Episode 258 - Paul Gilmartin
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:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fuckables?
Marc:I like that one.
Marc:That was a new one.
Marc:Came to me via email and I've integrated that in.
Marc:What the fuckables?
Marc:How did I miss out on that one?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:You're listening to me in your head right now.
Marc:I'm in my garage.
Marc:It's a nice day.
Marc:I feel a little sick.
Marc:Not that I want to open with that, but I guess I did.
Marc:That's behind us now.
Marc:Today on the show, Paul Gilmartin, who does his own show, his own podcast, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, will be here in the garage early on in his creation of that show.
Marc:We had a conversation.
Marc:What other business do we have?
Marc:I need you to come down to the Colony Theater tonight in South Beach, Miami, 8 o'clock show for the South Beach Comedy Festival.
Marc:I believe there are still seats available.
Marc:Check that out, please.
Marc:Colony Theater walk-ups invited.
Marc:This isn't desperation.
Marc:This is just a heads up.
Marc:I don't know that a lot of people know about that festival, but I'll be there tonight.
Marc:So do that.
Marc:And what else?
Marc:I had a wall built in my house in order to create a full room for the woman, Jessica, who's moving into my apartment.
Marc:I moved her shit today.
Marc:So I have a special added guest for you today, too.
Marc:Obviously, I couldn't move the shit myself, right?
Marc:Because Jessica was working.
Marc:She has a noble profession.
Marc:She was doing her job.
Marc:And Ryan Singer, who you've met before on my show many times.
Marc:Ryan, how are you?
Marc:Doing well.
Guest:Doing well.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:You got a bed out of this.
Guest:Oh, I got a sweet bed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it's only been slept on twice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm not part of either one of those.
Marc:I don't even know if she, like in the period where we weren't together, maybe another dude was part of that.
Guest:I can't think about that.
Marc:You can't.
Marc:I can't either.
Marc:I'll ask her later, though.
Marc:It's a little girly, but it's a nice bed.
Marc:Yeah, you didn't anticipate you'd be getting the girly frame.
Marc:Yeah, Ryan didn't come over and look at it.
Marc:And Jessica's like, do you want that bed?
Marc:And Ryan's like, hell yeah.
Marc:And then we get over there, and it's like this really wrought iron, curlicue.
Marc:It's nice.
Guest:Oh, it's a lot better than the mattress I've been sleeping on on the floor.
Marc:See, that's how comics live, like animals, people.
Marc:And that's the thing I want to bring up is that nothing brings out that weird adolescent existential fear than moving your shit.
Marc:Like just moving stuff, you know, with another dude, you're like, oh, this is our life.
Marc:It's kind of not that big, is it?
Marc:Did you...
Guest:because you're like i don't think everything's gonna fit i'm like oh it's gonna fit wait we got saying well you're sleeping on a king size on the floor yeah it was a kid it was probably about 10 years old king size mattress that was just in the room when i moved in so you didn't even that's a that's a beautiful thing that see that's that's how you know a guy is not it's not about where you live it's about what you're doing with your life that'll work right that mattress will work
Marc:So Jeff Tate is also here, who you met on my show once or twice.
Marc:How are you, Jeff?
Marc:I'm doing all right, man.
Marc:Now, Jeff came in last night to do his first network TV spot, and I just pulled him in here because I think it's worth talking about.
Marc:You flew in to do Ferguson.
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:Now, how'd you get that?
Guest:I was in a...
Guest:i was i was in wichita kansas yeah working at the loony bin yeah and uh craig ferguson that good club the loony bin it's all right i've had some uh i don't uh i like the guy that runs it but i've i've had some let's say not all the sets go well sometimes sometimes i i fucking ate it in wichita being very diplomatic here they serve drinks called the lobotomy uh-huh yeah yeah just trying to get gallon they're just trying to get people so drunk
Guest:It's just a fish bowl of fucking liquor.
Guest:To escape the sadness.
Guest:It's blue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can order it.
Guest:That's how you order.
Guest:You can order the blue one or the red one.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No one gives a shit what's in it.
Guest:You just drink four of them and then you watch me talk for a little while.
Marc:And you're probably going to talk too, I think, at four of those.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Whoever's watching the show is going to chime in a little bit.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're not quiet about it.
Guest:All right, so how does Ferguson come into this?
Guest:Ferguson was doing a casino or something outside of Wichita, and when he got done with his show, him and Ted Alexandro came to the club.
Guest:They just showed up for the second show.
Guest:Second show Friday, traditionally, that's the best one, right?
Guest:That's the one you look forward to.
Guest:Can't wait for that 10.30 Friday.
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:Are you being serious?
Guest:No, I never.
Guest:It's always bad.
Marc:Yeah, they've worked all day, and they've been drinking before they got to the club, and now they're drinking a bowl of blue liquid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's always bad.
Guest:There's 22 people there.
Guest:Two of them were Craig Ferguson and Ted Alexandra.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I just want to do... I just tried to ignore the fact that they showed up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've worked with Ted before.
Guest:I didn't want him to think I got shitty.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was going to be hard enough to just get through with the 20 people who had just showed up for whatever reason, drinking the fishbowl.
Guest:So I just did.
Guest:I just tried to do my set.
Guest:And...
Guest:Then they left.
Guest:Before I got off, when I said goodnight, they were walking out the door.
Guest:Did they say anything?
Guest:That's always a good sign.
Guest:Ted waited for me to come off stage to say goodbye, but Craig was already out in the car.
Guest:Then the next day, I got back to the club, and he had called the club to find out how to get a hold of me.
Marc:That never happens anymore.
Marc:What are the fucking odds?
Marc:Craig Ferguson's in Kansas, right?
Guest:Yeah, Kansas.
Marc:He just drops by, and you booked a show from that.
Guest:Yeah, five days later, the guy who books the show called me and set up a date.
Guest:We had a date locked in before we had a set.
Guest:He calls, he's like, which one of these dates do you want?
Guest:And so I picked the last one.
Guest:I was like, I'm not coming next week.
Guest:Give me three weeks to come up with something.
Guest:He's like, all right, well, you're down for the 28th.
Guest:And I was like, well, what about the set?
Guest:He's like, oh, you have three weeks, you'll be fine.
Guest:And did you go over set with him?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I eventually just sent him a transcript.
Guest:I got some help from some guys I know that have done things like this before.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Chad Daniels helped me write the thing.
Guest:Chad.
Guest:I sent it to the guy at the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I sent it to the lawyers.
Guest:None of these people but Craig have seen me do stand-up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He just gets a piece of paper with words on it.
Guest:And whenever you write a transcript, you're like, oh, none of this shit is funny.
Guest:It's not funny at all.
Marc:It doesn't even read like a joke.
Guest:It just seems sad now.
Marc:Yeah, they put it in parentheses, make face here.
Guest:Yeah, that's what I did at the bottom of the transcript.
Guest:I put it in parentheses.
Guest:I go, it's something about the way I say all of this.
Guest:It kind of makes people laugh.
Guest:These words are... This looks like a fucking essay.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Just a page about me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's from my journal.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so, okay, so now they okayed the set, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he flew out here last night, yesterday, day before yesterday.
Marc:When did you get out here?
Marc:Day before yesterday.
Guest:Yeah, a couple days ago.
Marc:Right, because he came over for the Oscars.
Marc:And then...
Marc:All right, so then you go down there.
Marc:I gave you some advice.
Marc:I said, try to shoot the camera a look every once in a while.
Marc:Did you do that?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, they told me to look just to keep looking straight into the camera.
Marc:I don't want to do that.
Marc:There's people behind him.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And I told you that he wasn't going to be there because they just dropped these sets in.
Marc:What I told you was you'll get there, and he'll end his show, and then he'll leave and say something to you, and then you go up for a room with no host.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what happened?
Guest:That's exactly what happened.
Guest:You said, here's what's going to happen.
Guest:You're going to be standing alone in a hallway.
Guest:He's going to walk by, say hello, leave.
Guest:Someone's going to shout your name, and then someone else pushes you out onto the stage.
Guest:And all of that happened.
Guest:There's two minutes where nothing's going on in the room.
Guest:They're putting the backdrop up.
Guest:They put the mic stand out.
Guest:I'm in the hallway by myself.
Guest:He walks by.
Guest:Hey, it's nice to see you.
Guest:Don't fuck this up.
Guest:He leaves.
Marc:He said, don't fuck this up.
Guest:I'm going to try real hard not to.
Guest:Then he leaves.
Guest:It's the weirdest thing.
Guest:The house just splits.
Guest:And then they set this up, and then the guy, whoever the warm-up guy is, just shouted my name.
Guest:Doesn't say anything.
Guest:I didn't hear him say, hey, there's a comedian coming up.
Guest:Nobody said anything like that.
Guest:They think the show's over, and they're just waiting to, like, maybe his car's in front.
Guest:But this guy's just standing somewhere, and he just shouts my name.
Guest:And then the guy just pushes me out, and I got to walk out there.
Guest:Nobody knows that this is about to happen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they knew, right?
Guest:You have to assume, right?
Guest:They're there.
Guest:Yeah, sitting still.
Guest:They've been waiting in line since noon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They've been sitting in that room for an hour and 50 minutes.
Marc:They're on the Craig Ferguson ride at the theme park of California.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so how does that go?
Guest:I thought it went okay.
Guest:It was not... I spent three weeks trying to make it timed out right, perfectly, all of that.
Guest:So you're very conscious of... Yeah, of time.
Guest:I've been doing nothing but that set for fucking three weeks.
Guest:I've done that set like 30 times in a row.
Marc:And you've never had to do that.
Guest:You've never in your life had to do four and a half minutes.
Guest:The set was good.
Guest:I was there watching it.
Guest:It was good.
Guest:And he's never done the same set twice in his life.
Marc:In his life.
Marc:This was like stepping up to the professionalism plate.
Guest:Yeah, I'm doing my best.
Guest:I'm doing whatever I imagine being a professional comedian.
Guest:It's my best impression of that guy.
Guest:Maybe you should open like that.
Marc:I'm now going to do an impression of a professional comedian.
Guest:Yeah, I wish I could.
Guest:I'm going to open all my sets now.
Guest:uh there's a countdown clock and i realize i'm coming in way under oh really yeah i was coming in over on one and i was like i'm gonna have to rush this thing i was i had gone through it like i had run this set eight times since i got to la or whatever i uh it was always timing out at like 4 10 4 15 or whatever and everybody's like oh you're doing this in a bar the tv crowd's gonna be great yeah yeah you'll hit 4 30 exactly everything will be perfect yeah i'm coming in 45 seconds under yeah
Guest:So there was a moment where, but like I switched, like I finished one bit and then I just stood there for like eight seconds.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:And yeah, yeah, I was trying to.
Guest:Slow it down.
Guest:I was trying to slow it down, but also I was honest to God, I was trying to just come up with another closer.
Guest:I was like, what else can I close on?
Guest:Because I'm going to fucking end this at 340 and I got another minute.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's next?
Guest:What's the least likely thing they'll notice wasn't in the transcript?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And did you do it?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It turns out that 10 seconds really was really all I needed.
Marc:the weird gaze the deer in headlights moment give me a second I gotta think of something else and that worked so after you got done with your set what happened I was like I felt like my face felt hot I was like that wasn't what I fucking wanted to do better than that this is not what I thought it was gonna be
Guest:But everybody said, like, late-night TV, you got the rooms and the cameras, and it's all... Like, some are great, some people bomb, but everybody's funny.
Guest:So then I was like, well, maybe this is the best late-night crowd.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just didn't... I was expecting more or whatever.
Guest:I get off, and the guy that...
Guest:The guy that put me on, the talent guy, was like, listen, I thought that was great, but the executive producer loved your set, but he thought the crowd was shitty.
Guest:So he asked me, he was like, can you come back and do it again tomorrow?
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:And he goes, yeah, I've never heard of this before.
Guest:And this guy's been working for 10 years or 12 years booking guys on shows, and nobody's ever done this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's no precedent for it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The producer was like, love this guy.
Marc:Fuck the crowd.
Marc:Let's have him come back tomorrow.
Marc:And you couldn't do that on another show because they drop these in whenever they want.
Marc:So if it was a self-contained show, they couldn't do it.
Marc:So it's a weird situation.
Marc:So now you're going back tonight?
Guest:Yeah, I got to go back.
Guest:I got to go back tonight.
Guest:To do the same four and a half minutes?
Guest:Same four and a half.
Guest:I added a joke, the 20-second thing, so I'm not going to come in under it.
Marc:So you're not going to take the eight second pause?
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:That was not in the... And what are you going to do differently?
Marc:What did you do last night?
Marc:I got... I just got drunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was tired of... I like how he says, I just got drunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it was just some small drunk.
Guest:It was a big... It was a big drunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the guy driving him around.
Guest:Yeah, you were the designated.
Guest:It's like telling you guys, it's like trying to corral a greased pig.
Guest:When this guy gets about, because he's got, what's your thing?
Guest:Four to seven beers?
Guest:I have a four, yeah.
Guest:I have a four to seven beer window where I'm wildly charming.
Guest:But then he gets to 14 and it's like, where's the fucking pig?
Guest:Couldn't get him?
Guest:Now we're going to, we're going to listen to Seeger acapella.
Guest:We'll go up Mulholland Falls.
Guest:No, it's three in the morning.
Guest:That's all I wanted to do.
Guest:You wanted to go to Mulholland.
Guest:I wanted to go, yeah, I wanted to go to the top of the hills and just look out.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I was trying.
Guest:I thought I had a very good argument.
Guest:My argument was, it's nighttime.
Guest:That was all I had.
Guest:But I was like, we should just go.
Guest:We'll go up there.
Guest:We'll find a place where we can look out over all of LA.
Guest:We'll get all of the Los Angeles energy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll sit on the hood.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We'll listen to Seeger, Tom Petty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Play it loud out of your car windows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we'll do that.
Guest:Ryan was not on board.
Marc:You denied him that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah well i was i was exhausted you denied him that i did deny him that because he i knew he probably i chances i didn't think he'd remember so you were okay all right i told him we'd do it tonight i told him we'd do it tonight after the next so what how are you gonna do it differently tonight you feel you obviously we know this that better you know exactly what you're walking into you're fucking hung over yeah and is that is that better for you
Guest:I feel like it is better.
Guest:The impression of a professional comedian I was doing was not, I didn't like it.
Guest:I was real tight.
Guest:I did a show last night where I was running the set again, and then just halfway through the set, I just fucked that set.
Guest:I was done.
Guest:I started yelling about the set.
Guest:Blew off some steam.
Guest:Yeah, it released so much tension.
Guest:I just wound it up, wound myself up, doing the same goddamn thing over and over.
Guest:I just needed to go, that's not how I do stand-up.
Guest:I do it with a hangover.
Yeah.
Marc:So tonight should be fucking awesome.
Guest:Yeah, it's going to be perfect.
Marc:All right, well, break a leg.
Marc:Thanks for talking about it, because I've never really had this conversation on.
Marc:It was a rare, it was synchronicity.
Marc:The story just keeps getting better.
Marc:I can't wait to hear what happens.
Marc:Well, you've got to take him to Mulholland tonight.
Marc:We're going to do it tonight.
Guest:All right, let me, okay.
Guest:And I had to help you move this morning, too.
Guest:Don't put this on me because you disappointed your friend.
Guest:I'll make it up to you, Jeff.
All right.
Guest:Hello?
Marc:Hey, Paul.
Guest:Mark?
Marc:Yes, Paul Gilmartin.
Marc:Mark Maron?
Marc:Yes, Paul Gilmartin.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Nothing, man.
Marc:Well, actually, there's something happening.
Marc:You know, it's been a while since we talked, and I just want to make sure.
Marc:I know your podcast is going great, and I'm thrilled for your success, but I also know you to be a guy that might let things fester, and I wanted to make sure everything's cool, that the episode is going up now, and I don't know if you're fine with that, right?
Guest:I am.
Guest:It's so funny.
Guest:There are a couple of things, actually, that have been festering in me since I did the episode.
Guest:The first one, and secretly I've been hoping that you don't air it.
Marc:Are you serious?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The first thing, and I don't know why I didn't email you this, but
Guest:this first one is I said in it that, um, my, uh, every male in my family tree is an alcoholic and that's not fair for, for me to say that I'm much more comfortable, uh, saying many males in my family tree are, are alcoholics.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So, so let's, uh, let, let that be noted to people listening that, that only, what, what, what's the percentage?
Guest:Like, uh,
Guest:I would say 80% maybe.
Marc:Okay, so when you're listening to this conversation I had with Paul, frame that in your head, that it's not every male.
Marc:Paul is very, you know, he doesn't want to offend that 20%, but 80%.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Okay, not a problem.
Marc:Okay, so we covered that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why would you secretly not want me to post this?
Guest:Because I had the feeling in the interview like there was an obligatory feel about it, that I was just, because we're acquaintances, and that it just, I don't know, I just got the feeling from it that you weren't into it.
Guest:And it just felt like
Guest:it felt like you were doing it out of guilt or obligation.
Guest:And, and it, and it kind of, um, it didn't seem that interested and you do, and you, you seemed, um, not entertained by me, not interested in my, my, uh, career or comedy.
Guest:And I'm sure that's probably just me being insecure, but it, um,
Guest:I just walked away from it feeling like... I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, I understand.
Marc:Your name again?
Marc:Paul, right?
Guest:I feel like a douche for bringing this up, but I had to be honest, and that's one of the things that your podcast is about and my podcast is about, so I figured...
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:You know, I'm the one being interviewed.
Guest:I might as well do what I expected my guests and you expected your guests, which is talk about the what's making them uncomfortable.
Marc:Well, I know that.
Marc:OK, OK.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, let me address that.
Marc:I don't know that that was true.
Marc:I think that what had happened was we'd had the mishap and you came over once and there was an we had planned to do it and there was a problem.
Marc:I'm not sure what the problem was.
Marc:I can't remember.
Guest:Your electricity was out.
Marc:Well, that's a problem.
Marc:And then there was a rescheduling.
Marc:And, you know, sometimes, you know, I enjoy what you do.
Marc:I mean, I love the stand up that I've seen.
Marc:And I also had a real fondness for the character that you used to do.
Marc:And we've talked many times.
Marc:And I think that this conversation that we had took place before you embarked on your own journey.
Marc:Your own exploration of conversation with others.
Marc:I think that, you know, maybe you've evolved a bit as a person since our conversation.
Marc:And now you're trying to throw me under the bus with your old self.
Marc:And I think, you know, what you're doing is like, you know, old Paul, you know, understands.
Marc:how he felt, but new Paul doesn't want old Paul in the picture anymore, so I somehow have become part of old Paul's presentation of himself publicly, and now you're giving this big disclaimer and throwing me under the bus right here in front of my own listeners, so now they're going to listen with a tempered ear, and this is how...
Marc:This is how you're building up momentum with your podcast.
Marc:I understand you're the new guy in town.
Marc:You're the guy that talks to people in an honest way.
Marc:So that was very clever.
Marc:And what I want to say in the name of honesty is that what you did there by making yourself the victim of a perfectly reasonable conversation about feelings and comedy is that you probably will get a few people that will say after hearing this conversation, you know, I think Paul was right.
Marc:I don't think Marin was really in it.
Marc:And I don't think Marin is what he used to be anymore.
Marc:And I think that maybe it's time to check out Paul Gilmartin's podcast because he seems to actually be more open and capable of discussing these type of things.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:You're so much sicker than I thought you were.
Marc:Did I bring to I thought that's the kind of relationship we were having here.
Marc:You throw me under the bus out of your insecurities on my show after I have you on for an hour.
Marc:at a different point in your life, and you're just, you know, if that's your version of recovery, running away from who you were, then that's fine.
Guest:Now, right now, I'm trying to figure out what percentage of you is serious and what percentage of you is pulling my chain.
Marc:Well, if you're having an issue with that now, why are you believing what you thought before?
Marc:You see what I'm saying, Paul?
Marc:This is your problem.
Guest:Oh, I know it's my problem.
Guest:I know this is all my problem.
Guest:I think I feel like in many ways, I feel like you're your little brother.
Guest:And I guess I care very much what you think of me.
Marc:A lot of times people don't sort of walk around as open and as needy as we are.
Marc:So once you get two of that type of person in a room where it's just a battle to get needs met, I can't imagine how we're both not going to feel a little weird walking away from it.
Marc:And I'm glad that I inspired you and I'm glad that it's working out for you.
Marc:But I think it went great and I'm glad we had this conversation.
Marc:I am too.
Guest:I am too.
Guest:Because now at least nothing is left unsaid.
Guest:And if I look like an asshole, at least I've been the one that makes myself look like an asshole instead of just thinking I came across as an asshole.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Now we're going down the rabbit hole here.
Marc:But I think it's fine.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And I appreciate this call, and I'll talk to you later.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Marc:Okay, Paul.
Guest:Hello?
Guest:Paul.
Guest:Hey, buddy.
Marc:I'm just calling you back because I wasn't completely comfortable with our last conversation.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Is this turning into a Mencia thing?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:No, it's not a Mencia thing.
Marc:It's just that we're both very sensitive, and, like, I think I was... I don't think you were right about our interview, but I think in the last conversation, I was kind of a little... I was a little dicky, and I'm not.
Marc:I just wanted to call you back to tell you that, you know...
Marc:I enjoy our conversations and you've helped me a great deal.
Marc:And I'm sorry if I come off as dickish or detached, but sometimes when I come in contact or I talk to somebody who is equally as raw as I am and as needy as I am,
Marc:Sometimes I get a little callous because I see too much of myself.
Marc:And so I just wanted to call you back in response to the last conversation we had where we talked about your feelings about our original conversation and say that I love you, man.
Marc:And I'm glad everything's working out.
Marc:And I'm sorry if I was detached or condescending in any way or at all sort of bullying or any of that.
Marc:I just...
Guest:You were not bullying at all.
Guest:And you calling me back and saying this means a lot to me.
Guest:It really means a lot to me.
Guest:I really appreciate it.
Guest:And I'm glad that you called.
Marc:Okay, buddy.
Marc:So we're good.
Guest:No, go fuck yourself.
Marc:All right, Paul.
Marc:I'll talk to you later.
Marc:paul gil martin is in the garage we finally got it done we're gonna do we're gonna do it i think all systems are go we've uh we've had a couple of close calls on this almost happened didn't happen so you all right buddy i mean yeah yeah you know i people ask me you know how you holding up and i say my life's great my perspective is horrible and uh
Guest:On certain days, my perspective is great, and I realize that my life is great, but there are days when I'm just in fear of the unknown and what's going to happen next.
Guest:I shared with you in an email that this gig I've had for the last 16 years, a third of my life is over now.
Marc:That's dinner and a movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With Paul Gilmartin and any number of female co-hosts.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:right how many female co-hosts you go through uh three uh-huh so the third one it's like a marriage kind of yeah yeah it is because the show is largely improvised and improvisation is a really intimate thing yeah yeah and it was a it was a cute thing that they had going there for a long time you were funny on it it was pleasant thanks yeah well thing going with the ladies on the show that you were with
Guest:Yeah, it took me a long time to appreciate the show because for the longest time, I was so afraid that people wouldn't think it was good or cool.
Guest:People.
Guest:What do you mean, what people?
Guest:My peers, mostly.
Guest:I care desperately what my peers- The back of the room?
Guest:My peers, yeah.
Guest:The back of the room syndrome.
Guest:Oh, yeah, and it's awful.
Guest:And I would have to drink when I would come home from a day of shooting because-
Guest:I would just be in my head about, oh, was that joke hacky?
Guest:The truth is my peers didn't even watch the show.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:And it was hacky.
Guest:I'm shocked that you were able to get out of your self-indulgence to consider somebody else for five minutes.
Guest:You know, gig's a gig.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Guest:I can't disagree.
Guest:There was moments of the show that I thought were great and original.
Marc:I'm not going to let you take that to heart.
Marc:It was a perfectly fine outlet for you.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Hold on.
Guest:Let's go back and look at the backhandedness buried in that fucking state.
Guest:It was fine for you.
Guest:It was a perfectly fine outlet for you.
Guest:Oh, that was two.
Guest:You took down me and the show.
Guest:How dare you?
Guest:Did I?
Guest:Yes.
Yes.
Guest:That was so backhanded.
Marc:I didn't mean it to be that way.
Guest:It's all right, man.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:No, I watched it and I watched it mostly when- I'm glad, by the way, that my first foray into talking about the show at length since I'm done with it, my fears are being realized.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think it's important for you to see the truth.
Marc:Enough of this perspective bullshit.
Marc:I mean, you want to be honest or you want to just try to reframe everything?
Marc:It's why people listen to your show.
Marc:I don't know why they listen to my show, Paul.
Guest:Because of the honesty.
Yeah.
Marc:No, but the truth of the matter is, is when I watched it, I mean, I watched it primarily when it was you and Annabelle.
Marc:I had no idea it was on for the last, what, six or seven years.
Guest:That's actually the truth.
Guest:That is the truth.
Guest:I'm on it, and I didn't watch it.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's- How could I be upset with you for not watching it?
Marc:I'm taking shots of it, but it was fine.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:It was, you know, it was- A lot of people don't realize we're comics.
Marc:There's only a few jobs we can do on television, and hosting in some form or another is one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and to make it your own look i was a host of short attention span theater for a year i almost hung myself because i didn't want to be that guy but you know but who the fuck on that level that like you said before you're generating original content you're engaging with somebody else you're being funny in the moment i mean that's the best you can ask for yeah it really is but i mean i don't know when you took it i mean you came out of where were you minnesota uh chicago chicago originally but thanks for paying attention to uh any conversations we've had in the past
Marc:Well, you know, but I consider that the Midwestern comedy scene.
Marc:It's the flyover states.
Marc:No, it's not the flyover states, but I mean, you were a stand-up comic.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I don't know why I put Minnesota in my head just now.
Marc:Did I meet you in Minnesota once?
Guest:Maybe because I like hockey and a lot of Minnesotans are from... But I feel like I met you in Minnesota.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:Did we perform at Acme together?
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Marc:But I feel like I met you briefly many years ago before you were doing Dinner and a Movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because I know I met Nick Schwartzen at Acme probably 15 years ago when he looked different and younger and less beat up.
Guest:I'm trying to remember the first time you and I. I'm just glad you're taking down somebody else other than me.
Marc:I think Nick would be the first to admit that he doesn't look like he did 15 years ago.
Yeah.
Guest:I had somebody yesterday say to me, you know, and I was in my head of, oh, fuck, am I ever going to work again?
Guest:Blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Are you?
Guest:And this person comes, I don't know.
Guest:You know, give me five bucks and then I'll feel like I worked here today.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I'll give you a free bag of coffee.
Guest:And this person comes up and he goes, hey, man, how you doing?
Guest:I said, you know, typical line.
Guest:My life's great.
Guest:I just my perspective is fucked.
Guest:He goes, okay, good, because you look horrible.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It was like, I was, even if you think that, keep that to yourself.
Marc:Keep that one in.
Marc:Appreciate the honesty, but.
Guest:You know, he says, you look exhausted.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it's impossible not to take that as a passive aggressive or just aggressive thing.
Marc:Like, it's framed in this sort of like, yeah, I'm concerned.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So you started as a stand-up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And where were you at in your stand-up career out of Chicago?
Marc:I mean, who was in the scene then?
Marc:Who were your peers?
Guest:My peers were Jimmy Pardo.
Guest:He's one of my best friends.
Guest:We've been friends for 20, some years.
Guest:Great guy.
Marc:Funny guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Never not funny.
Marc:It's the name of that podcast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My wife, Carla Felicia, was a stand-up then.
Guest:Steven Leo.
Guest:John Rigi.
Guest:so that goes back yeah yeah 80s yeah and a lot of and a lot of Second City people there was a there was an overlap so in Second City at that hanging around at that time was Mike Myers was just had just kind of I think moved there I didn't I didn't know him but yeah a lot of the other Tina Fey Scott Adsit and I went through Second City through their training program together we were in the same graduating class but you were always a stand-up though right
Guest:Yeah, but I did improv before I did stand-up, but I always wanted to do stand-up.
Guest:I was just afraid to get up on stage by myself.
Guest:A bunch of people, I'm sure.
Guest:What are we talking, mid-80s?
Guest:Yeah, 87, 88.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's when I started.
Marc:So we're of the same generation.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, I started working as a comedian in 1988.
Guest:And you didn't even have to be good back then to work because in Chicago, there were 16 full-time comedy clubs.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:The level of, the quality of comedy was horrible.
Guest:So you had to really, thank God, some of the open mics I went to were kind of alternative.
Guest:There's this place called The Roxy in Chicago that was really, really great.
Guest:Bob Odenkirk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:ken campbell steven leo emo phillips we would all go and and do these open mics and it was just we would make each other laugh and sometimes there would be six tom giannis there would be like six people in the in the crowd and uh we'd just be making each other laugh and that was i think where you really kind of learned yeah what you wanted to do the brotherhood
Marc:the brotherhood yeah so it was i have a lot of a lot of fond memories of of those times back then so now you were like what what uh precipitated the move to los angeles just felt like it was time i was headlining i mean you know it's a mistake to move here before you're a headliner i associate you with minnesota and indiana and all that why bob and tom
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, you were a big Bob and Tom guy.
Marc:I was.
Marc:I remember like doing Bob and Tom and it was always Paul Gilmartin this, Paul Gilmartin that.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Well, no, I just remembered you were of that area.
Marc:That's why I identified with you as a regional comic of that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They had taken to my act and that was the first kind of drawing power that I had was from people knowing me from that show.
Guest:But then I kind of, my act evolved.
Guest:And I started doing stuff.
Guest:When I was doing stuff for their show, it was doing stuff that I thought the audience wanted to hear.
Guest:And they did, but I didn't know what it was that I wanted to hear.
Marc:talk about that for a minute because that's something i don't really talk about is the power of regional radio because i mean certainly howard stern uh bob and tom these were guys that had a lot of real estate a lot of mental real estate and if you were a bob and tom act you know you could work what illinois indiana parts of minnesota i mean they had a huge reach they were a huge show
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Many more states than that.
Guest:They were in.
Guest:Well, when I first started doing them in like 1990.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was a feature act and the headliner was a ventriloquist.
Guest:So obviously he's not he's not I didn't even remember his name, but he obviously wasn't going to come to the radio show.
Marc:Yeah, he just sent the puppet.
Guest:He just sent the puppet.
Guest:So they had me come on, and I used to do poems in my act.
Guest:So that was the hook.
Guest:That was the hook, and they loved it, and it was very radio-friendly, but kind of edgy at the same time for that style of comedy.
Guest:But they weren't syndicated yet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So as they began to syndicate, all of a sudden, I'm getting these club offers from other places.
Guest:And I don't really understand that it's because Bob and Tom are growing.
Guest:So I go from just regular struggling stand-up comedian to a headliner to all of a sudden a headliner that is selling out an entire week.
Marc:And people want to hear those poems.
Guest:And people want to hear those poems.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then by the time that had happened, I'd become really bored with that part of my act.
Guest:So I was going out and really just doing it for the money.
Guest:Still...
Guest:enjoying the fact that people are paying to see me because as you know there is nothing like selling out a week and having people pay a special event price to come see you perform yeah i i just had a little taste of that in my life and it's happening now so like you know if you would have talked to me like a year or so ago i would have been like no paul i have no idea right what you're talking about yeah but it's exciting like very exciting me it's very gratifying yeah um the catch 22 was
Guest:is that I wasn't interested in that act anymore.
Guest:So I would have to do half of my act for them, and the other half would be of where I was at.
Guest:Now I was starting to talk about politics, I was starting to talk about other stuff, and they were not interested in that.
Marc:But like aggressively not interested or just not interested?
Marc:Somewhere in between.
Marc:Now, but did you ever sense that...
Marc:At that time, you were like, you know, I don't like me.
Marc:Why should these people like me?
Marc:Do you like me now?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Do you still like me now after I said that?
Marc:How about now after I said that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, look, no one likes me anymore.
Marc:How does that feel for everyone?
Guest:Yeah, I've always cared too much about what the audience thought of me to ever really do like what you do.
Guest:I've...
Guest:I've always played it a little safe.
Marc:How am I supposed to take that?
Marc:I'm going to make a little mark on there.
Marc:That seemed a little passive aggressive to me.
Guest:That was the highest compliment.
Marc:Oh, that was?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:See how I mistook that?
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:It was a tone thing, too, to do what you do.
Marc:No, your comedy is uncompromising.
Marc:Yeah, but I don't have a choice.
Marc:Yes, you do.
Marc:You totally have a choice.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:Poems?
Guest:I did.
Marc:Okay, so you're out there alienating audiences after your first wave of success.
Guest:Not alienating.
Guest:Hating myself for not having the balls to really say...
Guest:what i want to say you know the podcast that i that i've started doing in the last hey you want to plug the podcast yeah yeah it's called the the the mental illness happy hour i don't know how i'm supposed to take that um boy this this is like uh a hurricane two incredibly insecure passive aggressive people getting together the winds are whipping up i just want to make sure we plug the podcast did you get that plug in uh the mental illness happy hour yeah my point is the first episode i think didn't i uh second oh all right
Guest:So I'm finally able to talk about everything I've ever wanted to talk about to an audience.
Guest:I just needed the podcasting medium to be able to do it, to feel safe enough to do it.
Guest:My point that I'm going back to is you always had the balls to talk about what you wanted to talk about.
Guest:on stage.
Guest:And I've always envied that.
Marc:But I think that unlike a lot of comics, from the beginning, my own self-hatred just took for granted that the audience is going to judge me harshly.
Marc:So I defied them to like me.
Guest:How did you work, though?
Guest:To me, I would equate that with nobody's ever going to book me.
Guest:But you did work.
Marc:Yeah, no, I did, but not like that, not to the degree you did.
Marc:I mean, two years ago, before I started the podcast, I couldn't get work, and that was for a lot of reasons, but I never built up any sort of following to even disappoint.
Marc:I mean, I was respected, people knew who I was to some degree,
Guest:I guess I'm basing that on how you were treated here locally.
Guest:Because locally, you would close a show full of great alternative comedians, which to me was the pinnacle of critical achievement.
Marc:But even then, I don't think that I was necessarily alternative.
Marc:And by the time I got out here, I'd already been doing comedy 15 years or 20, whatever the fuck it is.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But it was always sort of like...
Marc:It was always a lot of wrestling, but I mean, but I was different.
Marc:I mean, I, you know, I never, even when I was doing aggressive comedy, I didn't feel like I was doing what I should be doing.
Marc:And then eventually it all turned all around where I was sort of like, well, why can't I just be goofy?
Marc:You know, why can't I be cute?
Marc:Why can't I be lovable?
Marc:I mean, I'm a lovable guy.
Marc:You must've still been getting loaded, huh?
Marc:When you thought that.
Marc:No, that was after I got sober.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:So how much did that play into it?
Marc:I mean, okay, so you're going up, you're doing your poems, you're doing some politics.
Marc:People are like, this isn't the same guy we heard on the radio, is it?
Marc:And then you're like, well, fuck you all, I'm moving to Los Angeles.
Guest:No, actually, the Bob and Tom explosion happened after I had moved to Los Angeles.
Guest:But I got dinner and a movie pretty quickly after moving to LA.
Guest:I moved here in January of 94, a week before the Northridge earthquake.
Guest:And and got dinner and a movie in September of 95.
Guest:So that took the heat off of having to be on the road a lot.
Guest:And during that time, Bob and Tom were really starting to get big.
Guest:So it's like all of a sudden I had two things that were really paying off.
Guest:I had this TV gig.
Guest:And then I had the ability to choose which and what clubs and how often I would go out to them.
Guest:So I was finally able to do stand-up on my own, but on my own terms.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I would just go out once a month and I enjoyed it, but I didn't necessarily enjoy all of the material I was doing.
Marc:I just felt like there was... Yeah, but that happens all the time, even if you're doing what you want to do.
Marc:Don't you eventually get tired of it?
Marc:Yeah, I suppose.
Marc:But okay, but wait, what's interesting is that your guy...
Marc:I know we're both open about being sober, about having some recovery in our lives.
Marc:We have a hyper-acute self-awareness that actually in and of itself can be paralyzing at times, even when it's supposedly beneficial.
Marc:And it sounds like you sort of came up very quickly.
Marc:You have, what, six or seven years under your belt, then you got the gig.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you had an act for the most part, at least a solid four.
Guest:Yeah, it was a solid headliner.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you got this gig and this is everything everybody wants.
Marc:And then I couldn't see that.
Marc:But then you align yourself with Bob and Tom.
Marc:And now all of a sudden you can kind of pick and choose when you go out and sell out rooms.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, you're winning on all levels.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When did the shit hit the fan?
Guest:Well, I never felt like I was winning on all levels.
Guest:I felt like financially, hey, I've got some breathing room here.
Guest:This is good.
Guest:But I felt like I wasn't connecting to the audience who I was as a person and what the battles in my brains.
Guest:in my brains in my brain was not i wasn't able to really make that into the the art or the communicative device that i wanted what were some of these themes that were haunting you sadness uh thoughts of suicide um feeling you know the the intro to to my podcast is uh the mental illness happy hour an hour of honesty about all the battles in our brains from medically diagnosed conditions
Guest:to compulsive negative thinking, feelings of dissatisfaction, disconnection, inadequacy, and that vague sinking feeling that the world is passing us by.
Guest:Give us an hour, we'll give you a ladle of awkward and icky.
Guest:And that is...
Guest:what i've had inside me my whole life that i could never express in stand-up well have you been able to sort of like were you unable to frame it properly i mean yeah i tried and i would just always bail on it but where does it come from what the the bailing or that stuff that stuff
Guest:uh come from a long line of irish catholic alcoholics that uh were high functioning uh and then one day we try to kill ourselves um because we we just don't and my dad tried to kill himself when he was in his in his uh 60s he was a an insurance executive literally had the don draper office yeah you know with the bar and uh
Guest:didn't show up for a business meeting, and he had tried to open his wrists in a New York hotel.
Guest:And this was in 92, and they committed him to Bellevue.
Guest:And the psychiatrist would only let him out of Bellevue if he would check himself directly into a rehab.
Guest:So Christmas Eve of 92, we picked my dad up at O'Hare Airport
Guest:rehab and and you're a grown man already with grown man already and the next day i went and wrote a poem uh about it it's actually one of the few poems that i i don't feel like a hack do you remember it uh-huh what is it
Guest:It's called The Christmas Poem.
Guest:Do you want me to do it?
Marc:Is that what you're saying?
Marc:I'm curious to hear the bit of comedy that came out of you the day after your dad recovering from a suicide attempt was checked involuntarily into a rehab for alcoholism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The poem, I mean, it's not...
Guest:necessarily i don't talk about my dad's suicide in the poem but the feeling of it yes it uh eggnog tinsel falling snow buttered rum and mistletoe trimming trees and hanging lights the sound of carolers fill the night shopping hours long and hard visa calls and cancels card unpaid bills and mounting debt family gathers depression sets
Guest:Drinking starts, harsh words are said.
Guest:Dysfunction rears its yuletide head.
Guest:Argument turns to shovin'.
Guest:Drunken brother punches cousin.
Guest:Tree tips over, popping lights, curtains catch, house ignites.
Guest:No one hears the reindeer cries.
Guest:Wedged in chimney, Santa dies.
Guest:Though he kicked and did perspire, his chestnuts roasted on an open fire.
Marc:So that's my- We had a fucking dark heart in there and all of a sudden we're on a ball burning joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was Bob and Tom audiences.
Guest:So I was like, I've got to put- When was the last time you said that out loud?
Guest:that that poem yeah oh maybe three years ago doing doing stand-up yeah yeah um but it's it's a poem that i i don't feel ashamed about because it came some from someplace real and um but how did you use it so that's the day after i mean this is a lot to take so you're you're in your 30s your father has tried to kill himself out of nowhere i imagine yeah to some degree you knew he was an alcoholic yeah uh you knew that things weren't good
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, and here's the degree of denial in my family.
Guest:There was only a payphone in the hallway at Bellevue.
Guest:So we're trying to get a hold of my dad.
Marc:I thought you said in your house.
Guest:I thought you were going to say there's only a payphone at the house.
Guest:We were very cheap.
Guest:And so we would call this payphone every day and try to get a hold of my dad.
Guest:But you're basically trying to get other mental patients involved.
Guest:To pick up the phone and go find somebody they don't know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But after two days, we managed to get a hold of my dad.
Guest:And I said, Dad, it's Paul.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:And my dad goes, oh, fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that's a that Midwestern charm that hides everything that that is what I've been trying to talk about in as an as an artist comedian as a human being but my entire life is that living with that wall and I feel like finally having this podcast I'm able to take that wall down and and
Guest:And talk about it and not feel the pressure of, am I boring people?
Guest:You know, is some heckler going to yell out?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:And you don't have to.
Marc:It's not necessary to frame it in jokes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That you can speak openly, honestly, you know, alone on the mic or with somebody that's supportive or at least sympathetic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if there is humor in my podcast, it comes out organically.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But what's interesting to me in that moment, though, the day after this happens, this is fairly traumatic.
Marc:And I've got problems with my father right now that I haven't been able to talk about publicly.
Marc:And I suck it up.
Marc:And I have a certain amount of distance from that.
Marc:And I do what I have to do to entertain myself.
Marc:I try to keep myself busy because there's not a lot I can do.
Marc:But one of the ways we make ourselves feel better before we even get to the audience is framing this stuff
Marc:in a way that we can handle it, where our hearts can take it.
Marc:Now you can call that denial, you can call it avoidance, you can call it whatever you want, but on a very basic level, sometimes it's just a fucking survival mechanism.
Marc:And to open that door into the unruly feelings that could engulf you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you grow up with mental illness or alcoholism or whatever.
Marc:I mean, you got to do that a little of the time.
Marc:Every once in a while, you open that thing up.
Marc:But the funny thing is that you do a joke like that, you do a poem like that, that comes out of that moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You have let a little steam out.
Guest:That's exactly the metaphor I was just going to use.
Guest:And I felt that because I...
Guest:I wrote the poem.
Guest:It just came pouring out.
Guest:I was sitting waiting to get my hair cut at a barbershop and I happened to have paper and pen with me.
Guest:And in 15 minutes, it just poured out.
Guest:And I remember walking home after getting my hair cut and feeling a little lighter and feeling like, oh, this is how art works.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's also how you integrate it into your own understanding.
Marc:I felt like at least I got something good out of this other than pain.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also you knew the relatability factor.
Marc:You got Christmas holidays.
Marc:Everyone's got fucked up families.
Marc:You know, you know, Santa dying is funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In a broad way.
Marc:And then, you know, you guys balls burning, which just adds another component.
Marc:But but the truth of the matter is, is that.
Marc:You couldn't have done a poem about picking your father up on Christmas Day with bandages around his wrist to drive him to Hazleton.
Guest:But that's what I really wanted to do.
Guest:Because I thought anything short of that is... I understand that.
Guest:But how the fuck is that funny?
Guest:I didn't care.
Guest:I wanted to dump on the audience.
Marc:So you, at least at this point in your career, you know that you're more honest with yourself.
Marc:You can be more honest in what you're talking about.
Marc:But there is a limit.
Marc:I mean, I know what it's like to get laughs of pure discomfort.
Marc:That is a type of laughter.
Marc:I'm not sure it's the type of laughter people want to experience when they go out for the evening.
Right.
Guest:But I mean, I wanted to experience that, though, because I wanted to experience it's like I wanted to bring the rest of the world down to my level and go, how's this feel, motherfuckers?
Guest:You know, it's it's incredibly selfish.
Marc:But I don't know if it's down to your level, because the truth is, is that like that poem.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, which leading up to it on some level, you know, could have gone either way in terms of darkness or humorous, you know, components.
Marc:Like, look, you know, if you end with a good dick joke or killing Santa Claus, you know, you can pretty much you can wallow in whatever you want.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it's how you're going to button the thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, but just be like, but to get in front of an audience, go, that's where I'm at.
Guest:How are we all doing?
Marc:Right.
Guest:that's different well the funny thing too is almost every one of my poems ends with somebody dying yeah and i remember one time uh opening for steve and leo doing something and and i had and i had you know broken out a new poem and they came up to me and they said how you doing are you okay this seems to be a theme in your life you look exhausted everything
Guest:Everything in your act is about suicide.
Guest:And I guess I couldn't... It's funny how people can see, know more about us from seeing an hour of us on stage sometimes than we will know in our lifetime.
Marc:But you think about the people that really mine this territory with any real...
Marc:success it's it's even it's delicate with them as well i mean because first of all as much as we'd like to believe it it's not everyone's experience there's plenty of people that never think about killing themselves right i mean they're you know it's probably 50 50 but i mean there are plenty that don't right but we think like you know like if you just dig a little deeper why would you want to live i mean we think that with anybody i mean you're lying to yourself on some level because this is fucked up right but
Marc:But so it's already a 50-50 shot with an audience.
Marc:But you deal with people like Dana Gould or Titus or people that really confront this shit head on.
Marc:I mean, even if it's done well, it's not for everybody.
Marc:No.
Marc:But nonetheless, it is part of the human struggle, and I think it's important.
Marc:And I don't think it's an indication of weakness or even sickness necessarily.
Marc:I just think people are wired a little more sensitively, and they may not have the tools to move on.
Yeah.
Marc:And I think it's important to talk about that stuff.
Marc:I find it incredibly cathartic.
Guest:How come you sobered up and what did that look like?
Guest:I could see on paper that my life was great.
Guest:I was making great money doing dinner and a movie.
Guest:I've got people paying to come see me do stand-up.
Guest:I've got a wife.
Guest:I've got a house.
Guest:I've got my health.
Guest:On paper, my life is amazing, and I'm thinking about suicide, if not every day, every hour.
Marc:But was there a point where you were going to do it?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I'd taken the test to get a gun.
Guest:So I had a gun permit, and I hadn't bought it.
Guest:For that reason?
Guest:No.
Guest:I was starting to hear...
Guest:I was starting to hear voices when I would lay my head down at night to sleep.
Guest:I could have sworn I heard people in the backyard saying, Paul, Paul.
Guest:And so one of the reasons I wanted to get a gun because I thought –
Guest:Are there people in the backyard?
Guest:Who know me that I need to kill?
Guest:In the backyard.
Guest:And then eventually I realized that after I stopped drinking for a little bit, the voices went away and I was like, oh, I think I'm just drinking too much.
Guest:And I went to see a psychiatrist because of these feelings of suicide.
Guest:And he suggested that I stop drinking and using drugs.
Guest:And I thought, no problem.
Guest:Because I didn't drink during the day.
Guest:I didn't drink when I play golf.
Guest:Everybody drinks when they play golf.
Marc:But you came from alcoholism and you knew that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But we're sneaky alcoholics.
Guest:I wasn't the ugly drunk yet.
Guest:So I didn't think, I knew I was a heavy drinker, but I didn't know I was an alcoholic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the psychiatrist said, I can't gauge where your depression is until you quit.
Guest:So I need you to quit.
Guest:And so I tried to quit.
Guest:And I found out that I'd lost the power of choice.
Guest:And that made me more anxious.
Guest:And so I began to drink more.
Guest:And I remember...
Guest:Being out of town.
Guest:And I said, I'm just going to have one drink.
Guest:I'm going to go because the usual group of people that would go out drinking couldn't go out.
Guest:And I didn't want to.
Guest:I don't know if you know that feeling when you can't sit in your hotel room.
Guest:But you also don't want to go drink at a bar by yourself and feel like a loser.
Guest:But that was the better choice.
Guest:So I went and I said, I'm just going to have one drink.
Guest:What is it about hotel rooms?
Guest:Nothing mocks you more than an empty hotel room.
Marc:I've gotten better at it.
Marc:But I mean, now I'm like, if it's a nice bed and shit, I'm like, this is great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have a good book.
Guest:But when you're...
Guest:When you're a drunk.
Guest:When you're a drunk and you don't know that the problem with life is your perception.
Marc:When you have the choice of like, I buy a bottle, I sit in here, or I go out where there might be a sad girl or some other idiots or something to look at other than me, I'm going to opt for that.
Guest:Yeah, so I did.
Guest:And I said, I'm going to have one.
Guest:I'm going to be back at 9 o'clock.
Guest:I had 10.
Guest:I stayed until closing time.
Guest:And it was just me and this other person.
Guest:And I said, hey, you know, I think we can get a drink across the street.
Guest:Because I just didn't want to be alone.
Guest:And this person said, no, I got to get up for work in the morning.
Guest:What are you, pussy?
Guest:And I said, please don't leave.
Guest:I'm so lonely.
Guest:To a stranger.
Guest:To a stranger.
Guest:Drunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:And I woke up the next morning and thought, is this really who you set out to be?
Guest:It was a woman.
Guest:And she said, I'm sorry, but I got to get up for work in the morning.
Guest:Oh, after I said, please don't leave.
Guest:I'm so lonely.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:I think I was just in my head then at that point of, oh, my God.
Guest:you fucking loser.
Marc:But there's also that horrible assumption that, you know, whoever you're left with at the end of a run like that, when you're that shit face, that the other person that's there with you, even if you don't know me, like the agenda is clearly to continue drinking.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:My body, and I'm sure you know this feeling, you get that when you're, when you're loaded and,
Guest:And you're miserable the other 22 hours a day, and you get your buzz on, you're feeling that beautiful sensation of relaxation and excitement.
Guest:And complete detachment from the world.
Guest:Complete detachment.
Guest:And I want to keep it going.
Guest:Yeah, where are we going?
Guest:And this person was local, so they knew where all the watering holes were.
Guest:Yeah, there had been a group of us that had just started chatting at the bar, but one by one, everybody had kind of broke up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was just me and this person.
Marc:And she let you down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I still couldn't get help because I was like, it's the only thing that makes me feel good.
Guest:And how could I give that up?
Guest:And then I woke up one morning and it was like every other morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My first three thoughts were...
Guest:You slept too late.
Guest:You're a lazy piece of shit.
Guest:Your life is passing you by.
Guest:My stomach would tighten into a knot.
Guest:I'd think about all the things I had to do that day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dreading them.
Guest:The only thing I'd look forward to is getting loaded.
Guest:And yet knowing intellectually that's what's making this spiral.
Guest:And I just said the words out loud.
Guest:I said, God, help me.
Guest:I can't do this anymore.
Guest:And I'm not a religious person at all.
Guest:I was raised Catholic, if anything, that turned me off.
Guest:But for some reason that day, I got help, and I've been sober every day since then.
Guest:Well, that's quite a story.
Guest:It's a fucking miracle.
Guest:It's a fucking miracle.
Guest:But it's been a lot of work and a lot of opening up that trap door and looking at what a frightened, insecure, self-centered, self-pitying, impatient, competitive, narcissistic, vindictive little boy I can be on any given day.
Guest:Well, I'm certainly glad you're not beating up on yourself anymore.
Guest:No, but I have to be aware of that.
Guest:I think I'm a great person, Mark.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I've gotten to the point where I think I'm a great person.
Marc:Jesus Christ, there's a joke, Paul.
Marc:That was meant as joke.
Marc:Mark says joke.
Marc:Paul gets defensive.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:That's the other character.
Guest:The flaw I have is sometimes I take myself way too fucking seriously.
Guest:I take everything seriously.
Guest:When people joke with me, I'm like, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're like, lighten up.
Guest:I'm like, you lighten up.
Guest:You just heard me.
Guest:I got to tell you, I've been really looking forward to coming and doing this podcast for two reasons.
Guest:For one, because it's popular, and I hope it'll bring people to my podcast.
Guest:The other one is...
Guest:Knowing what it's going to be like for you to not have a faraway look in your eye when I'm talking to you for over an hour.
Guest:Because you are the most distracted person that I've known in the last 20 years.
Guest:There are very few people that I know that aren't distracted.
Guest:drinking and using still whose mind can just kind of leave in the middle of a and i can take that two ways that i'm uninteresting or that you are self-involved and i think the truth is probably somewhere between those two well what where does uh how does uninteresting is that umbrella uh you know cover draining coming from you i can laugh at that
Guest:Coming from you, I can totally laugh at that, from the king of suck.
Guest:The sump pump of the soul.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that's one of the things that I really love about you and love hanging with you is that we can bust each other's balls, and we both know that there's truth underneath that, but...
Marc:but that you can do that that's all i ask of in a friend is be able to laugh at yourself you know and people that aren't truly truly draining people really are the people that can't laugh about that there are people that are much more draining well yeah because we're aware of it but it's funny i mean we just i mean we have an understanding uh because we're similar uh you know but there is that thing where and i get i get into this with other people too like sometimes because we're of the same milk uh
Marc:Emotionally and psychologically, I'm not talking about we're both sober or anything else, just that we're wired in a similar way.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Is that sometimes, you know, you might be having a good day and, you know, you may be a good person.
Marc:But if, you know, another Captain Suck energy comes along.
Marc:There's part of you that's sort of like, can I just have a fucking hour?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I happen to be out of it right now.
Marc:I'd love to help you.
Marc:But this part of my selfishness where I enjoy the hour without you sucking me out, you know, I'm going to do that.
Guest:So maybe you call me in an hour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've gotten very good at detaching from people that drain.
Guest:You know, there's a... I've discovered...
Guest:fine line between helping people and being used by somebody who you're just enabling by sitting and listening to their monologue.
Marc:Well, that's the weird thing about it.
Marc:It's an interesting topic in that
Marc:You know, it is possible, even when you're being self-aware and self-caring and proactive in, you know, taking care of yourself emotionally and psychologically, that you can spin your own wheels.
Marc:I mean, you can get stuck in that, too.
Marc:You know, where, like, I just saw you looking at me.
Marc:I know what you're thinking.
Marc:Like, this is Mark's denial.
Marc:We're hearing it.
Marc:No, no, I wasn't.
Yeah.
Marc:No, that's what I heard.
Marc:That's what I heard.
Marc:That's what I decided you were saying is like, look at Mark justifying his character defects and his issues with this weird monologue.
Guest:No, I actually tuned you out and was thinking about something about myself.
Guest:I did.
Guest:How selfish am I if I'm tuning out the host?
Guest:Where'd you go?
Guest:I went.
Guest:You want me to be brutally honest?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I went to a place of I hope we're going to talk about my Republican character, because deep down, I feel like that character has never gotten the attention that it deserves.
Marc:Okay, so I just want to make note that Paul called me easily distracted.
Marc:I'm writing that down.
Marc:Not only easily distracted, that was a grand slam.
Marc:Since you've been sober, you have never met.
Marc:That coming from the guy who...
Marc:You know, like, that was fucking, that was like, you ran the full bass line.
Marc:I did.
Marc:I just let it go right by.
Guest:I did.
Marc:I'm like, wow.
Marc:Because then I thought, like, really?
Marc:Do I not pay attention to Paul?
Marc:It's like, I remember paying attention to you.
Guest:It's like, I called you a pervert while I was jacking off on your face.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:What's the matter with you, Mark?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Why are you so dirty?
Guest:How do you live with yourself?
Marc:No, but that's where I went to because- You can talk about that.
Marc:But I remember we were in Bloomington.
Marc:You came down to my show.
Marc:You were doing a corporate gig and we showed up for each other.
Marc:We hung out.
Marc:We spent some time.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:I was focused.
Guest:I think that- And you helped me very much that night because I did done a corporate gig that completely drained my soul, made me feel dirty.
Guest:And I came and it was all your people-
Guest:At the Bloomington at the Comedy Attic.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You just showed up out of nowhere.
Guest:You let me do a guest set, and I did the material that I like.
Guest:And it was well-received, and we got to hang out, and I spilled my guts to you.
Guest:And yeah, you were really there for me.
Guest:And it was the Marc Maron that I love that...
Guest:That was there that night instead of the Marc Maron that frustrates me when I'm in the middle of a sentence and he starts looking off into space.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, what was it like corporate gigs?
Marc:I don't know if I've ever really talked to anybody about that.
Marc:It's the worst.
Guest:What was the situation?
Guest:Well, for one, it was a group of... I don't even remember the company, but it was very Republican and very conservative.
Guest:And I had to do an hour.
Guest:And probably half of my act is pretty liberal and make fun of conservatives.
Marc:But do you take...
Marc:You mostly mine hypocrisy.
Marc:You're not a policy guy.
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:But the stance in itself has an underlying liberalism to it that people who are conservative can smell and recoil from.
Guest:That's funny because you look like you could be a conservative.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why I started doing that character was because it...
Guest:I saw everybody on stage in 04 talking, bitching about the Bush administration.
Guest:I thought, what can I do that's different?
Guest:And I thought, I look like these guys.
Guest:I know them.
Guest:I play golf with them.
Guest:I went to college with them.
Guest:I know...
Guest:the way they dress down to the fucking pinky ring, the pleated khakis, the tasseled loafers.
Guest:And so I, finally, I was able to use my whiteness to my artistic advantage.
Marc:And you created this congressman.
Guest:And I created this congressman.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Richard Martin.
Guest:I've worked with him before.
Guest:Republican representative Richard Martin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um,
Guest:But I don't know why I got so insecure and started thinking about, I hope Mark brings that up.
Guest:But, oh, I think one of the reasons is people, Stephen Colbert started doing his thing about a year after I was doing mine.
Guest:And he wasn't ripping me off.
Guest:He didn't see me do it.
Guest:But people think that I started doing my thing after him.
Guest:And that's always kind of gotten under my skin.
Marc:oh right yeah but it's it's it's kind of a different thing because you sort of play it uh straight you know steven does as well but he's mining it for jokes but you actually have stances on issues that are political platforms and you take questions and uh you know you sort of have a disposition it's a very different demeanor than colbert you know people are always looking to
Marc:to call you know to to scream thief you know these are people that uh i'm not sure what they do but i mean that's ridiculous and i've worked with representative martin you know several times always does good you know i would imagine candid backhanded no it wasn't okay i i mean i would how is that have you done it uh for a primarily republican audience i
Marc:I did in Georgia and they enjoyed it.
Guest:I'm sure they would.
Guest:Then I did it in Indianapolis and this was, I would do the character as the opening act.
Guest:They were paying to see me as the headliner.
Guest:So they knew it was me doing this character and-
Guest:I would take questions from the audience.
Guest:I always enjoy that improvisational part of it.
Guest:And nobody's asking questions.
Guest:They hate it.
Guest:In Indianapolis?
Guest:In Indianapolis.
Guest:And this is when I knew I could never take this character really on the road to a non-liberal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or a non-... Blue state.
Guest:Open-minded.
Guest:And this woman in the back raises her hand.
Guest:She goes, yeah, I got a question.
Guest:When's the headliner coming out?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And everybody laughed and I was like... And it was you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they knew that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, they just wanted Monkey Boy to come out and do his poems.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that is one of the things... I think it's one of the reasons why I'm not doing The Road now because it just... You're up against... You're up against that.
Guest:If I knew it was going to be your audience or... Like when I go and do Richard Martin and open for Janine...
Guest:It's fun because they're like-minded people, but when I go do it for people that don't want to hear it, it's just too much.
Guest:It's too much for people that aren't, it's too specific.
Marc:It's an interesting indicator, though, that they're incapable of laughing at themselves, which is so much a part of that.
Guest:I don't know if it's that they don't get it or they get it and don't like it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think that that they're there.
Guest:I make fun of liberals, too, in it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, neither one of these extremes necessarily has a tremendous sense of humor about themselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, when it comes right down to the core of their politics.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They might find some gray area and be able to laugh at each other.
Marc:But as individuals, if you really get under the hypocrisy of either extreme, it gets a little hairy.
Guest:The really, really far left, politically correct far left is equally as annoying to me as the far right.
Guest:Maybe they're not violent, but they're...
Marc:as uncomfortable to be around it's hard to uh you know it requires a tremendous amount of charm to get under you know either one of those yeah yeah uh but the the left is a little easier because their anger is more like it's more familiar to us i think that that a lot of lefty anger you know it comes from a a lot of uh
Marc:weird um it's a type of defensive that that defensiveness that we understand yeah it's not they they i don't know what the analogy is i mean george lackoff wrote a wrote a book about the types of psychology that goes behind the sort of tough love um right wing kind of paternal yeah trip and then the left wing kind of nurturing kind of the amoral yeah trip yeah
Guest:You know, to me, when they both get too far in either direction, it's the right becomes obsessed with punishing and the left becomes obsessed with saving.
Guest:And that, I think neither of them are kind of healthy in large amounts.
Marc:Well, it's sort of a, it's like a cold war there because like the, you know, the punishings, you know, they don't see that they need to be saved.
Marc:And, you know, and sadly, you know, liberals, you know, can kind of see that they need to be punished, but they'll take care of that on their own.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So they can't save the other people and they will not accept being punished by anybody but themselves.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Well, now that we figured that out, did your dad get sober?
Guest:He did.
Guest:He then lost his sobriety at about 10 years.
Guest:At age 70?
Guest:Yeah, at age 70.
Guest:And then about a year before he died of cancer, he got sober again, or so he said, but I'm not really sure.
Guest:I don't know how much work my dad did on himself because he never made any kind of apologies to me for the kind of dad that he was.
Guest:And what kind of dad was that?
Guest:Completely disinterested in his children.
Guest:How many kids did you get?
Guest:Just one brother.
Guest:And we had a cousin who was raised with us, raised by our family because his dad was a fuck-up.
Guest:Older brother?
Guest:Older brother, and the cousin was 13 years older than us.
Guest:But my dad was he was a loving guy, but he was just trapped in his own head.
Guest:And fortunately, by the time he died, I could see that and I could get over my resentment at what he wasn't.
Guest:And I could focus on what he was, which was a guy that lived within his mean below his means.
Guest:um always provided financially for his family and um always wanted to do the right thing but you know he came from a verbally abusive physically abusive alcoholic father who again was high functioning his his dad was making you know forty thousand dollars a year during the great depression so he came from a very privileged kind of upbringing but
Guest:what came with it was this dad who was overbearing and would taunt his children.
Guest:Grandpa?
Guest:Yeah, I never met him.
Guest:He died before I was old enough to remember anything.
Guest:It's interesting how this stuff... But my dad never took that... Getting sober, one of the gifts was I was able to see my dad was better than his dad.
Guest:And that...
Guest:is a victory in itself he probably wanted to say the mean shit that his dad said to him right but he didn't so him being silent at the end of the couch in a lot of ways was a gift because like i remember one time um when we were doing that the shows over there at uh comedy network what was that uh the fuck was it the internet comedy thing we all had radio shows over there comedy world yeah i didn't have one there you didn't no
Guest:I thought you were over there.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I would do sketches and stuff like that.
Guest:And so when I went home to visit, I brought a compilation of these sketches I had done.
Guest:And on the ride home from the airport, I played in these sketches.
Guest:And I had learned how to use Pro Tools and edit and was producing this show every week.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he listened to him and he didn't say anything.
Guest:And I was like, so what did you think?
Guest:And he's like, I said, wow, I really thought that you would have at least had something nice to say.
Guest:And he said, I didn't think it was your best work.
Guest:And I just remember looking out the window and just thinking, why do I keep going to this guy who's incapable of giving me what I want?
Guest:And why do I do that to myself?
Guest:And why do I do that to myself?
Guest:I continue.
Guest:I mean, I did it here in the...
Guest:In the middle of the show, I wanted you to bring up my Republican character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at least today I can be honest about it and I can laugh about that needy side of me when it comes up.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, let's, you know, as two guys who have, what do you got?
Marc:You got double digits, you know, off the booze.
Guest:No, eight years.
Guest:Eight years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So is there a time...
Marc:Where, you know, we feel good about ourselves, Paul?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, through and through?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I have moments, days, weeks, sometimes even months of just beautiful, beautiful peace and totally okay with who I am and the world exactly as it is.
Guest:And then I slide back and I don't know what causes the backwards sliding sometimes.
Guest:Sometimes I think it's my depression.
Guest:I think, you know, I take meds and sometimes I...
Guest:You know, a psychiatrist will cut back my dosage a little bit because I'm having trouble getting up in the morning.
Guest:And then, you know, I had this thing in the last month.
Guest:He cut my dosage back and I had two wet dreams.
Guest:48 years old had two wet dreams last month.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's pretty good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was kind of a little proud.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Everything still works.
Guest:But there's always a creepiness to a wet dream because it's, you know, when your sexual stuff in dreams is very rarely tasteful or satisfying.
Guest:It's usually, for me, it's always a woman who's kind of vaguely bored and
Guest:And she's about to change her mind.
Guest:And then one last thrust and the wet dream happens.
Guest:And it always feels like you're kind of peeing.
Guest:So then you kind of half wake yourself up.
Guest:But you don't want to wake up because you want to feel it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's this weird... Wow.
Guest:It's this weird...
Guest:But it's better than.
Marc:So the woman's sort of like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:Maybe we shouldn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think that's deep down.
Guest:That's a turn on to me because I've always kind of been turned on by, you know, the woman that that you got to chase.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And then when you get them, they're bored with you.
Marc:Is that part of it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I get them, then I'm bored with them because they're into me.
Guest:You know, the Groucho Marx thing.
Guest:But your marriage is good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't have kids?
Guest:No kids.
Guest:Do you want them?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, neither my wife nor I want kids.
Guest:I think...
Guest:That's probably one of the few good decisions that I've made that were tough to make.
Guest:Because deep down, even before I got help, I knew there's something wrong with you.
Guest:And you need to break a cycle before you bring people into this world.
Marc:And you feel that to your core.
Marc:You don't ever think like, well, maybe kids would sort of engage me in the challenge of breaking the cycle.
Guest:I think that's a lie.
Marc:Yeah, but if you break the cycle now, then it's a small victory.
Guest:I don't want to gamble a person's life.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:I don't have kids either.
Marc:I mean, I'm not coming from a place of... Yeah, no, I know.
Marc:But I'm just too panicky.
Marc:I'm just like, I can't think that far ahead.
Marc:And then the idea that like, oh, now we have to feed it.
Guest:You know, the other thing that's nice too is... But I'm very responsible with my cats.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm... I guess I'm responsible with my dogs, but...
Guest:doing the podcast and being able to talk about, like I talked about the wet dream and stuff in my podcast.
Guest:And if I had kids, I wonder if I would be able to do that on a podcast.
Guest:I'd be kind of cringing, oh, my kids are going to hear me talking about this or other.
Guest:You've got a good 10 years before they can even figure out how to do that.
Guest:And probably the last thing they're going to be interested in is hearing you run your mouth when they don't have to.
Marc:Listen to daddy whine about his problems.
Marc:Daddy's a bigger baby than we are.
Guest:The one thing that I wanted the podcast to be, I remember what it's like feeling that there's no hope.
Guest:Sitting and feeling I'm broken, I'm fucked, there is no future for me.
Guest:Now being on the other side of it and knowing that that's just perception and that it's a lie if I'm willing to do work and connect to people.
Guest:This podcast is a way of talking with somebody about the pain and
Guest:And the battles in their heads and giving somebody out there who's listening to it, either entertaining them with that conversation or giving them a little bit of hope that they're not stuck for the rest of their lives if they're willing to get out of their comfort zone and try something different.
Yeah.
Guest:We may offer a hint here or there, but mostly it's two people waiting to go into a psychiatrist's office, that kind of a conversation.
Guest:It's not the doctor's office.
Guest:It's kind of a waiting room that doesn't suck, is what I hope for it to be.
Guest:And I've been getting some really touching emails from people that...
Guest:say that it has given them the strength to go see a psychiatrist and get help and to start reaching out to people and to talk to a cashier in line and compliment them.
Guest:And all of a sudden they're having a conversation and it's made their day.
Guest:And that's as far as the...
Guest:I guess the advice that I give to people.
Guest:Mostly, I think they just like hearing people that are as fucked up as they are and having a laugh here and there about it.
Guest:And in terms of... And I have to say, sorry to cut you off, I don't think I would be doing that show if it weren't for your podcast.
Guest:Your podcast...
Guest:showed me that people do want to hear the sad.
Guest:They do want to hear anything as long as it's real and it's coming from the heart.
Guest:So at the risk of making your big ego even bigger, I want to thank you for doing what you do.
Guest:Because I absolutely wouldn't be doing my show if it wasn't for you.
Marc:Oh, you're welcome.
Marc:And I appreciate that.
Marc:That makes me feel good.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of broken hearts out there, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:a lot of pain yeah i you know it because it's just uh yeah but even some people don't diagnose it like that you know i mean we're all grown-ups and part of being grown-up is learning how to you know to to sort of temper uh disappointment and vulnerability and um you know feelings of despair and sadness but i mean being broken hearted
Marc:there's a very fine line between accepting life for what it is and really experiencing a brokenheartedness.
Marc:If you don't overcome a sort of childlike entitlement and put it into perspective,
Marc:I mean, you know, that type of broken heart, it doesn't, you know, it's hard to make that, you know, feel better.
Guest:Yeah, because it's usually self-pity.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Self-pity is really hard to get somebody out of because they can't see they're in self-pity.
Guest:They think they're owed better.
Marc:But also the self-pity, the act of it, you know, protects them from just a, you know, if you push that aside, who knows how, you know, if you're ever going to stop crying.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:I think you will.
Guest:Of course you do.
Guest:Yeah, but the risk of that.
Guest:But some people are so chemically fucked up, so depressed on the physical level.
Guest:That no amount of talking about something in and of itself is going to is going to make them better.
Guest:They need, you know, I think there's kind of two facets to depression.
Guest:I think there's the, you know, the part that we can help by.
Guest:connecting with other human beings.
Guest:And then there's the part that some of us need physically to be on, on meds.
Guest:And you can say what you will about that.
Guest:Some people don't believe in them, but I can tell you this, I've gone off them and it was like walking off a fucking cliff.
Guest:And, uh, I went right back on them cause I, I don't give a shit.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:How was that?
Marc:The, the feeling of flying.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:It was so, you know, I was glad that I actually had, uh,
Marc:the the knowledge that there was a way back yeah because some people don't know how do you know if you've never experienced normal how do you know that what you're feeling is abnormal what is normal too yeah but anxiety and that dread and the panic is horrendous it's awful i mean like anxiety and panic like at least with depression you're like i know what this is yeah but with panic and anxiety i mean holy fuck
Marc:So, speaking of that, what are you working on outside the podcast?
Marc:I mean, I know you're having a lot of career fear now because it's hard to lose a gig, especially one that paid some money.
Marc:What, are you hitting the pavement, or what are you doing?
Guest:No, I'm really just kind of focusing on the podcast.
Guest:You know, I've got a pilot that I wrote for the Republican character, an animated pilot that I'm trying to shop around, but, you know, I...
Guest:I hate putting myself out there.
Guest:I don't like meetings.
Guest:I don't like calling my agent or my manager to talk about meetings.
Guest:I actually fired my manager.
Guest:That's always good to do.
Guest:You know, fired him right before I lost my show.
Guest:So now when I probably need a manager.
Guest:But I don't know if I even need a manager.
Guest:I don't know.
Yeah.
Guest:Now I'm starting to get panicked and anxious.
Marc:Keeping it interesting.
Marc:I like that fine line you ride between practical movements and self-sabotage.
Marc:It's really hard to regulate or to even assess properly.
Guest:It's okay to take a step forward as long as you can promise yourself you'll take a step back.
Marc:Or two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or two.
Guest:But I really feel like the podcast is...
Guest:where I'm meant to be right now.
Guest:And it just, it feels like I'm putting my whole soul into it.
Guest:And it just feels right.
Marc:The mental health happy hour.
Guest:Mental illness happy hour.
Guest:Yeah, the website is mentalpod.com.
Guest:And it's not a comedy podcast.
Guest:It's not listed in comedy.
Guest:It's listed in health self-help in iTunes, which kind of makes me cringe because it's not...
Guest:I didn't know what else to list it in.
Guest:I suppose he could have done it under in-depth interviews or something, but it's kind of its own thing.
Marc:Well, no, it's a great form.
Marc:It's a great medium, and there's total freedom to it, and it sounds like you're ready, and it sounds like it's a great thing to do.
Marc:Now, do you still have the website for Representative Paul Gilmartin?
Guest:Representative Richard Martin, yeah.
Guest:I'm sorry, you're Paul Gilmartin.
That's right.
Guest:It's askarepublican.com, and you can watch videos.
Guest:And I got a pretty funny fake campaign ad that I've had out there for a couple of years up there, too.
Guest:Back when I was making money, I got some good stock footage and put together, I think, a pretty funny campaign ad.
Marc:Well, I think we're good.
Marc:Do you feel good about this?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think we were too passive-aggressive with each other, and you know I love you.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:I love you, too, and I appreciate you...
Guest:having me on and and doing what you do man you're uh um again i hope i'm not inflating that fucking ego but you're uh you're really a pioneer in this in this medium and uh i feel proud to be your friend well thank you and and uh and i feel proud to be yours and that's not just doing that you know you've helped me out a lot and it's a great to talk to you thanks bud
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Thank you for joining us.
Marc:I want to thank my guest Paul Gilmartin and also my additional guest Jeffrey Tate and the wonderful Ryan Singer.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get your JustCoffee.coop over there.
Marc:If you get the WTF blend at JustCoffee.coop which you can link to at WTFPod.com I get a little kickback on that.
Marc:A little bit on the back end.
Marc:You can also get your apps there.
Marc:You can get on the mailing list there.
Marc:You can
Marc:You know, you can go to, it'll link you to iTunes.
Marc:Go to WTF Premium for any of those older episodes that you might have missed and you're not an app person.
Marc:I will be at the South Beach Comedy Festival tonight, 8 o'clock at the Colony Theater.
Marc:Still tickets available if you want to come down for that.
Marc:Please come down for that.
Marc:Okay, that's it.
Marc:I'll talk to you guys later.
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