Episode 286 - Kurt Braunohler
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck's the bulls?
Guest:What the fuck, Knicks?
Guest:What the fuck, Ericans?
Guest:What the fuck, Tuckians?
Guest:What the fuck, Anucks?
Guest:Enough.
Guest:Enough what the fucking.
Guest:I am Mark Maron.
Guest:This is WTF.
Marc:How are you feeling?
Marc:I feel all right.
Marc:And I want to, before I get started, well, let me say my guest today is Kurt Braunohler.
Marc:He is the host of the new show on IFC Bunk.
Marc:Also a great comedian.
Marc:Very funny guy who I knew very little about.
Marc:And as usual, within the conversation, I was like, holy shit.
Marc:This guy's got a life thing.
Marc:He's got some stuff.
Marc:Great talk with Kurt.
Marc:Hope you enjoy that.
Marc:I want to also thank everybody that downloaded the Mark and Tom show.
Marc:Tom Sharpling and myself.
Marc:I think we're going to try to do it fairly regularly, like maybe maybe once a month or something.
Marc:A lot of people have been asking for the first one because I build this as a second Mark and Tom show.
Marc:The first one's available for a free download in the WTF feed.
Marc:You can go to WTF pod dot com or or on iTunes or whatever you want.
Marc:But the new Mark and Tom show, you got to go to iTunes and search for Mark and Tom show.
Marc:You can search for my name, Mark Maron or Tom Sharpling, and you'll see it in our album sections.
Marc:You can also get it right at WTFpod.com.
Marc:There's a link there.
Marc:It's $2.99.
Marc:And Tom and I feel comfortable with that.
Marc:We've provided the world with a lot of free content.
Marc:We love talking to each other.
Marc:And it was exciting.
Marc:It's exciting to work with another broadcaster and shoot the shit for a while.
Marc:So do that if you'd like.
Marc:Me and Tom are very happy with it.
Marc:Also, I'll be at Bonnaroo tomorrow.
Marc:And Saturday, I don't know what that means.
Marc:It seems like a large thing.
Marc:It's at a farm.
Marc:It's in Tennessee.
Marc:Do some research on the Internet.
Marc:And next weekend, what was the date on that?
Marc:Saturday, the 16th, I'll be in Chicago at the Just for Laughs thing with Sarah Silverman and I think Natasha Leggero and Reggie Watts and Chris Hardwick.
Marc:doing a thing again you can go to wtfpod.com get the link or go see if that's sold out and what's happening with that so I was going through my stuff I've been doing that I think I spoke to you a little bit about that the last time I was on this microphone the clutter is going I had my whole house painted I had everything painted
Marc:I painted over my ex-wife's decisions on color, finally.
Marc:I threw away a lot of my ex-wife's decisions on furniture, finally.
Marc:Clearing out the ghost.
Marc:Didn't really think about it much.
Marc:I didn't really put it together that it would have an effect on me.
Marc:But man, my entire house, I just painted it a nice creamy white, which goes nice with the type of plaster that I have and the curved ceiling in my little two-bedroom hut up here on the hill.
Marc:And there's nothing on the walls.
Marc:I pulled all the clutter out and going through all my shit.
Marc:The house is basically empty except for the bare essentials.
Marc:And I'm like, holy shit, this is where it's supposed to be.
Marc:But I'm still digging it.
Marc:I know eventually I should put something up on the wall or it's going to look like it's going to look very temporary.
Marc:But I'll start cluttering it up again, I'm sure.
Marc:But I've been going through a lot of shit.
Marc:I'm going through all these old DVDs and shit.
Marc:And I found this whole box of Dean Martin variety shows.
Marc:And I threw one in.
Marc:What the fuck happened to show business?
Marc:Could somebody explain that to me?
Marc:Man, did they look like they were having a great time.
Marc:What a grand undertaking.
Marc:The Dean Martin show.
Marc:He just comes out.
Marc:He sings, cracks a few jokes.
Marc:He's laughing his balls off with all his buddies.
Marc:Bob Newhart.
Marc:Phil Harris, his band leader, did a bit that was hilarious.
Marc:Peter Sellers.
Marc:I mean, all these cats.
Marc:what happened to television man i mean it was so it was classy but just because they were who they were you knew it was sort of seedy underneath there you know this was a vegas uh crew but uh but man they were playing to everybody they were playing to a you know a nation full of eyes song and dance men doing the jokes i just i you know i grew up seeing some of that and it was so fun and so warm and so you know it had such context now i just don't
Marc:Sometimes I don't know what the fuck happened to television.
Marc:It seems like television was gang-raped.
Marc:Literally gang-raped.
Marc:And now all of television is just a victim of some brutal raping.
Marc:And now we're dealing with the sort of desperate manifestations of a damaged medium.
Marc:Just sorted.
Marc:Completely sorted.
Marc:There's a lot of choices, but most of them are tasteless.
Marc:Some of them are disturbing on purpose and just fucking craven.
Marc:not dean martin memories are made of this i mean what i i want to be a song and dance man i'm keeping those dvds a lot of other shit's going a lot of books went out i am a fucking hoarder there's no fucking doubt about that because i literally i had to get into the mindset to do this
Marc:All right, look, let's do this interview thing.
Marc:Let's make this happen.
Marc:Let's talk to Kurt Braunler now.
Marc:What?
Marc:Is that the... Hello?
Marc:Scott.
Marc:Hey, Mark.
Guest:Scott Aukerman just bursting in.
Guest:Hey, how's it going?
Guest:Hey, WTF listeners.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:I'm great.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:It's very unorthodox that someone just burst into my garage.
Guest:It is?
Marc:You left the Dora.
Marc:open we do that all the time on my show comedy bang bang we have an open door policy yeah well i uh this is not how this works i really i just thought i could drop by anytime i wanted no usually we arrange it people call you know we set things up and now you're here no thanks all right well i just wanted to tell all your wtf listeners about my new tv show comedy bang bang that's on friday you got a new tv show i got a new tv show i saw it oh good i saw the first two episodes mark what'd you think
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Daddy, do you like me?
Marc:I enjoyed the show.
Marc:I thought it was a butt.
Marc:No, I'm not going to butt.
Marc:I like the Scott Arkerman character.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Guest:It's an interesting character.
Guest:I'm in it right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But is it a character?
Marc:Because I know you pretty well, and I know you're sort of playing straight man to this universe that you've created there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I'm sort of doing a character, but yeah.
Guest:I mean, if people don't know what we're talking about, it's a talk show on IFC.
Guest:Is it really a talk show?
Guest:It's a talk show format.
Guest:We were trying to come up with a name for it.
Guest:You know how like a fake documentary is a mockumentary?
Guest:Right.
Guest:We were thinking like mock?
Marc:show yeah but that that doesn't tell anyone what it like an malk show yes mal or just the mlk show the ml yeah and it's a black theme it's a it's a racially charged yes righteous uh undertaking by scott ackerman a white guy but you do have reggie watts as hey so you know it was it a horrible cover you got the black guy
Marc:But no, Reggie is your band.
Marc:He's my band leader and my sidekick.
Marc:Very funny, too.
Marc:He's very funny.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:Because I know Reggie for his music, but then when you guys are working together, he's quick.
Guest:He's a funny guy.
Guest:We have a great relationship together.
Marc:And on the first show, that's the polar one, right?
Guest:No, the first show is actually Zach Galifianakis, Will Forte, Tom Lennon, Andy Daly, Gillian Jacobs from Community, myself, Reggie, plus a whole bunch of other stuff going on.
Marc:Man, Andy Daly was fucking hilarious.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:You're going to love him.
Marc:I mean, I've talked to him.
Marc:I've seen him do some stuff, but he killed me.
Marc:Everyone was funny.
Marc:Tom Lennon is the wine guy.
Marc:I'm not spoiling anything.
Marc:Sommelier.
Marc:The sommelier.
Guest:Yeah, no, you're not spoiling anything.
Marc:So you're kind of doing a mashup of talk show, like old style TV show.
Guest:Kind of Fernwood Tonight-y, Dick Cavett kind of thing.
Guest:With fake interviews, but also with real interviews.
Marc:And some sketch, man.
Marc:There's one part where you actually go to a post-apocalyptic Earth.
Marc:Yes, of course, and fight off the alien insurrection.
Guest:Yeah, for like three minutes.
Guest:It's just like, where's Scott?
Guest:He's fighting off aliens.
Guest:Yeah, that's on Friday at 10.
Guest:Star-packed.
Guest:Star Pack, every episode we try to put in as many crazy, great people on as we could.
Guest:You'll see Will Arnett and Topher Grace for like 90 seconds.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:It's nice having friends, isn't it, Scott?
Guest:It really is, and I'd love to have you on season two.
Guest:Now I'm feeling really insecure about not asking you to be on.
Marc:I'm not a big name, you know what I mean?
Guest:You have your own IFC show.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I'm going to be there with you if everything works out well.
Marc:I hope so, back to back.
Marc:Not until next fall.
Marc:But how many episodes did you do?
Guest:We did 10 episodes.
Guest:I'm really proud of them all.
Guest:I really stand behind them all.
Guest:I mean, they're really, they let me do whatever I wanted to do.
Marc:They were real good about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I can't believe the stuff that we got away with.
Marc:I was watching it.
Marc:I'm like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:Which is a good feeling to have when you're watching television, where you're like, what is that?
Marc:That's not a talking window frame.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the stuff, I mean, the stuff we do on the show, any other network would have said, can we change that?
Marc:It's taking some risks.
Marc:We don't understand any of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were all sort of like, oh, great.
Guest:That looks fun.
Guest:They loved it.
Guest:They love it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I think people are really going to love it.
Guest:We have Seth Rogen on the show, Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks from The Hunger Games.
Guest:Kids love The Hunger Games.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:My girlfriend loves The Hunger Games, and she's not a kid, but she's a kid.
Marc:All right, it's arguable.
All right.
Marc:28 29 now oh congratulations yeah she's not a kid yeah if there's grass on the field yeah this is one of those that's an awkward dockerman moment that you'll see a lot of on the comedy bang bang but you had adam scott too right adam scott he's great we have weird al yankovic tenacious d so i watched uh the one with uh polar as a guest and is that how much improv is going on there
Guest:I think it's probably like half the show is improv.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anytime I'm talking to anyone on set, I'm actually, they're all unplanned conversations.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a lot like what we do with the Between Two Ferns stuff that I do.
Marc:But obviously they're in on the joke, but you're working with people that can do that.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's great when you have Amy Poehler across the table from you and you know that if you lob something out there, she's going to knock it out of the park.
Marc:That's wild because I just by nature of how the sketches were structured.
Marc:So you structure blocks and there's some stuff that's scripted, obviously, because it needs pre-production.
Guest:There's a structure around it, but anything on the set, we're just kind of flying blind.
Marc:Andy Daly improvised that dance guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I've seen him do that character before, so I know sort of what he's going to do, but the whole thing is improv.
Guest:Because I think it just has a real air to it that a lot of fake talk shows like, I don't know, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it seems scripted, but mine doesn't feel like that.
Marc:No, I mean, I'm completely amazed because I knew, obviously you have to have points and you're asking the questions, but I didn't really realize that they had no idea what you're going to ask them.
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:Oh, that's unbelievable.
Marc:And Zach, of course, no one plays disinterested better.
Marc:Like I've never seen a guy.
Marc:I don't know that he's playing it.
Marc:But I've never, like, I've never seen a guy remove himself from a situation while still being in this situation as good as Zach does.
Guest:He's amazing at it.
Marc:But it's a funny thing, right?
Marc:It's not, you know, he was not really disinterested, was he?
Guest:No, I mean, he had a good time, but I think I was telling you the other day, I was watching him in a TV show the other day that he taped a few years ago, and he was actively turning his back to the camera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is such a funny thing to do.
Marc:Well, I love knowing that.
Marc:And I think that's something that ups the ante for people watching it.
Marc:Well, it's definitely a mind blower.
Marc:And it's definitely, you don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:And it's hilarious.
Marc:And thanks for dropping by.
Marc:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:I'm just going to see myself out the way I came in.
Marc:And shut the door, will you?
Guest:Yeah, okay, no problem.
Marc:All right, Scott.
Marc:Good times.
Marc:Watch what?
Marc:I was just going to say, watch Scott's show.
Marc:It premieres tomorrow night at 10 p.m.
Marc:on IFC.
Guest:Friday night, 10 p.m.
Marc:Is it going to be every Friday?
Guest:Every Friday, 10 p.m.
Guest:For what, 10 times?
Guest:10 times, yeah.
Marc:And hopefully more if they like it?
Guest:10 times at 10.
Guest:That's 100.
Guest:That's all they got to remember.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:No, it's only 10 episodes, not 100.
Guest:100 episodes.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Thanks, Scott.
Bye.
Marc:I don't pay attention to where people, I barely know anyone's name.
Guest:Yeah, I have the same problem.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah, and it's embarrassing.
Guest:I find it embarrassing, and I try to get better about it, and I just, it's like a block.
Guest:What do you think that is?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've always thought that it's like a... Selfish thing?
Guest:I mean, maybe that's... It could be selfish.
Guest:I've always thought it's like a downfall of mine.
Guest:I've always felt bad about it.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I could know people for 20 years and still be like, oh, fuck.
Guest:But also, after 15 years, it's weird to ask.
Marc:no you it's weird to ask after you know twice no of course and like some people are so good like i'm going to be working with people and it's i gotta i get that right i always ask other people you just have to have one person whose name you do know who knows everybody else oh yeah you gotta have like a the uh like a presidential assistant yeah that is more
Marc:So let me make sure I know your last name properly.
Marc:Brown Oler?
Marc:Brown Oler.
Marc:Brown Oler.
Marc:Yeah, it just looks complicated.
Marc:Kurt Brown Oler.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You must have been relentlessly ridiculed.
Guest:You know what was weird is that for the last name, no.
Guest:I mean, for everything else.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Brown Oler?
Guest:Nothing?
Guest:No, the best they came up with was Granolar.
Guest:Granola?
Guest:Isn't that the word?
Guest:I mean, like, in the name, there's an H that can easily be moved over one, and it's essentially assholer.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Assholer.
Guest:And no.
Guest:Kurt Assholer.
Guest:Granola.
Guest:That was the best thing.
Guest:Granola?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What an uninventive bunch of, you must not have had shitty kids where you grew up.
Marc:I mean, no, they were shitty.
Guest:They just were, they had tiny imaginations.
Guest:No.
Guest:Tiny.
Guest:Assholer, that's easy.
Guest:That's easy.
Guest:Brown hole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dirty butt.
Marc:Like even they just call me dirty butt.
Marc:That's a no brainer.
Marc:Let me get some more.
Marc:Oh, there I am in my head.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:So what are you doing out in L.A.?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:I never see you out here.
Marc:But then again, I don't know you.
Marc:Yeah, we don't know each other.
Marc:I mean, we worked together at an event.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We did one show.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:And that was good?
Guest:Yeah, it was a fun show.
Marc:That was Ithaca?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was me, you, Kristen?
Marc:No, it was Eugene.
Marc:Me, you, and Eugene.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:And that was the first time I said, wow, this guy's pretty funny.
Marc:I don't know if I would have noticed that if I just ran into you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I'm very dull.
Guest:I'm very dull in person.
Marc:Unassuming...
Guest:I'm a giant monster.
Guest:I look like an SS officer.
Marc:Yeah, well, I don't know.
Marc:Well, you got the name of one.
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:Do you come from German-speaking Germans?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:And I just found out that I always knew that my father is German.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But never knew about my mother because she didn't know her father.
Guest:And then she just recently, maybe like a year ago, got in touch with him like by letter, had found him and got in touch with him by letter.
Guest:And then he died and then he had never told anyone.
Guest:And then his daughter found the letters and got in touch and found out that she had a sister she never knew about.
Guest:and got in touch with my mom and through that we found out that I have a cousin living in Los Angeles and so this trip I've come out and I met this guy who's my cousin who actually knew my grandfather and I just found out that yeah like that's German too.
Guest:He's German so he came from Germany too.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:Yeah so and it's really weird like we sat down and all of a sudden like all of these things were like eerily you know similar and we got along incredibly well
Guest:And it kind of was like an overwhelming feeling.
Guest:This just happened?
Guest:This just happened three days ago.
Guest:And I'm going to go see him tomorrow again.
Marc:Like, what were the similarities?
Marc:I mean, was there resemblance?
Guest:No, there's no resemblance.
Guest:He looks like Ryan Gosling.
Marc:He looks exactly like Ryan Gosling.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But this is your first cousin.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like your mother's sister's kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But your mother didn't know she had a sister.
Marc:No, not until like two months ago.
Marc:Why was your mother not in touch with her father?
Marc:He just took off.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, so she never knew him.
Guest:And he had a second family kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, he, okay, so my grandmother was a dancer, and so she was kind of like, she traveled a lot, and I guess met this guy, and they had sex, and then he took off, and I don't even think she knew where he went.
Guest:She knew his last name, and that's how they found,
Guest:That's how my mother, my mother's married, she married like five years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that her husband is really into genealogy, which for some reason, old men get into genealogy.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:So this is not your dad because you're older than five.
Guest:No, right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, I'm older than five.
Guest:Yeah, this is my mom's husband.
Guest:Where's your dad at?
Guest:My dad?
Guest:My dad is in Michigan.
Guest:They've been divorced since I was two, but my dad has been remarried a whole bunch of times.
Guest:So I have actually eight brothers and sisters on my dad's side.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, I have a lot of stuff.
Guest:yeah well let's let's start unraveling it okay should we start on the dad's side well where'd you grow up i grew up in new jersey so i was born in michigan where my dad lives still and then at two my mom divorced my dad um and she moved we moved back to new jersey and moved in with into asbury park new jersey right on the bruce how old were you was the amusement park there still
Guest:No, it had burnt down, I believe.
Guest:But the casino building was there, right?
Guest:The casino building just recently was torn down, so it was there my whole life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we could break into it as the kids and just wander around.
Marc:Nobody hung out there.
Marc:No.
Guest:Just an empty boardwalk.
Guest:Empty boardwalk, but now it's coming back.
Marc:That's what I hear.
Guest:Yeah, it's pretty awesome now.
Marc:Is your mom still there?
Guest:No.
Guest:So we lived in my uncle.
Guest:My grand uncle had like one of these old decrepit houses near the beach.
Guest:He was my grand uncle who danced with my grandmother.
Guest:They were like a cousin team.
Guest:And they looked exactly like what kind of dancing ballroom dancing.
Guest:A professional ballroom dance.
Guest:Professional ballroom dance.
Guest:So they would go on tours and go to ships and they would go on cruise ships and then dance for people and teach people how to dance and then perform.
Guest:And then she would also travel all around.
Guest:And later in life, she actually had a dance studio in Asbury.
Marc:Yeah, did you know her?
Guest:Yeah, I knew my grandmother on my mother's side very well.
Guest:Like I danced my whole like growing up because and it was just, you know, it would be all of these girls and then me.
Guest:Ballroom dancing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We would do ballet and jazz.
Guest:And then I did our step dancing for a really long time as well.
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:So you know how to ballet dance?
Guest:I mean, then, I mean, you know, we're talking about ages probably three to 10.
Guest:And you did jazz too?
Guest:I did everything.
Guest:I mean, I have all, I have crazy amounts of weird photos of me with just like a gaggle of girls dressed as bees.
Guest:And then I'm like the king bee.
Guest:So I was always like, it was weird.
Guest:It was actually weirdly sexist in all the photos.
Guest:I'm always the king version of whatever else is dressed as because I'm the boy.
Guest:You're probably the only guy that could get to do it.
Guest:Oh, yeah, there's no other.
Guest:I mean, there's no six-year-old boys.
Marc:Do you still have ballroom chops?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, you know, when I dance now, if I dance to normal music, I look.
Guest:People either say, hey, you're a really good dancer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or people are like, you're trying to dance like funnily.
Guest:You're a really funny dancer.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And to me, I'm just actually trying to dance.
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:But it's probably in there.
Guest:It's probably like muscle memory.
Marc:Somewhere there.
Marc:It's probably like, you know, if you just.
Marc:But it's hard.
Marc:People hardly dance anymore.
Marc:But I mean, if you're at a party, maybe a wedding.
Marc:Like you probably kick into some sort of old jazz steps.
Guest:Oh, well, that's, I still know the Irish step dancing.
Guest:That's something I actually still- That's awkward at a party.
Guest:Yeah, you can't do that.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It's gotta be just right.
Guest:Yeah, it just looks awkward.
Marc:So did you do Irish step dancing in a group?
Guest:Yeah, well, I thought I was Irish for a really long time, because I was raised like Irish Catholic, essentially.
Guest:Why?
Guest:And all of my, everyone I knew was Irish Catholic.
Guest:I went to a Catholic school.
Guest:Everyone in that part of the Jersey Shore.
Guest:Brown Haller.
Guest:I didn't think of that.
Guest:I was just like, well, everybody else is Irish.
Guest:I must be Irish, too.
Guest:No one told you?
Guest:We never discussed it, you know?
Guest:And Irish step dance, I did all these Irish traditions and stuff like that.
Guest:And I think Irish step dance actually until I was like 12.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, for like a long time.
Marc:So you're growing up in this rickety house off the beach in Asbury Park.
Guest:Yeah, and then we moved from Asbury Park to Neptune.
Guest:So you're with your single mom.
Guest:Single mom.
Guest:She was a nurse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Raising me by herself.
Guest:My dad remarries.
Guest:Brothers, sisters?
Guest:No, it's just you and your mom?
Guest:Just me and my mom.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Your dad remarries.
Guest:My dad remarries.
Guest:My dad...
Guest:He's on his fourth wife now, but so I have three older sisters.
Guest:I have one brother who's right next to me in age, and these are all half, and then three younger sisters.
Guest:And so now I have, and I was always, so my eldest nephew is, I think, 19, and then my youngest sister, sisters, twins, are 10 or 11.
Marc:How the fuck do you keep in touch with all of them?
Marc:Do you keep in touch with all of them?
Guest:I just was at my second eldest sister's house in Laguna Niguel.
Guest:They're all half.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, in Laguna Niguel.
Guest:I was with her family and my nieces and my nephews.
Marc:Down here?
Marc:Yeah, it was pretty great.
Marc:And do you feel like family?
Guest:Yeah, that's the second eldest I feel very close with.
Marc:Oh my God, this is all so complicated.
Guest:Yeah, and then my brother I'm very close with as well.
Guest:Your half-brother.
Guest:My half-brother, yeah, he's like closest to me in age.
Marc:But they all have like, now they're in the same position you are because there's kids with the newer, different wives.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And are all these women still alive?
Guest:One of them is deceased.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, the eldest.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, it's intense.
Guest:And also, the thing I always used to do with my dad was that when my oldest nephew would come by and it was like family reunion, and when my youngest sisters were still like kids, they'd be like, oh, Emily and Aaron did something.
Guest:And I'd be like, no, no, no, no.
Guest:Aunt Emily and Aunt Aaron.
Guest:And my dad would be like, don't do that.
Guest:That's not funny.
Guest:I'm like, dad, you don't even realize how funny this really is.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because they were your aunts?
Guest:They were younger.
Guest:So they were like 10 years younger than him.
Guest:So at the time, he's probably 15 and they're five years old.
Guest:And they were his aunts.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's fucking complicated.
Guest:It is very complicated.
Marc:But you've maintained a relationship with your old man and everything was cool through all this?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it was never cool.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It definitely felt like he was... I don't think he was ever... And he actually said this to me.
Guest:relatively recently, like maybe five years ago, where he's like, I don't think I was a good father.
Guest:And I was like, and I don't think he ever just planned on it.
Guest:It was one of those things, again, in the, you know, people, he was born in 1940.
Guest:So it was just like that idea where it's like, you don't use condoms and they get pregnant, you just marry them.
Guest:And you just continue on.
Guest:And so I think,
Guest:he just sounds like he kind of like a series of blunderings almost like where these women wanted to have children and he didn't but he was just like all right and just kind of kept giving in it was almost like a giving in over and over again it seems but but see after like maybe once or twice doing that you think like you know he'd be like you know they've got these things
Marc:Maybe we don't have to have more children, you know.
Marc:I think, you know what, honestly?
Marc:Are you that forgiving?
Marc:It's just blundering after four wives and like in new broods of children every few years.
Marc:Yeah, my dad just makes mistakes again and again and again.
Marc:And I call them half brothers.
Guest:I mean, it is like, why?
Guest:If you don't think that you're really checked in as a father, then why do you continue to do it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You don't know?
Guest:I honestly don't know.
Guest:I mean, he's definitely like a, I mean, I like the guy.
Guest:People like him.
Guest:He's a very likable dude.
Guest:But do you see him as a dad or just a guy?
Guest:I see him as a guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a lot of anger towards him until maybe I was, I think, 21 or so, and we got drunk together.
Guest:and then i was like oh like he's a great drinking buddy yeah he's like you know i just can't expect him to be a father exactly yeah yeah i'm gonna retire those needs yeah yeah exactly and i just kind of retired those needs and now he's like a buddy you know and your mom just remarried five years ago yeah just right it was high school sweetheart wow who just found her on i think it was classmates.com and then they got like a whirlwind romance and they got back together again and you get along with that guy
Guest:Yeah, he's fine.
Guest:I always say about him, he could literally be a monkey.
Guest:A monkey as in the band or an ape?
Guest:No, like an ape who throws his shit around.
Guest:But as long as my mom's happy.
Guest:He helps her up the stairs.
Guest:I can't help her up the stairs.
Guest:I don't live there anymore.
Guest:So there's a guy who helps her up the stairs.
Guest:It's like he could do whatever he wants.
Guest:He could be the most racist man in the world.
Guest:And I'd still be so happy he was there.
Guest:Yeah, that's sweet.
Guest:Yeah, but he's fine.
Guest:He's fine.
Marc:He's a nice guy.
Marc:You'd probably be a little uncomfortable if you went to see your mom and he answered the door and goes, yes, all's here.
Guest:Yeah, that would be a little difficult.
Marc:And you'd have to say, hey, how are you?
Guest:Are you still helping my mom up the stairs?
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:My mom was so dedicated to me.
Guest:And I always wondered about this.
Guest:This is another crazy thing.
Guest:We're going to get all the family shit out right now.
Guest:All right, yeah.
Guest:is that I was always, my mom was such a good mom in so many ways and so dedicated to me.
Guest:And I definitely am like only child syndrome because of it.
Guest:But I always wondered why or how she knew so much and she seemed to do everything right.
Guest:And then I found out
Guest:like a year and a half ago that she had a kid before me that no one ever talked about because she got pregnant when she was 18 and then just gave the kid up for adoption.
Guest:And back then you just went to a nunnery, like a convent essentially for pregnant teens.
Guest:Put it on a doorstep maybe.
Guest:And then you would go through it and then she just disappeared for six months and came back and no one ever spoke of it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so... This is some deep Catholic shit.
Guest:It's some deep Catholic shit.
Guest:And the way I found out was that my dad was just drunk one night and in front of my brother, because he was having, my brother's having a kid and he's like, well, we're thinking about having a kid at home, but people say like, can't have kids at home unless you had one before.
Guest:He's like, but Barbara did that.
Guest:And my dad was like, oh, she had a kid before.
Guest:And then my brother was like, hey...
Guest:I think your mom had a kid before you.
Guest:And I was like, no, I don't think so.
Guest:It's like dad said when he was drunk.
Guest:I was like, really?
Guest:And then it was like, how do I bring that up with my mom?
Marc:But at this point, that's not surprising in this family.
Guest:Oh, no, not exactly.
Guest:There's so many levels of secrecy and unknown stuff.
Guest:And it is all like comes back to the Catholic thing of just like, just move on.
Guest:Just move on.
Guest:This will sort itself out.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So wait now.
Marc:So you bring it up with your mom?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I was trying to figure out how to do it, you know, because it is like it's a situation where you don't have a rule for it.
Guest:Do you have something you want to tell me for your whole life?
Guest:Yeah, the whole time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Do you want to tell me something?
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Guest:I'm going to think about it.
Guest:Do you want to tell me something?
Guest:Here, let me give you a hint.
Guest:Or yeah, I mean like now he's 48 years old, I think.
Guest:That is how old he would be.
Guest:Well, when do we track down that one?
Guest:That's the question.
Guest:So anyway, so how I brought it up was we were just having lunch one day because I don't want to do it over the phone.
Guest:So we're having lunch and I was like, um...
Guest:It's like, hey, did you have a kid before me?
Guest:And she's like, oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, I did.
Guest:And I was like, don't you think you should have told me?
Guest:And she's like, no.
Guest:It's like, I've never told anyone.
Guest:It's like, it's just something we never, no one ever spoke about it.
Guest:Did she have that tone?
Guest:No, like it was casual.
Guest:yeah it was totally cash it was super cash you know and she was just like you have to understand it was a totally different time like that you went away and then you came back and you've been gone for six months and everyone you know pretends like you didn't leave like no one speaks of it that's how the community handled it the whole everybody yeah the family the community everyone and did you ask her about the guy well I asked him about and I think she was you know I had thought about because I wanted to get in touch with him
Guest:Especially now, I kind of even want to more after meeting this cousin and kind of like getting along with him so well and being kind of like, I've always wanted to have somebody in Los Angeles who I could go surfing with and he's a surfer and I was kind of really excited.
Guest:Yeah, I just came from it.
Guest:I just came from Newport Beach this morning.
Guest:Where'd you start surfing?
Guest:In New Jersey?
Guest:In New Jersey.
Guest:Yeah, because I grew up on the ocean in New Jersey.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I asked my mom, I was like, hey, would it be okay?
Guest:And she's like, well, let's talk about it.
Guest:And then basically, I think she didn't come out and say this, but I think she's scared on some level that she doesn't know what happened to the kid.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:And basically what it comes down to is that
Guest:The Catholic Church, the state of New Jersey tried to open up these cases so that people could find the people that were adopted.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the Catholic Church sued them to keep all the records sealed because- The Catholic Church sued itself or the state of New Jersey?
Guest:No, sued the state of New Jersey to keep all these records sealed.
Guest:I wonder why.
Guest:Because they essentially said that would be a violation.
Guest:All of these people went into this system with the confidentiality in place.
Guest:And if you take it away, it's a betrayal of all of their trust.
Guest:And also, my mom said too, she was like, well, you know what, there's a chance that he doesn't even know he's adopted.
Guest:Because back then, you didn't tell your kid you were adopted.
Guest:That's a relatively more modern practice.
Marc:So, wow, so all this stuff is predicated on maintaining the denial and secrets that the church encourages.
Guest:And the church encourages it.
Guest:I mean, it's so, it's, you know, I grew up, when I grew up, I grew up at the Catholic Church.
Guest:I was gonna be, I wanted to be a priest as a kid, you know?
Guest:Yeah, I could see that.
Guest:Yeah, I was an altar boy my whole life.
Guest:And what shattered that, the dancing?
Guest:No, it was high school, my realization that there was just deep flaws in the system of the church.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's so weird to look at the Catholic church as a system and then to have my experience growing up within it were radically different.
Guest:I must have just been, even though I went to Catholic school my whole life,
Guest:I was always in a must have been a liberal Catholic situation in which it was only good.
Guest:You know, there was no there was never.
Guest:I think that's the bill of goods.
Guest:They want you to believe that.
Guest:I mean, yeah, no, but I mean, like even the liberal, like there are people who disagreed with the pope, you know, and said, you know, well, that's that's what the Catholic Church says.
Guest:But let's let's examine that.
Guest:We're always kind of encouraged to be analytic about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like what was in the Bible and, you know, all this sort of stuff.
Guest:But did you believe in heaven and hell?
Guest:Oh, hell.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, like, that's... You spend... I don't know.
Guest:I think when you grow up Catholic, you spend a lot, a lot of time thinking about it.
Guest:About hell.
Guest:About just the fact that all of your decisions have consequences.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I do think that, like, you know, this black... Like, the concept of heaven and hell is just such a silly idea.
Guest:Now I find it very silly.
Guest:But the one thing I do like about being raised Catholic...
Guest:is the sense that at all times you're like, whatever rules we're playing by, you have to realize that those aren't the only rules.
Guest:You have to realize that there's something else going on, whatever it is.
Guest:That we don't understand.
Guest:That you have to be held to.
Guest:You have to hold yourself to standards that you won't necessarily see in other people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's based on the concept of the mystery of the universe.
Guest:I love that idea.
Guest:And also the idea of sin.
Guest:i think how do you have sin i have a problem with yeah especially original sin it seems so mean to make babies like they're like babies are so nice and perfect it's like right out of the gate filthy right disgusting animals right out of the gate first breath they're shit yeah yeah they got to start apologizing immediately let's take these babies down a notch yeah yeah yeah with their arrogance they're not humble enough think about how
Marc:fucked up that is to have to give a baby a problem do you know what i mean like fuck you whoever can fuck you but the idea like yeah i i've had some recent re-understanding of of the idea of sin was not i i think it's misunderstood that it's that there's this notion that we in any way can be perfect the idea of sin was just to make people realize that you're not perfect and
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's going to happen.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I guess the Catholic Church's idea is that, you know, you're going to have to pay for that.
Guest:Well, the original the original word, as I understood it, actually means sin means to miss the mark.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I like that idea.
Guest:I mean, like we're all trying to be good fucking people.
Guest:And sometimes we miss the mark, we fuck up.
Guest:And the idea of inherent in the concept of Catholicism, which would be forgiveness, that's cool.
Guest:We're all gonna fuck up, you have to be ready to forgive people.
Guest:And I think that's a good thing.
Guest:There's a lot of things that I take away from it, a lot of things that make me just furious about it.
Guest:Well, when you were a kid, what was hell to you?
Guest:in your mind i thought about that a lot um and i would think about it i think i gave up trying to put words to it kind of early it was just going to be a eternal depression really yeah just in my mind just be just so horrible and you just feel bad every day that's how because i at first i was like still hot yeah or even not even if it's just you sitting in a chair but you're just so depressed
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:That would be hell.
Marc:I've been to hell then.
Guest:Yeah, I think we all have.
Marc:But was it to the point where you jerk off and you'd be like, oh man, I'm doomed.
Guest:I never pegged sexuality to sin for some reason.
Guest:I escaped that bullet.
Guest:So I had no problem with jerking off or fucking or anything like that.
Guest:No, for some reason, I don't know why.
Guest:But yeah, I miss that.
Guest:You miss that class?
Guest:Yeah, I miss that class.
Guest:No, I remember we actually had a sex education.
Guest:I was at all boys high school.
Guest:We had a sex education education class where we had to read a book called Becoming a Man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was written by a priest who's never had sex.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:So.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you go through this childhood and you have all these half brothers.
Marc:You seem pretty well adjusted.
Marc:I mean, was there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's got to be all my mom.
Guest:I mean, like we were there's always we always talked about stuff and we were clear about things like that.
Guest:I just have really close connection with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you just were angry at your dad for half your life, and then that went away.
Guest:And then that went away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was also forced to visit him, and I never wanted to.
Guest:So I started flying on planes by myself at age six just to go visit him.
Marc:And that was nice.
Marc:You got the special treatment from the flight attendants.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You got the little thing with the stickers.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, and the pin.
Guest:Where it says unoccupied.
Guest:No, not unaccompanied minor.
Guest:Yeah, unaccompanied minor.
Guest:they give you toys right yeah yeah and then they walk you off and they walk you off but it always felt creepy yeah you know what i mean it was like these people are doing this job and some of them were good at it and some of them weren't yeah yeah yeah and then as you get older you realize like well who the fuck you know flight attendant's not an easy guard it's not an easy gig
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we got to deal with a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In addition, it's like, as if like, if you, if a wait, a waitress, you know, all of a sudden how has to deal with so much, I'm just going to leave my child at the restaurant for six hours.
Guest:I'll be back in a bit.
Guest:Just watch him.
Marc:Part of your job.
Marc:So where did you end up getting interested in doing the Lord's work as a comedian or as doing comedy work?
Guest:Well, I didn't in college.
Marc:What did you go to school for?
Marc:You did all right in school?
Marc:You didn't fuck up in Catholic school?
Guest:No, I did...
Marc:Because I went to an all boys, um, high school.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:What's that about?
Marc:Was there any, like any of this sort of hackneyed nastiness going on?
Guest:No, it was actually, no, there were creepy cause it was run by brothers and the brothers were the most fucked up problematic part of the entire school.
Guest:Like I was physically beaten up by a brother, one specific brother repeatedly.
Marc:What's a brother as opposed to a priest?
Guest:They are, they're essentially monks.
Guest:They're Catholic monks.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They were the Jesuit faith.
Guest:No, Lasallian.
Guest:Lasallian, which was an offshoot of Jesuits.
Guest:And some of them were fine.
Guest:For the most part, here's the deal.
Guest:The whole problem with all of the Catholic Church and all the orders is that nobody's going into it anymore.
Guest:So everyone who's still in it is incredibly old and comes from a place where, you know, corporal punishment was okay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hitting kids was okay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also just kind of almost in the case of where I went to school, like a weak approach to academics because they weren't like becoming teachers because they were really smart and really wanted to teach.
Guest:They just had to do it because that's what the brothers did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:um and some of them were weird and definitely creepy there was a guy who would just give you massages while you took tests and only talked about like his his niece's tiny breasts during class I mean I took three years of Latin from that guy and I don't know a fucking word of Latin because he was just he was a miserable human
Guest:But you know about his niece's tiny breast.
Guest:I can remember the exact words.
Guest:He would say that Latin is about everything.
Guest:It's not just about the language.
Guest:And he would use a word and he's like, like my little niece, she has cupcake bread.
Guest:And then I think he would use the word for small in Latin to then talk about his niece's tiny cupcake-like breasts.
Guest:And this came up every year.
Guest:This came up.
Guest:The fact that I remember cupcake breasts is that he talked about it all the time.
Guest:I mean, it's like, think about it.
Guest:Think about if you never fucked somebody, if you never had sex, you would, it would just become like this, this, this, this, this grail that just becomes like huge in your mind.
Guest:A grail or a whale.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Like just like, just this like, because it's such a primal urge.
Marc:And it's always the one thing you can't do.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It's the one thing, this huge thing that's a part of everybody's life.
Guest:You can't do it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they were there.
Guest:There's a lot of drinking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of drinking in Jersey.
Guest:Irish Catholics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So what was it?
Marc:So he was the massager and he talked about his niece's cupcake breasts.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then there was some another violent one.
Guest:Yeah, it was a violent one who played football in college.
Guest:And I remember it was, you know, it was an imagined slight that I had done.
Guest:And, you know, it was one of these.
Guest:You mean it didn't happen?
Guest:Yeah, it was imagined.
Guest:Basically, the slight was we were in the middle of a test.
Guest:He came on, made an announcement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And because, you know, it's a standardized testing.
Guest:You're not allowed to interrupt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was, like, trying to finish up.
Guest:And it was the last three minutes of the testing.
Guest:And I went, oh, shut up.
Guest:And I said it under my breath.
Guest:And to a speaker.
Guest:And then that brother heard me say that, told that brother.
Guest:And as I was leaving, he grabbed me and threw me up against a wall and just started like slamming me into it.
Guest:And he's like, you have something to say to me.
Guest:And I was like, well, actually, I went into like explaining why he shouldn't have been making that announcement.
Guest:And he just slammed me into the wall.
Guest:And he said, I'm going to watch you.
Guest:And if you do that again, I'm going to fuck you up.
Guest:He said, I'm going to fuck you up.
Guest:The brother said that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, this is, and now, and that point I was like, thanks for stealing it.
Guest:Like I'm never coming back here.
Guest:Like Catholic churches out the window here.
Guest:You are an asshole.
Guest:Fuck this whole place.
Guest:You did fuck me up and I thank you for it.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You fucked me right out of fucking.
Guest:Being a Catholic.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Holy shit.
Guest:So yeah, I got out of that.
Guest:But you did all right in school because you were terrified.
Guest:Well, no, also, because it was all boys, I thought it was great because there was no cliques.
Guest:There was no social groups in my high school because there was no girls to impress.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So nobody gave a shit, you know?
Guest:We're just all just a group of farting 15-year-olds, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:nobody gave a shit so it was actually you know there was the people who played sports but within the school there was never any all you did was do work so there's no weird jock hierarchy because there was none of that uh kind of um what do you call it uh when a peacock there was no strutting yeah there's no strutting yeah yeah for the most part where'd you find uh pussy i mean um doing theater yeah
Guest:Actually, because we had to ship, so I was in the theater at the all-boys school, and they would ship girls in from other high schools.
Guest:For the theater program.
Guest:Yeah, so I would just stay at school, and we were all, of course, obviously, called theater fags and everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I was like, you guys, you're wrestlers, and you go and you wrestle with other dudes.
Guest:I go over there, and the cutest girls are shipped in for me to hang out and then have sleepovers with.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You win.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So is that who you had the first time you had sex?
Marc:Was it with one of the girls from the theater?
Guest:No, first time I had sex with a girl was just someone I met from another high school.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, it was just kind of a random meetup.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I just had my wisdom teeth out and I was at Jersey Mike's Subs, the first one, which I later got my first job at.
Guest:And I ran into her and then we just started dating.
Guest:We dated all of high school.
Guest:So like 15 to 18.
Guest:Oh, so you were locked in.
Guest:I was locked in.
Guest:I've always kind of done that.
Guest:And you didn't marry her and you didn't have a baby.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Marc:You avoided the family curse.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:No, well after that, right after that relationship, I got into a 13 year relationship from age 18 to 31.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:How old are you now?
Marc:I'm 36.
Marc:And you didn't have babies there either.
Marc:Mm-mm.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:So you've broken the spell.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're not going to have any weird random kids going like, I think my dad is a comedian.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, yeah.
Guest:I think that was definitely a pushback from my dad having done that.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you were careful and you thought about it.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So where'd you go to college?
Guest:Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
Guest:That's fancy.
Marc:Yeah, it was nice.
Marc:They got a good medical school.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:What'd you study?
Guest:Philosophy.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, they have a good philosophy department as well.
Marc:Now, when you study philosophy, because that's like some sort of path in my mind that I should have taken.
Marc:I have a lot of the books over there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I could not quite grasp.
Marc:It's almost like math.
Marc:There's a language to it, right?
Guest:Yeah, there is a lot.
Guest:And that's what actually I thought I was going to be a professor.
Guest:That was like my plan.
Guest:And so I was going to take two years off after school and then go back to school and become a professor.
Marc:Do a dissertation on Kant.
Guest:It was Hegel.
Guest:You were a Hegel guy?
Guest:Yeah, just because no one could understand it.
Guest:And I seem to have a basic understanding of it.
Guest:And it's literally all I was doing was parroting back what he said.
Guest:Can you sum it up for me?
Guest:Hegel, go.
Guest:Hegel basically has this idea that it's called Geist and there's an evolution of humanity and that we're slowly heading towards this kind of perfection of humanity and that there's all these different ages.
Guest:And so he kind of breaks down history into all these different ages and how we're heading towards kind of a perfection of humanity, which I don't think is true.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that was his idea.
Marc:Those are the kind of things that can be easily misunderstood by fascists.
Guest:yeah exactly oh yeah Hegel and then also you have the Heidegger problem and then also Nietzsche as well right and Nietzsche with his overman with his overman so between Hegel Heidegger and Nietzsche and I loved all of them yeah I mean like very Germanic kind of approaches to things where it's like there's inherent elitism right which I got rid of but I was obsessed with in college by nature of philosophy there was an inherent elitism no no no in like in Nietzsche and in Hegel right there's the stupid people and then there's us right
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:The thinkers.
Guest:And the thing is, philosophers are shit on all the time.
Marc:That goes back to Socrates, though, doesn't it?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:I mean, of course it makes sense.
Guest:Because here's a guy who does something that you can't monetize, and so he has no money, but he's super fucking smart.
Guest:Of course he's going to be like, no, no, the reason I don't have any money is because I'm better than everybody.
Marc:That's the key to philosophy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you'd like to listen to me, you may sit down.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't need money, but I will enchant you with my wisdom.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And my foresight.
Guest:But I think all that came out of coming from just thinking about Jesus all the time.
Guest:For Hegel?
Guest:I mean, my obsession with philosophy.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, because he was a thinker, and all of his ideas were pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They got twisted and fucked up and turned around, but-
Guest:you know, had always kind of been looking for a substitute for that in my life.
Guest:But they weren't coded.
Marc:I mean, I think that it seems to me that to really sort of take in the breadth of certainly a philosopher that's lived a long life, it's all very coded with, you know, their principles.
Marc:Yeah, their idiosyncrasies.
Marc:You know, like, because when you talk about the Geist, you know, in my first thought is like, well, that, you know, evolution sort of lends itself to thinking about that.
Marc:But that probably wasn't even part of the thought process.
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:And also, I don't even remember it enough to even wonder if evolution had been in there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because that always fascinated me, too, that there are these disciplines that were approaching the same material, which is life.
Marc:You've got psychiatry, you've got psychology, and you've got philosophy, and then you've got theology.
Marc:And out of the three, those three things are non-scientific for the most part in their rootings.
Marc:but yet are trying to approach the same problems.
Marc:Just like, what is this?
Marc:What is this me?
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:And those are always the ones that are a little vague.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's open to... We don't know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But what did you take from it?
Marc:I mean, after studying philosophy, because I was always jealous of that.
Marc:I wish I had, because I think I'm not as much of a pseudo-intellectual as I was, but I always thought that philosophy, that I see myself as a philosophical person, but to really study philosophy, it's like, it's a pain in the ass.
Guest:Oh, it's a super pain in the ass.
Guest:And also, I don't think I was ever sad.
Guest:And the reason I didn't go back is I was never satisfied with it because it was a purely intellectual pursuit.
Guest:And there was no spirit to it on the spirituality side.
Guest:But then also on the humor side, there are some philosophers who are very funny, but there was never, you know, there wasn't a, it wasn't an over, I was never found a philosopher who was like, that's how I can live my life.
Guest:Because that's what I was looking for.
Guest:I wanted an answer on how to live my life.
Marc:Yeah, did you read, I'm okay, you're okay?
Marc:What?
Marc:You know, like the Dwyer books.
Marc:Was that his name?
Marc:Wayne Dwyer.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:You're okay.
Marc:Or maybe some- That's a 70s kind of like solipsism where it's like everything's all right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Some Leo Buscalia books.
Marc:Just hug it out.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That stuff didn't work for you?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I never even read that stuff.
Marc:You wanted the deep answers.
Guest:I wanted deep answers.
Guest:I wanted to be able to be like, I wanted to have an awakening.
Marc:I took a class, an existentialism class, where I think the professor for a year only taught the first 50 pages of being in nothingness.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I still have it, and occasionally I'll be like, maybe I'm old enough to handle this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I'm further away from it than I ever could be.
Guest:Yeah, because you can just drill down and drill down and drill down into some of these books, and it's like you get lost in a... Well, yeah, but then you get into that being for itself, being of itself, being, you know, like, what is that shit?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:You know, I mean, like at a certain point it becomes, you start playing a syntax game that I found.
Guest:And each philosopher has his own, you know, his own vocabulary.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And being of itself for one philosopher is different for another.
Guest:And you have to kind of like learn their- The nuances of it.
Guest:The nuances of it.
Guest:And on an intellectual, you know, on just an intellectual front, it was exciting and fun.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it wasn't enough.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So what drove you towards, did you find some truth in performing?
Marc:I mean, what was the moment there?
Guest:Well, I think what it was was I had left college and I was like, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
Guest:You graduated.
Guest:Yeah, I had graduated.
Guest:Did you do well?
Guest:Yeah, I did pretty well.
Guest:Not exceptional or anything like that.
Guest:But I didn't know what I wanted to do.
Guest:And so I decided to, I took like this...
Guest:I don't know what you call it.
Guest:I went in the woods and I just lived by myself for a month.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:And like built my own structures and lived there.
Guest:So this is a thing about the one high school thing about also the liberal this is that I had a high school teacher
Guest:A brother.
Guest:No, he was a lay teacher.
Guest:That's what they call them, lay teachers?
Guest:Lay teachers, yeah.
Guest:And he taught this one class that I don't know what the fuck this guy, I'm still friends with him today, I don't know what the fuck he was doing in a Catholic school.
Guest:He shouldn't have been there.
Guest:And it was almost like constant abuse on his worldview to be there.
Guest:But he taught this one class and in it we learned about kind of like, you know, it was like kind of blowing out the whole idea of like Western thought.
Guest:So we learned about Aboriginal thought.
Guest:We learned about Eastern thought.
Guest:We read a lot of stuff.
Marc:Social anthropology kind of stuff?
Guest:No, more like...
Guest:mythic world the myths of industrialization right yeah about how about how people lived before right this most recent part of our history right like post industrialization so like about you know tribal communities and the mythologies and yeah and how they lived
Guest:their uh social rituals and also their and also their uh you know there's a great book called ishmael yeah uh which kind of breaks it down uh into leavers and takers right and like talking about like the hunter gatherers and how that was actually a a fundamentally different mind than a taker mind which we have now right um which was you know as a circle as opposed to a constant going upwards and more
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, the hunter-gatherers actually would support each other's different tribes through barter and through support systems.
Guest:And you would never fully wipe something out because you knew that you need.
Marc:They had resources that your tribe didn't have.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, got it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so anyway, at the end of that course, you had an option to go up to this land that he had.
Guest:and go camping for three days and learn actual survival skills in the woods.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all like primitive survival skills.
Guest:So we did that and then we ended the whole thing with this sweat lodge that we built on our own.
Marc:Like what kind of skills?
Guest:Learned how to throw a rabbit stick, which is a very basic tool to kill something if you needed to eat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Learned to make fire without matches or lighter.
Guest:Did you do it?
Guest:Yeah, with a bow drill.
Guest:And so using a bow drill,
Guest:to make did you were you able to kill anything with the rabbit oh no no we never tried to kill anything that was just kind of like it was just it's also fun to throw it we would throw it at like another piece of wood right sure um how to build a fire appropriately how to build a sweat lodge how to heat the rocks properly um and also just it was just you know just kind of how to slow down and get out of kind of like the industrial neuroses of of industrialization and
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:So was that three days?
Guest:Was that the cathartic thing?
Guest:Oh, that three days, I was like, oh, this is something here.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:And so when I graduated, I just went back to that place because he said I could go there anytime.
Guest:And I went and I lived there for a month and built a wigwam that I lived in and all that sort of just kind of like worked on my skills of really what I was working on was being alone.
Guest:Later, I realized this.
Guest:Because I had always been around other people and I crave that attention from other people.
Guest:And so I was really challenging myself to be alone without being lonely.
Marc:Well, do you think that part of it had to do with like, I mean, it seems like your relationship with your mom was pretty intense.
Guest:Yeah, no, it was really intense.
Marc:And the anger of the absence of your dad and those expectations were probably cursing you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you were just sort of like, how do I detach from all of that and be okay with me?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And it was really, and it rained also.
Guest:I was there for 30 days.
Guest:It rained for 26 days out of 30 days.
Guest:What the hell did you eat?
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:Oh, I brought all my own food up.
Guest:So I primarily ate like tuna fish out of a can, like every day.
Guest:So you didn't cook over a fire.
Guest:No, I did.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I would try and, you know, I would actually, no, I wouldn't cook over the fire too often.
Guest:I would just have the fire going just for company.
Guest:And you just, you sat up there in your teepee and ate tuna fish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And ate tuna fish and tried to be cool.
Guest:No radio, no box.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no watch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Books and, and a journal, you know, writing.
Guest:I would write a lot.
Guest:And how was that journal in retrospect?
Guest:I read it all the time.
Guest:It's fascinating.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, you didn't end up like the Into the Wild guy.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, also- Were you eating any leaves?
Guest:No, I was.
Guest:I probably ate some wild strawberries and stuff like that that I could gather.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But what was interesting was I had a moment there where I'd finally been like, I kinda freaked out and I was like, I'm gonna call my mom and have her come pick me up.
Guest:You had the cell phone with you?
Guest:No, no, no, it was before cell phones.
Marc:So you had to go to the pay phone at the gas station down there?
Guest:Yeah, it was about a five mile walk.
Guest:Right, a walk.
Guest:And I was like, I can't deal with being alone anymore.
Guest:It was too much.
Guest:And I'd gone and I sat.
Guest:There was a little pond right there.
Guest:And I'd made the decision.
Guest:I was like, I'm going to wake up in the morning.
Guest:I'm going to walk down.
Guest:I'm going to call my mom.
Guest:She's going to come pick me up.
Guest:I was 22.
Guest:And I was like, God.
Guest:God, it feels so good to have made that decision.
Guest:To have given in, it felt really good.
Guest:And even though I knew that for me, that meant failure.
Guest:But giving in.
Guest:How many days in were you?
Guest:I was towards the end.
Guest:And I sat there and I literally was just throwing rocks.
Guest:And it sounds almost cheesy at this point, but I was throwing rocks in the water and just watching the ripples go out.
Guest:And I totally lost track of time.
Guest:I just was watching these ripples, and I don't know how long I was there, but when I got up again, it was dark, so I know I'd been there for a few hours.
Guest:And I just all of a sudden came out of it and realized that I was totally fine with staying, and I stayed out for the rest of the time.
Guest:And I even woke up in the morning, and it was this total release, and it was this concept of you fight and fight and fight against something, and then you give in to it, and all of a sudden you realize it wasn't that fucking important to begin with.
Guest:Just a switch in your brain.
Guest:It was just a switch in my brain.
Guest:No drugs.
Guest:No drugs.
Guest:No, not when I was up there.
Guest:That got me really interested in meditation for a while, which I've since lost, but I would like to get back into.
Guest:But where does the... The comedy come from.
Marc:The desire to be... I mean, that sounds like a bold thing to do, and it seems like a life-altering month, and it obviously freed you from some things, but here you are looking for answers.
Marc:You studied philosophy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You lived in a wigwam that you made...
Guest:I was really looking.
Guest:I was really looking because I didn't know what the fuck I wanted to do.
Guest:That was the point of me going up there was to figure it out.
Guest:And your mom just let you?
Guest:I mean, she just.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was like, yeah, I'm going to go.
Guest:I mean, she couldn't.
Guest:After I turned like 13 or so, she really was pretty hands off.
Guest:She knew I was just going to do what I was going to do.
Guest:But she trusted you.
Guest:Yeah, she trusted me.
Guest:She'd wired you properly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then I moved to New York City after that.
Marc:What was the impetus?
Guest:To move?
Guest:Well, I knew I was going to either move to New York or San Francisco.
Guest:And so I- What was appealing about San Francisco?
Guest:I'd been there once and it was awesome.
Guest:That was pretty much it.
Guest:I was 22 years old.
Marc:That's all it takes.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, it seems awesome.
Marc:Yeah, a lot of people doing what they want to do.
Guest:Yeah, I like to do what I want to do.
Yeah.
Guest:and so and I went and looked and I looked I remember I drove across country from New York to San Francisco and kind of the deciding factor was that at that time San Francisco was way more expensive than living in Brooklyn and my friend John Daly was already in Brooklyn he had already kind of like you know he was already living there so I could stay with him so he was already doing the comedy thing
Guest:Yeah, actually right after I got there, I think he took his first class.
Guest:This was 1998.
Marc:Who else did I just talk to that was a friend of John Daly's that went to New York for him?
Marc:Brett Gellman?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So yeah, so John and Brett were there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got there and I remember seeing, I went and watched their first UCB show in 1998 or maybe early 99 and just being like,
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Because I hated improv in college because I'd only seen short form and I really didn't like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then seeing this long form stuff, which seemed so much cooler and hipper and like kind of really fucking crazy.
Guest:To me, it just like blew my mind.
Guest:Take more risks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I took one of, I think I was in one of the first classes when UCB opened their space on 21st Street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember doing my very first scene and walking off stage and being like,
Guest:Oh, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.
Guest:This is the thing I've been looking for.
Marc:What was it about it?
Guest:It was what my friend calls a peak performance.
Guest:It was a task that was incredibly challenging, but that I just had enough to meet the challenge.
Guest:And so I felt like constantly challenged, but also succeeding as well.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:uh what was the scene yeah uh it was a i was a baker and someone was i can't believe i remember this i never haven't thought about that i was a baker and someone kept uh ordering bread for me and i think i kept bringing out larger pieces of bread like something super stupid like anytime an improvised scene is described it's awful
Guest:But I was just like, boom, and that was it.
Guest:I clicked.
Guest:And then I really tried for a really long time to make a living improvising.
Guest:Because for me, that was the perfect marriage of the philosophy and this kind of like more Buddhist stuff that I've been studying and thinking about and comedy because it was that like that moment that you're always kind of looking for, that moment where you settle down.
Guest:Being present.
Guest:Being present.
Guest:All of your shit goes away and you're just doing one thing that you're good at.
Guest:And that's what I really loved about it.
Marc:And you're not, and you transcend self-consciousness in a way.
Guest:Yeah, you're not even, I oftentimes wouldn't remember what I did on stage if it was good.
Guest:And also all of your doubts and fears and all that shit just like melt away.
Guest:And so it was like that.
Guest:Because you're in it.
Guest:Fucking huge high, yeah.
Guest:You're just like in that flow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I really tried for a really long time to make a living out of it.
Guest:And then finally realized, I was like, I'm not going to make.
Guest:It was after I had taken, we had taken, I was in a group called Neutrino.
Guest:And we invented this form called the Neutrino Video Projects, which is a fully improvised movie that was shot, scored, and edited while the audience watched it.
Guest:We literally had camera crews outside that would run live and...
Guest:That's a lot of pipe delay.
Guest:It was a lot.
Guest:We literally physically ran the tapes in.
Guest:It was very low tech, but it was the actual shooting around the theater.
Marc:So you'd shoot for what, a half hour, an hour, and then you'd run it?
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:We would start, we would shoot for, this was a form I came up with by this guy, Tony Slocum, who was in the group, which was we'd have three camera crews.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We would get a suggestion from the audience.
Guest:All the camera crews would leave, and one person would stand on stage just talking to the audience for two minutes.
Guest:In that two minutes,
Guest:All three camera crews would record a two minute long scene and then the tapes would be physically run inside.
Guest:But all three camera crews.
Guest:So then that provides six minutes of footage that the audience then starts watching.
Guest:So then the camera crews have six minutes to deliver three more minutes.
Guest:And then that gives you nine minutes.
Guest:So you're always just running against the clock.
Marc:So this was sort of like it was taking, you know, improv to this other level of of almost it seems like a specifically New York thing to do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like performance art and, you know, and, you know, mixing media.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All in real time.
Marc:All in real time.
Marc:And this was 2003, 2004.
Marc:So the conception of it where you guys like, you know, like low reciting it and like, oh, man.
Guest:yeah we can do this yeah yeah we were literally in the lower east side when we came up with the idea i remember we had been doing all these cage matches and our thing was to like you know do something new each time right and i was like let's do we should do a video improv show you know where it's all on video but improv and no one knew how that would work and then tell him he came back with this fucking this map and he's like this is how it could work and i was like oh
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And was it popular?
Guest:It was incredibly popular.
Guest:We've since taught it to all across the world and the country.
Guest:It's easier to do now.
Guest:You don't have the tape.
Guest:It's now much easier to do, but I don't know if any, I think there's still groups that sometimes do it.
Guest:Every city, sometimes cities I travel in, people come up and be like, hey, we still do Neutrino here.
Guest:I'd be like, oh, that's cool.
Guest:So you invented some sort of mode.
Guest:Yeah, a new mode.
Guest:That's established.
Guest:And so I was like, okay.
Guest:I was like, here we go.
Guest:This is our ticket.
Guest:This is something that's never existed before.
Guest:And I remember we went to the HBO US Comedy Festival with it.
Guest:And then we went to Edinburgh with it.
Guest:And I was like, this is going to be the test.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going into Edinburgh, I was like, if we can make a profit here, this could be the mode of my living.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we lost $10,000.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I came back and I was like, that's it for me.
Guest:Do you know, I can't, I can't do improv any.
Guest:No one came?
Guest:It was, we got fucked by the woman who booked the shows.
Guest:Who was that?
Guest:The woman who owns the Gilded Balloon, Karen.
Guest:Karen Korn?
Guest:Yeah, she fucked us.
Guest:Yeah, I had my own experience with her.
Guest:Yeah, she is awful.
Guest:We were booked in a 50-seat theater, which would have been great.
Guest:And then Puppetry of the Penis canceled on her.
Guest:And so she came in, kind of like sold us on taking this 350-seat theater.
Guest:That no, like you have to be incredibly popular.
Guest:She's like, you guys can sell it out.
Guest:You guys can totally sell it out.
Guest:We're like, really, really?
Guest:How much more expensive is it?
Guest:She's like, it's...
Guest:this much more expensive it's ten thousand dollars more but you can sell she totally fucking sold us like a snake we get in there every night we had about 70 people which would have been selling out at the 50 seat theater right and instead we lost ten thousand dollars and it broke us it broke our souls it was so cold and rainy and everybody was so fucking drunk all the time i know i was there for a month and i was only in a in a small like a 50 seat or maybe those are the best yeah
Marc:but like even that because i went on a i was on a two-man show yeah which means that you know i didn't know what was going on i just went because i was produced yeah but it was still hard to draw people and it was relentless and you know after about two weeks you're like oh my god this doesn't matter this doesn't matter who are these people i'm in the uk too no one i come back to the united states like what have you been doing and i'm like oh edinburgh they're like what's that why were you not here
Marc:Well, if you don't wanna do that thing every year and build the thing, it's really a rough go.
Guest:Okay, so Neutrino tanks out.
Guest:So Neutrino tanks out, and I was like, I gotta start writing, and it took me that long.
Guest:I've been doing comedy now for seven years at this point, and I'd always thought to myself,
Guest:I'll start writing when I have something to say.
Guest:That's what I always thought.
Guest:And I was like, no, I need to just start writing and then I'll discover what I have to say by writing.
Guest:I wasn't driven because I needed to say something.
Marc:But you weren't doing stand-up either.
Guest:I wasn't doing stand-up.
Guest:And so I was at the People's Improv Theater and I had seen Kristen Schaal performing improv a few times.
Guest:And I remember I was like, okay, I should just start a variety show and that'll force me to write something new every week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I went to the artistic director of the pit and I was like, hey, I want to start a variety show.
Guest:And he's like, you know, Kristen Shaw just asked me the same thing.
Guest:And I just walked right back and I was like, hey, you want to do a variety show together?
Guest:She's like, okay.
Guest:And we had never spoken.
Guest:We had had one 30 second conversation.
Guest:We had just seen each other perform.
Guest:In sketch or in improv?
Guest:No, in improv.
Marc:And this before Kristen Shaw, no one knew her either.
Guest:No, no, this is probably two and a half years before she got Flight of the Concords.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we just, and it just so happened that we really, really clicked.
Guest:Writing style.
Marc:You guys were like, you know, you were a team.
Guest:Yeah, we were a super team.
Marc:What was the name of the first project?
Guest:The Penelope Princess of Pets.
Guest:And that was big.
Guest:That was big, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We made a television pilot for it in the UK, actually.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Did they make it?
Guest:No, we never made it.
Guest:There were serious flaws to the pilot.
Guest:I would make it differently now.
Guest:But yeah, we made that together.
Guest:We did a lot of sketches together.
Guest:We toured with it.
Guest:Actually, it was two years of doing... It was kind of like two years of us performing every Monday night together.
Marc:And what was it, I mean, did you, but like before, in the interim, did you do any, you didn't do any standup?
Guest:I didn't do any standup.
Marc:But between Neutrino and meeting Kristen Shaw, was there other shit that you did?
Guest:No, it was like that.
Marc:It was, I just came back from Edinburgh and that's when we got involved.
Marc:Yeah, and so all your experience was really in improv?
Guest:All of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it would just, then it was in sketch because we were just writing for each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Kristen had been doing standup on her own for about five years previous to that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So she kind of knew from like the eating it crowd, she knew you and all the, all the kids from Luna lounge and stuff like that.
Guest:So then they started to come do our show.
Guest:And that was the first time I was introduced.
Guest:This was maybe six years ago, kind of introduced to the entire kind of standup scene, the non-club standup scene in New York city.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That I didn't know anything about, really.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so we were still doing sketch, still doing sets, and I was trying to write stuff for myself and just really struggling with it.
Guest:Where'd you perform it?
Guest:I remember early doing Invite Them Up and then at my own show, Hot Tub.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then doing just all the little, small, weird little shows in the backs of bars and theaters and stuff like that.
Guest:But it was all scripted stuff for yourself.
Guest:Yeah, and then I really kind of got serious about standup probably between like five and three years ago where I was like, okay.
Guest:And this was also when Kristen just exploded so much that I was like, I can't, we were, when my main performance opportunities were with her.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then she was just getting so busy.
Guest:I was like, I really, I need to work on.
Guest:How long did you work with her?
Guest:We still work.
Guest:Every Monday night, we do shows together.
Marc:And what's the dynamic?
Marc:Because I've seen some of it.
Marc:It's pretty classic, almost team dynamic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You're kind of a straight guy until you go over the top.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And she's always at that weird level that she's at.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:you seem to start out the straight guy, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh no.
Guest:But there's a flip it.
Guest:Yeah, he's the crazy one.
Guest:That we're both crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's what I really liked about it, that there wasn't always a straight man, crazy man dynamic, that it was, we were both kind of crazy, but we bounced each other out in a certain way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think that's just male, female.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And now, like, so you guys still work together.
Marc:You still do show weekly?
Guest:Yeah, every week, every Monday.
Guest:Where is it?
Guest:It's at Littlefield in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And has it got a good following?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We've been doing it for seven years now, so it's a beautiful show.
Guest:New every week?
Guest:What?
Guest:New every week?
Guest:We try and do new material, yeah.
Guest:I mean, we have guests on, but the two of us, we used to write these.
Guest:We would spend so much time writing scripts for each other to open the show with, and we would do wraparounds where we would have a sketch in the middle, a sketch at the end that tied the whole show together, and we did that for years.
Guest:And it was always frustrating because that first sketch, no matter if it was good or not, the audience would just be, they would just hate it.
Guest:And then we found if we just came out with nothing and just bullshitted with each other, the audience was immediately like, yeah.
Guest:And I think it's just that you ramp up.
Guest:The audience just needs to be ramped up to performance.
Guest:That you're gonna see performance.
Guest:So first, the first level is seeing someone on the stage.
Guest:Second level is hearing them talk.
Guest:Then the third is hearing them do some things that are kind of funny.
Guest:And then you also get to the funniness.
Guest:And then the actual first performer is coming out to a warm house.
Marc:And when I see you do stand-up, I mean, you're really funny.
Marc:I mean, when did you really start committing to that?
Guest:That was probably, that was after.
Guest:So I went through...
Guest:I think what fed the stand up a lot was that I'd been in this 13 year relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the way, and I had actually been camping up at Crow, the place that I go camping at.
Guest:Is your wigwam still there?
Guest:No, wigwam decomposed after like two years.
Guest:Oh good.
Marc:You went and checked on its progress of decomposition?
Guest:Oh yeah, I would see it, because I still go, I cook camping there every summer, so I'm gonna go up there in two weeks, actually.
Guest:And you know where it was?
Guest:Oh yeah, I go look at it, at the space.
Guest:Anything you do on the land, it changes kind of the quality of it, so I can kind of tell still where it used to be.
Guest:But I'd been up there and been talking about, you know, just talking, because it's like that time to reflect.
Guest:And I was like, for 13 years we've been dating and we never discussed marriage.
Guest:We always said, when we have kids, we'll get married.
Guest:But we always kind of put it off.
Guest:And I came back and, you know, from a camping high, I've been reflecting and I was like, hey, you know, like, we should talk.
Guest:Like, why haven't we even discussed getting married?
Guest:And she said, well, I think before we do, we should probably sleep with other people.
Guest:And I was like, and I actually thought that was a good idea.
Guest:I was like, okay, let's do that.
Guest:That sounds like, that'll work.
Guest:And in retrospect, it was probably our weird way of breaking up with each other, but we decided to do it in this really strange way.
Guest:where we decided to have a rumspringa, which is like borrowed from the Amish, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, but we gave ourselves, like the Amish have two years.
Guest:When they're 16, they decide not to get, they're not Amish for two years, so they decide whether or not to come back to the faith.
Guest:So we decided to take 30 days and try and fuck as many people as we possibly could to decide whether or not we're going to get married.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And... How are your numbers?
Guest:I can't, what?
Guest:What?
What?
Guest:They were, I would say, what I always say is, I don't know what the exact numbers are, but I think I, because I'd only had sex with two people up until that, when I was 31.
Marc:And you were in relationships with them.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:And so I think I got up to a normal number, I would say.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Of someone who had been having sex their whole life.
Guest:But not in just that month, because then it extended from one month to two months.
Guest:Right, so you go a month.
Guest:And we went a month, and we met up again.
Guest:Yeah, how was she doing?
Guest:And we talked.
Guest:How were her numbers?
Guest:I think she probably had a slower get-go.
Guest:She was, I think for a lady, it takes a little while for her to settle in and emotionally get prepared to then go out and do it.
Guest:So I think she was just getting started doing it.
Guest:And she was like, I need another month.
Guest:And I was like, fine with me.
Guest:But then we also started dating each other during that second month.
Guest:Uh, so we're dating each other and sleeping with other people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then at the end of that second month we came together and we're like, well, what do we do?
Guest:And we're like, we need to make a decision.
Guest:This can't go on forever.
Guest:You weren't jealous or weird or there was no weirdness.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I think that's a big marker that the relationship was, was over.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, this seems like probably the most diplomatic way of breaking up I've heard.
Guest:It was so diplomatic.
Guest:And we're very good friends to this day.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, we still hang out.
Guest:And she's got a dude now?
Guest:She's single right now.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Just happenstance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, she kind of has a dude.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:She's a comedic performer?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:She's a journalist.
Marc:Oh, just a person.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Or a journalist.
Guest:Just a person.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Marc:Normie.
Marc:Yeah, a normie.
Marc:But, all right, so, well, this is all pretty exciting.
Marc:So that informed your comedy how?
Guest:Well, being single for the first time, being kind of... You're all lit up.
Guest:Truly alone.
Guest:But, I mean, like, being that loneliness, that deep-seated... Because being single in New York City is just like that.
Guest:It's that 50-50 of, like, the most amazing things ever, and the most amazing times, and having all this crazy sex, and then all of a sudden, just this...
Guest:loneliness that just bores into you.
Guest:And I think all of a sudden I had this world that I'd never seen before kind of open up to me in New York City.
Marc:Is that a metaphor for vaginas?
Guest:Yeah, hundreds of vaginas opening up, blossoming in the sunlight.
Guest:No, but, and then I was just like, I all of a sudden had all this stuff to talk about, really.
Guest:Because I had always been, and this is funny, this is actually, Eugene Merman said this to me maybe like two years ago, a year and a half ago.
Guest:He saw me perform and he's like, hey man, he's like, wow.
Guest:He's like, like six months ago, you didn't make sense on stage, but that was pretty funny.
Guest:And that's what I was obsessed with this absurdism that I still love to this day.
Guest:But that's all it was.
Guest:It was just absurdism with no heart to it.
Guest:And when I kind of had been starting to put myself out there actually personally on stage,
Guest:Because I was going through these things being alone for the first time in my life and then mixed in with the absurdist stuff that makes me really happy.
Guest:That was kind of first time I felt like I started firing a little more regularly.
Guest:So it felt like I could get that feeling.
Guest:feeling of all cylinders going.
Guest:I was grounded, but then the crazy stuff.
Guest:I could do the crazy stuff because I was grounded as a human being on stage.
Marc:You had a personal narrative, and you could take all those tools from just being ridiculous and apply them to the personal narrative.
Guest:Yeah, and I still love just being ridiculous, but I always try and ground myself as a human being first.
Marc:Well, it's sort of interesting that it seems that from the beginning of your life, you've got this, your conception of hell was sitting alone and being depressed.
Marc:Do you attribute it, because that seems to be your lifelong fear is reckoning with that feeling of existential loneliness.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:Do you attribute that to being an only child in a way?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I remember having a very distinct feeling that the worst part of the day was at sunset.
Guest:And now I think it's the best part of the day.
Guest:But the worst because it was just such a lonely feeling.
Guest:And a lot of that came from having to – because I just was – I had such a close connection with my mom.
Guest:I haven't mentioned this.
Guest:I breastfed until I was five.
Guest:So that's pretty creepy.
Guest:That's some Game of Thrones shit.
Guest:I guess that's one of those Catholic things.
Guest:No one said anything to her?
Guest:No, I mean, no.
Guest:For her, I think it was this progressive notion.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:She read all these books and done all.
Guest:And I think it came from having had a child before and then being able to think about all the things she did wrong and ready to do all the things right and reading all these books in the 70s.
Guest:that were like, the longer you breastfeed, the better it is, the better it is.
Guest:And so she was just like, okay, if he wants to, we'll do this until he wants to stop.
Guest:So you had to decide.
Guest:You actually had to say, mom, enough with this.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It's getting weird.
Guest:I would never have said that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was because I had to go away to visit my father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That she's like, I remember the conversation.
Guest:i mean i never thought it was weird that i breastfed until five until i thought about the fact that at a certain point we probably went to like a wedding or something like that where i was wearing a suit yeah and breast like having a formal dinner on tits do you know what i mean that was when i recently had that thought i was like oh that was weird that was probably weird i have a specific memory of breastfeeding and watching phil donahue yeah and asking my mom to change the channel because i was bored
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So you had conversations?
Guest:No, I remember the conversation.
Guest:She's like, when you come back, the milk's going to be dried up.
Guest:And I was like, fucking furious.
Guest:I was like, what do you mean?
Guest:No.
Guest:Because it was something my whole life.
Guest:I was also eating solid foods as well.
Guest:I wasn't just only, but...
Guest:But you grew to rely on it.
Marc:I mean, it's the original thing you rely on.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then going to my father's was this kind of traumatic situation.
Guest:I remember it was like, now I got to go here.
Guest:And then when I come back, there's no milk left.
Guest:And this guy's making me... This guy's making me not have any milk anymore.
Guest:And I remember always that feeling.
Guest:And his... The woman who my father was married to was awful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Horrible to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because she just saw me as, you know...
Guest:Distraction for him.
Guest:Distraction for him and a reminder that he has had another life.
Guest:And she was terrible.
Guest:And I remember always watching the sunset there and just be like, this is another day that I'm not in home.
Guest:Right, there's a woman that hates me.
Guest:Yeah, that dad who doesn't give a shit.
Guest:He doesn't seem to pay attention.
Guest:And no boobs.
Guest:And no boobs.
Guest:And so that sadness, I think, has been with me my whole life.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And do you think that, like, have you ever read up on the repercussions of breastfeeding that long or what they might be?
Guest:I mean, everything I can find just says it's, like, just good.
Guest:I don't get sick very often.
Guest:I'm very tall.
Guest:I love tits.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:I'm very confident.
Guest:So I recommend it.
Guest:I mean, if you could get over the creepy factor of how fucking creepy it is.
Marc:Well, it's weird because we live in a world now where breastfeeding is pretty commonplace publicly.
Marc:And I've heard comics do jokes about people who, that kid's a little too old for that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I wonder if that's a thing where it's like, yeah, I breastfeed in public, but not now because, you know, he's 12.
Guest:It's only at home.
Marc:Only at home.
Guest:When you start to feel guilty about that.
Guest:So you're not lonely anymore.
Guest:You know, there's always loneliness moments, but now, after being single for a while, I embrace it.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:If you're going to be lonely,
Guest:just go ahead and be lonely.
Guest:It's that whole idea that I was talking about again of like when you push against something so much, just giving into it all of a sudden it releases its power over you.
Guest:So now when I feel like I'm afraid of being lonely, I'm just like, let's just be lonely.
Guest:Let's just be on our own for a little bit.
Guest:And then all of a sudden it becomes, it transforms into something else.
Marc:Yeah, and when you go back and read the journal you wrote in The Wigwam back when you were originally conquering this beast, what do you take from it?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:How young I was, really.
Guest:I mean, I really take a lot from just, it was constantly trying to be present by forcing it.
Guest:I didn't have a path.
Guest:I didn't have something to do to lead me into that moment because I'd still been kind of looking for that thing that I think I found in improvising.
Guest:So you're constantly going, I'm watching a rock.
Guest:yeah do it do it be present be present now and it literally took me a full month to have that moment where I was present without thinking about it and realizing that it yeah and it came through an action for me you know which makes sense because that's you know in surfing I feel the same way it's the one thing where just everything releases you know yeah and you're the center of the ripples yeah it all comes from you yeah good talking to you Kurt thanks a lot Mark music
Bye.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I thought it was interesting.
Marc:I like Kurt.
Marc:Very bright, very funny.
Marc:Deep guy.
Marc:Deep guy.
Marc:As always, go to WTFPod.com if you need any WTF-related thing, feelings, stuff.
Marc:You can get merch there.
Marc:You can get the app there.
Marc:You can get the Mark and Tom show there.
Marc:You can get on the mailing list.
Marc:You can get a link to JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Get that WTF blend, and I get a little on the back end of that.
Marc:You can see my schedule if you want to clear up any dates that I may have misrepresented there.
Marc:Do what you got to do.
Marc:It's all there.
Marc:Get on that mailing list.
Marc:I write to you every week, personally.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I hope my brain is rotting.
Guest:I could barely read that thing that I had to read earlier.
Guest:I don't feel good.
Guest:God damn it.
Marc:it is hot in here though all right