Episode 249 - Jimmy Kimmel
Guest:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark maron
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck ups?
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:I'm back in the garage.
Marc:I feel like I've only been home a couple days in the last couple weeks.
Marc:I just got back from Boston.
Marc:Boston, Massachusetts.
Marc:Mac!
Guest:Hey, Mac!
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:You know who you are.
Marc:Jimmy Kimmel is on the show today, and I'm going to be on his show tonight.
Marc:It's not a simulcast, but he's here on my show today, and I'm on his show tonight.
Marc:I will be at Sketchfest in San Francisco this weekend.
Marc:I'm going to do plugs, people.
Marc:And I said to my girlfriend, Jessica, I said, oh, man, there's so many plugs.
Marc:And she said, at least they're not on your head.
Marc:Good call.
Marc:Sometimes when I do advertising or when I plug myself, you do realize, folks, that this show is free.
Marc:Every episode is free forever.
Marc:for six months.
Marc:The most recent 50 episodes are free.
Marc:You gotta let me try to make a little money without being too judgmental.
Marc:But I'm gonna plug myself here.
Marc:I will be at San Francisco at Sketch Fest.
Marc:Go to their website, sfsketchfest.com.
Marc:But I'm gonna do a bunch of shows up there.
Marc:On February 3rd, I'm doing a storytelling show at 8.
Marc:I'm doing a live WTF up there at Cobbs with Jeff Bolt, Pete Holmes, Will Durst, Lorraine Newman, and Arden Mirren.
Marc:February 4th, I'm doing stand-up with Jen Kirkman at Cobbs, and I'll also be doing the Bring the Rock show, so I'm going to sing again.
Marc:Thinking about doing a Blaster song.
Marc:So that'll be fun.
Marc:That's a lot of stuff to do.
Marc:Did I mention Jimmy Kimmel's on the show?
Marc:I'd like to thank all the what-the-fuckers for coming out to the shows at the Wilbur in Boston.
Marc:They were great shows.
Marc:Had a great time.
Marc:Thank you for hanging out.
Marc:Thank you for saying hi.
Marc:Thank you for the cookies.
Marc:Holy shit, major bake sale in the Marin Hotel room the night after that show.
Marc:Man, that was crazy.
Marc:Someone made me these peanut butter cookies with Hershey Kisses in the middle that were insane.
Marc:Usually I just eat a couple of them.
Marc:We're going to put up the live WTF from Boston with Tony V, Mike Donovan, Frank Santorelli, Jimmy Tingle, and Ken Rogerson this Thursday.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And the live comedy show was great, too.
Marc:I don't even know what else to say.
Marc:I'm humbled and grateful that y'all came and that it was a good show because it's weird for me.
Marc:It's weird for me to go back to Boston because I was there a long time and I had this realization that sometimes if you lived in a place where you went through some shit is sort of like seeing an ex-girlfriend.
Marc:In a way, because I haven't talked to this city in a while.
Marc:I went through some serious shit there, but I could never quite understand my resistance to going back to Boston.
Marc:And if you think about it, how about I'll think about it?
Marc:If I think about it, I spent five years undergraduate in college there.
Marc:I left for about a year and a half and I went back and started doing comedy there.
Marc:Those are some of the roughest, most difficult, most emotionally traumatic years of my life.
Marc:I mean, so many firsts.
Marc:Happened in Boston.
Marc:My first minor sexually transmitted disease, of course, Boston.
Marc:That would be crabs.
Marc:That was a very exciting month.
Marc:The first time I fell in love for reals, Boston.
Marc:That was a disaster.
Marc:The first time I failed on stage.
Marc:The first time I tripped on acid.
Marc:The first time I did a real play.
Marc:The first time I wrote poetry in earnest.
Marc:The first time my heart was broken.
Marc:I went there.
Marc:An open minded, frightened, sensitive person.
Marc:I left there, you know, angry, alcoholic and just furious at the world.
Marc:That was my college education.
Marc:And then I go back.
Marc:And I start doing comedy there.
Marc:And most of the history that I don't know if you've experienced this, but most of the history of my past in Boston has just been erased.
Marc:Kenmore Square, not there.
Marc:The Ratsko are not there.
Marc:Most of the rock clubs, not there.
Marc:It's just been sterilized.
Marc:I can't walk around and go, oh, this is where I threw up that time.
Marc:This is where we used to eat pizza.
Marc:Remember, we could get pictures here.
Marc:Remember, it's gone.
Marc:They're all gone.
Marc:It's gone.
Marc:And then I start to think about, well, how important is it all really?
Marc:the college years.
Marc:I mean, they're so far away now.
Marc:Things start to fade.
Marc:Things start to lose their relevance.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:If I can remember last week, everything's a big blur.
Marc:It's a big smear on the calendar.
Marc:Faces coming out of the past.
Marc:Hey man, remember me?
Marc:I don't, but I'll pretend like I do so I don't hurt your feelings.
Marc:Would that be okay?
Marc:My brain at this age has gotten to the point where I've lived in four cities, some of them twice over a 20, 25 year period.
Marc:If someone comes out of the crowd and says, look at, do you remember me?
Marc:I'll look at that face and then I try to put it in context.
Marc:I try to sync it up with the city, with the period, with the phase of my life.
Marc:Who are they?
Marc:How did they fit in?
Marc:It's a little scary.
Marc:The amazing thing is all it takes is one person that you completely recognize that will act as a portal into that period in your life.
Marc:This woman showed up at the merch table after the show in Boston.
Marc:I knew immediately who she was.
Marc:I was like, Judy.
Marc:And this was a woman that lived in the house that I lived in freshman year college.
Marc:When I went to Curry College, it was called the Greenhouse.
Marc:It was the art dorm.
Marc:And right when I saw her, everything came rushing back.
Marc:My weird Colombian roommate named Pedro, who thought he was a composer, who spent a lot of time putting ping pong balls into the back of pianos and then hitting keys and letting the balls bounce around and thinking he was John Cage.
Marc:And there was a woman that he was sleeping with named Lauren, who I had a crush on, but I didn't have any confidence.
Marc:I didn't know how to get laid.
Marc:So I would just lay in my bed and there was only a curtain separating our two rooms because it was a house.
Marc:So I'd listen to her.
Marc:And him fucking, well, I just laid there, you know, with a crush on the girl who was getting laid in the next room by my roommate who I didn't really get along with because I thought he was silly.
Marc:And me just trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, running around with a camera thinking I was a photographer, hanging out with my buddy Jim who was angry about the Vietnam War.
Marc:All of this happened and just came back in a rush of one woman saying hello.
Marc:Just a horrible...
Marc:Beautiful Proustian rush of sexual failure and frustration.
Marc:Sweeping with women who were pretty sure they were gay but just needed to check.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Yeah, Boston.
Marc:But it was good to go back.
Marc:I'm proud to say that me and my ex...
Marc:which would be Boston.
Marc:We went through a lot, but we had some of the best makeup sex I've ever had.
Marc:And we did it twice.
Marc:And it was fucking awesome.
Marc:You lost some wine.
Marc:Oh, you've got Nicorette going there, huh?
Marc:Well, I'm always on Nicorette.
Marc:I haven't smoked in 10 years.
Marc:Delicious.
Marc:Yeah, I love it.
Marc:You smoke?
Marc:No.
Marc:Aren't you supposed to give Nicorette up eventually?
Marc:No, that's the idea, but they forgot that there's people like me that will just keep eating it.
Marc:It's just candy with a little extra.
Marc:I bet they didn't forget.
Marc:I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
Marc:But you lost weight.
Marc:Did you lose weight?
Marc:I did lose weight, yeah.
Marc:See, because I don't know how you did it, but I'm doing that four-hour diet thing.
Marc:What is that?
Marc:The four-hour body thing.
Guest:Is that a real thing?
Marc:It's a real thing.
Marc:It's a lunatic's diet.
Marc:Steve Ferris, he wrote a book.
Marc:There's a lot of weirdness in it.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Tell me about it.
Marc:Well, all I know is I didn't read the book because I don't need that shit.
Marc:I don't do math.
Marc:I'm not, you know, just tell me what I can and can't eat.
Marc:Is there a website I can punch it into?
Marc:And I do it.
Marc:So I got that.
Marc:But then I looked at the book and there was an entire chapter on how to fuck for a long time at the end.
Marc:So it's a different kind of diet.
Marc:It's a full body experience.
Marc:It's actually perfecting the machine.
Marc:Does that appeal to you at all?
Marc:Well, the end part does, I guess.
Marc:What's the four hour?
Marc:It's not four hours of fucking, is it?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I didn't go there.
Marc:I said, why is there a fucking chapter in my fucking diet?
Marc:Maybe it was in there by mistake.
Marc:No, no, it's on purpose.
Marc:What does this guy look like?
Marc:He's weird, man.
Marc:He's done other podcasts.
Marc:I don't like when people have like a sexuality you find out about.
Marc:No, I don't know what he's up to.
Marc:I just know that in order to make the diet, he stuck a glucose meter into his stomach, like surgically, and monitored what he ate in order to see how fat burns.
Marc:So he's a fucking lunatic.
Marc:But this was my cheat day.
Marc:This is what I'm coming around to.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You stay on the diet for six days, and then you get a cheat day where you can eat whatever the fuck you want.
Marc:And I didn't push you on below today.
Guest:You didn't?
Marc:No, I didn't.
Marc:I ate ice cream for breakfast.
Marc:I had a muffin.
Okay.
Marc:It's not too late, by the way.
Marc:There's plenty of time to eat.
Marc:I've still got four hours.
Marc:I've got to host an alternative show at The Laugh Factor.
Marc:You know what?
Guest:Does it cut off?
Guest:Is it midnight sharp?
Marc:I give myself 24 hours from when I woke up.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That's what I would do.
Marc:So I can just stay up all night and shove shit in my face?
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:How did you lose weight?
Guest:The regular weight?
Guest:Kind of the regular weight.
Guest:We're here in my office now, and you see those machines I have right there?
Guest:Those sous vide machines?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, what I do is they're like kind of warm water baths, and I make fish in them.
Guest:I have fish sealed in plastic, and I put the fish in it, and I eat the same thing every single day.
Guest:That's how you do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's how people say you should do it.
Marc:And then I eat a chocolate bar afterwards.
Guest:I have a whole bunch of chocolate bars.
Marc:What the hell?
Marc:I eat a piece of fish in a chocolate bar.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So it's a piece of fish.
Marc:I just pictured there were whole fish in a warm water bath that you killed.
Marc:I eat a whole aquarium full of fish.
Marc:You kill with these machines.
Marc:And then you just take it out.
Marc:Well, they have to be fresh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what do you mean you put a piece of fish?
Marc:Tropical fish are the most delicious fish.
Guest:People don't eat them because they're so beautiful, but they're crunchy.
Guest:They're great.
Guest:And they're delicious.
Marc:And you've got to eat a lot, though.
Marc:A lot.
Marc:There's a lot.
Guest:Yeah, you've got to eat a lot of them.
Marc:And if you get a lot of different kinds, a variety of colors on your plate is wonderful, isn't it?
Marc:They consider me their Hitler.
Marc:Yeah, I bet.
Marc:So you got everything up here, actually.
Guest:I got a whole kitchen here.
Guest:I didn't even notice what was going on here.
Guest:The only thing I use, though, is that sous vide machine and the coffee machine.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Oh, you don't use the juicer?
Guest:Nope, don't use the juicer.
Marc:No one does.
Marc:I'm taking that home.
Guest:No one uses the juicer.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:the blender has a couple of times i've used the blender no one ever used those juicers you know why why have you tried to clean it yeah that's why that is why it's a mess yeah you do it twice and you're like fuck this and the juice comes out like with uh like comes out murky it's got it doesn't look like juice no but that's a good juicer yeah thank you and uh ovens and whatnot so i uh let me ask you a question about the last time i ran into you we were at
Guest:a furniture store and i went up to you and i said can i help you was there a moment where you're like things are not going well for mark he's really working there was not no no because most people don't work with a woman most people don't work as a couple how's that dresser we wanted working out it's it by the way it's doing great is it actually i should say there's a weird thing about it it's really it's a nice dresser and uh it was something you had your eye on and i had my eye on yeah i beat you to it yeah
Guest:But if you put a glass on it, anything wet, it makes a ring instantly, which leads me to believe that it was finished incorrectly.
Guest:Not finished properly.
Guest:Not finished.
Marc:Was it one of those ones that they made for them?
Marc:Or is it an antique piece?
Guest:I think they took an old piece of furniture and refinished it.
Marc:And they fucked it up.
Marc:And they didn't put a seal on it.
Marc:So now you've got rings on the top of your new thing.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So now it's garbage.
Marc:So the joke's on me.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It is.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:I knew that.
Guest:I talked to the guy.
Marc:I said, how's the finish on this?
Guest:He's not so good.
Guest:You wait.
Guest:You'll see.
Marc:Give it a few months.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was weird, though.
Marc:I felt guilty about that.
Marc:No, it shouldn't.
Marc:I didn't have the money to pay for it.
Marc:I just wanted you to feel guilty.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Now, you are one of these people that has somehow managed to come through the ranks of show business in a fairly traditional way.
Marc:You mean a white person?
Marc:No, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, for white people, yeah.
Marc:But, I mean, you started out as a radio broadcaster, and you seem to do it in this weird, old-timey way.
Marc:Have you ever thought of it that way?
Marc:Right?
Marc:You started off in radio, and you made your bones in radio, and then you hosted a couple things on television.
Marc:Now you're a big host on television.
Marc:That's how they used to do it in the 50s.
Guest:Yeah, although that wasn't my plan at all.
Guest:My plan was to stay in radio.
Guest:Oh, good plan.
Marc:You've got a good head on your shoulders.
Marc:You can still be there now, moving around every six months.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, every at least once a year.
Guest:Showing up for work and having someone hand you a box and say you can't go on the air anymore.
Guest:But the truth is, you know, I got a job at K-Rock here in Los Angeles and it happened to be Los Angeles where they make TV shows and people who make TV shows happen to be listening to the show and said, hey, come and audition for this or do that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if I'd been in Chicago or San Francisco or something like that, I probably would be fired from the radio, but I wouldn't be on television.
Marc:But how did you start?
Marc:I mean, you grew up where?
Marc:I grew up in Las Vegas.
Marc:In Las Vegas?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But your family's from New York?
Guest:My family's from Brooklyn originally.
Guest:When I was nine, we moved to Las Vegas.
Guest:Are you Italian?
Guest:I'm half Italian.
Guest:My dad's German-Irish.
Guest:My mom's Italian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we followed my grandparents out there and my aunt and my uncle.
Marc:Did they go
Guest:out there for the air uh my dad did my dad has asthma and he wanted to go out there for the air and my mother wanted to go out for the gambling family yeah no but my grandmother and my aunt went for the gambling really and there they yeah well my aunt's still there gambling really oh yeah she loves video poker i bought her a video poker machine for her house to try to save her her retirement fund does it give her money
Guest:It gives her her own money, and she stands there policing you if you play the machine because you're not allowed to win.
Guest:Her money.
Guest:You do not take her quarters home.
Guest:Has it curbed her a problem?
Guest:I don't think so, no.
Guest:It probably has just fueled it.
Marc:So you spend a lot.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:When I go there, I find it heartbreaking for some reason.
Guest:I spent nine years there.
Guest:Well, when you're a kid, you don't know what's going on.
Guest:at all yeah and um i really i didn't have any sense that it was las vegas i just thought this is the place i live right you didn't register the desperate crying people really not until i was 18 years old and visited california and told somebody i was from las vegas they're like what you're from las vegas i was like yeah i'm from and i never thought it was weird but i saw a lot of weird things in las vegas growing up i mean it's it's a very weird like
Guest:I saw Liberace buying meat at the Mayfair Market on the Strip.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wearing a hairnet.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:What else was he wearing?
Guest:A robe?
Guest:He was wearing some kind of a house coat.
Guest:I saw Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:buying pants in the boys' department at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Was he like Sammy?
Guest:He's Sammy, and he's tiny.
Marc:I mean, he was tiny.
Marc:Yeah, it's hard to know.
Marc:He could fit right on Frank Sinatra's shoulder if you want.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You saw that, though.
Guest:I saw it.
Marc:I witnessed it.
Marc:I had a weird experience in Vegas with my grandmother.
Marc:It was one of, I've talked about it before, where somehow or another, when I was very little, maybe 10, she found out that Jimmy Durante was staying in our hotel.
Marc:And she found out his room.
Marc:And she thought it would be wonderful if I met Jimmy Durante during the day.
Marc:The guy was 100 years.
Marc:So we go to this hotel room.
Marc:I didn't know what was going on.
Marc:She knocks on the door.
Guest:How'd she get his information?
Marc:Who the fuck knows?
Marc:My grandmother was a very charming woman.
Marc:But this 100-year-old man in a tank top with no makeup goes, hello?
Marc:And I'm like, cha-cha-cha-cha.
Marc:It was awful.
Marc:It was an early show business experience.
Marc:Your grandmother made love to him?
Marc:Yeah, why I sat there, which was weird, but it's why I'm a comedian.
Marc:Those are the experiences that shape you.
Marc:They define us.
Marc:Sure, that and seeing Jackie Vernon when I was 11.
Marc:Who else did you see there?
Guest:Did you see anything else weird?
Guest:Oh, boy, everything was weird.
Guest:I mean, I would see an Elvis impersonator at least once every three days, which, you know, you don't even realize.
Guest:Unless you're in Memphis, you don't see that.
Guest:Yeah, just like eating, you know, because when you're an Elvis impersonator, you don't put a wig on to go, you are Elvis kind of.
Guest:all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Except you're wearing regular clothes and you're at Denny's or something.
Marc:So there's plenty of Elvis's around?
Guest:There were a lot.
Guest:It seems like there was a lot more back.
Guest:Now it's all magicians.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot of magicians in Vegas.
Guest:How can you tell they're magicians by the way they handle things?
Guest:Their pets disappear.
Guest:No, you can tell.
Guest:But for some reason, something weird happens.
Guest:I know you interviewed Carrot Top.
Guest:I think there's some kind of a stage...
Guest:performer thing that goes on.
Marc:Where they become almost plastic.
Guest:Yeah, they do.
Marc:They become sort of isolated.
Marc:They make more money than they ever knew what to do with, yet they cannot leave the desert.
Marc:They still have to go into that casino.
Guest:Every day.
Guest:Every single day.
Guest:It's bizarre.
Guest:It's a hell.
Guest:And also, I think that from an appearance standpoint, they...
Guest:they want to be seen easily.
Guest:Like they, they want the people in the back of the room to be able to see their eyebrows.
Guest:You think that's intentional?
Guest:I think it is.
Guest:I don't know if they even know it, but I think it is intentional.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you get that feeling.
Marc:I get, see, like looking at you, you, you took your makeup off though.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I've had that experience when I've done television, especially local television, where the guy who's the local TV host comes out, and he looks like he has acromegalia.
Marc:The way his makeup is done, you're like, oh my God.
Marc:They do their own makeup, which is never a good idea.
Marc:Some people, I'm very surprised.
Marc:Some people, and I don't want to mention names, you see them on television, you're like, well, she's lovely.
Marc:You see them in person, you're like, holy fuck, is she 100?
Marc:I don't want to mention names.
Marc:Popular talk show host.
Marc:Mornings.
Marc:National.
Marc:But...
Marc:But you seem to look well.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:I'm 43.
Guest:I'll be 44 in a couple of weeks.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're in Vegas.
Marc:You're eating breakfast with Elvis impersonators.
Marc:Your parents are what?
Marc:They nice people?
Guest:They are nice.
Guest:They're very nice people, my parents.
Guest:You grew up in a healthy environment?
Guest:Very healthy.
Guest:They're still married.
Guest:Well, I mean, on paper, it was healthy.
Guest:They're weird.
Guest:I mean, my parents are very strange.
Guest:My dad looks just like Wolf Blitzer.
Guest:You have him on the show, right?
Guest:He's on every once in a while.
Guest:He pretends to be Wolf Blitzer.
Guest:People believe it.
Guest:I mean, that's how much he looks like.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:He looks so much like Wolf Blitzer that Tom Brokaw saw him on the street and invited him to join them for dinner.
Guest:My dad was too cowardly to go along.
Guest:I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Guest:You had to go to this.
Guest:Like, ah, I got too nervous.
Guest:He doesn't have it in him.
Guest:My mom is weird, though.
Guest:My mom, one of the things she would do for me and for my sister, who's a comedian, is she would pretend to be dead until we cried.
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't cry as an adult.
Marc:It doesn't work anymore?
Guest:I guess I would, but that would be a hell of an acting job.
Marc:So you would come home, and she'd just be laying there?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I think mostly she just wanted a little rest, and she didn't care if it tortured us, but she'd just lay on the ground, and we'd be like, come on, mom.
Guest:And eventually it would get to us hitting her on the forehead, and then eventually crying, and then she'd wake up laughing.
Guest:She'd finally come back to life, like Jesus.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Is that where you got your love of pranks?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I guess so.
Marc:Your comedy career was that my mother used to pretend like she was dead till she cried.
Guest:My mother's very sadistic.
Guest:If I wanted to do something, like our band leader, Cleto, he was my best friend.
Guest:We grew up across the street from each other in Las Vegas.
Guest:Did he become a musician just to be on your show?
Guest:No, but it was a weird thing that all worked out.
Guest:And his dad's a musician, too.
Guest:And his dad is in our band as well.
Guest:But I slept over his house almost every night.
Guest:And every night my mother would make me beg, like, again, on my knees in front of him and call and pay her what she said, pay her homage, which I learned later it's homage or homage or whatever.
Guest:But I had to pay homage.
Guest:So I would have to get down on my knees and tell her what a great mother she was and just go through this insane.
Guest:She would come over to.
Guest:do that no i'd have to do it at my house and then i'd be able to leave when really sufficiently really and that stopped at what age um probably 15 oh my god and she was the italian one yeah oh boy yeah she's uh there's something wrong with her
Marc:So, well, but it sounds like it's fairly benign.
Marc:Yeah, pretty benign.
Marc:And kind of funny.
Marc:There were no beatings.
Marc:No beatings.
Marc:It was funny for her, you know.
Marc:She didn't call you a little man or anything?
Marc:No.
Marc:But how did you end up, like, not only escaping radio, but how did you start?
Marc:Why was that the thing?
Marc:What made you want to do that?
Marc:Well, I was working at a clothing store called Miller's Outpost, which you remember that chain?
Marc:Yeah, we grew up in New Mexico.
Marc:Was that a national or just like a southwest?
Marc:I think it was a southwest.
Marc:Yeah, I remember Miller's Outpost.
Guest:Like jeans.
Guest:Levi's.
Guest:A lot of Levi's.
Guest:And there's a guy that worked there who worked at the college radio station.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He thought I was funny and he asked me if I wanted to do something.
Guest:And I'd read in...
Guest:a Playboy magazine that David Letterman used to do radio.
Guest:I read an article and I said, well, I'd like to do that.
Guest:And I never thought I'd like to be a late night talk show host.
Guest:And I never even thought there would be a late night talk show other than David Letterman and Johnny Carson.
Guest:I just thought, well, that's, you know, those are the late night talk shows and they'll do it forever and whatever.
Guest:But I wanted to somehow.
Marc:You were half right.
Guest:I wanted to be friends with Dave somehow.
Guest:And I thought that might be a good way to do it.
Marc:That was your guy, though?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:When you were a kid, you weren't like, I'm going to be in show business necessarily, but you just loved David Letterman?
Guest:I loved David Letterman.
Guest:My license plate said L-8-N-I-T-E on my car.
Guest:When was this?
Guest:When I was in high school.
Guest:Really?
Guest:My birthday cake when I was 16 said late night with David Letterman, the cake.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's bizarre.
Guest:Yeah, it's weird, I know.
Marc:So you were watching him, like, I guess I started watching him in college.
Marc:So you were watching him from the beginning?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was just too fucking funny.
Guest:I just, there was something about it that I loved.
Guest:I never mentioned it to anyone.
Guest:I'd watch it every night, and I kept quiet about it for about a year.
Guest:Like, it was your secret?
Guest:Yeah, it was like a little thing.
Guest:And my grandfather, I wasn't really supposed to be up that late either, so my grandfather said...
Guest:hey, do you ever watch this guy Letterman?
Guest:And I was like, yes, I watched Letterman.
Guest:And really, that's the first person I ever discussed the show with.
Guest:Do you remember how cutting he used to be?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's still Bruce.
Marc:Right, but he's gone through these weird arcs where I think he's gotten a lot more soul since the heart attack and he seems a little more fragile and vulnerable but still cutting.
Marc:But early on, and I don't even know if it's a real memory that I have, but I think it is, he had some guest on there
Marc:who had written a book about being in the mob or something and had suggested in the book that he had been part of murders or knew of them.
Marc:And the guy was going on and on of talking about how he converted to Christianity.
Marc:And Dave said, we don't want to hear about that.
Marc:Tell us about the people you killed.
Marc:I mean, he used to do that shit all the time.
Guest:You know what I think?
Guest:I think that that's a luxury you had when there were only two talk shows and they were both on NBC.
Guest:And now that there are a billion publicists and there's competition, and if you piss somebody off, they'll pull 20 guests off your show and take them all over to Leno.
Guest:I don't think you're as able to do that sort of thing anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the politics are the thing now, but let's get to that in a second.
Marc:So you get on radio, and you liked it.
Marc:I loved it.
Guest:It's still great, you know.
Guest:It's the greatest.
Guest:It's the greatest.
Guest:I did this little talk show on KUNV, the college radio station, where I would just go through the yellow pages and find people who seemed...
Guest:silly like there's a guy who called himself the hairstylist to the stars yeah and so i called him up and i said would you like to be on my radio show and of course he he wanted to and he came down and the only star whose hair he had ever styled was john davidson so i talked to him for like 30 minutes about styling john davidson's hair and i'd have local like guys that did local commercials like the joe franklin of college i really was i was like a little joe
Guest:And these guys would come in and people love to be interviewed.
Guest:You know, they're thrilled by this idea.
Guest:And they come in and I interview like this guy, Fred, who did local car commercials and he barely spoke English and all these characters.
Marc:So you're like the Studs Terkel of the clownish downtrodden.
Marc:Yes, the 112 pound Studs Terkel.
Marc:So now, OK, so then you decide to go into like because regular radio is a bitch.
Marc:And I mean, and I don't know how much it's a hard life.
Guest:yeah so how much of that did you live I mean once you got 12 years so you got out of college and you got uh what kind of show my first paying radio job I'd done I worked for free in Phoenix for a while was in at KZOK in Seattle it was a classic rock station I was 20 years old I'd just been married and so you swept up there with the radio dream you were going to be what the afternoon guy or the morning guy morning guy it was the me and him show yeah me and a guy named Kent Voss who was the laugher
Guest:We didn't really have.
Guest:In fact, this show established yet.
Guest:If you listen to this show, there's more silence on this show than any radio show you've ever heard, because we just sit there and we'd say something and then sit there and contemplate it.
Guest:And in a way, it was kind of great, but it was also terrible.
Guest:There was no pacing and there was none of that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we were fired there after 10 months, and then I was out of work for almost a year, which was awful.
Marc:I had to move back there with my parents.
Marc:When they fired you, was it like, now you can't come in the office?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We were escorted out by security.
Guest:After your show?
Guest:Yeah, after the show.
Guest:That's how it always worked.
Marc:And there was no bad blood?
Marc:It was just the way it went?
Guest:No, there was a tremendous amount of bad blood that lives to this day.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We had good ratings, too.
Guest:They just really didn't like us.
Guest:What the hell happened?
Guest:We did a lot of things.
Guest:My partner wrote the words, fuck you, on the bottom of his shoes, and he would just put them up on our program director's desk whenever we did.
Guest:Oh, that kind of shit?
Guest:It's silly stuff.
Guest:But what we did is we'd secretly tape the staff meetings and then play the funny parts back on the air, and I would cut like –
Guest:little pictures of my general manager's head and I put it on a naked body and put it on the cover of the company newsletter and distribute it to everyone.
Guest:Things that I thought were funny and would be seen as funny and, oh, isn't Jimmy funny?
Guest:But they didn't, you know, these are grown men and I was this kid who was fucking with them and they didn't like it.
Guest:That's the spirit of radio though.
Guest:It was because I made the mistake of listening to Howard Stern and thinking that I could, I too could do that and it would be applauded, but it was not applauded.
Marc:So that was the shift.
Marc:You always liked Letterman, but Stern was a big influence?
Guest:Howard and David Letterman, yes.
Guest:My Uncle Vinny would send me tapes of the Howard Stern show when he was the afternoon guy at WNBC.
Guest:And I would listen to it.
Guest:I'd only get one tape every six weeks or so, but I'd listen to it over and over and over and over again.
Guest:And every time the tape would end, I'd just have a moment of despair.
Guest:But I'd then listen to it again and over and over, and I just loved it.
Guest:Because he's so ballsy?
Guest:It was just so insane to me, and it was so different than anything we got in Las Vegas.
Guest:I mean, just the racism and the anger and all these things that I really had previously only heard in my house.
Marc:So the bad blood still exists?
Marc:Oh, I still carry grudges against people.
Guest:Oh, not them, though.
Guest:There's not a program director in Seattle saying, Kimmel will pay!
Guest:No, I don't think there is a program director.
Guest:I think there's still a general manager out there who doesn't like me, but...
Guest:And you have grudges, too?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:I'm the most spiteful.
Guest:It's what fuels me more than anything.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it does.
Marc:It used to fuel me a lot, too, but it never seemed to get me to where you are.
Guest:Well, there's a lot of luck involved.
Guest:I can isolate moments in my life where it was like, oh, that happened.
Guest:I just remember the program director of K-Rock, which is a big station here in L.A.,
Guest:came to tampa to the radio station i was working at we happened to go out to like dinner that night and dinner dinner turned into a whole night and turned into like breakfast and until like four o'clock in the morning and afterwards afterwards he's like wow this guy's really funny you know and and he hired me at k-rock based on hanging out with him at a diner that night that's awesome yeah but it so like how driven by smart are you do you have a list are you nixon
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:At this point, it's silly, but I try to be nice to people in general.
Guest:I think people don't realize what an impact they have on your life.
Guest:I mean, there are people who decide they have a grudge against you, and you wind up getting fired because they engineer it or they want it to happen.
Guest:I was a married guy.
Guest:I had...
Guest:a little kid.
Guest:I had two little kids.
Guest:How the hell did that happen at 20?
Guest:Is that just Catholic?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Actually, I had my daughter when I was 24.
Guest:I got married when I was 20.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then my daughter gets married at 20.
Guest:My parents did.
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:It seemed like a good idea.
Guest:I never really had a girlfriend and I thought I better get married because there's a good possibility.
Guest:I'm going to look back on this.
Guest:Sex will never strike again.
Guest:And so I got married.
Guest:You have grown kids.
Guest:Yeah, my kids are in college.
Guest:That's insane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're good?
Guest:Yeah, they're very good.
Guest:You get along with their mother?
Guest:I do get along with their mother, yes.
Guest:I mean, we had our time where we didn't.
Guest:I'm sure.
Guest:Mostly while we were married.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But now it's fine.
Marc:So you take these kids, so you get fired out of that job, and then what happens?
Marc:Where'd the journey lead next?
Guest:Moved back to Phoenix, packed a 26-foot moving truck with our Pontiac Grand Am.
Guest:Was your family in Phoenix at that time?
Guest:My family had moved to Phoenix.
Guest:I spent a lot of time there.
Guest:My brother's in Phoenix.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, my parents still live there.
Marc:There's something really horrible but really great about it.
Marc:I agree with you completely.
Marc:You know, you get out there and you're like, God, the space here is great, but it's awful.
Marc:Every one of these malls looks exactly the same.
Marc:Everything is brown.
Marc:You have to be a lizard to live here.
Guest:But then you pull in the parking lot of a Best Buy and the spots are so big and you go, this is great.
Guest:Why can't we have big parking spots?
Guest:Yeah, bring those.
Guest:But I moved back in with my parents there, and I was there for almost a year.
Guest:I got a job in Tampa, Florida, which is the worst place I ever lived.
Marc:Oh, Tampa, Florida is horrendous.
Marc:The failing Ebor district.
Guest:The Ebor district, yeah.
Guest:There's an improv there.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:It's just.
Guest:My car was stolen, and we were burglarized in the first two days that I lived there.
Guest:And I lived there for almost a year, was fired from that job.
Guest:Then I got a job the day I was fired.
Marc:Why were you fired there?
Guest:Uh, general misbehavior again, again with the, you know, I just didn't have a sense of myself that like, you know, I mean, I really, I was a very skinny kid who probably looked five years younger than I actually was.
Guest:Were you big in the market there though?
Guest:Was your show successful?
Guest:No, we weren't successful there.
Guest:And we were, I was the morning show producer at that.
Guest:And I did characters and that sort of thing on the air.
Guest:You're the goofy guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like the guy on the phone.
Guest:Like, Oh, Joey's on the phone.
Guest:I am.
Guest:I do the Mike Tyson imitations and you know, all that sort of stupid stuff.
Guest:And then the day I got fired there, I got a job, thank God, in Palm Springs, where I worked for 18 months, where Carson Daly was a kid there who I made my intern.
Guest:He was 17 years old at the time.
Guest:You're responsible for that?
Guest:I'm responsible for that.
Guest:And you feel okay about it?
Guest:I feel perfectly fine with it.
Guest:You see a future for that kid?
Guest:The future has happened.
Guest:He's done very well for himself.
Guest:By the way, I know everybody makes fun of Carson, but I...
Guest:nicest guy in the world no no one will say that any different than that yes they will for some reason people think he's a douchebag the opposite of a douchebag and um i you know i mean i think he's a very natural on-air personality i did when i was a when i was a kid he was a kid i just like this kid is good on the radio i think a lot of people say like that carson daily gee he seems like a nice guy
Guest:No, people say he seems like a douchebag, and he's like a punching bag for some reason.
Marc:Well, he's a punching bag because he's, I think, that the general consensus is he can't really deliver a joke, and he doesn't seem to have much personality.
Guest:Yeah, but he's not a comedian is the thing, and the personality thing.
Guest:I think most of those people, you know, for me, I'm very sensitive about it.
Guest:Well, first, I mean, I love the guy.
Guest:You invented him.
Guest:You invented Carson.
Guest:I think of him as a little brother, but, but also I just think that most of those people don't actually evaluate what he does.
Guest:They, they've not actually watched him in an unbiased way and, and, and seen him because I mean, he's a very good broadcaster.
Guest:He does good interviews.
Guest:I mean, he's likable on air and that, I mean, that's a talent.
Guest:Did you use him on the radio?
Guest:Yeah, he was my sidekick on the radio.
Guest:So he was the laughing guy?
Guest:No, I fucked with him all the time.
Guest:He was a kid, and he told me he had never masturbated, and I just was obsessed with that notion that he'd never masturbated.
Guest:And was he telling the truth?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I would interrogate him about it almost every day.
Marc:And that was the theme.
Marc:That was fun for me.
Marc:Getting Carson to masturbate.
Guest:We'd have lunch together every day.
Guest:He was starving, really.
Guest:I'd give him $5 for lunch every day.
Guest:That was his pay.
Guest:He worked for free otherwise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I was only making $20,000 at the time.
Guest:But, I mean, you know, we do stupid stuff.
Guest:Are you friends now?
Guest:Yeah, we're still friends, yeah.
Marc:Who are your buddies in show business right now?
Guest:In show business?
Guest:Adam Carolla.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Carson.
Marc:I just did his show.
Marc:Yeah, it's weird because I always assume that you guys... I always drew these lines.
Marc:You know, those are those guys' guys.
Marc:And then there's me, the hypersensitive, neurotic, angry guy who's got to convince people he's smart to get any pussy.
Marc:But these guys just have to have a car.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Those were the two camps.
Marc:You couldn't be more wrong about either one of us.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I know.
Marc:That's what I learned over time.
Marc:Because I used to watch the mad show and be like, these guys are just these guy guys.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get what they are.
Marc:But lately, I've grown to really admire...
Marc:Sorry, that's my cell phone ringing.
Marc:It's the sound of a baby laughing.
Marc:But I've grown to admire both of you because you're really not that.
Marc:And I do Adam's live shows sometimes.
Marc:And it's very interesting.
Marc:When you listen to someone on the radio, you see them on television.
Marc:They have a certain on-air personality that you sense with your ears or you hear.
Marc:But when you're standing in front of somebody and then you really see the person, it's like, he's not that guy.
Marc:He likes to entertain and he's a lunatic.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he's got a great gift of, of wrapping shit, you know, tying things together.
Marc:That's his great gift.
Marc:It's like, he'll start somewhere.
Marc:And then you're like, where the fuck is this going?
Marc:And then at the end, it's like, and that's like the thing at the beginning.
Guest:I said, he takes you on a journey and you can't imagine that there's any way he's going to pay it off.
Guest:And then he pays it off every single time.
Guest:He's you know, he's a guy that I met.
Guest:He was my boxing instructor when I was at K-Rock.
Guest:And he's just I had an on air fight with another guy on the show and we needed boxing instructors.
Guest:So he came to the show looking to train the other guy.
Guest:And I happened to run into him in the hall.
Guest:And he said, yeah, I'll train you to be to box.
Guest:And.
Guest:We hit it off, and we really didn't do any training.
Guest:We just sat there and drank Snapples and talked for hours.
Guest:And we really fell in love.
Guest:I mean, we would go to lunch together, and we'd talk for three hours every day.
Guest:And eventually, it just was like, we really need to do something because this is a terrible waste of time.
Marc:Was he a good boxing instructor?
Guest:Yeah, he's a very good boxer.
Guest:So he's kind of a guy's guy.
Guest:Yeah, well, he's definitely.
Guest:I mean, he can build a house.
Guest:He can do all those things.
Guest:Can you?
Guest:No, I can't really do anything.
Yeah.
Guest:i cook i'm more of a guy's woman that makes me feel better all right so wait palm springs how does that crap out that um that it was actually that ended okay palm spring was okay i mean it was a tiny radio station uh the electronic equipment was made in mexico i've never seen mexican electronics before
Guest:We had an Arrakis board.
Guest:That was the brand, Arrakis.
Guest:In fact, the equipment was so shitty that during the songs and during the commercials, normally you could pop the mic down.
Guest:You had to be quiet because the mic never really went off.
Guest:So during the commercials, you had to either leave the room or be quiet or everyone could hear you talking.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:And so I didn't get fired there.
Guest:I got a job in Tucson doing mornings in Tucson, Arizona.
Marc:That's a pretty good city.
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Guest:It was pretty.
Marc:My brother went to college there.
Guest:There's a lot of natural beauty there, but I got fired there, so I don't have great memories.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:Same thing.
Guest:Same thing every single time.
Marc:Were there events?
Marc:I mean, did you cross a line?
Marc:Did you take pictures?
Guest:Our program director was the midday guy, so he came on the air after we did.
Guest:Almost every day, I would switch out his commercials with sound effects.
Guest:I tormented this guy.
Guest:I'd call his wife on the air all the time and find out what her, because I felt like she was running the radio station.
Marc:I was really the stern model.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:Every time.
Guest:Did you love doing that?
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I fucking loved it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:You're like a prank guy.
Guest:I like making people mad.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:It tickles me to no end.
Guest:You have no guilt when you hurt somebody?
Guest:It's not about.
Guest:I don't think it hurts them.
Guest:I never.
Guest:I always think.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Ultimately, it's so funny that it overwhelms.
Guest:I don't think it really ever.
Guest:I never am hurtful.
Guest:But it's teasing.
Guest:You know, it's relentless teasing.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:There's another word for that.
Marc:But you never.
Marc:But you've never had a situation where you had to go apologize?
Guest:You understand, my mother pretended to be dead until I cried, so I'm bugged up.
Guest:I know that.
Marc:But you've never got yourself to a situation?
Guest:Apologize?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think I'd probably apologize, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have done it again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you're more the kind of guy that's sort of like, come on.
Guest:Come on, it's funny.
Guest:Yeah, look at you.
Guest:Look at how hard I'm laughing.
Guest:So you got poop on your head.
Guest:Try to think of the joy you're bringing me.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:You selfish fuck, right?
Guest:Look how much I'm having a good time.
Guest:Yeah, and so I got fired there.
Guest:Just to give me an idea, my program director actually said these words.
Guest:He said, I love corporate rock.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Isn't that a derisive term?
Guest:It's not a good thing.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:All right, great.
Guest:So I got fired there.
Guest:And then thank God I got a job at K-Rock, which is the best radio station in the United States.
Guest:It was like a miracle for me.
Guest:I mean, I forced myself on Kevin and being the morning host there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and they when I showed up for work because their boss had hired me, I showed up at the radio station and they said they looked at me and they didn't know what I was doing there.
Guest:They said, oh, they hired you.
Guest:And keep in mind, this is a staff of five.
Guest:There are five people working on this show, so it's a big deal to add somebody.
Guest:Nobody bothered to tell them that I'd been hired.
Guest:So was there that weird tension?
Guest:My heart sank.
Guest:I was just like, oh, no, this is going to be another.
Guest:I can't do this anymore.
Guest:I got two kids.
Guest:I've got to make this work.
Guest:I have to behave myself.
Guest:And I, for the most part, did behave myself.
Guest:But it was easier because I wasn't one of the main hosts.
Guest:I was the sports guy, and I did characters on the show and wrote material for them.
Guest:And they loved you.
Guest:They loved me, yeah.
Guest:That's where I met Adam.
Marc:And then what happened with you two?
Marc:You came up with the man show later, though.
Marc:Because Adam, when did he do Lovelines?
Guest:Adam did Lovelines.
Guest:He was doing a character on the Kevin and Bean show called Mr. Bertram.
Guest:It was a shop teacher character.
Guest:And it became very popular.
Guest:And then they had him kind of sit in on Lovelines with Dr. Drew.
Guest:And Dr. Drew loved him.
Guest:And it just really worked.
Guest:And in a way, he kind of leapfrogged ahead of me.
Guest:He'd only been at the radio station for a year.
Guest:I'd been in radio for like seven years at that time.
Guest:and all of a sudden he was named the host of Loveline.
Guest:So it was a little bit weird.
Marc:And you were buddies by then.
Guest:Yeah, we were very close friends.
Guest:Has there been sort of competition?
Guest:No, we're not competitive at all.
Guest:We're really not competitive.
Guest:With people I like, I'm not like that at all.
Guest:And he became the host of Loveline, which gave him some credibility, and then they made Loveline into a TV show.
Guest:And somewhere around that time, I was hired to work on Win Ben Stein's Money, a game show on Comedy Central.
Marc:That was where most people, I think, nationally saw you.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that was the first thing I ever did on TV.
Marc:It was a weird thing, you know, because it was sort of like as a comic and, you know, in the world that I run in, they're like, who is this guy?
Marc:Where did he come from?
Guest:It's funny because that's what my ex-girlfriend Sarah said.
Guest:She was like, when she saw you, she was like, who is this guy?
Guest:Yeah, well, that's what we all said.
Marc:It's like, there should be someone we know there.
Guest:And you just came out of nowhere.
Guest:Just this guy doing that job.
Guest:I didn't know anybody because I went to bed at 9.30 at night every night.
Marc:Morning radio is the worst, dude.
Marc:It's the worst.
Guest:Oh, you never get used to it.
Marc:I did it for a year and a half and it just fucks your life up.
Marc:It's terrible.
Marc:Yeah, I used to say, you walk around feeling like you've just been in a really long pillow fight.
Marc:You're just like numb.
Marc:You can't function.
Guest:The worst is when you take a nap and you have two alarm clocks a day.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Is that how you did it?
Marc:Because there's a couple ways to do it.
Marc:Either you run it all the way through and just fucking suck it up, or you do the two-hour nap.
Marc:I'd take a nap a few days a week.
Marc:I had to.
Marc:There's nothing worse than being frightened to your core of 10 p.m.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like that, where you're like, you're looking at that clock, and you're like, no, I got it.
Guest:I got to go to sleep now.
Guest:I lived in Seattle.
Guest:It was still light at 10 o'clock in the summer, and you'd have to go to sleep while kids were playing outside.
Marc:How'd your kids deal with that?
Marc:Your daddy's got to go to bed?
Guest:Well, the kids were in bed by 7, 38 o'clock anyway.
Marc:so okay so ben stein's money had to put up with that freak you know on a day-to-day basis i love ben stein he's a smart guy love i love him really was very good to me i mean they i was mistreated very badly when i first started there and he put his foot down and really like he's an odd guy i mean like in terms of what he's done with in his life and what he's willing to do he's very conservative didn't he write speeches for nixon or something and
Guest:He did.
Guest:He was a junior speechwriter for Nixon, and his dad worked in the Nixon administration.
Guest:He was his economic advisor.
Guest:And, yeah, he's had some life.
Guest:I mean, he just kind of got discovered in Hollywood and wound up, you know, he was writing, and Norman Lear discovered him.
Guest:They were very good friends.
Guest:And he ended up, I remember him from Ferris Bueller, but I don't know.
Guest:Ferris Bueller was his first on-camera thing.
Marc:All right, so, okay, so you're at Comedy Central, and you're doing the Ben Stein thing, and then, what, you pitch The Man Show?
Marc:Is that how that works?
Guest:Yeah, well, Adam and I wanted to do a radio show together.
Guest:That was our goal, and, in fact, there was an FM talk station, KLSX, at the time, and so we went to them and said, you know, we love being at K-Rock, but we love to do our own thing, and we'd love to do this show together, and Adam would continue doing Loveline, and the general manager at K-Rock said he didn't see me as an on-air guy.
Guest:I was a behind-the-scenes guy, and he said no, and
Guest:And radio guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we weren't allowed to do a radio show together.
Guest:But then we pitched this idea for the man show.
Guest:And it was instantly we sold it in the room.
Guest:We sold it to ABC originally.
Guest:And they were like, we want it.
Guest:We want to do it.
Guest:It was right there in the room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, of course, there was no way they were putting that on the internet.
Guest:They showed it to everyone at the network.
Guest:They're like, what the fuck is this?
Guest:We're not putting this on ABC.
Guest:And you keep in mind, this was 13 years ago.
Guest:Now you could maybe see some version of that on television with the way things have gone.
Guest:But this is a pre-fear factor world.
Guest:I think ABC was still showing the wonderful world of Disney on Saturday nights.
Guest:Probably, yeah.
Guest:So so we we made the pilot.
Guest:And after we made the pilot, ABC passed on it.
Guest:A bunch of cable networks were interested in it.
Guest:And Comedy Central made us a great offer.
Guest:And I liked everyone there from working there.
Guest:And so that's where we did the show.
Guest:How did he transfer over to Rogan and Stanhope?
Guest:I mean, how did that happen?
Guest:I got this show and had to leave the man show.
Guest:And I was ready to leave.
Guest:Adam and I were so ready to leave because our audience would show up.
Guest:It was like a tailgate party.
Guest:I mean, they'd camp out to get in the show all day.
Guest:Everybody would come in drunk.
Guest:And the moment I knew it was over was when Adam said... Adam was telling a story, making fun of one of his... When he was growing up, his friend's dad said...
Guest:Hey, guys, opinions are like assholes.
Guest:Everyone has one.
Guest:And he was saying it to make fun of the guy.
Guest:And the audience roared with laughter.
Guest:Like they'd never heard it before?
Guest:And I just was like, I got to get out.
Guest:This is enough.
Guest:Enough with this.
Guest:So we decided we can't do this anymore.
Marc:But you wanted to keep the show on the air?
Guest:We didn't want to keep the show on the air.
Guest:Comedy Central and the producers wanted to keep the show on the air.
Guest:What was your feeling?
Guest:We had nothing to do with the.
Guest:What was your feeling about it?
Guest:Well, it was weird.
Guest:I mean, it was like like somebody dating your girlfriend or something.
Guest:I mean, I wrote the theme song.
Guest:I drew the logo.
Guest:You know, I mean, you had no control over that.
Marc:I had no control over it because I mean, it was a change of tone because there seemed to be there's something about it's even like when when Bill Maher was on Comedy Central before he went to HBO with Politically Incorrect originally.
Marc:that there was something about honoring a line about what will and won't be done in the tone of the show.
Marc:And I think you guys had sort of a line.
Guest:For us, it was a goof.
Guest:And I think the mandate when we left was to make it harder edged.
Guest:And I think that was a mistake.
Guest:I mean, we had an Oompa band was our band.
Guest:And when we left, they changed it to rock music.
Guest:It was more like a strip club than a comedy club.
Guest:It was more...
Guest:It's more that ugly, kind of rapey side of guys than what we were... I mean, we were goofing around.
Guest:I was a married guy with two kids.
Guest:Mistakes were made.
Guest:We'll leave it at that.
Guest:And by the way, when I say that, I don't mean Joe and Doug because I think they're both very talented guys.
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:And I just think that...
Guest:The producers we were working with were dying for us to leave so they could take it into their own hands and do what they want because we had creative control over the show.
Marc:It's interesting, like that story about Ken Kesey.
Marc:You know that story about Ken Kesey?
Marc:No.
Marc:That he had written...
Marc:He'd written Cuckoo's Nest, and he sanctioned, he okayed the stage play of Cuckoo's Nest.
Marc:So then they took the stage play and somehow, through convoluted ways, got the rights to make a movie, not from Keezy.
Marc:And he was asked once whether or not he'd seen the movie.
Marc:He said, if a couple of Hell's Angels came to your house and knocked on the door and said, hey, we're raping your daughter out front.
Marc:You want to come out and watch?
Marc:Would you go?
Guest:I mean, there's got to be... It's so different, the book, even just... And the movie's great.
Guest:Yeah, it's a great movie, but it's so different from the book.
Marc:Oh, yeah, the poetry of it.
Guest:I wouldn't put us on that level, but... But he must have had some sense of that.
Marc:I mean, was there frustration about it that...
Guest:You know what?
Guest:We were happy that we were able to move on.
Guest:We suggested that, you know, we said, hey, listen, if you guys are going to keep doing the show, let us produce the show and let us hire the new hosts and let us pass the torch and make for a smooth transition.
Guest:But the producers did not want that.
Guest:They wanted to do it.
Guest:And, you know, they'd still be probably making money off of that show had they done that because the audience resented the new hosts immediately.
Guest:I mean, it's, you know, they become familiar with us and we were obviously very close friends.
Guest:We had...
Marc:a real chemistry right on air and and it just I mean they were doomed from the get-go so this show now like I read the war for late night mm-hmm when you started doing the show you're doing now I mean do you feel like you are you comfortable you're gonna survive you're the last man standing in some way
Guest:Well, we've been on for nine years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's it's it's funny because nobody thought we would last this long.
Guest:And people ask me if I thought we had last this long.
Guest:And I just don't think that way.
Guest:You know, I don't think nine years ahead.
Guest:I just for us, it was like drowning at the beginning.
Guest:I mean, the first few years were just like, just get the show on the air.
Marc:You know, you were taking some hits, too.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, that was the least of our problems, taking hits.
Guest:I mean, you know, the show was live.
Guest:I mean, there were many days where at 5 o'clock we did not have a guest.
Guest:There was no lead guest.
Guest:Because you got shut out?
Guest:We just weren't planning ahead.
Guest:You didn't have a guest booker?
Guest:We had guest bookers, but, you know, sometimes you don't get a guest and you keep kind of...
Guest:you know hoping that oh you know we're hoping this one will come through hoping this and a lot of times they all come true and I just through and I remember just like calling like okay well we got to call Adam we got to call Sarah we got to call Kathy Griffin we got to call David Alan Greer you know all these people that kind of like saved us through that time
Guest:Ben Stein was another guy, and it kind of became a joke.
Guest:In fact, I remember seeing somebody write a joke version of our weekly schedule, and it was like, Adam Carolla, Sarah Silverman, David Alan Greer, Ben Stein, and it just kind of went the same thing.
Marc:But you don't think that was political?
Guest:No, I don't think it was political.
Marc:Because when you read that book, you come off, whether or not it's just years of being in the business, you're very savvy as to the political landscape of television at this point.
Guest:Well, I mean, I think, you know, listen, I'd be, I mean, there's obviously people are competitive.
Guest:I mean, Tonight Show is competitive.
Guest:They did not want us to succeed.
Guest:I mean, of course, they still don't.
Guest:We don't want them to succeed either.
Guest:You know, I understand that.
Guest:And they threw their weight around as much as they possibly could.
Guest:And they kept people off of our show.
Guest:But I understand it.
Guest:I mean, that's kind of, that's what is done.
Guest:You know, it's brutal, but that's how people do it.
Guest:But for us, it was really more about being disorganized than anything.
Guest:And now like you feel relatively secure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I feel very secure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I feel as secure as I've ever felt in my life because the show's got its own following.
Guest:It's got its own definition.
Guest:It's not like the shows.
Guest:And, you know, ultimately what they look at is we make money for them, you know, and as long as we're making money for the network, they're not going to take us off the air.
Marc:And you guys are doing well with numbers and everything?
Marc:Yeah, we're doing well.
Marc:Now, when you look back at the Conan debacle, when you look at what happened with Conan, do you feel that he made the right decision?
Guest:As far as the right decision leaving NBC?
Guest:Um...
Guest:I don't really know.
Guest:I don't think anybody will know.
Guest:I don't think you can know if you made the right decision or not because you don't know.
Guest:You don't have the other side of the story.
Guest:Like, what would have happened?
Guest:All I know is if I was him and I was asked to follow a half-hour Jay Leno monologue, I would be very unhappy.
Guest:I mean, I think that just from a – just kind of –
Marc:natural standpoint like you know it's just unnatural it's an unnatural way to have to do your show it was all you know it became uh it seemed embarrassing and there was pride involved and you know and jay like that when you went on that show and and you spoke truth to power there that night where where he didn't know where you sort of blindsided him with with that with your attack on him i mean that was so fucking beautiful i
Marc:I remember watching it and thinking like, oh, something real is happening.
Marc:And did you like how prepared were you to do that?
Guest:Well, I was I was pretty prepared to do it.
Guest:Did you feel the juice of it?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, I was I was fired up after.
Guest:I mean, I walked out of that room very quietly and I was just like, that is going to be crazy.
Guest:This is going to be.
Guest:And I have a very good understanding of how things work.
Guest:It was 10.
Guest:There were 10 questions.
Guest:So they could not edit any of it out because there had to be 10 questions.
Guest:And I let everything... You played along.
Guest:I just kind of kept talking and talking and talking.
Guest:But in fairness, though...
Guest:I didn't want to do it like that.
Guest:The questions that they came up with, I pleaded with them not to ask me these stupid, generic questions.
Guest:I said, listen, people want us to talk about what's going on.
Guest:They wanted to briefly address it at the top and then move on to questions like, have you ever had a lap dance?
Guest:And I said, nobody...
Guest:I don't want to be involved in it.
Guest:I don't want to brush past all this stuff.
Guest:I mean, I'd been on the air two nights earlier making fun of Jay.
Guest:I was dressed as Jay.
Guest:My band leader was dressed as his band leader.
Guest:We lampooned him for the whole show, and then we were just going to kind of ignore it.
Marc:So let's paint the picture again exactly what was happening.
Marc:He was still in the 10 o'clock place.
Marc:He was still in the 10 o'clock slot.
Marc:But it became clear to everybody in the late-night landscape that NBC was about to pull the plug on Conan.
Marc:Um, or that it was being talked about.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's of your generation.
Marc:He deserves the show.
Marc:He was not given the, uh, the, the proper amount of time.
Marc:He was not given a grant.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So, so, you know, going into this, that Jay was trying to, to make it look good for him.
Marc:He wanted you to be a team player.
Guest:Yes, he did.
Guest:And did you talk to him?
Guest:He called me after I imitated him the next day.
Guest:And he's like, yeah, that's funny.
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:I was like, oh, good.
Guest:Well, I'm glad he thought it was funny.
Guest:No, I know he didn't think it was funny, but I was willing to go along with that.
Guest:But I was actually sitting at the table with the writers, our morning writers meeting, and my assistant came in and said, Jay Leno's on the phone.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:Oh, Christ.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the not fun part of it.
Guest:And I went in, I was like, fuck.
Guest:And then I took the call and, uh, you know, he was a good sport about it or whatever.
Marc:But you love doing that.
Marc:I mean, cause like in my mind, like doing, even, even knowing when you were attacking Jay, doing an impression that it was, it's sort of an acceptable format, you know, you're doing an impression, but you know, it's got teeth, but you get a charge out of doing that.
Marc:You knew it was going to fucking, you know, put it right up his ass.
Marc:Everything makes him crazy.
Marc:Of course it was going to make him crazy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:All right.
Guest:So he calls you trying to say funny and funny, you know, whatever.
Guest:And, you know, we talked for a few minutes and he hung up.
Guest:And then an hour later, the producers called and said, hey, would Jimmy be our guest on 10 to 10?
Guest:And I just kind of went like, well, you know, Jay's being a good sport about it.
Guest:I guess I'll be a good sport about it and I'll do the 10 to 10, you know.
Guest:And but I assuming that that was going to be all 10 questions would be about that, you know, about real things.
Guest:And then I got on the phone with the producer and just the questions were nonsensical.
Guest:There were questions you could ask any guest ever.
Guest:You know, there's just like, you know, what kind of breakfast cereal do you eat?
Guest:And I didn't want to be a part of that.
Guest:And I realized, like, please, we you know, this is not this is not going to be good.
Guest:And then I had a moment where I realized I'm going to look like a dick here if I sit here and go along with the stupidity with the tension that was building in a tabloid way.
Guest:with the elephant that was not in the room, but sitting on our heads at the time.
Guest:And I wanted to talk about that.
Guest:And I understand why they didn't want to, because I guess it was a no-win situation for them.
Guest:And maybe the die had already been cast.
Guest:I don't know what the situation was at that time behind the scenes.
Guest:But I just was like, fuck it.
Guest:I'm going to talk about it.
Guest:No matter what the questions they ask me, I'm going to bring every question back to that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you I mean, it got to the point where you actually said, why don't you get out of the way?
Marc:I mean, didn't you?
Marc:And so in so many words, like, you know, you have plenty of money.
Guest:Oh, I'm trying to make a living.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something to the effect of Conan.
Guest:I have children.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I thought it was great because it's so rare on television where in the world we live in now because of technology and because of how much attention is paid to behind the scenes, everything is a fucking soap opera.
Marc:And the entire country was watching this thing.
Marc:Jay was like this villain in the culture.
Guest:Well, it was, you know, and there's a lot more backstory as far as all that stuff goes.
Guest:And I know a lot of people thought I was out of line.
Guest:I mean, I say a lot of people really, you know, us, you know, we're comedians.
Guest:We have this, you know, kind of, you know, we like sick things like that.
Guest:But a lot of people thought that was not right.
Guest:And, you know, people...
Guest:People that I respect were like, well, that was not right.
Guest:You were out of line to do that.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, I don't agree with their argument.
Guest:But I think I was.
Guest:I mean, I was working here.
Guest:There was a good chance Jay Leno was going to come to ABC.
Guest:We'd had many, many conversations.
Guest:And as soon as he decided to stay at NBC, those conversations were gone.
Guest:And I felt kind of stupid because I realized that at that point, like, oh, I've been worked over here.
Guest:I've been worked on for...
Guest:So he was going to be your lead-in.
Guest:He was going to be my lead-in, but it was my decision because if he came to the network and I got pushed back a half hour, I had the option to leave.
Guest:At 12.30.
Guest:And I had other options, other places to go.
Guest:So, you know, he had to woo me because it wouldn't have necessarily looked good for him if he pushed me out, you know, and he didn't want any more of that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you actually had – there was politics going on that you were having conversations with him.
Guest:And, you know, I'd reached the point where I was like, you know what, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing, you know.
Guest:It's a comedy show.
Guest:The show is very popular.
Guest:You know, as it stands, we're following a news magazine show.
Guest:It's a tough transition for us.
Guest:And maybe it would be – maybe we would get bigger numbers if we were following –
Guest:the tonight or you know whatever you know at that time i may you know maybe there's something and jay was being very nice to me and what did he take you to lunch or oh we you know we talk on the telephone and you know i saw a couple of times yeah and you know i mean he called during the strike i really was out of my mind i was you know spinning in circles mad about this and that yeah you know and whatever and he was he really gave me good advice he was he calmed me down he said just you know what just ignore it
Guest:It's a be over, you know, just kind of whatever he did.
Guest:He gave me good advice and I appreciated it.
Guest:And and, you know, he's a smart guy.
Guest:He is.
Guest:And and but then I just felt weird.
Guest:Like afterwards, it was like once he decided to stay at NBC, I never heard from the guy.
Marc:So so what you're saying is that there was a real good chance that Jay Leno raped me.
Marc:Yes, that's yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, in a business way.
Marc:But, you know, he was jockeying for his old job back and he was using the ABC card to push them to give him the Tonight Show back.
Marc:I felt that that was the case.
Marc:And so you felt used.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And and that's what this is.
Marc:That's what fueled me.
Marc:That's the fire that you entered the Tonight Show set with the Jay Leno show.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I was actually on my set here.
Guest:So they had a couple of producers here, and I told my staff, I was like, just everybody be calm.
Guest:No matter what happens, just everybody be calm.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because nobody knew what I was up to.
Guest:No one had any idea.
Guest:I was like, everybody just be cool, okay?
Guest:I got this.
Guest:Do this.
Guest:I'm going to walk out of here.
Guest:I don't want anybody laughing.
Guest:I don't want anything.
Guest:And sure enough, Jay Leno's producers were there, and they were kind of like,
Guest:what just happened i i think that might have been bad and uh i said thanks guys and i i headed upstairs and uh i was like oh my god you know it's like i felt like i'd been in a did you watch it oh yeah i watched it yeah and it's painful to watch i mean it's painful even for me to watch well because like it was like watching you know you saw him taking the hits
Marc:And like, because he's got a profile, he's looking at a screen, and every one of those things, you know, it's just like, poosh!
Marc:And his audience is laughing at him.
Marc:He's laughing, and he's just sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know?
Guest:The most remarkable part was that he did not vary from the script.
Guest:I mean, he stayed on script, and it was, that was very interesting to me, because I remember being a kid, and Jay Leno being one of my idols, and like, this guy is a really funny, you know, he'd go on Letterman, I assumed he and Dave were really good friends, and
Guest:And this and that.
Guest:And, you know, it was a great comic.
Guest:And, you know, I was just like, wow, this is this is interesting.
Guest:You could be so bound to your cue cards.
Guest:Well, I think it was what else was he going to do?
Marc:I mean, that was a political decision.
Guest:I think he's capable of more than than he than even he thinks he is.
Guest:I think he thought that you were going to play along.
Guest:He has been, you know, I did, too.
Guest:But by question number five, it's like, all right.
Guest:But then he couldn't stop it.
Guest:You know what I would have done if I was him?
Guest:I would have said, after the second question, I said, all right, that's the two at 10.
Guest:Good night, everybody.
Marc:We'll be right back with whoever.
Marc:He took every hit.
Marc:Because I don't know that he would think on his feet as well or that deeply to think that that would martyr him in any way or that he was just going to take the hit and hope that you looked bad.
Marc:I just think that he was not going to engage his anger.
Guest:One of the strangest moments of my life was when he sat down for a one-on-one with Oprah and they discussed it.
Guest:They said my name and she clearly disapproved of what I had done.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:Well, you did exactly what you've been wired to do from radio.
Marc:You put it up the man's ass and you let them deal with it.
Marc:I mean, once the paradigm of power is shakable, I mean, all those people on that level, Oprah and the rest of them, are going to be like, who's this kid?
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, Queen Oprah did not approve, and there's nothing that delights me more than that.
Guest:I mean, really, that's why we started The Man Show, is because my ex-wife was watching Oprah and getting mad at me for things I hadn't even done.
Guest:And you guys are like, why are you lumping me in with these people you're watching on Oprah?
Guest:And I built up this hostility towards Oprah and her legion, and that's really what made me think, you know, it would be great to have a show that's...
Guest:that's the opposite of what's on it.
Marc:Have you been watching the Oprah Network?
Guest:I have watched a bit of it, yeah.
Guest:I love watching Oprah's Life Class where she, basically it's reruns, it's a bit wraparounds like on Family Ties.
Guest:And you remember the time Skippy came?
Guest:But she acts as if we're learning something from it.
Guest:I don't know what's going on over there.
Guest:All I can figure is they said, holy shit, this network is going in the toilet.
Guest:Oprah, we need you on immediately.
Guest:What can we do?
Guest:And we need Rosie O'Donnell.
Guest:I don't want to work more than eight minutes a day, so you guys better figure something out.
Guest:And they said, okay, you know what?
Guest:You can sit there and comment on your fucking show and your old shows and speak of them as if there's some lesson to be learned from them, which there is not.
Guest:Okay, so where are you at with Jay now?
Guest:We're very close now.
Guest:We haven't spoken since that day.
Guest:Was there a moment where you're like, I'll fucking do it.
Guest:Oh, yeah, the whole thing was.
Marc:I can't imagine the high of it.
Guest:I was so charged up.
Guest:It's still on YouTube, actually.
Guest:It seems like people mention it and they see it every once in a while.
Marc:They must keep putting it up.
Marc:Someone must keep putting it up.
Guest:Yeah, but it was thrilling.
Guest:I will not lie.
Guest:I mean, it was absolutely thrilling.
Marc:And how do you feel about him now and his show?
Marc:I mean, I think he's still doing the same thing he's always done.
Guest:Is he icing you out of guests?
Guest:I mean, they can't really anymore.
Guest:We're established.
Guest:We get them after he does, but we get them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you struggled to keep your segments off of the Internet.
Marc:How did you?
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:We put them on the Internet.
Marc:I know you do now, but was there a concern on your part?
Marc:Are you concerned with the future of television?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there is no future of television.
Guest:I mean, there's not going to be television as we know it.
Guest:Everybody will have their own show.
Guest:And if you're lucky, you'll make $2 million.
Guest:But nobody's ever going to make $35 million like Leno does anymore.
Guest:I mean, it's never going to happen.
Guest:But it's great, I think, because it just gives you so much more to choose from.
Guest:I mean, I feel like, for me...
Guest:If I was 20 years older and, you know, was this age when there was only, you know, Carson and Letterman and NBC, there were no other options for talk.
Guest:I mean, I wouldn't have a talk show if there weren't if it hadn't been fragmented and splintered.
Guest:So does it sadden you that the landscape is what it is?
Guest:No, it doesn't.
Guest:I think it's great because I think it gives people – more creative people can have their own shows.
Guest:I mean, just the fact that – I mean, you can do this show on the radio like this.
Guest:I mean, you just couldn't.
Guest:Not in this way.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:And to be able to make even a little money at it is fantastic.
Marc:So in the big picture, you think that that's a good thing that –
Marc:That the dream of making $50 million to host a TV show and have a career of 40 years is diminishing?
Guest:I mean, listen, I don't know that anybody should ever make $50 million to do anything.
Guest:I'm happy that I've been able to make a living and to do very well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it also makes me happy that, I mean, you know, I've hired, I hire people, you know, I've seen people direct shorts on the internet and hired them as a director or you read somebody's Twitter feeds and you go, wow, this person's a very good writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is like, I mean, like Kelly Oxford is somebody who's, you know, she lives in Canada, in the middle of Canada.
Guest:She's a housewife there.
Guest:I mean, do you think anybody, nobody would ever know about her?
Guest:It's pretty amazing.
Guest:And it's great because your talent is what people will see.
Guest:Like the internet is so democratic.
Guest:You know, if you make a video that is very funny, there's no, you know, everybody's got all this bullshit when they put a TV show on and it fails.
Guest:Like, oh, they didn't promote me.
Guest:They didn't do this.
Guest:But now if you make a video that's funny,
Guest:People are going to see it.
Guest:And sometimes they're going to see it 30 million times.
Marc:And then if you think it's really funny, you put it on your show, and then everyone's going to see it.
Marc:So now you dated Sarah for a while.
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:And you guys are all right?
Guest:Yes, we're very friendly.
Marc:How the fuck do you do that, dude?
Marc:I mean, how do you... You mean stay friendly?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think it would be hard not to stay friendly with Sarah.
Guest:No, that's true.
Marc:But I mean, in general, now I'm making it about me.
Marc:I just don't know how to...
Marc:Was it a mutual breakup?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's, you know, it's weird for a while, but then you kind of like, you know, you remember why you were friends in the first place, you know.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:That's an interesting approach, because I usually generally in that period where it's weird for a while, I make things so much worse.
Guest:by being such a colossal asshole yeah that the weirdness is not transcendable well i've only had three relationships in my life you know okay i mean i i dated um my my wife i we were married for almost 15 years yeah and then sarah and i went out for eight years and now my current girlfriend we've been going out for two and a half years or so and um
Guest:So I haven't had that experience where you're running through and there's bad blood and disappointing people.
Guest:And I disappoint people in a slow, murderous way.
Marc:And the theater, what made you choose to do it old school, like Ed Sullivan or Letterman?
Marc:Was this Letterman-inspired?
Guest:You know, it really wasn't my decision.
Guest:It really wasn't.
Guest:I was driving by one night because I live in Hollywood and I was driving by and I thought, wow, I know Disney owns the El Capitan Theater.
Guest:That'd be the greatest place to do the show.
Guest:And the next day I went in for a meeting and the guy who ran ABC at the time, Lloyd Braun, goes, I have a great fucking idea for a location.
Guest:Hollywood Boulevard, El Capitan Theater.
Guest:And I was like, are you kidding?
Guest:I thought he was fucking with me.
Guest:I thought maybe I'd mentioned it to someone.
Guest:But no, it was his idea to put it here.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And it's great because we have all these nuts outside, the superhero being dressed as Hollywood Boulevard.
Guest:of our superheroes and a little sad out there but it's a fun sad yeah it's a great sad it's like Vegas it's exactly I feel very at home here well it was great talking to you Jimmy thank you it's great talking to you too is it over already what do you want to talk more no no I just it went by very fast you want to go through the grudge list the grudge list are people that you wouldn't even know it probably wouldn't be that interesting all right yeah we could do hey let's jerk each other off okay can we turn the recorder off yeah let's turn the recorder off oh this is great
Marc:Okay, that was Jimmy Kimmel.
Marc:Good talk.
Marc:I will be on his show tonight, if you're listening to this, on Monday morning before the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
Marc:Look, I told you about Sketchfest.
Marc:If you want more of my calendar and want to know if I'm coming to your area, go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Check the calendar.
Marc:If you want to know who's been on the show, check the episode guides.
Marc:If you want to read the blog thing, you can read it.
Marc:There are comments there now.
Marc:You can get on the mailing list.
Marc:I mail out a thing here.
Marc:every Sunday or every Monday morning.
Marc:If you want to get the app or listen to the show or go to iTunes or buy the premium episodes, all that's available there.
Marc:You can do all of that stuff at WTFPod.com and I encourage that you do it.
Marc:Also, we got the Just Coffee going.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Look out!
Marc:Oh, I just shit my pants.
Marc:I added a little something to that one.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:What do you think of that?
Marc:Thanks for listening.
Marc:Thank you for putting up with me.