Episode 325 - W. Kamau Bell
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Marc Maron.
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckenots?
Marc:What the fuckstables?
Marc:What the fuckaholics?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:Damn, that was good.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:On the show today, let's try and get this right out at the top.
Marc:W. Kamau Bell is back for this time a full hour, one-on-one.
Marc:I've had him on a live one.
Marc:I've had him on another show with another guy, but this time me and Kamau are going to talk about it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:We're going to talk about it, but that's going to be happening.
Marc:Also, I wanted to tell you that Kamau is about to hit the road for a tour.
Marc:It's the Kamau Mau Uprising Tour, which launches in December.
Marc:Tickets are on sale.
Marc:Go to wkamaubell.com.
Marc:That's W-K-A-M-A-U-B-E-L-L.com.
Marc:I've actually got a couple of plugs for my buddies, if you'll allow me.
Marc:One of the funniest guys alive, my buddy Al Madrigal, is going to be shooting a Comedy Central special.
Marc:Jeez, I don't know.
Marc:Is it a Comedy Central special?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's a special.
Marc:I should know that.
Marc:He's shooting a special with cameras.
Marc:And he's doing it in Austin at the Moody Theater on October 25th.
Marc:That's a Thursday.
Marc:There's two shows.
Marc:And you can get free tickets if you sign up at almadrigal.com.
Marc:Go see Al.
Marc:Whatever he's shooting it for, it's going to be a great show because he's funny.
Marc:I'm sure it's Comedy Central, right?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Somebody check my facts.
Marc:Could somebody please Google that for me now or call Al and find out.
Marc:I'm all full of the beans.
Marc:I've been shooting all day.
Marc:Now I'm not sure how much I can say about the show just to protect the show and myself and not get you guys all worked up or speculating too much, but it's going very well.
Marc:I will tell you that.
Marc:I got a lot of lines to learn.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because the show's about me, it's centered on me, and it requires me to know what I'm saying out of my mouth, out of my hole.
Marc:So I got to do that in just a minute, but I want to talk to you first, if that's okay.
Marc:Thank you for all the stereo input.
Marc:Some people sent me some websites.
Marc:Some people told me, like, what are you out of your fucking mind?
Marc:$10,000 for a stereo?
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:If I was in full throttle midlife crisis, I would have bought that shit and regretted it.
Marc:The biggest fear about that, I don't know if I mentioned that, is that it's perfectly within my range of doing to spend a bunch of money on something that's not worth that much money or that I don't need.
Marc:And then be disappointed.
Marc:I mean, there's a 95% chance that that'll happen.
Marc:This is going to be fucking great.
Marc:And you just dump the cash, cash you don't have, get yourself in debt to have that feeling of owning that shit in that moment.
Marc:And then you bring it home and you're like, ah, this isn't even that great.
Marc:The entire American economy is built on that.
Marc:That disappointment and the need to buy something else to fill that hole that was carved out of your soul by that disappointment.
Marc:It was probably a much deeper and earlier hole, but you know what I'm saying.
Marc:But some people sent me websites that deal in vintage gear.
Marc:That looked pretty good, but that gets overwhelming.
Marc:I don't even know which fucking vintage gear to get.
Marc:But then someone hit me.
Marc:This woman who owns a place down on Figueroa here in Highland Park.
Marc:uh mount uh mount analog just sends me an email says she's got books and audio equipment all kinds of shit down there so now i i'm excited to go down i'm i'm giving her a plug on speculation just out of my excitement because i've decided i'm gonna find what i need to buy at that store that store is some sort of journey i'm going to make that is going to give me what i need i hope it pans out that way and i ran into uh
Marc:Jonathan Larroquette, who I've never met, who does the Yeah Dude podcast.
Marc:They were podcasting before any of us.
Marc:Great podcast.
Marc:So I hear from my girlfriend, Jessica, who no longer listens to my podcast because she prefers to listen to Jonathan Larroquette and his partner.
Marc:But I ran into him in the most weird way.
Marc:I mean, I was just, we were shooting at this restaurant down in Highland Park and I had about an hour in between shoots.
Marc:And I went to this music store that I'd never been in in my fucking life.
Marc:And I walk in, there's a large, not a large guy, but a tall guy with a beard and long hair.
Marc:I'm like, hey, what's up, dude?
Marc:I never knew this place was here.
Marc:Cool guitars.
Marc:He's like, you're Mark Merritt.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, he's, I'm Jonathan Larkin.
Marc:I'm like, holy shit.
Marc:You're the host of that podcast that was on before all of ours.
Marc:And my girlfriend listens to you constantly.
Marc:She's filling me in on the history of you because she has to start at the beginning of everything.
Marc:And we hung out.
Marc:We talked.
Marc:Maybe I'll get him on the podcast.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:But his buddy Mondo, that's the only reason I'm telling you this story outside of dropping Jonathan Larkett's name is that I met a guy named Mondo today.
Marc:You got to talk about meeting a guy named Mondo.
Marc:That's the best name in the world.
Marc:Hey, my name is Mondo.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:It is.
Marc:Well, I'm going to have to talk about that because that's a great fucking name.
Marc:I'd like to be Mondo Marin if I could.
Marc:Will you guys call me that?
Marc:Mondo Marin from here on out?
Marc:Hey, Mondo, that's my name.
Marc:Good name.
Marc:So I've got hope around the stereo.
Marc:Boomer's not back yet, but in my heart and mind, Boomer lives.
Marc:And I will hold on to a glimmer of hope because I keep getting emails from people that say, my cat disappeared for most of my life and came back.
Marc:It's beautiful, and I appreciate the outpouring of love and support.
Marc:Love those stories.
Marc:I lost my cat when I was six, and then when I was an adult and it moved four times, my cat showed up.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:I'm holding on to that hope, but I'm also holding on to the myth that is Boomer.
Marc:That is happening.
Marc:I don't want to bum anybody out here.
Marc:I got a whirly pop in the mail today.
Marc:Do you know that song?
Marc:I got a whirly pop popcorn maker.
Marc:They're not paying for a plug.
Marc:To tell you the truth, I threw out a Whirly Pop popcorn maker about two months ago because someone gave me one.
Marc:But I got another one.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because my lovely girlfriend, Jessica, for my birthday, bought me a surprise.
Marc:I didn't know what it was going to be until we went.
Marc:I knew that I had to go somewhere.
Marc:I asked her, should I be wearing clothes?
Marc:Should I prepare myself for something?
Marc:Do I need to have clean underpants?
Marc:She took me for my birthday to a home coffee roasting class.
Marc:I'm not a big class guy.
Marc:It was at this place called the Institute of Domestic Technology.
Marc:Free plug show for fuck's sake.
Marc:Is there anything else I could plug for free?
Marc:Let me just look around my desk.
Marc:Hey, maybe what is this stuff called?
Marc:Dust off.
Marc:The original duster.
Marc:Hey, why don't I just clean my keyboard?
Marc:Does anyone else need a free fucking plug?
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:The Institute of Domestic Technology.
Marc:Rediscovering the future of home economics.
Marc:You know, pickling and whatnot, making your own cheese.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Maybe they make soap, cooking.
Marc:But okay, so we went.
Marc:And you always wonder when you go to a class who's going to be in this class.
Marc:And then you realize, like, what kind of people are these?
Marc:And then you realize, like, oh, I'm the same kind of people as these people.
Marc:But it was pretty fascinating because I didn't realize a lot of things about coffee.
Marc:I've recently been enjoying a medium roast coffee because I was told that has more caffeine and more flavor.
Marc:I wasn't quite sold on it.
Marc:But after learning about the coffee,
Marc:We started with green beans.
Marc:And you can roast coffee in a whirly pop.
Marc:It's very exciting.
Marc:You got to figure out the right heat to slow roast them.
Marc:Then you got to keep them moving.
Marc:And then at six minutes, there's the first crack.
Marc:All of them start popping like popcorn.
Marc:And then about four or five minutes after that, you get into your medium roast.
Marc:And then you got to keep your eye on it.
Marc:And when the oils start to show up, you enter your dark roast zone.
Marc:And then about 10 minutes in, you fucked it up.
Marc:Got to start over.
Marc:We did medium roast.
Marc:We tasted all different kinds of roasts and I learned about all the different kinds of beans.
Marc:I know a lot about coffee now, but I'm not going to be one of those people.
Marc:You know, there's a lot of talk of like, what's the perfect temperature for the water?
Marc:You know, how long do you let the beans soak?
Marc:What's the perfect ratio?
Marc:Blah, blah, blah.
Marc:Look.
Marc:I just want it in my body.
Marc:You know how it goes.
Marc:Let's just get it going.
Marc:I like it if it tastes good.
Marc:But I'm that kind of person.
Marc:Like there's part of me that thinks like we need to, you know, get a temperature for the water and we need to get the French presses up and running.
Marc:And we need to perhaps, you know, roast our own coffee.
Marc:So I fell for it all.
Marc:And my whirly pop came today.
Marc:So you know what I'll be doing?
Marc:Roasting my own coffee soon.
Marc:And you know what I'll be doing in about two weeks?
Marc:Throwing away my whirly pop.
Marc:But it was fascinating and I did learn a lot.
Marc:I'm still thinking about the movie The Master.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I've decided I like it.
Marc:I've decided it was great.
Marc:It looked beautiful.
Marc:It captured a time perfectly.
Marc:The shots were amazing.
Marc:There are two scenes in it that are the keys to the movie.
Marc:And I think basically it's a film about an unrequited male sexual relationship.
Marc:It's a movie about the two sides of the masculine archetype or disposition, the carnal and the mental.
Marc:There's a lot of things going on.
Marc:But as you can see, I'm slowly forming an opinion about it that is diplomatic,
Marc:uh pseudo-intellectual and uh completely in progress w kamal bell kamal bell uh the guy who uh created the show the bell curve the guy who's got uh totally biased with w kamal bell on the fx network let's talk to him right now
Marc:That fro is looking a little up.
Guest:I just picked it out a little bit.
Guest:You picked it out?
Guest:For the occasion?
Guest:For the occasion.
Guest:You got one of these?
Guest:Yeah, I have one of those.
Guest:Yeah, it's right in my back pocket.
Guest:Does it have the fist on it?
Guest:That's the only kind that you should have is one with the fist on it.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Have those been continually made since the original fisted Afro pics?
Guest:You know, they're probably shopped out to some country that would be sad to hear about.
Guest:But, yeah, I mean, they're hard to find if you don't live in, you know, Harlem.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Kamau Bell is here, W. Kamau Bell, whose show is now on FX.
Marc:Yes, we have.
Marc:Weekly show.
Guest:Yeah, it's weekly.
Guest:We just wrapped up our first six and, you know, we're doing a few more.
Marc:how many more seven you're doing seven more so you did six you're doing seven more yes yes so they have faith i don't know i guess they have faith or they feel like it's a small enough bet that they can keep betting on it well how's it going man because i know this is the first time that this is a big thing i mean this is your first this is a big break this is it this is it this is the big break that uh you hear about yeah i didn't actually believe happened so what do you mean
Guest:Well, you know how that is.
Guest:People think you have your big break and you go, well, yeah, but I was doing all these things.
Guest:But this is actually like a huge, it's like an evolutionary jump in my career.
Marc:Yeah, well, I remember I did the pilot with you.
Marc:Yes, right here.
Marc:And this was, how did the whole opportunity unfold?
Marc:Because you were doing the bell curve for a while.
Marc:I saw it up in San Francisco.
Marc:You're a known quantity.
Marc:You're a comedian, a Bay Area comedian, respected.
Marc:for his intelligence yeah and fearlessness uh yeah yeah and uh it's you know but you were you know you you got married you had a kid you were nervous i was nervous well before i got married and had a kid let me be clear about that well what i mean but how did it uh how did it unfold and when did chris rock get involved what happened with that
Guest:Well, I started my show in October 2007 out of frustration with my stand-up career because I felt like I wasn't able to cover the stuff in stand-up that I wanted to cover.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, I talk about race a lot in my act.
Marc:Can I talk about it now?
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Guest:That's what we do.
Guest:Look, I'm trying to progress, man.
Guest:You don't have to not talk to me about race because white people make you feel guilty about talking to black people about race.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:I'm going to put that on the promo.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I've heard you say that, and I'm like, you can talk to me about race.
Guest:That's what I do, and that's what we do specifically.
Marc:No, but I'm not hung up on it.
Marc:I don't know that you are.
Marc:I'm just saying we can talk about it.
Marc:Well, I will talk about it.
Marc:i'm trying to ease into it because i you know there you know i get occasional angry emails from uh progressives that are probably 19 or 20 years old that honestly believe that we live in a post-racial world which to them means do not address anyone as the other we are all as one and there's no reason why separate even in conversation
Guest:the other which i find uh i i have a hard time with it well yeah i think you should have a hard time with it i think people the we have these categories and they actually do uh you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna sit across from a person who's like a trans person and act like there's not differences there no but if we have a discussion about our experiences i'm going to be sure that there's going to be some that aren't shared
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So that's what it comes down to.
Marc:When you talk about experiences or where you come from or how you're defined or what struggles you went through, there's no way any individual as somebody who has chosen or not chosen a life for themselves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:but are considered different.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That they're not going to.
Marc:I just don't.
Marc:I guess after a certain point, you don't talk about that because it would be weird.
Marc:I mean, if you went into work every day and someone said, there's the black guy.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:What's up, black guy?
Guest:Which every black person probably had that job.
Guest:That's true, right?
Guest:And somehow it is said, there's the black guy.
Guest:Maybe not in that way, but also like, hey, what's up with that BET, huh?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:But obviously you don't talk to transgender people and say like, how's the beard coming in?
Guest:I believe there's a transgender person you can talk to like that, but you can't talk to them all like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can't open with that.
Guest:You can't open with that.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you were having a hard time getting in your mind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In your mind or maybe in reality.
Marc:It's definitely both.
Marc:Because I understand that idea.
Marc:There comes a point where you want to do a type of comedy.
Marc:You want to honor your intelligence and honor how you want to do it.
Marc:And if you're not known for that, you're going to stand in front of a room full of people that are expecting comedy, period.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you're comedy Kamau Bell.
Marc:Not comedy, period.
Marc:So you were banging your head against the wall.
Marc:Was there experiences where you were like, it just wasn't getting over?
Marc:Or did they take you too seriously?
Marc:Or was it like, oh, he's going to talk about this?
Guest:Well, I mean, I feel like it came to a head when me and Kevin Avery, another comedian, went to Okinawa to do shows with the troops.
Guest:And I just was very aware, and the troops were great, this isn't about them, that I was not the comic who could just be sent to go talk to the troops.
Marc:I never get asked, thank God, because I would be so paralyzed with a weird kind of fear.
Marc:But ultimately, you adapt.
Marc:You're like, what can I do?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:How much time did you have to do, 15?
Guest:Well, no, no, no.
Guest:We were doing co-headlining, so we were doing 45, which means... Oh, boy.
Guest:So the first night, I went up and did 45 minutes to absolute... At first, they were like, ha-ha, ha-ha.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:And then it was the politest silence I've ever heard because they're actually good.
Guest:They're good kids.
Guest:They're troops.
Guest:They're troops.
Guest:And so they know they can't just tell you suck because they're going to get written up for that.
Marc:Where were you?
Guest:It was Okinawa.
Guest:So it wasn't a war zone.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:And that's the thing.
Guest:They're kind of just bored because there's no reason for us to be in Okinawa, which is a whole other thing.
Guest:It's a holding pen, though, right?
Guest:Yeah, it's a place to go just in case something goes down.
Marc:Okay, so right.
Marc:They're just on base.
Marc:They just want to be entertained.
Guest:And they deserve to be entertained, and they probably wanted magicians and or strippers, and I couldn't do either one of those things.
Guest:I don't blame them for that.
Guest:Or a comic who could relate to them in a different way.
Guest:Yeah, just a clown or someone who doesn't do anything provocative.
Guest:Yeah, I could think of many comics I respect who would do a great job of that.
Marc:Because your approach to race, it's a dialogue about race.
Marc:It's not a parade of stereotypes or a show just for black people and the uncomfortable white people who like laughing at the way black people do white people.
Guest:And yet I've been accused of all those things.
Guest:By who?
Guest:The intranet.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:You know, random emails.
Guest:Anytime you're a black person talking about race in a comedy setting, any white person can say you're stereotyping white people.
Guest:And any white person can also say, because I've had the progressives, the white people are laughing because they're afraid.
Guest:And I'm like, I've never heard...
Guest:afraid laughter in my career you know like people either laugh or don't laugh they don't you don't go far on afraid laughter discomfort laugher I think there's discomfort but that's a different that's you can't sustain a career on just discomfort laughter right other comics have proven that not me you know there's been a few people I well I couldn't sustain a career that way I just so you know but anyway like I just felt like and you know and I'll
Guest:Talk to you about this.
Guest:The comics that I like are the comics who I felt like approached comedy like it was an adult conversation.
Guest:And that means sometimes you're talking about high-minded things and sometimes you're talking about poop and it just sort of goes back and forth.
Guest:You can talk about poop in a high-minded way.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Or you can just choose not to be high-minded and just talk about poop.
Guest:Whatever you want to do.
Guest:And I felt like I wasn't getting my thing across in a comedy club because especially when you talk about race and you reference either things that happened to either you or...
Guest:there's a thing in comedy club where on some level i feel like people think you're making it all up right like they don't and so i felt like i needed a screen to cite my sources so i could do the bits right and you know and i would you know certainly i took the from the daily show and like yeah i want to i was like i told myself i want to do my version of the daily show right which is it was a weekly show that we my solo show was like one point weekly and every week it was new right and so that's how we got to the w come out bell curve and
Guest:Doing that show for about three years is when I... The one-man show.
Guest:The one-man show.
Guest:And it was great from the moment I first did it in San Francisco.
Guest:My career changed from the first performance.
Guest:Well, you felt better.
Guest:I felt a lot better, even though it was a mess the first time.
Marc:But there were people coming specifically for an experience that was not a comedy club experience.
Marc:It was a comedic performer doing something that had some structure.
Marc:It was provocative.
Marc:You did it in Berkeley like a pussy.
Guest:LAUGHTER
Guest:That was the time you saw it.
Guest:I did it in Berkeley.
Guest:I started in front of, and I did the thing where if you brought a friend of a different race, you got in two for one.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:So I would guarantee that it wouldn't just be white theater goers, which in San Francisco, if you do that, you're just going to get any theater thing automatically gets white theater goers.
Marc:But no, I remember seeing it.
Marc:Was it Berkeley or Oakland?
Guest:It was in Berkeley, but it felt like Oakland because there's a lot of black people there.
Marc:No, I didn't say that.
Marc:You said that.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But it was a very diverse crowd.
Marc:And the theater itself looked like you had to be diverse in order to go there.
Marc:In order to get in, they had to judge your tolerance level.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:It was a classic East Bay.
Guest:It was La Pena, a cultural center.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:A lot of murals, working people.
Marc:I think you could get condoms when you walked into the theater.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, I'm sure I was followed by and opened for by a spoken word of some sort.
Guest:It was that place.
Marc:Well, I mean, how do you address this thing?
Marc:Because I can't think of anybody better to talk about it than you, because it sort of stuck in my craw that when I get accused of somebody who is...
Marc:I will not admit to being a racist of any kind.
Marc:I will admit to being insensitive, but perhaps my insensitivity is something that needs to be educated as opposed to be condescended to by people who claim that we're in some sort of post-racial universe, whatever the fuck that means.
Guest:Well, first of all, the post-racial thing is totally nonsense and didn't exist, and anybody who's still talking about that this far into Obama's presidency is clearly not paying attention.
Guest:So, I mean, that's just...
Guest:Nobody, I mean, even when I talk about it in my acts.
Guest:It's an ideal though.
Guest:It's not an ideal though.
Guest:Nobody, I don't want that.
Guest:What does it mean?
Guest:That would be like saying we don't want to recognize the differences in height or the differences in like eye color.
Guest:It's all part of the stew that is humanity.
Marc:Well, that was that's always been my point is that if somebody has a different cultural background or they come from something that it because different cultures and I'm not talking about black culture, but on some level I am, is that we all live in America.
Marc:Yes, we're all Americans.
Marc:And in the fabric is diverse.
Marc:But people who have communities of a certain ilk.
Marc:have different ways of going about life.
Marc:Yes, they're still American, but to me, it's sort of like, I don't live there and I'm sure I could walk through, maybe have some food and look at some interesting stores, but I'm still not gonna know what happens when you go home.
Marc:you're talking about your neighborhood right now right yeah so the argument is it's like well when someone says you know that's being racially insensitive or racist i'm like how about it's being fucking curious like what are you sort of saying that like well you need to go knock on some doors or befriend is it more condescending and racist to tell me that i need to have more uh indian friends or latino friends or black friends
Marc:Because not having those friends makes me somehow racially insensitive.
Marc:Or how about just acknowledging that I don't spend time with a lot of people, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to know.
Marc:Does that make me somehow insensitive?
Guest:Well, I'm willing to guess that the people who tell you you need to go make those friends aren't those people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would imagine.
Guest:Like, you know, I think that the whole thing is that for this is the show I talk about this, that the pendulum in this country has been swung so far that white people think that white is the absence of culture and race.
Guest:And they think that that the other thing, well, I'm not anything.
Guest:I'm just an American or I'm not.
Guest:I don't really know what I am.
Guest:And really, I feel like what it comes down to is that if white people thought about their whiteness more, it would make interacting with others in a.
Guest:it would it would it would change the way in which they interact with other people because i don't think white people think about their whiteness enough in this country and so that when people so when the news says white people blah blah blah every white person goes that's not me i'm not white people right whereas when black when the news says black people blah blah i go even if i don't relate to that i know that's me i have to i have to accept some responsibility for that or i have to choose not to but i can't act like i'm not involved in it and i feel like a lot of times white people act like they're not involved in the race discussion in any way yeah
Marc:Well, I mean, I don't I when I think about my whiteness, I might come from, you know, Eastern European Jewish working people a few generations back.
Marc:I, you know, I know I culturally culturally identify as a Jew, but I just don't take that much offense to any of it.
Marc:You know, if someone pigeonholes me, it's like, well, you're kind of Jewy or whatever, or that you're too white or too this.
Marc:I'm like, well, I don't even know what that fucking means, really.
Guest:But you've probably been, I would imagine you've been in situations where you felt like your Jewiness, that has been like, uh-oh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think that that probably happened to you more than your whiteness has made you do that.
Marc:But the weird thing, no, that's true.
Marc:But the weird thing about that is generally, usually what you're dealing with is somebody who has no experience of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:they don't it's not that that was what pissed me off the most about the last email i got from this woman um who i think is that why i'm here because you got an angry email i thought we booked this before the email okay from an asian woman can i still use the word women or are we are we yeah you can use women are we post gender yet not yet we're going we're going there we're going there it's it's coming that's what i wanted that's why i feel like america doesn't get over the gay thing because post gender is coming
Marc:Right.
Marc:But but it was just this sort of thing like, you know, take a gender studies class, take something class.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:It's so fucking horrendous and condescending.
Marc:And I got angry.
Marc:Because – but I did think, like, is there a generation – how old are you?
Marc:I'm 39.
Marc:So is there a generation of 20-year-olds now that honestly – because, I mean, that's several generations away.
Marc:It's another generation away from whatever you and I came from, and we're already a few generations away from whatever we're identified as, Jewish, black.
Marc:But –
Marc:My question is, am I missing something?
Marc:Are there a bunch of 15-year-olds now that really don't see color lines?
Marc:I imagine there probably is, but that ain't me.
Marc:I'm an old man.
Marc:Don't yell at me.
Marc:Help me out.
Guest:Well, I think in urban environments, there are a bunch of 15-year-olds who don't see race in that same way.
Guest:But in non-urban environments, there are a bunch of 15-year-olds who see race in a different way, but those things are still clashing.
Guest:You know, there's... I feel like every time people say we're... There's people in this country who are filled with fear, and they're raising kids.
Guest:There's people in this country who aren't filled with fear, and they're raising kids.
Guest:And their kids are obviously going to be more progressive.
Guest:They are going to be more... You know, how do I put this?
Guest:Like, those kids are still being raised by the parents who are running stuff right now.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So I feel like, yes, if I'm in Brooklyn, there's a bunch of black kids on skateboards with tattoos, like with their hair sprayed up in golf bands, who are like, yeah, I just sort of do whatever I do.
Guest:But then if you go to Alabama...
Guest:There's white kids who feel very like, or not even, you go outside of San Francisco, 40 miles outside of San Francisco, there are white people who feel like they're in Texas.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:And so I feel like we in the urban environments overshoot that a lot because we think because, well, in my neighborhood or where I live, it's not that way.
Guest:But yeah, there's a lot more of America that's the other way.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I just get I get weirded out by it, but we don't need to get hung up on that.
Marc:So so.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're doing your show.
Marc:How does Chris Rock get involved in this process?
Guest:Chris Rock is involved.
Guest:He I had done the show here at the Comedy Central stage in L.A.
Guest:and a writer named Chuck Sklar came out and saw the show.
Marc:I started with Chuck Squire.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:We talk about you regularly.
Guest:You've mentioned him on this before.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:So Chuck comes out and sees it because he got a recommendation from a guy named Kevin Cataoka.
Guest:Chuck comes and sees it.
Guest:Friend of ours, Kevin Cataoka.
Guest:Yeah, great comic.
Guest:Who I do not see as an other.
What?
Guest:I don't know that Kevin wants to be seen as another, so that's probably fine.
Guest:Although he did express pride recently about PSY, that Korean star.
Marc:But he doesn't want to be seen as another yet.
Marc:Most of his acts used to be his dad.
Marc:It wasn't a general dad.
Marc:It was my Korean dad.
Marc:Yeah, but a lot of comics talk about their dad, and your dad is your dad.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is we are all others.
Marc:Yes, we're all Americans.
Marc:We're all people.
Marc:But on some level, if I'm coming from a certain experience, but this might be the argument where if a general white guy was to sort of explore his whiteness, which is something you said would be interesting, that would be interesting.
Marc:I mean, I'm fortunate enough to be Jewish, and I can lean on that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, like, I think in a general way, you know, white people don't identify ethnically.
Guest:Well, they don't.
Guest:And, like, I'm married.
Guest:My wife is white.
Guest:But I realized from being with her that she's actually – her ethnic identity is Italian Catholic.
Guest:Even though she's a very small portion of herself is Italian.
Guest:But she grew up in – her grandfather was 100% Sicilian.
Guest:She grew up in an Italian family.
Guest:All the food, all the talking, all the – so she – I realized, oh, that's her ethnicity as Italian Catholic.
Marc:Well, what's been your experience with that?
Marc:I mean, initially, what was the resistance?
Marc:Was there any pushback?
Marc:I mean, you know, I felt like... Is that an inappropriate question?
Guest:No, it's not an inappropriate question.
Guest:It's a question I get a lot from her family.
Guest:What's your experience here?
Guest:No, we're great.
Guest:I mean, it's like, first of all, the dynamic of somebody dating like your daughter is always going to be a screwed up thing, no matter how alike you are on the surface.
Guest:So I think that's let's just start with there.
Guest:I think also the fact I think her family was way more alert to the fact that I was a comedian, an unsuccessful comedian in their eyes and my eyes than I was.
Guest:I was black.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now, certainly there's other aspects of the family where like other people in the family where I'm sort of in things like going like I would look around and be like, I'm the only black person here at these big family gatherings.
Guest:And I can't help but think about that because that's where I come from.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Doesn't mean I'm going to necessarily affect what I do, but it can't help but be this thing that I'm sort of dealing with.
Guest:And there was times where things would happen where I would be like.
Guest:Is this because I'm black or is this because I'm me?
Guest:And I think that's a burden that the other carries a lot, not being able to figure out what's happening.
Guest:Now, nothing happened to the family where I got kicked out or yelled, I get your black, you know, you know, at the time I had really long dreadlocks.
Guest:And I think that had a lot to do with it.
Guest:Like I just looked, I didn't, if I had been a black lawyer, I think it would have been different.
Guest:but i was a black comedian with long dreadlocks who was older than their daughter and it was like what is this dude this is not the dude we ordered yeah yeah black was just was maybe on the list somewhere but it was not the top of the list well that's good yeah no it's that's progress that is progress now on the other hand i couldn't sit down with their family and be like let's talk about my blackness i don't think they would have any time for that i'm just wondering what are the lines of you being offended by me and my blackness they're not but they're not that family in general so you know
Marc:But that's interesting because I think that that attitude would be something that a lot of people would bring to it without saying it.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Well, I think that identifying yourself and knowing that in your own discomfort, that reads.
Marc:Like if you're sitting there thinking, I wonder what they think about my blackness.
Marc:That would create a defensiveness.
Guest:It does create a defensiveness, and that's happening throughout society about things that aren't race, like what I'm bringing you to and what you're bringing you to.
Guest:Suddenly we're sitting here and we think, oh, this guy is doing this to me.
Guest:And I feel like as an other, you can sort of – a lot of times we're carrying all this homework.
Guest:that we've been given by, like, I gotta figure out how to get through the situation, that when you are, for lack of a better word, white, that you just sort of walk in and go, this guy's treating me like an asshole because he's an asshole.
Guest:And you don't have to sort of wander through, like, is this a racist thing happening?
Guest:And it's just a lot of, I think it happens to women all the time, certainly it happens to gay people, that it's a lot of extra stuff to carry.
Guest:Happens to Jewish people.
Guest:You know, that it's extra stuff to carry that can make complicated situations more complicated.
Guest:Even if I'd been a white lawyer, it still would have been complicated to marry somebody's daughter.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:And believe me, I'm not waving around any Jewish card.
Marc:Our struggles, for the most part, in this country are over.
Marc:You won.
Marc:Yeah, I can honestly say, somehow or another, it's been a few decades, but we seem to have integrated okay.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No.
Guest:Good job.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Guest:It's, you know, that integration thing is easy when, uh, when you're white.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you can blend in, when you can blend into a crowd.
Guest:And honestly, that's why I think black people are always going to be in this position in this country.
Guest:Cause we're never, even Latinos can check white on the census and you can meet some Latinos and be like, I had no idea you were.
Guest:Cause it just, it depends on what part of the country you're from.
Marc:So.
Marc:So, okay, so Chuck Squire.
Marc:She's the show.
Marc:And recommended by Kevin Kataoka.
Marc:Chuck Squire, a Jew.
Marc:Why not?
Marc:Let's mix it up.
Marc:Let's keep this theme going.
Marc:So at the Comedy Central stage at the Hudson, right?
Marc:Yeah, at the Hudson.
Guest:And Chris.
Guest:And at that point, he was like, he called me the next day.
Guest:And I had met him because he had tried to hire me for something else.
Guest:So he called me the next day.
Guest:He was like, you're going to get a TV show.
Guest:And at the time, I'm living in the barrier.
Guest:That's what he said?
Guest:That's what he said.
Guest:Yeah, like very much.
Guest:And at the time, I'm living in the Bay Area, like, okay, whatever.
Guest:This is why I don't live in L.A., because people like you are saying nonsense.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I said, okay, thanks, man.
Guest:You know, and we, whatever.
Guest:I came back down here a couple times, and then he said he had told Chris about me and that Chris thought I was funny.
Marc:But I feel like when I tell that story... Oh, so you didn't know Chuck had talked to Chris?
Marc:No, I didn't know Chuck had talked to Chris.
Guest:He just said I told Chris about it because he works with Chris.
Guest:He's working with Chris on his Chris Rock show.
Guest:And when I tell the story, it sounds like, oh, that must have been an exciting moment.
Guest:But really, in your career, there's all these different... You know this.
Guest:You have all these different pots going...
Guest:And I had the solo show and I had stand-up and I was trying to work on a book thing.
Guest:And so I was touring with Laugh Against the Machine.
Guest:It was, okay, that's one thing.
Guest:That's, okay, Chris Rock thinks I'm funny.
Marc:That's the most exciting thing out of all these pots I'm self-generating the heat for.
Marc:Yes, yes, yes.
Marc:This actually, this might be a guy that can cook this shit.
Guest:But I also know Chris Rock has his own career.
Guest:And at that point, I didn't think he was looking to do anything with any of that.
Guest:I thought the best I thought maybe one day I can open for Chris Rock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like that's sort of like, that'll be yay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, uh, so we, we talk, you know, that would just sort of kept going.
Guest:And then October, 2010, I was in, um, New York, the UCB theater and I did my solo show and it was a great night.
Guest:It was really good.
Guest:And I walked backstage and suddenly, you know, Chris walks backstage at the end of the show with, and you know, and, and I didn't know he'd been there.
Marc:Yeah, that's good.
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:That's the best way that can happen.
Guest:That is the best.
Guest:I think Chris is very aware of his Jedi status, that he's got to use it very... That if he had walked in and waved to everybody, that the whole thing would have been over.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So he came in after it started.
Guest:Was he wearing a hat?
Guest:He was wearing a hat, and he was literally dressed in all black like it was the Matrix.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was just sort of head down, wearing all black, and he had his glasses on.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So that was sweet of him not to come backstage...
Marc:It's always good to know.
Marc:When there are Jedi's in the room, they should always identify themselves later.
Marc:That is the Jedi thing to do.
Marc:That is the Jedi thing to do.
Marc:He's very much aware.
Guest:He fought hard for his Jedi status, so he knows how to use it.
Guest:And I've seen him use it several times now.
Guest:And so he just came back, and it was very much like, hey, you're funny.
Guest:It wasn't like, I finally found the one.
Guest:He was like, you're funny.
Guest:Where do you live?
Guest:I said, San Francisco.
Guest:He said, move.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and my wife was pregnant at the time i was like i don't think i'm moving anytime soon but he's like you got to go to the either new york or la and get to you're funny he's like i don't think a lot of people are funny so take that for what it means and he left yeah chris disappeared and i went about living my life and then two months later i got a phone call from an unlisted number and it was like uh and i thought it was my dad because weirdly my dad has an unlisted number yeah and i said hello and said come out yeah it's chris rock
Guest:And I said, no, it's not.
Guest:Because I told all my friends, and I was just like, this is Jeremy being an asshole.
Guest:And he started going off, and very quickly I was like, oh, this is Chris Rock.
Guest:And he said, I want to do a show with you.
Guest:And I don't know what that means.
Guest:I didn't know what it meant.
Guest:And I was just like, all right, what does that mean?
Guest:And so he went to Broadway.
Guest:I flew out to New York to meet with him and Chuck.
Guest:We talked over an afternoon at his office.
Guest:At that point, I flew back to the Bay Area.
Guest:Nothing happened right away.
Guest:And I kind of thought I had fucked it up.
Guest:I was like, did I not do enough in that meeting?
Guest:It was really like we sat for six hours in his office and sort of bullshitted.
Guest:And I was just like, and it was over.
Guest:And I kept thinking we were about to do something.
Guest:And then I went home like, wait, I just fucked it up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:Right.
Marc:That's the worst feeling.
Marc:It's like you're second guessing something that you have no idea about.
Marc:And all it is is just sort of a heightened way to beat the shit out of yourself for nothing.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Like, did I say that wrong?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:That sentence, should I have said that differently?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I did a lot of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then came back home, and then he went to Broadway, and my wife had our baby, and so there was just this long process of nothing happening, and then after I came out of the baby haze,
Guest:I called Chuck.
Guest:I was like, we need to produce some sort of pilot in San Francisco to show Chris that this is actually a thing and I know how to do this.
Guest:So we did two nights at the theater in San Francisco at Stageworks Theater and then showed it to Chris.
Guest:And he's like, okay, I see it.
Guest:And that's when he put in money for the thing we did in November.
Marc:You self-produced the pilot?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In San Francisco, like you said, I know a lot of people.
Guest:I've been there for a while.
Guest:I called in a lot of favors.
Marc:Just shot some stuff.
Guest:And just shot some stuff.
Guest:It didn't look great, but we did two nights and shot some stuff to show him what the idea was.
Guest:And it didn't look good, but it had a lot of spirit in it.
Guest:And he recognized that and said, okay, I can see it now.
Guest:And it was based on my solo show, but just with more parts to it.
Guest:It was me in front of a screen, but then also we had different comedians as correspondents.
Guest:I interviewed somebody live at the theater and just sort of shot some man on the street stuff and put it together.
Marc:So a lot like the Chris Rock show.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, the Chris Rock show and the Daily Show are probably my two biggest models for this thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I certainly know that I'm different than both those dudes, so I'm going to do it differently.
Marc:So what, you know, in your mind, what is that point of view difference for you?
Guest:I think I, as a comedian, I'm a generation younger than him.
Guest:I feel like I, so I think about, I was, you know, I think about comedy in different ways, and I think I...
Guest:Because I lived in San Francisco for 15 years, I'm really steeped in this sort of idea as the... It's not only okay to be an other, it's great to be an other, and let's get over this bullshit and get to whatever the next problem is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I like celebrating and sort of aggressively pushing the other.
Guest:And not just from the... The thing that San Francisco did to me, I don't just push it from the black perspective.
Guest:In my solo show, I was talking about race, but I'm trying to push it from as many different perspectives as possible to sort of show that all of this shit is normal.
Guest:Right.
Marc:There is no other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or there's no reason to be afraid of any of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a discussion that should be trivial.
Marc:It should be like second burner stuff.
Guest:Yes, yes, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of the thing, and I'd be like, do I like you?
Guest:You know, like, not in my... And believe me, I went to San Francisco, I was as much... I'd come from Chicago, and Chicago's a great city, but it's certainly a city of segregation even to this day, so I had not been around as many different types of people when I got to the Bay Area and got steeped in it and sort of felt like it's my responsibility to push this stuff forward.
Marc:It's interesting, because you're making me think about something, because I've always...
Marc:You had this weird feeling about San Francisco.
Marc:Like I lived up there for a couple of years, but I could never get a handle on it.
Marc:And I knew innately and also from living there that it was a place where people were that was really driven culturally by a celebration of individuality, whatever that might be.
Marc:Whether it be, you know, sexual or racial or creative, whatever it is.
Marc:But it always had that feeling.
Marc:And to me, that felt sort of it always felt sort of boundaryless to me, which is ultimately what you're working for.
Marc:But it also makes me uncomfortable.
Marc:Like, you know, like there I think there's some comfort, you know, and I think that in the way we pigeonhole ourselves.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Marc:That like the gay community in San Francisco fought, you know, long and hard.
Marc:And that's sort of a capital that New York of their that's the territory that they made for themselves.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it was not easy.
Marc:And it took a very aggressive, I guess, an aggressive celebration.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Of all things gay.
Guest:Some would say marches and riots.
Guest:But yes.
Guest:But yes, an aggressive celebration.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I think that is a good way to look at it.
Marc:Is that condescending or is it trivializing?
Marc:But for me, it was sort of like it kind of called me to the carpet in that like, you know, why are you uncomfortable with this territory that has been achieved?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, maybe I don't know what I am.
Marc:It's a lot better in my brain that we can have a conversation about race because in my mind, it's like, well, we got to be talking about this because look at us.
Guest:And really look at us because what we are on the surface is a lot of times connected to who we are inside.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, we're exactly just because you're a black guy doesn't mean he does all things.
Guest:But I think there's a connection there in the same way that I'm also six foot four.
Guest:A lot of who I am is based on the fact that I'm tall.
Guest:You know, it's just not as politically loaded as black.
Marc:Right now, are you just being diplomatic so I don't look racist?
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Guest:This kind of conversation, I feel like it's supposed to happen a lot, especially at this point in America where we're supposed to have these conversations where we're not actually charged about something and where you can maybe make some mistakes at a point where I don't have anything on the line that I'm waiting for you to make a mistake.
Marc:Well, the weird thing is, and I don't know if I talked to you about this before, but I think, and this might go either way, I think when I really try to ask myself, why am I asking these questions or why do I feel this way?
Marc:And what is racially charged for me?
Marc:And all it comes down to is I, on some level, am envious of the built-in identity.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, if I feel like an other, it's only because like I'm weird and I'm shy and I'm too angry and I can't seem to socialize too easily for very long.
Marc:I'm bad at relationships.
Marc:So my otherness is really limited to my inabilities emotionally and psychologically, you know, moving through the world.
Marc:It's not it's not because I'm white.
Marc:But and I think in a lot of ways that even with the gay community and the black community and the Latino community, there's part of me that thinks like they know who they are.
Guest:Well, yeah, I think, well, in this country especially, I'll speak for all three of those groups, which is the first time I've ever done that.
Guest:We know who we are because on some level we've been marginalized, and I feel like this, I'll speak for myself on this, I was made to feel like black was a bad thing for the first part of my life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so at some point I had to reckon with that and then decide how I was going to make it a great thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's what I did.
Guest:And so my version of blackness is not the version of blackness of most black men my age.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's the version of blackness I feel like I can get down in and celebrate.
Marc:But wait a minute.
Marc:So marginalization, I understand.
Marc:If you're going to frame it historically that way.
Guest:If you're going to say black is a bad thing, eventually the other side of that is black pride.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The black power movement.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:But obviously, you know, that marginalization politically was intentional that there's no question that that the political culture was certainly racist and not tolerant and in many ways, I would say absolutely controlled minorities so they would be held back.
Guest:And fractured groups, you know, in such a way so that it was harder to even get together.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:But because of that and maybe not because of that.
Marc:See, this is my question because, you know, we have Armenians down the street here.
Marc:And I also know this about the Jews.
Marc:Now, they came here in a different way.
Marc:They were not bound and put on boats.
Marc:They got on boats voluntarily.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:They paid their fare.
Guest:They got to choose what class they sat in.
Guest:They got to send meals back.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Could you?
Marc:Well, there was steerage, but it was not forced steerage.
Guest:And when you got off the boat, you could go wherever you wanted to.
Guest:Pretty much.
Marc:Once you went through the island and they deloused you.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Certainly, a lot of people got here through bad ways, but yes, slavery has its own...
Marc:No, that baggage, it's clearly nothing that I'm trivializing.
Guest:And I just don't want to make sure anybody else's baggage is their own baggage, too.
Marc:No, but I get that.
Marc:But what I see even with Armenians is that when a group of people comes from another country of another ethnicity, and when they build their community, they are not necessarily marginalized, the Armenians.
Marc:Let's just stick with them.
Marc:Clearly, they've got their own shit behind them, and I'm not going to trivialize that.
Marc:I don't even understand what it was historically.
Marc:But it was bad.
Marc:And the Turks were involved.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But but nonetheless, when they come here, they may have money.
Marc:They may be middle class, but they're not marginalized per se.
Marc:But they do create a community within the fabric of America, within the fabric of the city that is clearly exclusionary on some level.
Marc:Because they're like, well, we're going to hang where they're on.
Marc:We're going to speak our own language.
Marc:And we're going to do that.
Marc:Hasidic Jews do it.
Marc:I think Latinos do it.
Marc:And even if they're not marginalized, there's a community and a sense of national identity that isn't necessarily homegrown American stuff.
Marc:So I think I'm just playing off of that, that even with the black community, that obviously struggled in a different way.
Marc:That there is a community and that I don't know that being a sort of, you know, generally considered a white person, you know, that sense of community is not the same.
Guest:Well, but I think that you're I think white people like yourself are shortchanging your community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody has a community.
Guest:And like you say, I hear you talk about this on the show all the time, when you go to the South, there's a totally different type of thing.
Guest:And in my mind, yeah, there's a totally different type of white people in the South than there is in New York or L.A.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's a community.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And white people in the South, and my dad's from Alabama, I go to Alabama every year and hang out there.
Guest:You can feel the community and there's pride in the community.
Guest:And sometimes that comes with the Confederate flag, but not all the time.
Guest:But there's a sense of we are this thing and we define ourselves through our community that just, I think, starts to not happen so much in urban environments as people move and disperse.
Guest:So I think that white people, a lot of times, like my wife's family, I don't think they would define their ethnicity as Italian Catholic.
Guest:I'm defining it because I can see it from the outside and go, you don't see how important those two things are to this.
Guest:That even though you don't go to church every Sunday and this is only one-eighth Italian, that you're Italian Catholics.
Guest:American Italian Catholics.
Guest:And so I feel like a lot of times white people, because they see, it's so easy to go through a Latin neighborhood and go, this is, look at the flags and I don't recognize the names on the things.
Guest:That's a thing.
Guest:And it's not as easy to go through your own community and see that way.
Guest:So I just think that white people are shortchanging themselves.
Guest:Have some white pride, as I say.
Marc:Be careful with that.
Guest:It's a small jump from white pride to white power.
Guest:Yeah, but that's why I feel like white pride has been, I've talked about this in my show, white pride has been taken by bad white people.
Guest:There's got to be good things to be proud about when you're white.
Guest:There's got to be.
Guest:It's just the same way there's a black nationalism that is the get some guns and start taking out some white fools.
Guest:And then there's the black nationalism that's like get an Afro pig with a fist on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like, that literally makes me feel better to be black, you know?
Guest:It's by degree.
Guest:It's by degree and direction.
Marc:Which way are you pointing that fist?
Marc:Well, I met your mom a couple times, and she, like, what did your parents do?
Marc:My mom... Because she's in Indiana.
Guest:She's in Indiana.
Guest:She's always, I mean, for most of my life, she's been a self-employed educator.
Guest:Like, she will teach and do things like that, but she also...
Guest:She published her own books of famous black quotations in the 80s, self-published, just because she felt like there was no books of African-American quotations.
Guest:And she felt like that was a hole in the market, that she always wanted that.
Guest:And so she made them herself.
Guest:And I always tell this story, self-publishing in the 80s meant a thing that it doesn't mean now.
Guest:You had to have a mimeograph machine.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Well, you also had to go to a typesetter.
Guest:You had to go meet somebody.
Guest:That's Microsoft Word now.
Guest:you had to go right oh yeah you had it right they had to go offset press yeah yeah and so it was like eight different jobs that don't exist anymore yeah she was driving all over boston the boston area to put this thing together now that's a segregated city yes yes yes even you lived in boston i did live in boston i went to school in boston as a kid i was pretty young but we were i remember my time in boston it's a very bizarre bit of business there and my mom felt like it's a segregated city even so much as a black person moving to boston the black people boston like we're boston blacks you know like wait
Guest:Don't bring that out-of-town black in here because they're so segregated from the white people.
Guest:Again, they have to take pride in that thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, we fought hard.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:We were the first slaves in this country.
Guest:Slow down, slow down.
Guest:That's my mom, just always a self-starter.
Guest:She was working her PhD at Stanford in the 70s, but she dropped out of the program because they didn't believe African-American literature was a valid field of study at that point.
Guest:At Stanford?
Guest:At Stanford.
Guest:Yeah, so she dropped out of the program, so she's a totally self-made person on that end.
Guest:And my parents were never together in my lifetime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad is from Alabama, mostly has lived in Alabama, but has sort of worked his way up through...
Guest:uh like it was the guy who's like you know basically at one point in his life like i don't have a job like i don't have anything i do i had been an artist and a photographer went to the bank became a teller worked his way all the way up through the bank then started selling insurance and now uh is retiring from a fortune 500 reinsurance company which is a whole separate level of insurance scam yeah the people who insure insurance
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's like double evil.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I tell my dad that all the time.
Marc:People who insure insurance companies.
Guest:Yeah, the people who pay.
Guest:When insurance pays out, there's people who pay them.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's bizarre.
Guest:Where does that end?
Guest:I don't know where it ends, but the money is so huge.
Guest:He's like, ugh.
Guest:That Japanese thing cost my company $4 billion or something.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:So they're hedging their bets on the effectiveness of an insurance company not to have to pay out.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So they charge an insurance company an exorbitant fee to insure them in hopes that they're a good insurance company and give people nothing that they deserve.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then when, God forbid, a class action suit goes through and actually rewards the person who was probably truly injured and all the insurance company's lawyers could not stop that from happening.
Marc:They're like, oh, fuck.
Marc:Some guy got what was doing and now we got to pay the fucking bill on the insurance company.
Guest:And yet it's still working out for them.
Guest:That's unbelievable.
Guest:And I say this.
Guest:My dad is the guy who, again, he's a black guy doing this.
Guest:There's not a lot of black guys in the reinsurance industry.
Marc:And he just found his way there.
Guest:He just sort of went back to college when he was in his 40s to get his degree so he could be promoted through all these things.
Guest:And both my parents on paper don't have a lot, but they both have, in separate ways, worked hard to get the sort of, I'm going to do this.
Marc:How they feel about what you're doing.
Marc:Is your dad proud?
Marc:Does he give you some respect?
Guest:Once you get a show on FX that's produced by Chris Rock, your dad finds out that's a way to bring closeness together with you and your dad.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:You did something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, my dad, I always said the biggest laugh I ever got from him was telling him I had tried stand-up comedy.
Guest:It didn't make any sense.
Guest:He never saw me as being funny at all in any way.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You?
Guest:Me?
Marc:I know.
Guest:What a crazy... Yeah.
Guest:Even comics.
Marc:Was that his response?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just didn't even, he felt like, I felt like he had never heard me speak out loud before.
Guest:I didn't even know you talked like what in front of people.
Guest:Uh, cause I was an only child and sort of off to my own devices most of the time.
Guest:And so, but my mom, like, you know, I could have said, you know, there's, I could have said any number of things.
Guest:She was like, sounds good.
Guest:Let's do that.
Guest:Like she was that mom, you know?
Marc:Well, I think you're a guy, you know, not unlike myself, that was probably, you know, sensitive and, you know, in his head a lot.
Marc:And then, you know, at some point, like, you know, I always knew I was naturally funny, and I'm sure you did, too.
Marc:But you had to find your way there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, we're thinky.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Marc:So, you know, we had to, you know, we we had we had to suffer through the fact that, like, why I want to say this.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:It can't all just be just funny.
Marc:I mean, like, I don't know that I was naturally funny until recently.
Marc:Like, you know, I know.
Marc:I knew that I was propelled by anger and creativity and a way of saying things, but I don't know if I knew how to integrate my natural sensibilities of just being kind of funny and lighthearted until the last few years.
Marc:Well, I, you know, I think it was always like, I got something to say and I need you to listen.
Guest:Well, I think that's, yeah, I think that's true of me too, that I felt like I know I can be funny.
Guest:I just don't know how to get it out.
Guest:And it took me like sort of going the root of the solo show to figure out how to get it out.
Guest:That made me a better standup because I was just like, I'm not going to listen.
Guest:I'm not going to,
Guest:I'm going to just perform for me.
Guest:The whole idea behind the show is like, what would I do if I was famous?
Guest:That's how I wrote the show.
Guest:I'm just going to perform for me, and if that doesn't work, then I'll know that I can't figure this out.
Guest:Because I always felt like, until this day, they feel like they don't fit exactly in the whole stand-up comedy.
Guest:I love it, but I just feel like a lot of times, I look at other comics like, it's weird that we have the same job title.
Marc:Well, you know, I have felt that myself, and I think you're probably going to evolve out of that.
Marc:I hope so.
Guest:Does that mean evolve out of stand-up comedy or evolve out of the insecurity?
Marc:I think that from my own experience, that that is what that is.
Marc:It's insecurity.
Marc:I don't know that I saw myself as an entertainer, per se.
Marc:I felt like that my my intentions in getting into stand up comedy were more about having an outlet to speak and be listened to and be seen.
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Marc:I knew I wanted to be a great comic, but I don't think that initially I saw myself as an entertainer.
Guest:Well, you know, I think there's a little bit of difference between us and that is that when I got into comedy, I did want to be a comedian.
Guest:And I felt like there's a lot of... And I've seen this happen to friends of mine, where the act of doing stand-up comedy over and over again ends up shaping how you be a comedian.
Guest:Like, for example, you know, I feel like when I would do stand-up, when I started, I would talk about race and I would not talk about race.
Guest:And I felt like whenever I talked about race, the crowd would react to me in a way that I thought, that's weird, why aren't they going with this?
Marc:But what I'm saying is that when you...
Marc:when you were approaching a stage, was it ever part of your thinking that, like, now I'm going to entertain these people?
Marc:Yeah, I don't think I thought, like, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Old school show business.
Marc:But that's what it all is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, it's not even old school necessarily.
Marc:It is.
Marc:You're an entertainer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, it's hard to sort of, like, because, especially depending on who your heroes are, you know, whether they're, you know, if they're Bill Hicks or Lenny Bruce or George Carlin or Pryor or whoever...
Marc:The bottom line is that those guys were in fucking show business.
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Marc:And whether they ended up, however they ended up where they were, whatever level that they ended up at, they were entertainers.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:That's the weirdest part about it, is that at some point, you know, between Lenny...
Marc:And Bill Hicks, you know, that usually is and prior to certainly, but there's no doubt that even prior at his finest and at his best was a top notch entertainer.
Marc:There's no arguing.
Marc:Yeah, you know, he might have fought the fight and, you know, said, fuck comedy, fuck who I was.
Marc:You know, I'm going to I'm going to now I'm going to speak as myself.
Marc:But he was an entertainer.
Marc:And I think Lenny Bruce, too, was that way.
Marc:And then Hicks, you know, he throws a wrench in it.
Marc:He's like, you know, I'm not sure that he would ever consider himself.
Marc:But I think he did.
Guest:Well, yeah, but I think also the Hicks story sort of ended way early.
Guest:Who knows what 40-year-old Hicks would have looked like.
Marc:No, but I think he said, don't worry, we'll get to the Dick Joe soon.
Marc:We're going to land on Dick Joe.
Marc:He was clear of the parameters, and he chose the parameters.
Marc:And I think when, like, I went through what you went through with certain one-man shows, like, they're not getting it.
Marc:They're not getting me because I'm doing something different.
Marc:Yeah, you're not entertaining properly.
Yeah.
Guest:you haven't figured out how to say what you want to say as an entertainer well i would say that that's true i hadn't figured out what i wanted to say what i wanted to say and i needed the i needed the echo chamber of a theater to figure that out and i felt like and also the supportiveness yeah the uh and the curiosity of a theater audience that they will sort of sit there and be like so explain i'm here right yeah right it's not just like robert hawkins says is that you know you we sell drinks
Guest:yes yes you took that out of the equation yeah i was just like let me just take that out of that so i can see where i land up and i certainly became a better stand-up comic because of that like like you know the stuff that i do now that is all the the spine of the show is always in me now is better because i went out of because i went to the echo chamber of a theater you know so i you know i wouldn't i wouldn't i don't i wouldn't be here right now if i just stayed in the clubs and i still you know i still love the clubs but it's just a it's a different thing
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like, you know, trench warfare in a lot of ways.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think as time goes on and more people come to see like it seems to me that some guys are trying to they just want to avoid the clubs altogether.
Marc:You know, like if they can just make the jump to, you know, small theaters and, you know, I don't know.
Guest:Well, the thing I know, the thing I love about a comedy club is it is kind of like it's you're just sort of it's like.
Guest:It is sort of like Lord of the Flies.
Guest:It's just sort of you don't know what's going to happen and whatever happens is what happens and you just sort of go into it and you sort of wrestle it out with the audience and you come out, yay, we had a good time.
Guest:And that's fun.
Guest:I feel like that's its own fun.
Guest:Whereas doing the solo show and doing the TV show is a different type of thing.
Guest:It's just a different animal.
Guest:And so I really enjoy stand-up comedy in the club setting.
Marc:So now that you've got the show and you're getting up there, you're reading the prompter, you're learning all these new skills that are not that easy.
Guest:No, it's not.
Guest:There's no training for a TV show host other than being a TV show host.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think a lot about all the things that people notice that I'm not doing well, I noticed them as I was doing them.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:There's no training for delivering into a camera like they're your friends.
Guest:There's no training for that.
Guest:I'm still figuring that out.
Guest:Not that I'm comparing myself to these people.
Guest:Nobody thinks about the first season of Conan as being the classic season.
Marc:Definitely, they don't think about that.
Guest:You know, and Conan's great, but he was able to grow.
Guest:And I think about even the nobody quotes the first season of Seinfeld.
Guest:Like, I feel like it's given time if I'm given the time by effects and they seem to be giving me a little bit more.
Guest:Yeah, I will.
Guest:I will figure it out because I believe in the content and the stuff we're doing.
Guest:I'm just it.
Guest:There's no training for that other than doing it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:That's trench warfare of its own, you know.
Marc:And what are you feeling about your skill set?
Marc:I mean, what do you think, as you're moving into this process, what have you been conscious of doing better or what did you think were your shortcomings initially?
Guest:What did I think are my shortcomings initially?
Guest:you know i think it's funny on some on a basic level i didn't know i was heading towards being a tv talk show host that was not something i was i was going for so it's sort of weird to be thought of in that in that like the late night talk show hosts right like it's i just didn't think that now that i'm there i have to accept that and just sort of do the best job of that that i can you know and and enjoy it and i think i'm starting to enjoy it yeah i'm starting to relax a little relax into the thing and
Guest:And also, you know, I'm starting to learn how to a joke that's written at two o'clock in the afternoon to do it at three as if it's the joke.
Marc:Well, that's the weird.
Marc:That's the trickiest thing, really, is that, you know, as a comic who writes his own shit and then all of a sudden, like, you know, like it's hard to have faith in a joke in him.
Marc:Right.
Marc:that you've never heard come out of your that's right they've never heard or that's right but then all of a sudden you realize like wait this audience is here for they know exactly why they're here it's a talk show they understand the format you know these guys write good jokes and i wrote part of this joke and i've made it my own uh so uh you know and they're all jacked up and then you you know you tell the joke and it gets a laugh and there's that beat where you're like dad they're just playing their part shut up
Marc:You know, maybe they're really laughing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, all that shit.
Guest:Yeah, no, so that's all happening.
Guest:And now, like, I'm, you know, Chris talks about this all the time.
Guest:He's like, the difference between a comedian and a great comedian is a great comedian never worries about the audience.
Guest:That a great comedian...
Guest:And we'll just go out and sort of doesn't care about what the audience is.
Guest:It'll just make the audience great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, you know, I'm sure there's certainly arguments for and against that.
Guest:But I think I'm understanding what that means.
Guest:Just go out and do the thing.
Guest:Just go out and do the job and do it as good as you can.
Guest:And let the pieces fall where they may instead of worrying about what these people out here are going to think about this thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think after a certain point, if you're not doing that, you're just beating the shit out of yourself.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Marc:At some point, you've got to be like, this is who I am.
Marc:That ain't changing.
Guest:Yeah, no, and maybe the things that I do wrong one day will be like, it's adorable how he does those things wrong.
Marc:That's the best you can hope for.
Marc:Your insecurities actually become your cute quirk.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, that's the thing that other people will start trying to do those things wrong.
Guest:You know, I mean...
Marc:Very optimistic.
Guest:That's just that's what, as you said before, I'm super thinky.
Guest:And so, you know, and that's I think about this all the time.
Guest:Like, you know, I'm live tweeting the show and I'm on Twitter and I'm getting live responses from people and 90 percent of it is great, but 10 percent of it is not great.
Guest:And 50 percent of that 10 percent is accurate.
Guest:You know, like, so it's like... It's the worst.
Guest:Yeah, it's the worst when somebody hits you by the thing.
Guest:And I want us to be like, yeah, I know.
Guest:I'm working on it.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:When a troll hits you in your guts, you're like, how the fuck did he know that?
Guest:That's so right.
Guest:I shouldn't even do this anymore.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:That's what those people do.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so, you know, I'm very aware of the things that I need to do better.
Guest:And also...
Marc:learning about things that i do that i'm saying oh i'm like these man on the street segments that we're doing i'm having a lot of fun doing those and i didn't know that i would like doing that yeah so there's all these things that i'm going oh this is fun let's do more of these yeah well i think it's hard for for uh for me and maybe for you being thinky is to get get away from self-consciousness that like you know just engage in the situation you know you know because that weird kind of like oh my god this person's uncomfortable because we're talking
Marc:I watched a bit on the last show with the girls, the little girls.
Marc:Oh, yeah, One Direction.
Marc:Even in those situations, when I've had experience in doing bits like that, you're like, I'm in charge of this.
Marc:I have to talk to them, and they're going to be little girls, and it's going to be weird.
Guest:I don't want them to think I'm weird.
Guest:Not even just that this thing is weird, but why is this old man talking to us?
Marc:Were they actresses?
Guest:No, they were fans of the band.
Marc:So then you've got to deal with these real people.
Marc:You're going to throw a curveball that you wouldn't necessarily throw in general conversation.
Marc:And you just have to sit there and eat it while they're uncomfortable.
Marc:And every instinct in you wants to go like, I'm just doing this.
Marc:This is some venomous.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:Where are your parents?
Marc:I need to apologize to you.
Guest:This is TV.
Guest:They told me this is how it works.
Guest:It's hard, man.
Guest:And I think I am, as you said earlier, sensitive.
Guest:And we talk about this in the show pitches all the time that I didn't want to put those little girls in a position where at the end of the day they felt like they had been punked.
Guest:And ultimately, when it was over and they figured out what it was, they were high-fiving.
Guest:That was one of the first things we taped for the show, and they kept emailing us finding out when it was going to be on.
Guest:So it worked the way it was supposed to work.
Guest:But yeah, that piece taught me a lot about just relax.
Guest:Just fucking relax.
Guest:I'm not an asshole, so I'm not going to be an asshole to anybody.
Marc:And also, you can't control the reaction that other people are going to have.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Because when you do, even working on my show, when you're scripting things, is that at some point, you just got to own it and trust the people that you're working with.
Marc:It's not going to be too awkward.
Marc:Even though it is awkward, it still feels weird.
Guest:Awkward is part of that thing.
Guest:Awkward is part of the joke.
Guest:If it's not if it's not awkward, if I go, hey, girls, this is going to happen.
Guest:I'm going to do this thing.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:It's about Islam.
Guest:Then there's no joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You have to put them on the hook.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They were very funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So and and I think that, you know, like we're I'm the first six episodes.
Guest:And for a while, it's like you're watching the evolution of this guy become this thing, which is me.
Guest:And we'll see how far it goes.
Guest:But I certainly feel like I can figure this out.
Guest:A lot of this stuff is like the hard part is figuring out how to do jokes.
Guest:And I've done that over the course of years.
Guest:This is the part where it's like, oh, being on camera and reading the prompter naturally.
Guest:And where should we put the camera so I can do a better job of that?
Guest:And luckily, the staff we have is all very much trying to make sure that that happens the way I want it to or that is best for the show.
Guest:But there's also the whole idea of writing with other comics.
Guest:Who are your guys in there?
Guest:We got Nato Green, Janine Brito, Kevin Avery, Kevin Cataoka, Chuck Sklar, obviously, Danny Vermont, Trey Ellis, who's actually a writer-writer.
Guest:Danny Vermont moved to New York?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm forgetting somebody.
Marc:Oh, your friend Hari Kondabolu.
Marc:Oh, Angry Hari.
Marc:Pretends not to be angry.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's great.
Marc:That's a great bunch of writers.
Guest:Yeah, and everybody, I mean, a lot of everybody, I mean, Danny and Cadaoka have been around, but the rest of us are pretty new to this whole thing.
Guest:Chuck's been around.
Guest:And Chuck's been around, but the rest of us, so there's that learning curve with all of them, too, is that you can't, some of us are quite thinky, and they're like, you can't be so thinky to get to the punchline.
Guest:It's TV.
Marc:And Chuck's the showrunner?
Guest:Chuck's a showrunner.
Marc:Well, it's good that you have an old Jew running the show to temper the jokes.
Guest:It is in the entertainment business after all, so we should keep an old Jew in charge.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, sometimes there's questions about the tone or the angle of a joke, and I'm like, I don't think I can say that because I think there's a lot more in our show talking about that than there is on other shows.
Marc:Right, but you've got a nice ethnic mix, you've got a gender mix, and you've got Danny, who used to work with Bill Maher.
Guest:Yes, and Danny's great.
Guest:Danny has been the voice of reason a lot of times around there.
Marc:No, no, he's a great guy, and he's a great writer, and I remember when he was doing a lot of comedy.
Marc:I mean, he's good, man.
Marc:He's good.
Marc:That's a good crew, and Kevin is good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's good joke writers, buddy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So now this thing, have you always had a relationship with your old man, or is it new?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no, I've always, you know, like I had the thing where I would live with my mom and then every summer I'd go to Alabama and live with my dad.
Guest:That was my summer.
Guest:That was the way it worked?
Guest:Yeah, that was the way it worked.
Guest:I mean, they weren't, my parents were never married, so there was no like legal, like how does this, what does the court say?
Marc:I'm not saying that in any judgmental way, I'm just curious about, you know, how their relationship with you has changed with the fact that you're on television.
Marc:I mean, your mom must be thrilled.
Guest:She's thrilled.
Guest:They're both thrilled.
Guest:But if they were to walk in this room right now and you didn't know, then you'd be like, why does it feel weird in here all of a sudden?
Guest:Like they're still angry about things that happened a long time ago or tense about things that happened a long time ago.
Guest:And when they're both in the room, I have to attend to each of them separately.
Guest:I can't attend to them as a group.
Marc:Isn't that weird?
Marc:Like, you know, when you think of lifetimes and you think about, you know, like in your own life, you know, how much shit has gone under the bridge and, you know, those weird moments that were so angry and raw and you thought you'd never get, you know, recover from them.
Marc:But there's still a couple of things that just is never going to be right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and you only have one lifetime.
Marc:Either you're going to do it or you're not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And sometimes it's weird that it's like, well, I guess I'm just going to live with that one.
Guest:Yeah, no, I think it's like, and I'm beyond, you know, every kid has that point where like, maybe I can get my parents to da-da-da-da-da or they could fall or whatever.
Guest:My dad's been married for over 30 years to another woman.
Guest:My mom's never remarried or never been, you know, since then.
Guest:And so I just sort of know that this is just what I have to deal with.
Guest:And every now and again, I have to call one of them or the other one.
Guest:Usually my mom, I'm like, mom, he didn't say anything mean or you just being...
Marc:but that's also the dialogue that we have like you know if you really look at how old america is and you know that what you're saying that you know we have to have conversations uh that are continuing you know the evolution of of the dialogue of race that and and like you see that things get better with age yes so are you are you optimistic that that you know even in that dialogue as as america you know that we're not moving backwards certainly
Guest:I think, I mean, I believe that things, and I'll say in America, I can't speak for the world, things move in a more progressive direction in general.
Guest:Like, this is the nature of evolution is that things are always, you know, as we're talking about gay marriage now, you know, daily, we weren't ready to talk about gay people 50 years ago.
Guest:So I think in general, that's why I think...
Guest:like when the right gets really tense about things, I'm like, this stuff is all inevitable.
Guest:Like people are always going to pursue more freedoms and more and the freedom to be who they are.
Guest:So let's, like I said, get past the gay thing because gender is coming next, you know?
Guest:So I, I do have hope and I think that's why I like doing the show because the show is sort of predicting the future in that way.
Guest:Like we're all going to be over this stuff.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there is no question that, that the presidency of Barack Obama kicked the, the racial dialogue in the balls.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That despite, you know, whatever, if anybody wants to accuse somebody being racist because they're not voting for him, that's not even the issue anymore.
Marc:It is what it is.
Marc:So shut the fuck up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it's certainly, you know, you know, as I've said before, what's a better recruiting clan for the what's a better recruiting tactic for a Ku Klux Klan other than a black president.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, like it sort of it it reopened the discussion that a lot of people thought was done.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so we're talking about race every day on the news, which for me is great.
Marc:But there's no better.
Marc:Like the weird thing is, is that he does not like he is just being a dude who's doing that job.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And no matter what, the people who don't like him hang on him.
Marc:Like it is not gotten as racist as you would have thought it had gotten.
Marc:Well, yeah, he's alive.
Guest:You know, like I think that there's...
Guest:yes yes that was certainly the test of what we thought how racist it was going to be when we had a black president and it hasn't gotten there yay you know when i'm you know yeah not even an attempt not even not even yeah who knows if there's been an attempt but not a newsworthy one you know not a you know apparently gets more hate mail than any president but you know whatever but you know that's what happens uh but yeah so yeah there's certainly a sense that but and i think that's a testament to how he does himself yeah
Guest:He's very much aware.
Guest:I think the fact that Barack Obama is actually of a white parent and a black parent is why he's able to get through this the way he is.
Guest:He very much is always reaching out to white people because he had to reach out to his relatives.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:There's not a sense that he's not the black president from Detroit that we thought we were going to get.
Marc:Yeah, and also not progressive to the core either.
Guest:Yeah, no, no.
Guest:I sort of say sometimes I think of him as a really kind Republican.
Yeah.
Guest:If you think about him like that, then suddenly you can accept that.
Guest:It all makes sense.
Marc:Why isn't he putting that in his platform?
Marc:Just to tip the scales.
Guest:Just to tip the scales, I think, because then they'll tip too far the other way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, everybody's working for somebody.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:We did it.
Marc:We covered it all.
Marc:We got closure on that debate.
Marc:W. Kamau Bell, as I said at the top, go to wkamaubell.com.
Marc:You can get tickets for his new tour, the Kamau Mall.
Marc:Kamau Mau Uprising Tour launching in December.
Marc:If you want to go see Al Madrigal for free, tape his special for some outlet.
Marc:That's Thursday, October 25th.
Marc:Two shows at the Moody Theater in Austin.
Marc:You can go to almadrigal.com and sign up for free tickets.
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Marc:Try not to be a douchebag, but if you're going to be a douchebag, make it intelligent.
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Marc:I got to go memorize my lines.
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Marc:I just shit my pants, and I've got to go deal with that.
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Guest:Boomy lives!
you