Episode 222 - Steve Almond
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck's the bulls?
Marc:What the fuck you buy?
Marc:Wall Streeters?
Marc:What the fuck a Ricans?
Marc:What the fuck a Mullins?
Marc:What the fuck an ox?
Marc:All right, let's stop there.
Marc:I am Mark Barron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:Thank you for listening to the show.
Marc:Always a pleasure to sit out here in my garage.
Marc:I got some new equipment.
Marc:A little bit of new equipment.
Marc:It's amazing what new equipment can do in terms of making me feel like a fucking idiot.
Marc:I buy, I had my guy, the guy I deal with, the Mac man.
Marc:Mac man.
Marc:Mac man.
Marc:He's the guy that does the Mac stuff.
Marc:But that's actually his business's name, Mac man.
Marc:But he comes over.
Marc:He tells me what to buy.
Marc:I buy it.
Marc:Now I got to sit here and figure out how to use it.
Marc:I am perpetually amazed at how little I know about the technology I use.
Marc:I don't know basic shit, but that's OK.
Marc:I think it sounds good.
Marc:It looks good.
Marc:It's giving me a little more space.
Marc:Picked up an extra mic.
Marc:It's starting to look kind of professional in here.
Marc:Don't get nervous.
Marc:It's still cluttered and there are still a lot of spiders and it still smells a little like cat pee.
Marc:And I got to throw some shit out.
Marc:I just got to throw some shit out.
Marc:On the show today, author Steve Almond, his book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life.
Marc:Great book.
Marc:He's got a new book coming out, a collection of stories called God Bless America.
Marc:That's out this week.
Marc:We'll talk to him in a few.
Marc:How come nobody told me that I was having a slight midlife crisis?
Marc:Why do I got to be the last one to find out that I'm having a slight midlife crisis and I've got mental and emotional problems?
Marc:Where are my friends?
Marc:How come no one's telling me this stuff?
Marc:How come I got to wait till somebody emails me a large pamphlet
Marc:titled compensatory narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:And I look at that thing, I print it up and I'm like, well, if they know this stuff, where's the part where they tell me how to fix myself?
Marc:Where's that part?
Marc:I don't know about the rest of you, but some nights I lay in bed and everything's quiet and I'm just listening to myself breathe and I'm listening to my heartbeat.
Marc:And that's all that's going on.
Marc:And what's going on in my head is, well, you know, this is going to end sometime.
Marc:Could be now.
Marc:Nope, still going.
Marc:How is that healthy?
Marc:It just happens sometimes just the way my fucking brain works.
Marc:Compensatory narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:Any shrinks out there?
Marc:I don't generally solicit this.
Marc:What the fuck is wrong with me?
Marc:I mean, I feel fine outside of laying in bed and listening to my heartbeat and listening to myself breathe and wondering when that's going to stop.
Marc:Outside of that, I'm doing OK.
Marc:Outside of perpetual anxiety and dread that I'm fighting with every day, even though things are going good.
Marc:Who knew that being busy would make me crazy?
Marc:There's some part of me that misses doing nothing.
Marc:The problem is when I did nothing, I was consumed with bitterness.
Marc:Compensatory narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:Now look, the disease perspective.
Marc:Maybe some of you listening to me, you'll relate to this.
Marc:I have to assume we have something in common, some of us.
Marc:Let me maybe I had to read this first.
Marc:These compensatory narcissistic personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of unstable, overtly narcissistic behaviors that derive from an underlying sense of insecurity and weakness rather than from genuine feelings of self-confidence and high self-esteem.
Marc:Oh, so that would be what makes it different from narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:It's all based in bullshit.
Marc:I don't really believe it.
Marc:So let's see.
Marc:It's indicated by 10 or more of the following.
Marc:seeks to create an illusion of superiority and to build up an image of self-worth, of high self-worth.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Here's the second.
Marc:Has disturbances in the capacity for empathy.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I drove a cat to the hospital that was hit by a car the other night.
Marc:I didn't have to do that.
Marc:I'm not going to check that one.
Marc:That was horrible.
Marc:I don't even know how to talk about it.
Marc:It wasn't my cat.
Marc:It was sad.
Marc:It had just happened.
Marc:The cat was mortally injured, and it was still breathing.
Marc:Me and my neighbor Adam took him down to the emergency hospital.
Marc:He was put down properly.
Marc:It was horrible.
Marc:Strives for recognition and prestige to compensate for the lack of a feeling of self-worth.
Marc:Okay, that's me.
Marc:That's one.
Marc:May acquire a deprecatory attitude in which the achievements of others are ridiculed and degraded.
Marc:That's two.
Marc:Has persistent aspirations for glory and status.
Marc:Who doesn't?
Marc:Has a tendency to exaggerate and boast.
Marc:Eh, not so much.
Marc:Is sensitive to how much others react to him or her.
Marc:Watches and listens carefully for critical judgment and feels slighted by disapproval.
Marc:Hell yeah.
Marc:Is prone to feel shamed and humiliated and especially hyper anxious and vulnerable to the judgments of others.
Marc:Yes, but I hide that covers up a sense of inadequacy and deficiency with pseudo arrogance and pseudo grandiosity.
Marc:Now, I think my grandiosity and arrogance is genuine.
Marc:So no on that one.
Marc:Has a tendency to periodic hypochondria.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:I just bought turmeric and saw palmetto.
Marc:Alternates between feelings of emptiness and deadness and states of excitement and excess energy.
Marc:Oh, shit, yes.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:What is there?
Marc:Yeah, that's me.
Marc:Entertains fantasies of greatness and constantly striving for perfection, genius or stardom.
Marc:Oh, OK.
Marc:Has a history of searching for an idealized partner and has an intense need for affirmation and confirmation in relationships.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Frequently entertains a wishful, exaggerated and unrealistic concept of himself or herself, which he or she can't possibly measure up to.
Marc:uh-oh produces i just have to say i'm early at one two three four five six seven eight nine ten just hit ten produces work not up to the level of his or her abilities because of no overwhelmingly strong need for the immediate gratification of success don't know is touchy quick to take offense at the slightest provocation continually anticipating attack and danger reacting with anger and fantasies of revenge when he or she feels frustrated in his or her need for constant admiration
Marc:Oh, God, is self-conscious due to a dependence on approval from others.
Marc:Suffers regularly from repetitive oscillations of self-esteem.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Bing, bing, bing.
Marc:You know, there's a few more, but there's no need to go into this.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So somebody fix it.
Marc:How do we fix it?
Marc:I mean, Jesus, man, the dimensional perspective.
Marc:This sounds like a description of my show.
Marc:High neuroticism.
Marc:That's the heading.
Marc:Chronic negative effects, including anxiety, fearfulness, tension, irritability, anger, dejection, hopelessness, guilt, shame, difficulty inhibiting impulses, for example, to eat, drink, or spend money, irrational beliefs, for example, unrealistic expectations, perfectionist demands on self, unwarranted pessimism, unfounded somatic concerns, helplessness, independence on others, promotional support, decision-making.
Marc:This is our show.
Marc:The show is called WTF.
Marc:That was the next description of the show.
Marc:I put that out into the world.
Marc:It's not that bad.
Marc:Well, this stuff is getting better, but I fucking hate when books get you right.
Marc:It's not even a book.
Marc:It's a pamphlet.
Marc:So now I know what I got.
Marc:Compensatory narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:I seem to function, but it seems to take a lot of fuel to function.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So that's me.
Marc:How about you?
Marc:Oh fuck, is that, why is the phone ringing?
Marc:Why is the phone ringing in here?
Marc:Why can't I turn off my cell phone or unplug my regular phone?
Marc:Hello.
Guest:Mark.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, it's Steve Attell.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:I can't remember the last time I talked to you.
Marc:What's going on?
Guest:Well, I'm just calling in to see how you are.
Guest:I know you've been in a rough state lately.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:I think I've been doing great.
Marc:Have you heard something otherwise?
Guest:No, that's now ramping up your paranoia.
Guest:No, I've been listening to the podcast, and I really like it.
Guest:It seems like...
Guest:Every week you have some other trial and tribulation you're trying to deal with.
Marc:Well, that's a very general assessment.
Marc:But, yeah, I've got my issues.
Marc:What the fuck have you been doing?
Marc:I mean, do you go out during the day?
Marc:What's happening?
Guest:Do I go out during the day?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:You win the world's worst interviewer contest?
Guest:Yeah, I go out.
Guest:I've been working on a show on Showtime.
Guest:It's called Dave's Old Porn.
Guest:And it's about retro porn.
Guest:It's kind of a mystery science theater of porno.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're both porn and mystery science theater, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I actually watched the first episode last night of Dave's Old Porn, and I found it very entertaining.
Marc:I think you finally found an area of investigation that's right up your alley, man.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:Yeah, well...
Guest:If one thing I know, it's porn.
Marc:Do you remember, actually, though, do you remember the first time you ever saw porn in your life?
Guest:Yeah, it probably was, let's see...
Guest:When did my dad set up that camera?
Guest:No, I know it involved a new bike.
Guest:No, no, I remember like when I was in my teens, you know, we were watching, you know, mostly like Swedish erotica and stuff like that, you know.
Marc:On VHS, right?
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:And that's what this stuff is all about.
Guest:It's, you know, VCR, VHS tapes, you know, the retro tapes.
Guest:Hairy, very hairy.
Guest:Do you like it, hairy, Mark?
Marc:Yeah, I was surprised at how much hair there was.
Marc:I'd forgotten that that much hair existed and that it was just culturally accepted.
Marc:It was actually refreshing to see.
Marc:How about you?
Marc:You like it?
Guest:To some degree, but as I watch more and more, since I have a tremendous collection of over 100, I have hundreds of tastes of retro porn now.
Guest:So it's hard to, you know...
Guest:Basically, anybody who comes to my apartment, I just say, do not look in that room.
Guest:And if you do, let me explain.
Guest:It's kind of like the Batcave, you know, where you have to let them in.
Guest:What I was trying to say is...
Guest:I like it a little hairy.
Guest:This stuff is out of control.
Guest:This is the 70s, remember?
Guest:This is before Twitter and Facebook and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:So people have a lot of time to grow their hair.
Guest:And I get a statement to some degree, kind of a fuck you to the man, kind of like a take back your crotch.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's like, deal with this guy, huh?
Marc:Find your way through this.
Marc:So that room in your house, do you tell people that they should, like some people when you go to their house, they're like, could you take your shoes off?
Marc:And you're like, please, leave your shoes on.
Guest:Yeah, that's a good analogy for it.
Guest:What we did on this show is we got a lot of the younger stars, like Whitney Cummings was on our premier episode with Ron Jeremy.
Marc:I saw that one.
Marc:That was pretty wild to see Ron.
Guest:What do you think, Mark?
Guest:You're a pretty good judge of TV.
Marc:No, I love you, man.
Marc:So, I mean, you're so fucking quick and it was so hilarious.
Guest:No, come on.
Guest:Give it to me, man.
Marc:All right.
Marc:You know, I think this show is shit and good luck with it.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:This happened to us about two years ago when you predicted the downfall of Joey and I said, give it a chance.
Marc:No, I thought it was hilarious.
Marc:I thought it was very funny to see Whitney sitting there with Rod Jeremy.
Marc:You know what's weird about Ron Jeremy is that, you know, I don't know what I expect out of him.
Marc:I don't know if I expect him to be intelligent or some sort of wizard, but he's just an old Jew.
Guest:Well, he is very intelligent.
Guest:He has a master's degree and he was an Eagle Scout.
Guest:There's a lot more to the man than just a gigantic, huge shock.
Marc:Yeah, but if they live long enough, that point he made about, like, he was very weird about saying, he's like, no, I would never do Viagra, and explaining that that's why there was only, like, ten guys for the entire history of porn is because most guys couldn't handle it.
Marc:So he's sort of implying that Viagra actually fucked it up for everybody because now any asshole can do it.
Marc:I think you're projecting that.
Marc:Am I?
Marc:I thought I was reading into it.
Marc:This is how he deconstructed the show.
Marc:This is what my essay is going to be about.
Guest:Your essay in the School of Who Gives a Shit?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:But let me tell you this.
Guest:Back then, it was kind of a risque, kind of, you know, arty thing to do.
Guest:And a lot of these people were, you know, there weren't as many ways to kind of rebel, I think, as there are now.
Guest:Like, you can rebel just by posting a hilarious video on YouTube.
Guest:And back then, like, you know, really it was just like, you know,
Guest:uh the carnival or porn yeah you had to run away to one one or the other and it also was like you know a different time like drugs were more accepted not like today with you know brutalized you know just smoking a pot you know and uh i think people were just cooler then i think it was just a cooler time personally well people seem to be having a a little more fun and not worried about getting caught having that fun so who are the other porn stars you're gonna have on
Guest:Okay, well, we have a really great selection of both older stars, living legends, as I call them, and some of today's greatest talent.
Guest:We have Seika, who you remember, of course.
Guest:Still alive, huh?
Guest:Very cool lady.
Guest:Seika was in the movies Ultra Flesh and just a billion other ones that we will show clips of later.
Guest:Really, really cool.
Guest:Nina Hartley, of course, Boogie Nights, she was a crossover talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really cool lady.
Guest:Paul Thomas, who's the director at, of course, a porn star from the Golden Age of Porn.
Guest:And Georgina Spelvin, who is the godmother of porn, she was in The Devil and Miss Jones, which is kind of the, I guess, before paranormal activities.
Guest:This is kind of a...
Guest:the kind of scary yet saucy, sexy kind of thing.
Guest:It changed the whole terrain for porn, basically.
Marc:Well, I watched the ones I remember from the old days when I first started watching was the opening of Misty Beethoven, Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat.
Marc:Behind the Green Door was pretty trippy.
Guest:Yeah, that's a cool flick, but people really just think of Retro as those three or four films, but there were thousands of movies made
Guest:by both really high-end movies with plots and scripts and just loops of people just hanging out.
Guest:It looks like they shot some of it on a Super 8 camera in a Motel 6.
Guest:We have samplings of all of it, and the best stuff is the high-end, really story, plot-driven material, and we have really great clips of that kind of stuff.
Guest:Nina Harley, who is super cool,
Guest:A great lady.
Guest:She was in Boogie Nights.
Guest:She also was in this movie called The Ultimate Lover, and we bring her out with Bill Burr.
Guest:That'll be coming up.
Guest:I don't want to give the whole thing away, but that'll be coming up down the road.
Marc:So tonight is the Squares, right?
Marc:And then you've got Bill Burr coming up.
Marc:Who are some of the other comics?
Marc:Jim Norton?
Guest:We've got Jim Norton.
Guest:We've got Margaret Cho.
Guest:We've got Greg Fitzsimmons.
Guest:And the comics are great because, as you all know, like when you're on the road, you know, you and I both know, like your best friend on the road is porn.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Every comic has a different take.
Guest:And it's really cool to have the ladies on because, you know, you really get to watch a skin flick with a chick in the room.
Guest:And these girls are funny and they're cool and they get it.
Marc:Whitney did all right.
Marc:And, oh, you've got Chelsea Handler on tonight, too.
Marc:Oh, Whitney's great.
Marc:Yeah, she did great.
Marc:Chelsea Handler tonight?
Guest:Chelsea's great, yeah.
Guest:She is so cool.
Guest:And the Sklar brothers.
Yeah.
Guest:The theme is fetish.
Guest:So the ultimate fetish is what?
Guest:Twins.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Well, let me let's see.
Marc:OK, so it's on every Thursday, 1130 p.m.
Marc:Eastern Standard Time on Showtime.
Marc:Who's the porn star?
Marc:No porn star tonight?
Guest:Um, well, basically, uh, we're, it's about fetish.
Guest:So it's really, I guess you could say the points are would be me.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:What are your, uh, what are your big fetishes, Dave?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:A lot of people think feet are the biggest fetish, but I, that's not my, uh, that's not my thing.
Guest:What about you?
Marc:Wait, is yours a sadness?
Guest:Then it's tears.
Guest:You use lubricant.
Guest:Is your favorite lube tears?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You can also follow the show on Twitter.
Marc:It's at old porn, but the O in porn is a zero.
Marc:Go to the website, davesoldporn.com.
Marc:For all Showtime's and listings, go to Showtime's website.
Marc:And, you know, that's the info.
Marc:I enjoyed the show because you're so fucking quick and funny, and it's dirty, and I can't even imagine what the Jim Norton episode's like.
Guest:Oh, that's out of control.
Marc:Is it?
Guest:It's very good.
Guest:The cool thing about doing it on Showtime is that, you know, very little censorship.
Guest:You know, we do...
Guest:cover most of the penetration, but anything else goes.
Guest:It's all unscripted, just comics hanging around, bringing out these living legends, giving them the tribute and celebration they deserve.
Marc:Did you think I was above it or something?
Marc:Am I going to be able to go on?
Guest:No, I asked you to do it.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:I think I asked you to do it, but you were too busy getting your Montreal speech together.
Guest:That Gettysburg address.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:After I heard that, I put my helmet on.
Guest:I was ready for war.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That was your, I hear you, and whoever knocked down these buildings will hear you.
Marc:Well, you know, I had to do something.
Guest:It had to be sex.
Marc:Have you ever had sex with a porn star?
Guest:I think the furthest I've ever been was a stripper who thinks she can act.
Guest:It's not really about the sex.
Guest:It's more about the fun of it.
Guest:Yeah, as you saw from the show.
Guest:You watched the show, right, Mark?
Marc:Yeah, I watched it last night.
Marc:It was great.
Guest:As you see, Whitney, she has a network television show.
Guest:She's so cool to do this kind of thing.
Guest:It's really just about, like, you know, we use the porn as the jumping-off point.
Guest:We talk about sex.
Guest:We talk about a whole bunch of stuff.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:When Ron comes out, who's, like, always funny and always available, he came out and just, like, basically set us straight on a lot of stuff.
Guest:It's cool to watch the porn stars, these living legends, watch themselves.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:He was, like, getting nostalgic.
Guest:Do you ever watch yourself, like, from an old evening at the improv or something like that?
Marc:Yes, occasionally.
Guest:I can't even watch myself on TV.
Guest:I'm so ugly.
Guest:I hate myself.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:I can only imagine what it could be for these people.
Guest:Like, wow, you know, it's like such a, you know, it's like extreme makeover, but without a good feeling at the end.
Marc:Yeah, well, he was actually, he was actually, he was nostalgic.
Marc:I mean, he was like, wow, I don't even remember that part.
Marc:And I looked pretty good, didn't I?
Marc:He was real sweet about it.
Marc:It was almost as if he were jarring, you know, shaking some memories loose.
Marc:He like, he actually forgotten an entire bar fight scene.
Guest:Isn't that crazy?
Guest:Because these people do so many movies, you know, like, and then they're re-looped and, you know, like, scenes that are thrown together and different things.
Guest:And they really don't get enough credit for, like, the amazing stuff they've done.
Guest:now like this retro stuff which is i guess everybody wants to you know jump on the whole retro thing but this is the real deal these are the real movies we haven't like doctored them or anything like that but having the porn store watch it is really uh it takes it to another level and i'm not just trying to like promote the show i mean i am a whore yeah promote the show i mean that really is what separates it from like you know a pop-up video or something like that no no it's fun man and wait do you have any gigs coming up you want to plug
Guest:Yeah, I'll be in Irvine the first week of November, the 4th through the 6th, I believe.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's a great club, so I'm looking forward to that.
Guest:And by the way, not that like, you know...
Guest:give you a reach around here but uh when i saw you at the punchline in san francisco that's got to be about a year or maybe under a year ago yeah rocked out you sold out those kids were hanging on your every word you're like the charles manson of like whatever you talk about there charles manson of the comedy nerds of the nerds uh finally i've got something all right dave lead them to safety i'll try all right dave so funny i'm trying to lead them to funny
Guest:Thanks for having me, man.
Guest:And you got my stuff.
Guest:Check it out.
Guest:Follow it on Twitter.
Guest:All the other things you're supposed to do in today's times.
Guest:But possibly if you love porn, you're going to like this show.
Marc:All right, Dave.
Marc:It's good talking to you, man.
Guest:All right, brother.
Guest:Bye.
Guest:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:So lovely to talk to Dave Attell.
Marc:He makes me fucking laugh.
Marc:So now tell me about this.
Marc:Not the Nazi fetish, but the commencement address.
Guest:Now, interestingly, there's an intersection.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because all I talked about was my Nazi fetishism.
Guest:Kids.
Guest:Because they were trying... Hitler was right.
Guest:Now it's coming from a Jew.
Guest:Well, you know, everybody... Why don't they talk about the paintings?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why don't they talk about the paintings?
Yeah.
Guest:Give the guy a break.
Guest:Cut him some slack.
Guest:Well, they all want to know, kind of, how do I get to where you are?
Guest:Which, you know, there are students, they're budding artists, and what are you supposed to say?
Guest:Like, if I were you, I wouldn't want to get to where I am.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:I'm sure people...
Marc:have the same dynamic with you like mark how can i have that life and you're like really i do that all the time now i mean i used to be i used to not engage well my guest today in the garage here the cat ranch steve almond the author of rock and roll will save your life and a number of other books a small book he just gave me called letters from people who hate me which i understand yeah
Marc:And you wrote some, what's the other nonfiction books?
Marc:I'm not a guy that does research.
Marc:You listen to the show.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:But you're a guy that writes, and you do it for real.
Marc:And you've had some success with it.
Marc:You're giving commencement addresses, and people love this book.
Marc:I love this book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life.
Marc:Save mine.
Guest:Yeah, well, I appreciate all that, because I know that you're a very cranky bastard.
Guest:Well, look, I got Keith Richards' wife right here next to it sitting on that.
Guest:I can't let this thing go.
Guest:Yeah, no, that could be worth money.
Guest:I would hold on to that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because he's going to die.
Marc:But they'll still have the book, but I guess it's the first printing.
Marc:Did you read it?
Marc:No, I didn't read it.
Marc:What's wrong with you?
Marc:Do you want to stay and do the interview?
Marc:I mean, how could you not read?
Marc:I'm a Stones fan.
Guest:I'm a Stones fan, but...
Guest:Something told me, and people have told me it's a great book, but it's not like, hey, I want to hear what Keith Richards has to say for 500 pages.
Marc:I mean, it should be great stories, right?
Marc:No, you'd be surprised.
Marc:See, what you're doing is holding on to your idea of Keith Richards.
Marc:You're not letting Keith Richards.
Marc:Break me down, man.
Marc:You're not letting Keith Richards live.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:You just want to keep him in that box, the junkie box, the rhythm guitar box, the outlaw box.
Marc:He is all those things, Steve.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it turns out he's a very intelligent, thoughtful, philosophical guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you're right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:You know, the problem is the Stones, I fell off of them so hard and they're just completely monetizing.
Guest:And I know he's the cool junkie part of that fucking corporation, but it's still a corporation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, look, you know, some people outlive their integrity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By just, you know, 20 years here or there.
Marc:But when it comes right down to, what do you expect them to do?
Marc:Stop?
Marc:Did you expect them to go back to bars?
Marc:I mean, what do you really expect out of them?
Guest:Yeah, I expect them to stop, dude.
Guest:I expect them to stop with their 19 Bentleys and their 15-year-old models and just fucking stop and make it a hobby in the fucking garage.
Guest:Don't go out and get a sponsor and monetize us swimming in their fucking backwash.
Guest:Again, I get it.
Guest:It's capitalism, but there's so many shitty fucking decisions that result from that.
Guest:It's just capitalism.
Guest:What are you going to do?
Guest:I mean, they have to fucking make millions and millions more dollars and end up on the street buying shitty heroin.
Guest:Well, look, Keith hangs out on Mick, so if there's any way I can angle you... I'm sure Mick, in his eminent macho-ness, like, forces Keith Richards onto the road.
Marc:Come on!
Marc:Well, no, the way it's depicted in the book is that, I mean, for the most part, Keith Richards, though it doesn't seem like he was ever hurting, was definitely on the run, and was definitely, you know, could give a fuck one way or the other.
Guest:Are you going to try and make me feel sorry for Keith Richards?
Guest:Is Keith Richards going to be your tragic hero?
Marc:Like, just dragged on.
Marc:on a tour with Visa and Target.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:There's part of that.
Marc:All right, so back to the commencement address.
Marc:Somebody asks Steve Allman with this attitude to speak to children.
Guest:The best part about it, the best part of the whole thing.
Guest:What was the college?
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Guest:I shouldn't besmirch their good name.
Guest:It was the University of Riverside's
Guest:Palm Desert MFA, it's a low residency MFA, so it's just like a summer camp for people who are just ground down by the marketing and they wanna do something more interesting.
Guest:And where is it, it's out in desert?
Guest:It's out in Palm Springs.
Guest:It is like the most dissonant,
Guest:like a little band of depressives who are just plunked in this resort setting that is like a petri dish for reality tv just awful tattoos and tan like this the swimming pools are covered in a thick film of just like suntan lotion and spermatosa and spray tan nice the whole thing yeah it's delicious that's a tide pool we're waiting for something to evolve out of there exactly
Marc:The next generation of writers will start crawling from the single-celled organism out of the pool at this resort college.
Guest:Or they just put a little bit of saline and it grows into an entire breast.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:But the best thing about this commencement address, our little event was being held next door to a giant ballroom where the U.S.
Guest:Marine Corps was welcoming a bunch of troops back from Afghanistan, all of whom had survived in their entire unit.
Guest:And so there was great happiness.
Guest:But...
Guest:I, of course, just... This is the way my mind runs.
Guest:I'm getting ready to do my fucking dumb speech about Nazi fetishism.
Guest:And I go over and just sort of check out what's going on in the other ballroom.
Guest:It's all these fucking Marines, you know, just looking very trim in dress uniform.
Guest:Guys with real balls?
Guest:Guys with real genitalia.
Guest:And I just kept thinking, what happens if I'm just like, hey, I smell some fucking Marine Corps pussy?
Guest:I mean, what happens?
Guest:How quickly...
Guest:And not just am I annihilated, I'm vaporized almost instantly, but how quickly do they run through the room of a bunch of MFAs with their faculty?
Marc:I bet you it would happen quietly and with an efficiency that would be more frightening than the result of that efficiency.
Marc:It'd just be like one guy would quietly walk over and grab you in a very specific way, and you would start crying and saying your mother's name out loud, and he would walk you out.
Marc:It's over, yeah.
Marc:It's just...
Marc:He would walk you to the podium like he was holding a kitten.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:It's my lie, but just unmute.
Guest:So what did you say to these kids?
Guest:What did I say?
Guest:I mean, basically because I've been in a depression and been trying to write a novel and felt overwhelmed and just down on myself and full of anxiety and dread.
Guest:Great way to go in.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Well, with full confidence...
Guest:and i basically said uh it never gets easier so you better try as hard as you can to enjoy the process because it is not going to get easier it doesn't matter if you have some books we are living in such a tiny little world that you know our version of fame is not going to bring you anything so you better just enjoy any of the american fantasy bullshit money and self-esteem how come i just picture one guy like
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No hats were flung.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:There were some aimed, but there were none.
Marc:Some hats were bowed down.
Guest:It was a sweet deal, and they basically appreciate that because the worst thing you can have in the commencement speaker world that I've done too, Song of the Speakers, the world's leading authority, is just that kind of smug, like, wouldn't you like to be where I am?
Guest:And I think in a weird way it was comfortable.
Marc:Or that assumption.
Guest:Yeah, just where it's clear that the speaker is saying, I know that I'm the shit because I'm the one talking to you.
Guest:Whereas my attitude was, I know that I am shit and I am talking to you.
Guest:And they couldn't get friends in.
Guest:So let's get through this.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Let's just get through that.
Guest:Fucking blowhard still blew them off.
Guest:Yeah, thanks for that.
Guest:And by the way, I really enjoy your Rolling Stones poster of your hero.
Guest:Oh, it's Mick Jagger, I guess.
Guest:It's not even Keith Richards.
Marc:That is an interpretation of the original Gimme Shelter.
Marc:That was for the reissue of the film done by Frank Kozik.
Marc:Now, wait, are we going to shit on the Stones?
Guest:No.
Marc:You wrote a whole chapter in your book on fucking Toto and somehow celebrated it in some twisted fucking way.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's a misinterpretation of that chapter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you are fucking going down on the Picaro brothers and it's fucking sick and they're all doing blow.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:That song, I Bless the Rains Down Africa, is an abomination.
Guest:The problem is it's a very powerful virus.
Guest:You cannot get rid of it.
Guest:There's no cure.
Marc:It's not even a meme.
Marc:It's an actual virus.
Marc:Like a song.
Marc:But before we get into that, though, so what's the difference between a... What would you... Like if someone asked you to write a keynote address, what does that mean to you?
Marc:What's a keynote address versus a commencement?
Marc:Because they seem to be similar.
Guest:You know, and here's an odd thing.
Guest:I have just...
Guest:reached this sort of pathetic place where I'm now being asked by very small, very desperate operations to do this.
Guest:To do both keynotes and commencements.
Guest:Well, I mean, the only distinction I would make having done like one and a half of each.
Guest:But you've done the research.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, no, I didn't.
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, you know the difference.
Marc:Like if I were to say like, you know, okay, you know, this is not a commencement address.
Marc:This is a keynote address.
Marc:You'd go, oh, I have to make these adjustments.
Guest:Well, I just think about who's the audience and the fact that it means a great deal, especially at a commencement.
Guest:So I'm not going to come in and just, you know, mail it in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I need to think about this is a big deal and I need to try to say some things that feel honest to these people and not...
Guest:not bullshit them but also not just play my the card that i could just sort of say what i want i'm still gonna get my check yeah uh so and and it's very specifically that it's a big deal they have their families there so that all the families and these people who probably i mean come on imagine that your kid you know or some of these people are in their 30s 40s they have family and they've decided to try to become an artist in this culture so you got to be delicate in how you shit on their dreams exactly it's like a
Guest:Slow suicide, and they can't even feel the razor bite.
Guest:It has to be extremely slick.
Guest:Oh, it's just a little itch.
Marc:In the guise of honesty.
Marc:Not in the guise of like, I've had it.
Marc:But let me just tell it how it is.
Guest:But a keynote is something different.
Guest:A keynote is a broader audience where you know that it's aspiring writers, but I don't feel the same...
Guest:Level of responsibility just to sort of speak in a momentous way about the transition that they're about to take from aspiring writer in this little habitat to unemployed, debt ridden, depressive on the brink of self-harm.
Guest:Right.
Marc:There is something to be said about the risks that one takes to be creative.
Marc:And that if you are on that quest for truth or you do live that life where you forego any semblance of security to sort of pursue this thing for as long as it takes and maybe forever, that should be commended.
Marc:And then you deal with all these other people like the power, whether it be political power or executive power,
Marc:that just use you as grist for their mill.
Marc:I mean, that's what they're counting on.
Marc:How can we run money through this guy?
Guest:Right, how can we monetize him?
Marc:Yeah, and if we can't run money through him, what good is he to us?
Marc:And that's usually, those are the guys who get the best, that if they survive their talent, they might come up with something brilliant.
Marc:Maybe one thing.
Marc:But anyways, getting back to what you were asking me, I find myself...
Marc:You know, telling people who ask me for advice, just being very honest, is that don't limit yourself.
Marc:I mean, you know, comedy is one thing in the sense that if you have the chops to be a comic or a writer, you know, figure out what the hell your voice is.
Marc:Don't think in a context and figure out how to use it.
Marc:If you can't stand up on stage, you know, write.
Marc:If you can't write, you know, work with other people.
Marc:Do what you can to sort of facilitate your creativity in a way you can live with.
Marc:Right.
Guest:i mean that's the big thing is that a lot of times creative people they get they they get sold out and and they're part of it and they don't realize they've been raped until you know they're midway through it and then they've learned to like it but don't you think everybody takes a patron i mean you've created this um world where you don't have to take a patron here we are and you're incredibly nice smelling if i might say garage yeah and you know you do it and you the internet makes it possible for you to have this place and people come there because they
Guest:sense that they're not going to get reamed and fucking anally raped with marketing like in every other fucking corner of our culture so they dig it and you've made that but almost everybody takes patrons in order to be able to do what they really want to do right yeah I think that what I usually say is that you don't make money until you make someone else money right okay
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Perfect.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that is true in a big sense.
Marc:But then you have to sort of determine what it means to make money.
Marc:I mean, you can make a living without taking a patron per se.
Marc:I mean, I think that I never really understood the glory of entrepreneurship until I'm sitting here with my buddy trying to figure out how to make money at this thing that's eating up a lot of our time.
Marc:And I think that we should make money.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And then but for the first time in my life, and I've talked a little bit about this before, I feel like I've earned this money.
Marc:I don't feel like this is money that's been given to me by a company to maybe get what I get done.
Marc:That kind of money that ultimately ends with them going, yeah, we don't like it, but we're glad we locked you down for a year.
Guest:But what happens when, I mean, I'm just, maybe you've even spoken to this, but what happens when somebody says, oh, well, Marin created this thing.
Guest:How can we fucking blow it up and get more distribution channels?
Guest:Or do you just say that is zero tolerance, not interested?
Marc:Well, I'm in the position where I'm still the guy that they have to ask.
Marc:So it really comes down to what can I live with selling?
Marc:I do advertising.
Marc:I don't mind selling dildos.
Marc:Who does?
Marc:Yeah, I don't mind selling audiobooks.
Marc:I've tried a little out-of-the-box things.
Marc:It didn't really work.
Marc:I couldn't sell man-grates.
Marc:I don't have a lot of grillers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Shockingly.
Marc:And generally, I find that if I can live with it, like recently I've been doing some stuff for Comedy Central and for Turner Broadcasting, and a lot of times these guys have been on the show, so it seems to match what I'm doing.
Marc:The only issue then becomes, there's a lot of ads on your show now.
Marc:And even if I like the ads, it still is what it is, so I'm trying to limit that.
Marc:But your game is even harder.
Marc:I got a lot of friends who are writers, and even if you write a great book,
Marc:How do you... Does anyone care?
Guest:A small portion of people do care.
Guest:And I should say, I am not even a mid-list author.
Guest:I'm more like what they would call a cult author, which is...
Marc:I'm a cult comic.
Marc:I understand.
Guest:Yeah, but it's a different scale, I think.
Guest:Sure, absolutely.
Guest:Not that different, actually, from where I am.
Guest:But I would say, I don't know how many people listen to WTF.
Guest:I would say it's probably, you know, more than 100,000, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:If you sold that many books.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:The most people who have ever read one of my books, I had one book that was The Outlier that probably 50,000 people have read.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:I can't even remember.
Guest:It was about Candy Freak.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, all right.
Guest:So it's a book about candy makes sense, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it really about candy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a book entirely about my obsession with candy and the confectionery industry and late model capitalism and I traveled around all these places and tried to find the candy bars of my youth and it's a weird fucking crazy memoir that's partly about my own depression and self-medicating with candy but it's also about the industry and it's about the homogenization of late model capitalism.
Guest:All this stuff rolled up together.
Guest:Sugar.
Guest:Sugar, exactly.
Guest:And the pitch is, it's Tootsie Rolls.
Guest:They'll love it.
Guest:And in fact, people do.
Guest:And they want to talk with me about Tootsie Rolls.
Guest:They take the book at whatever level.
Guest:It's their book after it leaves my desk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it did okay.
Guest:But every other book I've written has sold maybe 5,000 to 10,000 copies, which is great.
Guest:I'm honored.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:I thank all of my...
Marc:It is good, though.
Marc:A lot of people don't realize that in order to get on the New York Times bestseller list, sometimes 10,000 will do it.
Guest:Maybe not that list, but certainly the extended list, if you sell enough at a particular time, you can get on there.
Guest:But the larger point is that 99% of writers are making...
Guest:are basically not making money from their books and are finding other ways.
Guest:And I'm talking about literary writers, not trying to be snobby, but it's like Clancy's doing fine.
Guest:Stephen King's doing fine.
Guest:The genre writers, the people who are celebrities or celebrities, people who fuck celebrities or any of those books are doing great.
Guest:Those are pop cultural products.
Guest:They're different things.
Guest:They're like an adjunct to the East network.
Guest:But the actual...
Guest:wonder what's happening inside me, why aren't I happier, or how do I get happier, stay happy, or that kind of, I don't mean self-help, but the stuff that's concerned with people's internal lives, and ask the reader to engage with their imaginations.
Guest:The lifelong question of why.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That kind of book just doesn't sell.
Guest:I can't figure out why we can't monetize deep concentration.
Guest:I mean, our culture is so focused right now or so, you know, I mean, everybody, there's a zillion channels.
Marc:It also goes back to the candy metaphor.
Marc:I mean, if it doesn't have a happy ending or if it doesn't sweeten things, who the fuck, you know, people can't handle it.
Guest:I disagree with, I mean, I disagree with that.
Guest:I mean, culturally.
Guest:Culturally, what I think the problem with books is that they just ask people to do something that is completely antithetical to where we're at as a culture right now.
Guest:Read?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sit there with one thing.
Guest:It's got one fucking app, okay?
Guest:It's got one fucking language.
Guest:You look, you convert the specs into, you know.
Guest:There's no touching or clicking.
Guest:you have to turn a page, but not even that now.
Guest:There's no touching or clicking.
Guest:You don't get Holden Caulfield.
Guest:You have to dream him up.
Guest:Your Holden Caulfield sounds different from everybody else's.
Guest:He lives inside your head.
Guest:They're not gonna feed it to you on a plate.
Guest:You look at the images and the fucking soundtrack and the corporate synergy.
Guest:it's a, it asks people to do something that's really inconvenient.
Guest:And we live in the age where convenience is the God of all things.
Guest:So, so there's a limit to how big, uh, I think a literary writer can get, or at least somebody like me is going to get.
Guest:And I mean, my poor publisher, random house found this out the hard way.
Guest:They thought, Oh, almond, you know, he's kind of edgy and writes about sex.
Guest:And,
Guest:you know he's really busy and writes a lot and you know seems to have a devoted audience we'll kick him up to the next level we'll throw a bunch of money at him and kick him up to the next level and with our corporate synergy and they fucking took a bath because i sold you know 10 000 copies of each book the readers who found it loved it but everybody else was like but did they really take a bath i mean yes i promise you yes so you made out all right
Marc:And for this book, and then you didn't make it back for them.
Marc:Yeah, but not only did I... Am I supposed to feel bad for Random House?
Guest:No, please don't.
Guest:And the twisted fucking sick thing is I'm now going to try to make you feel bad for me.
Guest:But what I did was I took a bunch of money and said, all right, well, everybody wants to be called up from AA to the big leagues.
Guest:I mean, that's the dream.
Guest:And kid, we love your swing.
Guest:And you want to make your star...
Guest:But all I feel now is a sense of kind of like, oh, I failed.
Guest:I failed.
Guest:They tried.
Guest:It's not like they weren't trying to make these books successful.
Guest:And I just fucking don't have the intelligence or humor or eloquence or whatever's required to break through and suddenly have a big audience where it moves inches slightly closer to the margin of the culture.
Guest:So you're beating the shit out of yourself.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:Did you get the money back?
Guest:I didn't give him money back.
Marc:Okay, well, I'm glad you didn't beat yourself up that much.
Marc:Look, you guys, maybe it didn't work out between us.
Marc:Here's some of your money back.
Guest:Here's some of your, but you know what?
Guest:Thanks for believing in me.
Guest:But the truth, and I do thank them, but the truth of the matter is I said to my wife when this offer came through, which was by a factor of like 10 more than I'd ever been offered for anything.
Guest:It was like, you want to do what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have your head examined.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said to her, this doesn't feel right.
Guest:This does not feel like I don't like how this I don't like how this feels expectation, a lot of expectation and a benighted sense that somehow they're going to be able to monetize me, my Judaic bellyaching, you know, troubled foot sold.
Marc:It's just a long history of that.
Guest:in letters yeah but it's I felt like saying they're like I'm not gonna be as funny as David Sedaris I'm not gonna be as smart as David Foster Wallace like please be realistic don't make this terrible decision that I'm gonna be forced to go with because there's money involved you didn't say that I you thought I said it to my wife right she was like you're crazy we gotta buy a house I'm gonna have a baby you know
Marc:But see, I do the same fucking thing you do.
Marc:And it's hanging over me now because I did a book deal with Random House.
Marc:I mean, I don't know who you're with here over there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was.
Marc:Was.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I'm excited about it.
Marc:But there's part of me that's like, I did one book before.
Marc:And I have friends who are writers.
Marc:I mean, I got Lipsight, who's my best friend.
Marc:He's a fucking great writer.
Marc:unbelievable genius you know but i always think that writing is the most labor intensive of of the arts in a way because it's just you sitting there wrestling with you right and you have to fill these fucking pages up right and it is the most um you know uh uh what what's the word i want it's certainly not glamorous solitary lonely yeah
Marc:and and it's not rewarded like other things and also this market you're talking about yeah you got to cut that in half again because it's not just appealing to everybody it's appealing to readers so that that brings it down to what a tenth of the population oh come on you're being optimistic you're kidding me so you don't have a problem with the kindle though i'm still a book guy like i like having books around you look around you
Marc:I mean, it is sort of a point and click kind of thing now, but I'm sure people have read this book on Kindle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rock and roll.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what am I going to say?
Guest:Oh, how dare you read on a device rather than on pages?
Guest:Papyrus is a noble and honorable.
Guest:I have a I recognize my attachment to the book as an artifact, as something that is not in sync with the culture.
Guest:But honestly, I.
Guest:I feel like a book is a perfect cultural artifact.
Guest:A ton of consciousness is squeezed into a very small space.
Guest:You can carry it the fuck around.
Guest:It's not that inconvenient.
Guest:It's a pretty efficient little artifact.
Guest:It just seems like a bad idea to put a book onto something that allows you to do something other than read that fucking book.
Guest:To have an additional place that you can...
Guest:scroll away from if you want.
Marc:And also to try and detach from the relationship we have with books.
Marc:I mean, I love fucking books.
Marc:I mean, look at these books.
Marc:Between me and you and everybody who listens to this, have I read half of them?
Marc:No.
Marc:Have I started most of them?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, but a lot of them, I'll just take books.
Marc:I mean, if people send me books, I don't care.
Marc:I just like having them around.
Marc:I'm comforted by them.
Marc:Some of them mean a lot to me.
Marc:But I love them.
Marc:But then there are those days where I look around and like, wouldn't it be great if none of this was here?
Marc:Blank slate.
Marc:Well, not just clutter.
Marc:What am I holding on to?
Marc:As we get older, what are you really holding on to?
Marc:What's going to happen to this shit?
Marc:Are they going to put it in a library as my book collection?
Marc:What is it really doing?
Marc:I haven't touched those books.
Marc:You pulled that Nazi doctor book off the shelf.
Marc:I don't remember the last time I touched that book.
Marc:But I like looking at it.
Marc:But it could all go away.
Marc:Don't you find that as you get older?
Guest:Yeah, but so what?
Guest:They take all the books away and then you're just like an old guy worrying about your prostate with a Kindle on your lap?
Guest:Isn't that everybody?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But the discussion about the creativity involved with writing, I mean, you're clearly a depressive dude.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'm a lifer.
Marc:But when you started out doing this, I mean, how much of the romantic, it sounds like probably when you were younger that you are living exactly your idea of what you were going to live.
Guest:Yeah, that's the kind of fucking plan ahead masochist I am.
Guest:Like, yeah.
Guest:Let me go about 20 years out, older, cholesterol's fucked, really cynical, self-judgmental still, plenty of doubt, and still going every day and doing something that I hate and hating myself while I'm doing it and then afterward.
Marc:Well, so what's the resolution?
Marc:Where's the book where you transcend your self-hatred?
Guest:Well, I have to say that there are occasional moments where, for instance, having written and knowing that I did battle and did well today.
Guest:It's rare for me, especially being in a trough right now creatively, but that's a good feeling.
Guest:And it's actually, to bring it around, this is what I talked about in the commencement speech.
Guest:I said to these graduating, little budding artists, MFA students, I said,
Guest:Do a better job than me of holding on to what you accomplished and how hard it is to go off in a room and make all the decisions that a writer has to make.
Guest:Because the thing you do, and it's true, I don't mean to simplify comedy, because when you're trying to come up with a routine, I know that must be excruciating.
Guest:You're trying to figure it out and you're really doing it in front of people oftentimes.
Guest:But you've gotten into a rhythm where you can do this.
Guest:You know how to just get straight to it with people in a room and then it's over in an hour and a half.
Guest:The writer has to sit there and go and churn through however many hours and hours and days and weeks and months of questioning his or her own decisions and being completely...
Guest:plagued by doubt and anxious and then having to turn that manuscript over to friends who are going to read it and worry about that and even worse to an agent yeah in fact just a pimp yeah trying to fucking sell it to an editor and that editor is interested maybe in and then they say things like i don't get it but we'll
Guest:We'll see what they say.
Guest:Could you put in an axe murderer and maybe some fellatio?
Guest:I mean, whatever they say is partly, and it's just their job as a patron, is partly trying to say, how can we monetize?
Guest:How can we sell this and make it successful?
Guest:And they're saying that in an environment where fewer and fewer people are reading.
Guest:Ironically, not because they don't need real emotion.
Guest:I think people are dying of loneliness and they're dying of inauthenticity.
Guest:They know that the species is fucked and nobody's telling the truth about it.
Guest:And so they gravitate towards those places where they feel like they're getting something other than complete bullshit.
Marc:Right, okay, so let's go there.
Guest:That's a great marketing tag, in other words.
Marc:Yeah, well, I actually think it is.
Guest:Steve Allman's book, Something Other Than Complete Bullshit.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think the idea now, because I'm assuming...
Marc:That when you say the species is fucked, you're not talking in necessarily an apocalyptic way.
Marc:Because I am of the mind that the species is fucked because of our need to function in our lives does not honor our inner voices at all.
Marc:That our need to pass...
Marc:and appear as an efficient cog in a relationship or a job or any sort of career trajectory does not honor exactly the voice that you're talking about, the why.
Marc:And, you know, I'm sad.
Marc:I'm in pain.
Marc:Am I good enough?
Marc:And all that stuff.
Marc:And it just seems that there are areas where people extract this emotion you're talking about because...
Marc:The emotion that one can engage with in a book that's well-written by a guy or a woman who is really crafting something, there's a context to it.
Marc:Whereas I think because of this immediacy you're talking about, that when you start to watch reality shows, when you start to watch even shows like Intervention, which despite myself, I find engaging and helpful.
Marc:And even stuff like I'm compulsively watching Chopped on the Food Channel.
Marc:Right.
Marc:is that people are engaging and experiencing this emotional enmeshment with these things because they don't know how to honor their inner life.
Marc:Now a good book will challenge somebody enough to identify as opposed to just consume emotion and mesh with that.
Guest:What I like to say, the word I like to use is a good piece of art, whether it's a movie or TV or books especially, they implicate the reader.
Guest:You're not just looking and observing the emotion and sort of, you know, looking down on these characters and maybe connecting a little bit to their hope.
Guest:But they're at a distance from you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, they're going to do dumb shit because it's reality TV.
Guest:And you know that they've absorbed all the tropes of scripted TV.
Guest:And they now, you know, they know who's going to be the villain and how to humiliate themselves.
Guest:And that's what the cameras want.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Basically.
Guest:how to actually empty out anything authentic in themselves and just fill themselves with the fucking tripe of Hollywood tropes that have been around for years.
Guest:Reality TV is so patently artificial at this point, it's just unbelievable.
Marc:But it's just interesting that I find that I used to, there's a certain energy that exists
Marc:in media, that there's only, reality shows, if they're dealing with real people, has this frenetic, almost sort of like, God, I'm glad I'm not that guy.
Marc:Or I identify with these struggles, but I'm still not that guy, and I may not even identify what's in myself that I'm relating to.
Marc:But then there's this other thing, which is genuine honesty and real struggle that isn't really represented in an embracing way in almost any medium.
Guest:To me, I feel like they could,
Guest:If I could get a hold of the master tapes of what's happening in Jersey Shore, for instance, I would choose a completely different set of video footage to air for a half an hour or 22 minutes, whatever it is.
Guest:Not the contrived, oh, hey, let's pour liquor down these mooks' fucking throats and see if they punch each other or show a tit.
Guest:But actually the moments where you can see how desperately bored and needy and lost these people are and how hard they are trying to find something authentic, find some real drama.
Marc:So that's how the species is in trouble.
Guest:Well, how do you address the lack of authenticity?
Guest:Well, what I would say is it doesn't just have to do with authenticity.
Guest:It has to do with if I can't recognize my own sorrow and acknowledge it and just sit with it and recognize you're not going to be able to recognize the suffering of other people.
Marc:So empathy is being annihilated because of the narcissistic culture.
Guest:Yeah, all right.
Guest:But I would say that, yeah, I guess.
Guest:I mean, that sounds a little bit declamatory, but yeah, okay.
Guest:That's a pretty good summary of it, that good art is intended, good writing, good art of any sort is intended to make people feel more than they did before.
Guest:so that they are unable to start treating immigrants to this country or people in the developing world or sick children, any of the other people we shit on every day in the political world.
Guest:If people felt more, if they could imagine the suffering of other people, they just wouldn't do that.
Guest:We wouldn't have a whole crazy kleptomaniac, sociopathic right wing in this country because there would be...
Guest:Everybody else would say, that's actually criminally insane behavior.
Guest:Everybody you're talking about is a person.
Guest:You just happen to have been born lucky, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Or they would look at the environmental ruin that's happening and say, you know what?
Guest:The people who are really smart recognize that we're fucked if we don't reverse things immediately and start living in a slightly less convenient way and find solutions that our big brains allow us to come to if we'll just be patient and agree to inconvenience ourselves a little bit for a second.
Marc:All right, so knowing that, because I know that as well, and I spent a couple years speaking to that, speaking against not only the right wing, but just a type of self-involvement that manifests itself as apathy that is our culture.
Marc:More than politics, when it comes down to individuals, as I said before, what people are managing is really their emotions in the sense that they don't want to experience them.
Marc:So they're shutting shit off in order to function in the culture that we've created.
Marc:And I think that the culture of convenience that you talked about becomes almost a way of it retards us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I was walking around this this resort area that we that this MFA was in and I it was literally filled with, you know, 20 somethings scantily dressed, you know, all tanned and muscled up and titted up.
Guest:And.
Guest:I was like, oh my God, I'm moving through a body culture.
Guest:These people are all about hormones and bodies and they are about complete abnegation of anything that's really happening inside them.
Guest:Anything we could call existential where they think, why am I here?
Guest:What makes me happy?
Guest:How am I going to find love?
Guest:How am I not going to fuck it up?
Guest:All the big essential questions that people ask.
Guest:should be asking if they want to really take advantage of the 80 years or so, if they're lucky, they have on Earth.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So isn't the real risk then, because we assume as sort of old school thinkers and fans of existential struggle, that these things are inherently human, which they are.
Marc:All literature and art and culture indicates that these struggles are ever present.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That we're just designed that way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it seems to me that outside of environmental disasters and political...
Marc:genocide or whatever you want to call it, that there is a real risk that if the adaptation of the human being to the age of convenience and shallowness continues at its current pace, that those will no longer be elements of concern.
Guest:That the expectation will be different.
Guest:What I said to these students also was, look,
Guest:uh our job is we're sunk as a species if we cannot engage with acts of imagination we're just dead because our central job isn't to like banish the wicked or uh you know take care of of the sick or preserve liberty or any of that other bullshit it's just to imagine the suffering of other people
Guest:So that even if we're not suffering, everybody collectively agrees we got to take care of things.
Guest:We got to take care of all the stuff where people end up getting hurt.
Guest:Because you can actually imagine that some, I mean, how do we become different from animals?
Guest:At a certain point, we develop the capacity to imagine possible bad outcomes and avoid them, figure out ways to avoid them.
Guest:Global warming is the biggest example.
Guest:But also, we develop the capacity to recognize that we love people.
Guest:And if somebody dies, they should be mourned.
Guest:And if somebody's sick, we should care for them.
Guest:And if somebody has less than we have, then we should share with them all the basic shit that Christ was peddling before the Romans made their big business decision.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That stuff is, and we're trying to build it into all our holy texts and so forth.
Guest:But are we living like the Romans right now or what, dude?
Guest:Well, no.
Marc:kill christ we would nail him to the cross so fucking fast yeah we just do it on twitter he's a homeless socialist fucking exactly we would we would well that's the interesting thing is that as interconnected as we all are with this great machine of convenience and this great culture of interconnectivity through uh through technology is that we've never been more selfish and there and lost and
Marc:and lonely and atomized.
Marc:But the thing is, is that once you start talking in these absolute terms about what is right and what is wrong and how we should behave, that there's also a part of the individual who's already sitting around going, well, it's not in my yard, so how does it really concern me?
Marc:It's not raining shit yet, but it is actually.
Marc:but it really has nothing to do with my immediate life.
Marc:It's one of the reasons why I pulled out of partisan politics bickering, is that the amount of input I get from talking freely here about my own sadness and frustration
Marc:and feeling marginalized from the culture you're talking about.
Marc:I get a lot of email from people who were like, I thought I was alone.
Marc:You got me through a dark time.
Marc:I never thought about it like that.
Guest:In other words, you're getting emails from people who are the people who are hungry for some authentic voice of compassion.
Guest:We could say on the left, fuck it.
Guest:Just in the culture, some voice of compassion and authenticity that says, we are destroying ourselves as a species.
Guest:Your own grandchildren and kids are fucked if we don't figure out a way
Marc:to solve certain basic problems let me ask you a question let me ask you a question and you know and i agree with what you're saying and and i'm sorry i don't mean to be didactic i just get upset about no but but but i try to address this stuff i mean a very conscious decision to try to address this stuff you know directly what what do i do right and not you know like what do i think should be done right or or or what am i saying what am i living up to it how
Marc:Not even that, as opposed to just paying lip service and stuff, is that there's a moment where, and I'm just recently, really in the last year, getting in touch with my own empathy and any sort of attempt at selflessness that is genuine.
Marc:Because that's a tall order for a person.
Marc:And it takes a unique person to have that innately.
Marc:There are some people that do that.
Marc:Some people are genuinely nurturing, and some people don't think about it.
Guest:And the rest of us have fucked up families.
Marc:Yeah, and also, but the rest of us, if you're smart enough or you are looking at it as a shortcoming, are pathologizing everything.
Marc:Everything is pathologized.
Marc:There's codependency, there's this, there's enabling, there's addiction, there's all these other problems that everything can become pathologized.
Marc:And that, in a lot of ways, as helpful as it is, really insulates the self even more.
Marc:So what I'm asking myself is that feeling of giving,
Marc:Or that feeling of allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to actually be there emotionally for somebody else.
Marc:Maybe even someone you don't know is an overwhelming and almost frightening moment for some people.
Marc:You're dealing with a lot more people who are like, I don't know who I am.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:Like, I feel sad.
Marc:My dog is sick.
Marc:I wish I could help that guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, and within within you go three more steps down, whatever I was just doing and you're depressed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you're overwhelmed with the sort of anxiety.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So how do you you connect those two and make it genuine?
Marc:That's the struggle.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And and not to make some sort of hackneyed.
Marc:uh transition in the conversation i mean i i wish well for people but even as a person that has the same concerns you do there there has to be a point where like i'm doing this in my life and on some level it's the most i can do and even with a platform if i was to sit here and say we got to do something about the fucking hole in the ozone
Marc:We got to do something about the ice.
Marc:I'm losing polar bears every day.
Marc:Right now, a polar bear is gasping for air, and I love polar bears.
Marc:I mean, maybe a few people will listen to that, but I don't think it's going to facilitate change.
Marc:Whereas, if I can be honest with my own struggles with this, like I said the other day, I don't know why I said it, but everybody should just be nice to an old person in a non-condescending way.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Once this week.
Guest:Yeah, they're a lot smarter.
Guest:They've gone through more than we have.
Guest:But you also have figured out that the best thing you can do and what you do do is be genuine about whatever's going on in your life in one space a couple of times a week in a way that other people can plug into and feel great relief in doing so because they're like, oh, finally, a zone of somebody wrestling with what's going on in this particular way.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, the thing that, and I think it speaks to what we're talking about in terms of music is like last night I was melancholy because I was thinking about music, actually.
Marc:You speak a little bit to it in the book that there's a fine line between being nostalgic and being melancholy, that there's a time travel element to music and how it captures emotions and frames them and frames a moment in your life and holds it in your memory
Marc:that uh that i rely on yeah so there are those moments where it's like i was a different person when i was 15 yeah and then when i was 20 and then when i was 25 and all of those are marked by music and it like to the to the point where it's like my identity or what i was struggling with is revealed in these moments and you can feel it in your body when you hear certain songs
Guest:That's why classic rock exists, and you can slag it all you want, but the boys are back in town, you hear that song from me, I'm like, fucking Thin Lizzy, man, there it is.
Guest:My fucking brother might have some pot, and I might fucking finger a girl.
Guest:You're right back there.
Guest:And that's why I can't get rid of any of my CDs.
Guest:So just all their time machines.
Guest:I'm like, are you crazy?
Guest:That's a time machine.
Guest:It cost me five 99.
Guest:And in 1989, it's a time machine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that power of that is that, you know, cause this morning I became more nostalgic and, and, and it also goes into what you're talking about before is that, you know, what has my life been made out of, you know, who am I as a person?
Marc:What defines me?
Marc:And in those moments is that you can actually map your evolution.
Marc:Now, if you're still sitting there,
Marc:saying this is the best music ever made and I don't listen to anything else, then somehow you've stopped it.
Marc:Like maybe I'll finger a girl.
Marc:But I can sort of mark my personal evolution at those moments in my life where people have said, have you heard this?
Marc:And I'm like, what the fuck is that?
Marc:And then you bring that thing home and you're like, I'm on another planet, man.
Guest:Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I mean, it was funny because I'm thinking about this in relation to Pardo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, you know, I've talked with Pardo.
Guest:I mean, that guy, it's almost like performance art, his take on music.
Guest:He is so deeply into Chicago and so unaware that there's any other way of being than being deeply into Chicago.
Guest:The band Chicago?
Guest:Yeah, the band, not the city, the band Chicago.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:But not even, it's not like...
Guest:it's like there's some amazing uh miraculous force field around him that is completely impervious to the idea that chicago would be held up for any kind of ridicule he's he just has no idea at all it's all about early satira early chicago late chicago every day is saturday in the park he's so on it for him like punk rock is like jimmy buffett like
Guest:Oh, that's just crazy.
Guest:What is that guy doing?
Guest:That's just those chord changes.
Guest:But I want to be careful not to, like, Pardo's quite happy with his music.
Guest:I see him in his fucking, you know, in his Trans Am playing in Chicago.
Guest:I don't want to get down on him for about that.
Guest:You know, I agree that, I mean, I'm troubled by the fact that people haven't found the artists that I think are the important, great, just they will move you.
Marc:That's a great part of the book is the relationship stuff.
Marc:What do you call it in there?
Marc:The point where you are either playing music to get laid, but then once you get into a relationship, the sort of campaign against their music and for your music, and you can't let that shit go.
Marc:If they like something that you don't like, you're like, really?
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I was, I was with one of the more beautiful women that I've ever been allowed to be around with, uh, you know, court permission.
Guest:And, uh, she, she, she just started playing air supply.
Guest:And I was like, now, you know, in retrospect, she probably meant it a little bit ironically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was just such a fuck up and so self-absorbed and so determined to ruin anything that might bring me genuine happiness that I needed her to be listening to it and that to be an index that she was really not right for me.
Guest:But I was like, I can't do it.
Guest:I can't do it.
Guest:I'm lying alone with my head on a phone.
Guest:I can't get there.
Guest:Her myths, her sexual myths, her ideas of passion and relationships...
Guest:If they are in any way represented by air supply, we are headed to divorce court.
Guest:We're never even going to get there.
Guest:We're going to kill each other on the way.
Guest:But I don't like being that kind of judgmental asshole.
Guest:I hate music criticism, or I don't hate it, but I mistrust most of it.
Guest:Even Lester?
Guest:No, not Lester, because because he was writing exactly what I'm interested in.
Marc:I just recently, dude, like literally I was late to the fucking party on a lot of shit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And and once I got introduced to it, like I mean, what the first Stooges album came out in 69.
Marc:So we're talking like it wasn't until I read Please Kill Me, which was within the last 15 years that I was like, you know, I miss this because I wasn't old enough and I was programmed by by hippies and I was programmed by hippie radio.
Marc:they're so good at programming yeah and i was i was a stones guy but i was also a dead guy and i got the basics of r b dead yeah well that came a little later i wasn't a heavy dead guy but but i also there was a few people in my life that you know there was that one guy that turned me on to the residence and fred frith and brian eno and that changed the whole game right and then there was the kid who i knew who did the beatles sing and then some dude old dude said let me give you two or three r b mixtapes so i got otis and everything else
Marc:And then early on, my dad gave me Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.
Marc:So I had a good bass.
Marc:You had a good bass.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's a good bass.
Marc:But then when I finally started, even when the first Guns N' Roses album came out, I missed it.
Marc:And so I've had to come back.
Marc:I've had to back into this stuff.
Marc:All those things to me were I had to understand why.
Marc:Lester Bangs, that's why.
Marc:Within the last two years, man, I read his piece on Astral Weeks.
Marc:And I was not a Van Morrison guy.
Marc:I found him annoying.
Marc:Could not listen to it.
Marc:Did not want to hear Moon Dance Again or Wild Nights.
Marc:I liked Brown Eyed Girl when I was younger, and I still love that song.
Marc:But then I read, someone sent me that piece on Astro Weeks, and I'm like, fuck, I've got to reckon with this.
Marc:And I did, and then for like three weeks, it was all that was going.
Marc:And now it's in place.
Marc:Now I can speak to Van Morrison.
Marc:I don't have to listen to him every day, but it opened another part of my brain up.
Guest:Good music criticism.
Guest:can do that but it doesn't do it by sending the message this is really cool music and you'll be cool if you listen to it yeah it somehow is able to and I don't know if I was able to successfully compel people to listen to the you know musicians in the book who I dig but I definitely think it's done through telling stories and personal revelation more than through the kind of bullshit celebrity coverage or the super snobby music criticism with all the stupid adjectives jangly blah blah blah and all their stupid I can't read it
Marc:I mean, I don't, you know, and I just don't.
Marc:But I did, my second wife was a metalhead.
Marc:I mean, genuine metalhead.
Marc:Like my wife.
Marc:Yeah, a lot younger than me.
Marc:You know, grew up, you know, Metallica was all about fucking Ozzy and Metallica and everything that came from there.
Marc:And that was nowhere in my wheelhouse.
Guest:Yeah, that's tough.
Guest:I would think it would be, I would think it would be tough to be like, all right, so you just want to fucking rock to some Queensryche and then we're going to make sweet love.
Guest:But I have ACDC.
Guest:I have ACDC in my wheelhouse.
Guest:So could you go to that place or did you want to go to...
Marc:it's just like i got i kind of got a blues bass cock right you know so like an ac dc still i know that because i have the album blues bass cock by the mark maron band i love it i love i love the single i love all the you know it needs to come from there but like you know with things like metallica and you know but sabbath i i could get sabbath and i can i can listen it's gotta have a little genuine blackness in it gotta swing so
Marc:Something's got to swing.
Marc:I can't just be... But I did go.
Marc:I went to concerts with her.
Marc:I went to see Iron Maiden.
Marc:God, that's love.
Marc:So I was able to make that concession and actually try to embrace it.
Marc:But I think your description of fandom, and I think it's important to... There was a couple points in the book where... Were you ever a musician?
Guest:No.
Guest:Ineptly, like, you know, learned piano a little bit, but never to the point where I actually understood the language and started speaking the magic, crazy, shaman language of music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:Yeah, you're just a fan.
Guest:Just a fan.
Guest:I mean, look, 99% of people are just fans.
Guest:Of something.
Guest:Well, of something, but specifically when you're talking about music, the people who are fanatical music people, there's some...
Guest:people who played in a college band whatever didn't work uh my wife whatever that whole died dream thing but most people just don't just fucking love music and every the every single person has some sweet spot whatever it is for pardo yeah it's it's it's the early chicago it's the terra it's the magic
Marc:It's also just funny that, like, what I was thinking about before you came over was that, you know, when that wife left me, there was a, you know, I put together these, you know, playlists.
Marc:Oh, yeah, the mixtapes.
Marc:The Heartbreak playlist.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, it was a weird sort of collection of things.
Marc:There was that Maria McKee song from Pulp Fiction, which is great.
Marc:She's got a powerful voice, some slim harpo.
Guest:She, too, has a blues bass cock.
Marc:Yeah, no doubt.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Slim Harpo was on there, but it was my choice of these things.
Marc:And it wasn't for me to wallow in my heartbreak, but it was for me to feel the sadness and move through it with a certain relief.
Marc:And I went on a date with some chick
Marc:And I'm playing these songs in the car.
Guest:Hoping, yeah.
Marc:But she knew right away.
Marc:She was like, I know what this is, man.
Marc:I know what's happening in here.
Marc:I mean, this is a fucking heartbreak mixtape.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I don't know if you're ready to be dating.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:She felt it.
Guest:She sniffed it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Isn't that fucking insane?
Guest:Yeah, you're like, that's great.
Guest:You're too insightful to be involved with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Will you just fuck me, though, so I can get the relief that could come?
Marc:How'd that work out?
Marc:It worked for a little while.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:She got mad at me.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And what are you going to do?
Guest:That's what happens.
Guest:That's what happens.
Guest:Then you get to have the breakup and make another tape.
Guest:But that's, the book is really, all it's trying to say to ham-handedly connect it with the rants we were talking earlier is music is there essentially to allow people to reach emotions inside themselves that are not accessible by other means.
Guest:Bingo.
Guest:That's what it's, and to me as a writer, sitting there in my room with my ancient fucking runes,
Guest:It is miraculous because it is immediate, it's emotional, it's physical, it happens.
Guest:As the music is being made, you're experiencing the art.
Marc:It's magic because it's repeatable magic.
Marc:That's the most baffling thing.
Marc:Like joke writing, that's a trick.
Marc:Music is fucking magic.
Marc:And writing is magic too because poetry you can read over and over again.
Marc:But there's something about it.
Guest:music but but comedy don't undersell comedy because i mean growing up i would listen to uh you know richard pryor mostly richard pryor but you know i would listen to those albums again and again i would listen to those routines again and again i mean you know good the good stuff yeah you want to plug back into it yeah yeah and and that is the amazing thing about uh about music is like you know i i can tell now if i get a new album because i'm always on the hunt for new dope
Guest:Like, I'm like, okay, I've got like 10 listens on this where it's just gonna fucking kill me.
Guest:I'm just gonna be like, yes, it's the heroin is working.
Guest:And then I know it's gonna tail off.
Guest:So I preserve it.
Guest:Oh yeah, no, you gotta.
Guest:You gotta like stretch it out a little bit.
Guest:When I was a kid, it'd just be like, hit me again, hit me again.
Guest:I know, find a fucking...
Guest:It ain't on my toe.
Guest:That's fine.
Guest:But now I'm like, okay, I know that this is going to make a super big impact.
Guest:And then- Can I put it away?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now once I know all the things and what's coming, it's not as exciting anymore.
Guest:It's like love.
Guest:It's always exciting the first time.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Or the first few times.
Marc:It reminds me of this moment I had with- I was at Louis C.K.
Marc:'s house years ago.
Marc:It was probably the early 90s, maybe.
Marc:And that tape had just been, it was before YouTube and everything else, but there was that tape going on around of that evangelist, Robert Tilton, that someone had put fart sounds into, like he's very facial, so it was just this tape of, you know, different, a montage of him making these faces was like, right.
Marc:And the first time he showed it to me, we were hysterical.
Marc:And then he took it out and he's like, I gotta put this away.
Marc:And I'm like, why?
Marc:He goes, because I don't want to lose this magic.
Marc:I don't,
Marc:It's true, man.
Marc:But that is something that you don't experience with drugs because you don't put that shit away.
Guest:But it stops feeling good.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:And that's a sad moment when that song just doesn't fucking lift up.
Marc:I've had that recently, too, with that first or maybe the second Kings of Leon album and a couple of other where I'm just like, I just pound it out and just keep going.
Marc:And you're so happy when the magic.
Marc:ACDC's been very consistent for a certain mood.
Guest:dirty deeds done dirty man you can still listen to that record or all the early ones black yeah all the early ones but well let me ask you i'm not going to put you on the spot but did you listen to any of the artists from the book because i think ike reilly would kill you i think he would knock you out i just i haven't gotten any ike reilly i gotta get it dude just make me a promise do me a solid get salesman and racist get the record sales all right i'm gonna go didn't you do it here's a playlist it's even almond.com
Guest:stevenalm.com there's a playlist and you can just even listen to commie drives a nova on that but if you like the stooges what i'm hearing the different influences that is a record that's in your roundhouse i mean that is just fucking american music it's celtic it's hip-hop it's blues it's punk it's all that shit it's the clash all of it just slammed together in the clash of british all your fucking music head fans gonna be like the clash of british are not american my way
Marc:All right, so now if I don't get as much out of it as you just explained.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:Are we going to be all right?
Guest:It's like with my daughter.
Guest:I just want you to have a no thank you bite.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's all I need from you.
Guest:Put it in your head.
Guest:Run it around the head a little bit.
Guest:Just a no thank you bite.
Guest:You don't have to like it, but I just have a feeling that you would.
Marc:Okay, I'll do it.
Marc:I mean, I'm definitely open to new music and I don't.
Guest:I should have made you a mix.
Marc:Well, I can get it.
Marc:But are you finding as you get older that it's harder to put more new music in your head?
Guest:Are you okay?
Guest:No?
Guest:I need even more.
Guest:Yeah, because as you can tell, I'm just angry and depressed all the time.
Guest:Did you used to do drugs?
Guest:No.
Guest:You were not that guy?
Guest:I could never.
Guest:Suburban variety depressive.
Guest:I could never work up the chops to get that's truly self-destructive.
Guest:I felt terrible about it.
Guest:But what are you going to do?
Marc:Wow, your parents did a good job.
Guest:They're both psychoanalysts.
Guest:Are they really?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my mom just wrote an incredible book about women's fears of giving birth to monsters.
Marc:Really?
Marc:That is a personal endorsement.
Marc:You mean a real monster, just a damaged?
Guest:Women's fears of literally giving birth to monsters and their fears of birth as a monstrous process and the fear that their babies are gonna be in some way or another monstrous.
Marc:That's pretty deep.
Guest:Yeah, very deep.
Guest:And your dad's a therapist too?
Guest:Yeah, he's a psychoanalyst too.
Marc:So you were one of those fucking kids?
Marc:I only knew one other person that had two parents of shrinks.
Marc:My first wife's father was a shrink.
Guest:Can I congratulate you for not being the first person on God's fucking green earth to not say, oh, your parents are psychoanalysts in whatever cool way you would do it.
Guest:You absolutely did not say the thing that every fucking person says.
Guest:thank you you didn't give like oh well you must fucking stick crazy shit up your ass and fantasize about doing your mom i mean like every single person who i talked to where i mentioned this will immediately have this weird counterphobic reaction of saying you must be crazy just like the fireman's kid is a pyro it's not been my experience i i mean the the real amazing thing is is that you you didn't go into that and
Guest:But I think in my own way, I'm trying.
Guest:I mean, you know, I hear it.
Guest:You know, I go in when I'm writing especially short stories, but even like rock and roll save your life.
Guest:That book is an effort to kind of interrogate my own like what you would be doing lying down on the couch.
Marc:But what what is this depression thing?
Marc:Because I mean, I mean, is it something you're romanticizing or is it something that you really battle with?
Guest:uh no i'm i never romanticize it what i would say is it's been a little bit of a tough stretch and there are people who have it far worse like i'm not a capital d depressive i don't take you know medication to try and regulate it right i just uh when i'm when i'm up against you know how it is in a creative career
Guest:There are times where you just feel like, I can't do it.
Guest:I don't have it.
Guest:I'm not big enough.
Guest:I can't make it happen.
Guest:And you just have a sense of dread and feel doomed to failure.
Guest:But it doesn't plague me all the time.
Marc:I once wrote this line where I do it sometimes on stage where I say, in most cases, the only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, honestly, that's the thing about comedy that is... It's the reason that my books, I guess, are considered comic, is that comedy is basically the way that you forgive your own grief.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Well, think about it.
Guest:I mean, what you do... A good joke is always...
Guest:Something painful.
Guest:The biggest fucking laugh is the most painful thing.
Guest:If you took away the fact that the comedian can say it for all of us and just had it transcribed on a piece of paper, most jokes would sound deeply sad and depressing.
Guest:I mean, that's what's happening with a good comedy routine.
Guest:You know, they're all about Richard Pryor, all of Richard Pryor's stuff.
Guest:Heartbreaking.
Guest:Heartbreaking.
Guest:but the comedy is the act of forgiveness.
Guest:The comedy is the thing that allows him to actually say it and acknowledge it.
Marc:That's what it really is because the pain of being human, and this is the one thing that is really difficult, and I learned it much later than most people, because people would say the real transition to be a grownup is realizing your limitations, but what is more painful than really realizing that
Marc:not only are you not entitled to everything, but that a lot of things, if not most, aren't gonna work out.
Marc:And I think that is the key to the empathy you're talking about, is being able to understand that life is disappointing, it's difficult, and it's heartbreaking for fucking everybody.
Marc:And that doesn't mean that you should have the opinion of like, well, I'm just trying to fucking deal with my shit.
Marc:That that should be the thing that connects us.
Guest:Yeah, and I mean, honestly, I think that in its best moments, I mean, that's the reason art exists, whether it's comedic art or whether it's literary art or musical art or whatever.
Guest:That's the place where the fucking paintings in Lascaux, you know, why did somebody feel the need to do that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:some effort to say to the world, I'm here, I'm feeling, I'm feeling something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or maybe you're feeling the same fucking thing.
Guest:I don't know, but I'm feeling it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, let's see, let's see if this hits you where it, where it hurts, but also elevates your, your humanity.
Marc:Let's see if it hits you in the blues bass cock.
Marc:Let's put it right there.
Marc:All right, Steve Allman.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:That was Steve Almond.
Marc:His new book, as I said, God Bless America, a collection of stories out around now, soon this week maybe.
Marc:God, I should do my research.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get yourself some Just Coffee at JustCoffee.coop or link to that over at WTFPod.com.
Marc:I will be in San Francisco next week at the Punchline, November 2nd through 5th.
Marc:doing that thing that I do, the comedy thing.
Marc:I'll be at the Neptune Theater November 25th of this month.
Marc:Looking forward to that.
Marc:What else have I got to tell you?
Marc:Go get on the mailing list.
Marc:I do that.
Marc:I email you.
Marc:I will email you every week if you get on my email list.
Marc:If you need an episode guide, that's there.
Marc:Get yourself some apps.
Marc:Get an app.
Marc:iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Droid.
Marc:Do all that.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:This has gotten bigger than me.
Marc:It's gotten bigger than me.
Marc:Compensatory narcissistic personality disorder.
Marc:Yeah, thanks for that, buddy.
Marc:Thanks for sending me that.
Marc:Good times.
you