demi Lovato, who stars in the show, was a great little singer, could not have been more of a monster.
Guest:She was a horrible little girl to work with.
Guest:My daughter, Natasha Slayton, who, by the way, let me plug her.
Guest:She's going to be really big soon.
Guest:Not plug her.
Guest:Plug her website.
Guest:Natasha Slayton.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:In Alabama, though, would have worked fine.
Guest:Natasha Slayton could be a big singer.
Guest:You should have her on the show sometime.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:Really great.
Guest:We should come on as a team.
Guest:And then you can make me cry.
Guest:Your daddy should suck.
Guest:Then I'll cry.
Guest:Get my daughter here.
Guest:Tell the stories how I miss daddy-daughter dances.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Okay, you want me to cry?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll show Louis C.K.
Guest:a thing or two about crying.
Guest:Tag it.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:I'll cry.
Guest:I'll talk.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Anyway, so...
Guest:I'm doing the show and she bangs into me in the scene and the polar bear outfit.
Guest:We're doing a scene where she's supposed to bang into me, but she bangs into my head.
Guest:My nose starts to bleed.
Guest:It wasn't a big thing.
Guest:But of course, I got to call a nurse.
Guest:Not once does this little bitch say, are you okay?
Guest:How old is she?
Guest:17, 18.
Guest:She was just thrown off the Jonas Brothers tour because she punched one of the dancers.
Guest:That was big news a couple of months ago.
Guest:She's thrown off the tour because they said exhaustion.
Guest:Anyway, she was not funny.
Marc:She hits you in the head.
Guest:So the makeup people and the
Guest:wardrobe people I start you know it's not my show and I really am a professional when I work I start asking him and nobody liked this little girl so she goes into rehab because I guess she's on tour as a singer yeah goes the rehab supposedly she was a cutter you know she's one of those girls that cuts herself so badness in the childhood so I go on Twitter and here's the power of Twitter yeah pitbull of comedy thank you so I start writing some stuff and I think it's a challenge to go on there I
Guest:I know a lot of guys just go on and they just plug their gig, but let's say 140 characters.
Marc:Make some jokes.
Marc:A lot of guys are writing jokes, sure.
Guest:So it comes out in the news that Demi Lovato goes into rehab, and she's a cutter, but they might let her out for Thanksgiving so she can spend Thanksgiving with her family.
Guest:And I write on Twitter, great, she can carve the turkey and her wrists.
Guest:Okay, now, I didn't realize when you write this that anybody, you put the name Demi Lovato, and the thousands and thousands of sycophants around the world who follow her, this will go to them automatically, even though they're not followers.
Guest:So I'm getting hate mail from Mademoiselle Lovato.
Guest:On Twitter.
Guest:Oh, my, from, in Spanish.
Guest:Your Twitter's just, it's just filling up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:How can you say that, you old, mean, miserable man?
Guest:She's cutting herself, she needs help, and blah, blah, blah, and you're a horrible person, and you should die.
Guest:So I answer one of these girls.
Guest:I've had a couple of glasses of wine.
Guest:I don't realize when you answer,
Guest:Everybody else sees this, too.
Guest:I don't know how the Twitter works.
Guest:I'm new.
Guest:The kids today.
Marc:I have a freezer.
Marc:They're in a petroleum.
Marc:What do I know?
Marc:So you replied, drunk.
Marc:A push-button car.
Marc:A drunk Bobby Slayton.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I buzzed.
Marc:You had a cup of wine.
Marc:Definitely not drunk.
Marc:What were you responding to?
Marc:What was the tweet that you decided to respond to?
Guest:It was one of the tweets.
Guest:I'll send them to you.
Guest:Maybe I'll show them to you.
Guest:It was one of the ones that said, I hope you die.
Guest:You're a horrible old man saying something about a beautiful woman like Demi Lovato.
Guest:And I didn't want to talk about what a fucking dick she was on the show.
Guest:You know, these kids love her.
Guest:I'm bigger than that.
Guest:These kids are 13, 14.
Marc:Clearly, you're bigger than that.
Guest:Bigger than that.
Guest:So I said, well, except this one night when I said to this little girl,
Guest:I said, well, you know what?
Guest:As long as she's cutting her wrist, she should slit her throat too.
Guest:Now, they looked at it as a death threat.
Guest:So I'm getting letters now from these little Disney fans that they're writing Disney to say that I threatened Demi Lovato's life.
Guest:And I realized that right then and there that the power of Twitter, more than your show, more than radio, more than internet radio, more than television, more than satellite, that I can sit in privacy in my own home and send a little tweet.
Guest:And destroy your career.
Guest:Yeah, or piss off thousands of 12-year-old girls around the world.
Guest:That was kind of cool.
Guest:But I realized, okay, you know what?
Guest:I don't need to do this anymore.
Marc:Those jokes were a little harsh, weren't they?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You asked me if I ever feel bad about what I say.
Guest:Yeah, I felt bad for a minute, but I didn't realize everybody was going to see that.
Guest:But I was just mad at this kid for telling me I should die.
Guest:So I said, well, Demi Lovato dies too.
Guest:But I wasn't going to kill her.
Guest:It wasn't a death threat.
Guest:And it's all because you got a bloody nose and a polar bear suit.
Guest:That's how it started.
Guest:You know, you always look at a homeless guy and go, where did that start?
Guest:Where did he start going downhill?
Guest:Did he lose his job, his wife?
Guest:Was he once maybe working for Disney also?
Guest:Did Demi Lovato do that?
Guest:Where did it start?
Guest:Did Seinfeld get a show and not that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:well you're not that guy who is a guy that lives under the bridge he's not me I have a jet that's my I didn't get a time to do impressions but wow that was one of your best interviews wasn't it it was and I'm glad you thanks for doing it Bobby Slayton and I'm at Pitbull of Comedy if you want to tweet twat me and give me angry whatever alright thanks Bobby thanks pal music music music
Marc:Bobby Slayton.
Marc:Bobby Slayton.
Marc:Bobby Slayton.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That guy can go.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:That's our show, folks.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Get on that mailing list.
Marc:We're going to have a new website soon.
Marc:Look forward to that.
Marc:Big and fun with a lot of new options.
Marc:Go to the merchandise.
Marc:Get yourself a WTF mug.
Marc:Get yourself a poster from one of our many live performances.
Marc:How about a cat shirt?
Marc:Or how about a me screaming shirt?
Marc:If you go to WTFPodShop.com, you got all your premium episodes there.
Marc:Night of the Many Jews.
Marc:You got all the live ones from comics and also some of the premium episodes like the Carlos Mencia episodes are up there.
Marc:The Robin Williams is up there.
Marc:You can get the apps for iPhone, iPad, iPad touch, or you can go to WTF pod.com.
Marc:Choose the no iTunes choice.
Marc:You can sign up for the premium membership and stream every episode ever made from way back in the day.
Marc:Remember before TV?
Marc:Yeah, that stuff.
Marc:A lot of great episodes coming up in the weeks to come.
Marc:Michael Showalter, Conan O'Brien, Laura Keitlinger.
Marc:Who else we got?
Marc:Bobby Goldthwait.
Marc:A lot of things coming up.
Marc:A lot of great stuff stacking up and getting ready to put it out there.
Marc:Putting it all together for you.
Marc:I really appreciate you listening to the show.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Now I'm just going to say names and plugs.
Marc:BungelineMagazine.com.
Marc:Um...
Marc:Yeah, that's good.
Marc:I feel good about all that.
Marc:You guys all right?
Marc:All right, talk to you later.