Episode 443 - Barry Crimmins
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
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 Marc Maron.
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fuckineers?
Guest:What the fucknicks?
Guest:What the fuckadelics?
Guest:What the fucksters?
Guest:What the fuckinavians?
Guest:What the fucknadians?
Guest:damn i am mark marin this is wtf thank you for joining me i'm glad you're here well i had an okay day we're writing uh marin the second season it's coming along good all 13 scripts are in pretty good shape we got one that's uh that's uh still on the uh on the uh on the forklift no on the lift and we're up under it
Guest:poking around in the story, making it better.
Guest:Very exciting.
Guest:It's very exciting, this part.
Guest:You know, weeks and weeks of writing a story and breaking story and writing scripts and tabling scripts and taking network notes and studio notes and reworking scripts.
Marc:Eventually, you just want to get the fuck out of that room and stop eating snacks.
Marc:So that's going to happen.
Marc:We start shooting next week.
Marc:And we're going to shoot for a couple months.
Marc:And we're going to get in it.
Marc:And I'm excited.
Marc:I'm going to focus on me playing me.
Guest:I'm going to try and up the ante with the acting this season.
Guest:I thought I did okay.
Guest:I think I can do better.
Guest:Scripts are funnier.
Guest:We know what we're doing.
Guest:Once again, Bobcat Goldthwait is going to be directing a few episodes.
Guest:Luke Matheny again returning.
Guest:Rob Cohen returning to the helm.
Marc:So they're going to do four, four, and four, I think, or something like that, and I'm going to direct one.
Marc:I'm going to direct an episode of Marin.
Marc:That's sort of pretty close to my heart, in a way, dealing with comedy and comedians.
Guest:So that's all exciting.
Guest:Now, as long as I don't fall apart before...
Guest:Everything's going to be all right.
Marc:Speaking of comedians, today's guest, Barry Crimmins, I've known since I was a college student.
Marc:I wouldn't say that I knew him back then, but he held a special place starting out in stand up.
Marc:Now, when you listen to this episode, I was up in where was I was in Buffalo.
Marc:Buffalo, New York doing gigs.
Marc:And I knew that Barry was up there.
Marc:Now, Barry was and still is a very important political comedian.
Marc:There's not many political comedians, real political comedians.
Marc:I mean, real sort of political satirists who seek to cut through the hypocrisy of the political dialogue and champion what is good and right about people.
Marc:and how people are misrepresented or not represented or used by our political system.
Marc:It's a rare person that commits their life to that, and Barry Crimmins has.
Marc:Barry Crimmins, in the 80s, was a very important comedic force against the Reagan administration.
Marc:He's never stopped.
Marc:He was involved with Air America when I was there, writing things, pieces, jokes, bits.
Marc:He wrote a book, Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal.
Marc:He's very clever and he's an eloquent writer and a great stand up and a great political satirist.
Marc:Now, when I was a kid, when I lived in Boston and I was just starting out doing comedy, I really had no idea.
Marc:I don't have any idea about politics.
Marc:I was a straight up reactionary.
Marc:That was my racket.
Marc:Relatively non-nuanced, uneducated when it comes to politics in any sort of deep way.
Marc:But I knew who I hated and I knew I didn't like authority and I knew that I was a lefty.
Marc:I knew I come from the sort of...
Marc:hippie tradition of revolution.
Marc:That was what impacted me as a kid.
Marc:But really, I would never call myself a political comic.
Marc:And even when I did Air America, even when I learned how to do radio, and if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be here, I was offered this opportunity.
Marc:And I was like, yeah, man, I'd like to get rid of Bush.
Marc:I want to be part of that.
Marc:What do we got to do, man?
Marc:Where do I got to sit down?
Marc:Where do I get to yell stuff?
Marc:And it was interesting because I got to New York at that time, having never done radio and really not knowing that much about politics.
Marc:And this is between you and I. Maybe, you know, maybe maybe I've told you this before, but I literally showed up at the offices of Air America.
Marc:I had packed in my bag for the plane like that one of those books like the American government for dummies.
Marc:Because I just need to get up to speed.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You know, a bill is a bill was a schoolhouse rock.
Marc:I mean, you know, that was the depth of my wisdom about the legislation, how legislation works, how the U.S.
Marc:government works, the branches of governments, how many senators, how many congressmen, what do they do?
Marc:You know, how do they decide on things?
Marc:What do people have to do with it?
Marc:Who's in charge of what?
Guest:Man, that that year and a half at Air America, I I didn't pay attention in civics.
Guest:I don't even think I took civics.
Guest:I think I took American history, but I had no fucking idea.
Guest:I swept through high school.
Guest:Come on, man.
Marc:I was too busy rotating which classes I would ditch as opposed to learn anything.
Marc:You know, I'm a bright guy.
Marc:I'm a quick learner, but I didn't know shit.
Marc:So I had it like I had to learn and cram.
Marc:I've never been a wonky guy.
Marc:I've never been that concerned about politics.
Marc:I just want to say, you know, fuck that guy.
Marc:Fuck that guy.
Marc:Occasionally, I'd come up with some fairly clever stuff because I was intuitive.
Marc:But boy, what an education that was.
Marc:And then once I made the decision to start doing the podcast and stay entirely away from politics to the disappointment of maybe a thousand or so people who who enjoyed what I did on Air America was primarily because I didn't think I could service it.
Marc:I don't think it's.
Marc:I don't think it's a mystery where I think politically, but I realized that I was an angry guy and my struggles were more existential.
Marc:And when politics affects me directly and gets me angry and I need to raise awareness, I generally do.
Marc:The patent troll situation is good, but it wasn't my life.
Marc:And I'm happy it's not my life.
Marc:It's a difficult life to fight that fight.
Marc:And you really have to be passionate about it and stay on top of it.
Marc:You have to stay on top of that narrative.
Marc:Now, the thing about Barry and the thing we'll learn here with this interview outside of his impact on the Boston comedy scene that I became part of and I had no idea some of the stuff he told me.
Marc:And I also had no idea that, you know, part of his story was very traumatic and
Marc:And I want to give you a heads up for that.
Marc:This was his story as a comedian, his story about his place in comedy is sort of founded in a very traumatic and upsetting event in his childhood, which he talks about.
Marc:And I think what you really get to see here in a way that I'd never seen it before, and I talked to him about this explicitly, is how we are shaped by our childhood trauma.
Marc:And specifically, where do your politics come from if you're passionate about them?
Marc:Where do you come from as an individual and what effects did your childhood have on that?
Marc:And this is addressed fairly early on.
Marc:And I just want to give you a heads up for that because it's heavy stuff.
Marc:And Barry is a sweet guy and he's a sharp guy and he's a great comedian.
Marc:And it was a powerful conversation.
Right.
Marc:But man, you know, I can't I tell you what I was so intimidated by him when I was younger just because the dialogue was so it was out of my wheelhouse.
Marc:I mean, you can talk about politics like a moron, which a lot of people do.
Marc:Most people, you know, their opinions of politics are based on emotion.
Marc:They're not necessarily based on on on intelligence or actual knowledge.
Marc:So, you know, I'm a reactionary thinker.
Marc:And when a reactionary thinker meets not only a progressive reactionary, but educated and nuanced thinker about politics, it's hard for a reactionary not to say, well, fuck that guy, too.
Marc:Who the hell does he think he is?
Marc:But I learned a lot from Barry, and I'm thrilled he's on the show, and I hope you enjoy it.
Marc:I hope you're enjoying your life.
Marc:I'm trying to enjoy mine.
Marc:Things are settling down a bit.
Marc:I'm starting to do some material now that I'm through the eye of the storm.
Marc:Again, I'm taking the high road.
Marc:It's a nuanced high road.
Marc:I think nuanced, of course, is the theme of today's show.
Marc:Nuanced, the word.
Marc:This show is brought to you by Nuanced.com.
Marc:This is my conversation with the brilliant Barry Crimmins.
Marc:Took place in a hotel in Buffalo, New York.
Marc:I think the first time that I met you was...
Marc:At Stitches.
Marc:You hosted a show at Stitches.
Marc:You had a political show there.
Marc:I believe, I want to think it was a Wednesday night.
Guest:I did Thursdays and every other Saturday.
Marc:All right, so I was completely wrong.
Guest:You were off by a day.
Marc:I remember, I remember.
Guest:You're too hard on yourself.
Marc:Am I?
Marc:You're telling me that?
Marc:I guess that's sort of the point.
Marc:It's not a conscious point.
Marc:It's something that evolves naturally and then you try to get rid of and you can't.
Guest:Getting to do this podcast, I said it on Twitter and Facebook.
Guest:And I start getting these messages from all these people.
Guest:Oh, tell Mark.
Guest:He'll remember me because that time he was trying to order a sandwich.
Guest:And I mentioned his shoes to him.
Guest:And he looked at me kind of funny.
Guest:But then he snickered a little bit.
Guest:He won't forget that.
Guest:And I'm thinking, this is hilarious.
Guest:These people think Marin's a disapproachable guy.
Guest:I am.
Marc:I'm too approachable.
Guest:Yeah, you're really approachable.
Marc:But I'm not saying how to remember that.
Marc:I mean, now I'm trying to think about the sandwich thing.
Marc:Was that a real thing?
Guest:That actually was sandwich and shoes, I think.
Marc:From what era?
Marc:I didn't get any of that.
Marc:Because when I first met you, I think I was in college.
Marc:I had not started doing comedy, probably.
Marc:And I'd gone to Stitches with David Cross.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I think I must have been...
Marc:maybe a sophomore or a junior at college, and he wanted to do comedy, and he might have done a little comedy where he came from, and we went to see you.
Marc:And I tell a story about you all the time, actually.
Marc:Because you were innately a political comic always, but you still had to deal with Boston audiences.
Marc:And my memory of you is just, you'd start your show no matter what night it was, and within 10 minutes you'd get exasperated.
Marc:And you'd take a deep breath and go, all right, there are three branches of government.
Guest:That was one of the two, yeah.
Guest:Right?
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:That was a bit.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Guest:I used to work with maps.
Guest:Yeah, fake maps or real ones?
Guest:Well, back then, remember the old maps where the United States was always in the middle?
Guest:I'd say, hey, that's good.
Guest:The United States, we're in the middle.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:Until you notice the Soviet Union is here and here.
Guest:Not quite as cool anymore.
Exactly.
Guest:That was a day old us versus us-er joke.
Marc:But I have no idea where you came from.
Marc:I know that at that time...
Marc:there was sort of a heyday in Boston comedy.
Marc:I think during the Reagan years, I mean, you were at the top of your game.
Marc:I remember you had an album come out with Will Durst and Jimmy Tingle, was it Strange Bedfellows?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:That I think that in terms of modern political comedy, the 80s were it in terms of when it defined itself, correct?
Guest:I think we turned a corner, yes.
Guest:I think actually we sort of were able to carry on
Guest:from where, like, Lenny Bruce got things.
Guest:You know, like, Lenny did all this stuff, but it had to be about him because he was always in trouble and being, now, you know what, you're not going to get in trouble for being that guy.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so now you can actually get down to brass tacks.
Marc:Yeah, to talking about it with some safety and intelligence without half of it being the menace of, like, is he going to get arrested tonight?
Guest:Yeah, right, right, right, exactly.
Marc:But where did you start?
Guest:Although I did do, one time in Johnson City, Tennessee, uh,
Guest:I finish a show, and a cop comes in, and he says, yeah, we've had a call.
Guest:We understand some remarks were made here tonight.
Guest:Some remarks were made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had to do a show the next night, and the people from Johnston said, no, get away, because I was going to go, yeah, there was remarks made.
Guest:Yeah, let's see.
Guest:There's a microphone off in there that's used for, but they go, get out.
Guest:They got me in the car, and they got me out of there.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Because they thought you'd be taken back in time?
Guest:They thought I was probably spending the night in the Jonathan City Jail.
Guest:So I flew out safely the next day.
Marc:But where did you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in Atlus, New York.
Marc:Up around here?
Guest:East of here.
Guest:It's the easternmost Finger Lake.
Guest:Skinatlas is an Indian word that means beautiful lake surrounded by fascists.
Marc:They're a little prouder now or no?
Guest:Yeah, they're good.
Guest:Now the town's like, well, it was really quaint and really beautiful.
Guest:Now it's all dressed up to look like itself.
Guest:It's like an artist's rendition of what my hometown's supposed to look like.
Guest:And as my friend, Jimmy Huxford, hilarious guy, says, you know, like, it's just like, I mean, you can buy, if you need a Christmas ornament in June, you're in the right place.
Guest:And he said, Huxford says, you can get anything your horse needs except food.
Marc:But that's a lot.
Marc:I mean, sometimes I was saying that to the guy I was with today.
Marc:We went up to Niagara Falls is that.
Marc:There's something as sad as it is up there and as broken as that town seems to be.
Marc:And I know nothing about it.
Marc:I know it's obviously economically stifled, to say the least.
Marc:But I like that it's still the same town it was.
Marc:That there hasn't been this effort to either destroy it completely or doll it up.
Marc:That it seems to have the integrity.
Marc:It shows what it used to look like and it shows its decay.
Marc:And it shows a sort of sadness that is a lot of parts of America.
Guest:And they've kept the water featured.
Marc:Yeah, it's very popular.
Marc:But I thought it was beautiful.
Guest:When we used to come up here, we'd come up to Buffalo.
Guest:We'd come to Buffalo for a concert and do acid or something.
Guest:Then we'd get out the rest of the night to kill.
Guest:We'd go up to Niagara Falls.
Guest:Back in those days, there was this little island you could get out to.
Guest:It's still there.
Guest:Yeah, but you're not allowed there anymore because they started breaking off or something.
Guest:But back in those days, they had a sign like the Forest Ranger made with a wood-burning kit and just hung it on a chain, which lowered it just enough so it was easy to step over.
Guest:And we would go out, and literally, there's this bigger island, but we would get on these littler islands and just yell, ah!
Guest:So we were surfing on the Niagara.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, that was great.
Guest:Make campfires and stuff?
Guest:No, we didn't want to draw any attention.
Guest:But you could do anything because the roar of the water was so loud.
Guest:It would cover up anything.
Marc:I found it amazing.
Marc:I don't think I'd ever been there.
Marc:I mean, I feel like I might have drove through it, but I'm not even sure I ever have.
Marc:It is astounding, man.
Guest:Yeah, it's a real force of nature, and it's less than it used to be.
Guest:They slowed it down.
Guest:With the dam.
Guest:Yeah, or whatever.
Guest:The Army Corps engineers did something to slow it down.
Guest:Sure, like they always do, right?
Guest:Not those guys.
Guest:Dangerous leftists.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:We're going to get in trouble.
Marc:All right, so now we know you need to do some acid and go to concerts in Buffalo.
Marc:Who'd you see?
Guest:Oh, you know, The Who, Rolling Thunder Review.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:So you're a little older than anybody.
Guest:At that point, I was probably about 19.
Guest:Well, no, that was 76, so that would have been 23.
Yeah.
Marc:And you were still up here at 23?
Guest:Well, I was in and out.
Marc:Going back and forth to where?
Guest:Yeah, I was in and out.
Guest:Different places.
Guest:I had a buddy who got into a little trouble in Rhode Island, and so his parents shipped him up to the ski house in New Hampshire, and it didn't snow all winter, so we just...
Guest:ran a resort for our friends and took advantage of the low, low liquor prices in New Hampshire.
Marc:He got himself into some trouble?
Guest:A little bit, yeah.
Marc:They had to do something for the kids?
Guest:Well, they just wanted to get him out of there for a while, but he was my good friend.
Guest:He actually died a few years ago.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:He went out and became a union carpenter in San Francisco for years.
Marc:Credico was the other guy on that record, right?
Guest:Credico.
Guest:I just worked with him last week.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I did because he's running for mayor.
Guest:Of New York?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:How's he doing?
Guest:Well, you know, I really think it's turned his way now with all this NSA shit that's come up because it's sort of like, you know, I mean, he's doing sort of like guerrilla, you know, political theater with this thing.
Guest:But suddenly, you know, it's become clear to at least a reasonable number of people
Guest:that they've tipped their hands and they really look upon both the the you know i mean i say the american political you know uh spectrum you know it's like two parties that are five inches apart who yell at each other across a thousand foot chasm and we're supposed to worry about them all the time but we don't have a third party because corporations don't want to write a third check you know so
Guest:I'm so sick of that stuff and worshiping those people.
Guest:And Howard Zinn said, go out, do the least amount of damage you can do on election day, and then hold their feet to the fire the rest of the time.
Guest:But so many people think they're really politically active by just worshiping one party or the other.
Guest:And it's two things, and it's so American.
Guest:It's like a pennant race or something.
Guest:Red Sox suck, Yankees suck, Republicans suck, Democrats.
Guest:And we just keep ourselves busy beating ourselves in the head with the boards they provide for us.
Guest:But now, with this NSA... More money, you get nicer boards.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:But with this NSA thing, they've really kind of tipped their hand, and they've kind of indicated that they consider all of us the enemy, you know?
Marc:And they don't give a shit.
Guest:Yeah, no, they don't give a shit.
Marc:Yeah, we're doing that.
Marc:I thought everyone knew that.
Marc:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:And I'm nostalgic.
Guest:I remember the good old days when you felt a little special if the government was watching.
Marc:Oh, yeah, right?
Marc:The old-timey spies.
Marc:What happened to the list?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, I know.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:And, you know, you work hard to get on that list.
Marc:You do.
Guest:Now, you know.
Marc:Do you think you were on the list at some point?
Guest:Oh, I, you know, who knows?
Guest:That's so grandiose.
Guest:But, you know, I think that probably because some of the people I kept company with and a few of the things I did, you know.
Marc:When was that?
Marc:What stuff are you talking about?
Guest:Well, if you were asked at some nuclear waste production facilities, which is what they – nuclear power plant.
Guest:But, I mean, you should, truth in labeling, call it what it really does.
Marc:Create radioactive power.
Guest:Yeah, more effectively than anything.
Guest:And, by the way, when you want to build one, show me your water feature that's going to work for the next 300,000 years, and I'll give you the okay.
Marc:Hell of a half-life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But –
Marc:uh that and the stuff in Nicaragua with Credico and yeah I want to get I want to get to that because I I don't know if I understood what's going on so okay so we're back here 1972 70 whatever it was yeah right or 76 you were yeah 23 yeah and I'd already been out west and done a little bit of stand-up when did you start doing stand-up
Guest:Well, actually, when I was up in New Hampshire, we were so poor, I had to go out and win a talent show one night.
Guest:So I played the kazoo and made jokes about shoplifting.
Marc:Those were your choices?
Marc:Because you win shoplifting?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because I wasn't, everybody else was poor and was shoplifting, but I was like Mr. Morality.
Guest:I'm not going to shop, you know, but I knew everybody's methods.
Guest:And I think I got a lot of laughs saying if I wanted to shoplift, I'd be great at it.
Guest:But, you know, you guys are morons.
Guest:I can't believe you're nailed.
Guest:But, yeah, and playing, like, the theme song from Leave it to Beaver on a kazoo, and, you know, that killed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How long did that stay with you, the kazoo part of the act?
Marc:That went right away.
Marc:That was almost immediately.
Marc:So you're doing some of that just to open... I guess it wouldn't be open mics.
Marc:It was talent shows.
Guest:Well, that was just there.
Guest:We saw the sign, you know.
Guest:We went in.
Guest:That day, for some reason, we'd been at a joke and novelty shop, and we had it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And, you know, you're out there.
Guest:You've got to do something.
Marc:And did you like stand-up?
Marc:I mean, was it something you wanted to do, or did you just do it without a fluke?
Marc:Oh, well, you know what?
Guest:I didn't think I was eligible, because I was such a farm.
Guest:Because I'm from, you know, Jesus Christ, in upstate New York.
Guest:And I'm like... And...
Guest:I didn't think you could be a country boy and do that stuff.
Guest:Cause everybody was so ethnic and stuff.
Guest:I went to the university of Miami as a freshman, did the one year smuggling program.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And I literally would laugh when the Jewish kids, some of the Jewish kids talked in the same pattern as like Jackie Mason or something.
Guest:But they're being serious, and I'm laughing at them like a moron.
Guest:And then I find out I'm being an idiot, so I try to clear it up.
Guest:And somebody, oh, a Jewish holiday's coming up.
Guest:What's coming up?
Guest:Yom Kippur.
Guest:I literally wish people happy Yom Kippur.
Guest:That's not the happy way.
Guest:Have a tremendous day of atonement, you know.
Guest:Okay, get back in the book.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So, you know, but eventually I caught on that I could, you know, like I caught on that you could do it.
Guest:You know, you actually, you could do it, but you had to figure out where to do it.
Guest:So, you know, I started trying to hustle up stuff, and I ended up opening up for, like, local rock bands in upstate New York.
Guest:And, I mean, you've got, like, three seconds to get that.
Guest:And your introduction would be, like, the band would finish.
Guest:We'll be back in a few, and then all of a sudden someone would come up.
Guest:Oh, yeah, there's some guy.
Guest:This is comedy something.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And that's your intro.
Guest:And you, you know.
Guest:And then I finally got this one place where the guy goes, I want to do comedy.
Guest:And he goes, I got a sound system.
Guest:And I go in for the sound system is literally...
Guest:You know the thing they had in the old offices?
Guest:Like, Madge, come in here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Intercom.
Guest:Yeah, the intercom.
Guest:He had that set up on the stage and then like Madge's speaker in the middle of the room.
Guest:And he's going like, no, that'll be great.
Marc:He's got to hold the button down.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, right.
Marc:Did you see it at that time?
Marc:Like, who were your guys that you were looking at that you were sort of modeling what you wanted to do?
Guest:Well...
Guest:You know, I mean, it always sounds haughty, but Twain was always a big influence.
Guest:Mark Twain.
Guest:Yeah, and his way of just sort of presenting things.
Marc:And you'd read him in high school, or you'd read him in college?
Guest:And I started reading him, I mean, they tried to make me read him too early.
Guest:You know, making a kid read Huckleberry Finn with all that dialect and stuff, it's just like, you can drive people.
Guest:Yeah, well, you can scare them away forever, too.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I didn't realize it at the time, but he was doing audio history.
Guest:He recorded how they actually talked to matter-of-fact racism and how cruel they were to children and whatever.
Guest:And the dialects.
Guest:And there was like a hundred different dialects.
Marc:I don't think I understand Twain enough.
Marc:My experience of reading him, I know he's this great humorist, but I don't think I've put my time in.
Marc:in really, you know, understanding Twain.
Guest:He takes a little getting hold of it.
Guest:He did for me, but he really is a big influence on me.
Guest:But, I mean, I loved Carlin.
Guest:I loved Pryor.
Marc:Even when they were straight comics.
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:I mean, what are the tools of Twain, you know, that you kind of gleaned?
Guest:Well, just his incredible use of the language and, you know...
Guest:like understated but extremely sarcastic and powerful like he could turn something on its head pretty quickly and then you know for years I read all the stuff everybody read advice to youth you know always obey your parents when they're in the room you know real funny stuff like that and that's what got me but then I started yeah right yeah but then I started reading the later stuff that was really censored and how they censored Twain was they said he got old and bitter
Guest:His wife died.
Guest:A couple of his kids died.
Guest:His son died when he was months old.
Guest:He'd been through all sorts of stuff.
Guest:The rest of his family died.
Guest:He had all these dear friends that had died and whatever.
Guest:But he was still out there writing essays challenging society.
Guest:And he's getting late, so he just figured he was going to call a spade a spade.
Guest:And some of his most beautiful stuff was written in the last 20 years.
Guest:25 years of his life, but it's all censored.
Guest:Then you turn on Star Trek and they've got Mark Twain there and they're telling him, well, you're too bitter.
Guest:He was still in there pitching, which was an act of optimism, which reminds me of getting to Boston and then ending up with Howard Zinn as a mentor.
Guest:Howard always called himself an optimist.
Guest:And people said, well, how can he be an optimist?
Guest:And he said, because he studied history.
Guest:And he would find these little moments in history where someone took a principled stand.
Guest:And all of a sudden, it catches on.
Guest:And these giant institutions that you think could never be assailed, they're dust in almost no time at all.
Guest:Maybe that's what this kid Snowden just did.
Guest:Maybe, maybe that's a Zen moment.
Guest:That's what I like to think of myself as a Zen optimist.
Guest:Like you get the prairie fire going there.
Guest:You wake people enough up to the point where you understand like these people that we worship and argue with each other about, you know, would like, you know, turn into Mr. Burns, release the hounds if you got anywhere near their front door.
Marc:Well, I mean, it could be that moment.
Marc:It depends on how placated and apathetic the masses are in terms.
Marc:I mean, the only thing that makes it not as in moment is if people go like, I got nothing to hide.
Marc:No, I understand.
Marc:I understand.
Marc:It's hard to make people understand that the infrastructure put in place in the wrong hands and arguably they may be in the wrong hands now, but they're in better hands than they could be.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That once the infrastructure is in place, we're fucked.
Marc:That, you know, it could be used by the worst kind of people.
Guest:Well, I mean, all sorts of quote unquote private contractors have have access to this stuff.
Guest:I think the term revenue stream probably comes to their head with what they can do with some of this stuff.
Guest:I fear that.
Guest:Call me crazy.
Marc:Okay, so speaking truth to power in the Twain model, which is like you're entertaining them, and then they go, ooh, that hurt a little bit.
Marc:That's attractive, and that's a powerful political stance, is that you don't necessarily have to pick a side.
Marc:You just have to be not even cynical, but you just have to have the courage to turn it in on itself and hold up a dark mirror.
Guest:That's right, and it's why I'm not...
Guest:big on conspiracies because really what what's what's going on right in front of our faces that we're ignoring if i have to create i mean i i and the conspiracy stuff to me is just like you might as well give up if the fix is in that far you might as well just give up what my friend jim who has worked for several presidents one said to me when i went on a conspiracy tirade he said mark people here just aren't that organized
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Well, right, right, right.
Marc:You're giving them way too much credit.
Guest:Yeah, but if we could just get people to pay attention to what's being done to them right in front of their faces, like this latest insult, you know, we're going to violate everybody's civil liberties for our security.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:What?
Guest:And if you can just sort of boil it down and put it that, just boil it down into simple stuff, say it matter-of-factly, it's just right there for you.
Marc:Well, going back to what inspired you to do comedy, I mean, at some point, when did you, I mean, I understand that you like Mark Twain and you're in your 20s, but I mean, when did you choose to fight that fight?
Marc:To fight the fight where I'm like, not only am I going to do comedy, or be a satirist, if you want to call yourself.
Guest:That came along.
Guest:The satirist thing, you know what I think it came from?
Guest:I never was a coke guy, so I had my days free, and I would read and do stuff.
Guest:I have a job.
Guest:I report back to the audience.
Guest:People are stuck in traffic.
Guest:You're a reporter.
Guest:Yeah, to some extent.
Guest:Expository humor, to some extent.
Guest:But
Guest:there was no real plan in my head because I was just bluffing from the start.
Guest:Like the ding-ho was like the biggest bluff ever.
Guest:I just came and go like, oh yeah, I know how to do this.
Marc:When did that happen though?
Marc:That was 79.
Guest:That moves up to 79.
Marc:Historically together.
Marc:So you're bouncing around up here and you grew up in a religious house or what?
Guest:Well, I grew up Catholic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Catholic.
Guest:And I've demanded excommunication.
Guest:I have.
Guest:I have.
Guest:Because, I mean, in case there's a God, I do not want to be associated with certain groups when judgment comes.
Marc:You were brought up with the concept of hell and heaven and guilt and this and that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Having to go to a priest and whatnot?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I had to serve Mass every day with one of the worst pedophile priests ever.
Guest:But he tried and he started to give me the shoulder rub and I hit him with an elbow.
Yeah.
Guest:And he backed up.
Guest:Now, I didn't know what I was getting away with then.
Guest:But, I mean, it turns out now that they profile a kid and whatever.
Guest:But this guy turned out to be one of the most.
Guest:His name was Thomas Nery.
Guest:And he would orally rape a boy and say, you have to swallow all of this because I'm God's messenger on earth and this is like the Eucharist.
Guest:He would anally rape a boy and pray very loud in Latin so that the mother who he has downstairs saying rosaries
Guest:You say, well, it's very tough.
Guest:If we were going to find out if he has a vocation for the priesthood, he's up there raping the kid.
Guest:And then on the way out the door, he takes five or ten bucks from the mother for instructions.
Guest:He made the children who he was raping say confession to him afterwards.
Guest:And he looked like Christopher Lee.
Guest:So he was like Dracula.
Guest:And nobody else...
Guest:I got stuck serving mass every day.
Marc:And you knew that guy?
Guest:Every day.
Guest:I wrote about it.
Guest:It's called, it's on my website, Mia Maxima Culpa.
Guest:I tell the story, but I mean, I now know several of us.
Guest:True victims.
Guest:I mean, this guy though on the altar every morning would tell, I'm going to hell, I'm this, I'm that.
Guest:He was trying to drive me out because the pond wasn't stocked when I was there.
Guest:So you wonder why I have a problem with authority.
Guest:I'm on an altar every morning.
Guest:And this priest is telling, you know, the kind of the assembled congregation that I'm going to hell, that I'm no good.
Guest:You know, I pour water, you know, the water.
Guest:Are you trying to drown me?
Guest:You know, like, I mean, just like he did that in front of people every day.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And then a couple of times he tried to get me in his car.
Guest:I'll take you for an ice cream.
Guest:No, thanks, Father.
Guest:I have to go to North Korea.
Marc:He felt something weird.
Guest:Oh, I didn't want to be anywhere near.
Marc:But you didn't know at the time what was happening.
Guest:Well, you know, back then, with our limited vocabulary, and it sounds homophobic now, but he was referred to by the kids in town as Father Queery, which meant he wanted to go after little boys.
Marc:Well, word was out, though.
Marc:Someone must have said something.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Amongst the kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and I mean, now, and I mean...
Guest:I know of suicides that resulted from that man.
Guest:I know of people who would, you know, struggle their whole life with what he did to them.
Guest:And then the church has just been, you know, awful about it.
Guest:So anyway, yeah, I've demanded excommunication.
Guest:They have this rule, this secret rule in the church that if a priest or someone, a leader of the church, is in a situation where the damage can be done to the church, they're obliged to lie.
Guest:It's it's literally a document.
Guest:Yeah, it's a code.
Guest:So so why should we ever believe them?
Guest:You know, I mean that now the last pope who would think you?
Guest:Who basically, you know, I mean, he was at the choke point for all that stuff.
Guest:And then what do you know?
Guest:He gets elected pope.
Guest:Yeah, but now then I don't know.
Guest:I don't know why I guess he was too poop to pope.
Guest:But I don't know if he has the pope mobile anymore.
Guest:I think he can only travel now via extradition.
Guest:So, but anyway, yeah, so I grew up with that stuff.
Guest:I was kind of serious about it.
Guest:I mean, I felt the responsibility to be a good altar boy and whatever.
Guest:And then I just like three straight years of just getting battered by that guy every morning.
Guest:And it was like, see you later.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:I've never looked back, and the one thing they hang over you is that they're going to doom you and will excommunicate you, and you're the gates of hell.
Guest:I mean, this child rapist was saying it to me on an altar every morning, that same threat.
Guest:So, you know, bring your best on, Catholic Church.
Guest:But if someone's out there who can excommunicate me, please excommunicate me, because I don't want to be associated with the likes of you.
Marc:So did he live long enough to be imprisoned?
No.
Guest:No, he died.
Guest:He died.
Guest:But the church, I mean, the church paid off some stuff.
Guest:I mean, there had to be dozens and dozens of victims.
Marc:So he was one of the real monsters.
Guest:He was a real monster.
Guest:Him and that guy Shanley.
Guest:Yeah, Shanley.
Marc:Boston.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:This guy was...
Guest:I mean, he was just flat out evil.
Guest:He was evil.
Guest:So anyway, I formed a little organization with people who had to deal with him, because I was emotionally abused by him, so I'm in the club.
Guest:So I call it the Hell Alumni Association.
Guest:And I say to my friend Charlie Bailey, who wrote the book about him in the shadow of the cross, I say to Charlie, whenever I hear Nary's name, I think of two words, extra crispy.
Guest:I'll believe in their hell for a minute just for that one.
Marc:So you turn your back in religion.
Marc:How old do you?
Guest:Oh, I mean, you know, now I'm in teens and whatever.
Guest:You go to college in Florida.
Guest:Why there?
Guest:Well, it seemed far away.
Guest:Get away from the folks.
Marc:Get out.
Guest:Yeah, and it seemed like it might have been a pretty good party.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Was it?
Guest:It was not bad.
Guest:I helped.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you go through the whole thing?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I went one year.
Guest:Because I mean, because I got down there and there's no seasons and whatever.
Guest:It drove me crazy.
Guest:And you crapped out on college after a year?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I went.
Guest:I studied college.
Guest:geography, literally.
Guest:Let's not even go into it.
Guest:I got around.
Guest:I went to a bunch of places.
Guest:I guess we have to go back even further because it's just disclosure to make sense of it.
Guest:I had PTSD because when I was very young, the babysitter's father was coming over and raping me for a few months.
Guest:It took me until I was about 38 to really
Guest:deal with that and face it and whatever so like the guy you met the people whatever you think you know whoever that guy was yeah that guy was i was just like i was in a you know shock aggravated hostile shock yeah to some but to some extent yeah yeah for your whole life to protect myself right no i get it and also if people got too close to me i would give them anything that's the other thing you know
Marc:I remember vaguely hearing about this, and it was never clear to me.
Marc:I remember you had sort of a breakdown a few years ago about it, right?
Guest:When did you know that it happened?
Guest:I would like to say breakthrough.
Guest:Well, I always knew, but I never knew exactly.
Guest:And then a sister came forward, and then there was another person who knew about it.
Guest:So it's corroborated.
Guest:We knew who the guy was.
Guest:He died in a New York State prison not far from here.
Marc:Why was he there?
Marc:For raping little boys.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:That's what he did.
Guest:And he did it... Serving his third or fourth term, and he died.
Guest:But he was gone.
Marc:But his game was he'd go to where his daughter was babysitting?
Guest:Well, yeah, and it might have been stepdaughter.
Guest:I haven't been able to figure that part out, but, you know...
Guest:Let me just tell the women out there in the audience, if you're looking in the Lonely Hearts ads and the guy says loves children, they may actually mean that.
Guest:So be careful of those guys.
Guest:I mean, I like kids.
Guest:That's fine.
Guest:But when they put it in the ad, that's what they're looking for sometimes.
Marc:So you had this...
Guest:So my parents would go out, you know, I mean, they've been through the Depression and World War II, and they'd go out on a Friday night, you know, and they'd be like, you know, we beat the Nazis, let's go.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:So, and this guy would come over, and, you know, and it was, I mean, it was really, I mean, I was like five years old, and it was crazy.
Guest:life-threatening you know I mean because I would it's getting asphyxiated because I was getting my face shoved in a pillow so that was what I had to get back to figure out and Reese and it's funny how this stuff sticks with you because I mean you know I mean I really the main thing I do is is try to help people
Guest:Helping others, it's promoted my healing more than anything.
Guest:I like AA or whatever.
Guest:You think you're fine for years.
Guest:A month and a half ago, there was a story in the paper about a little girl and
Guest:India who was about three years old who died from being raped and then I was just sitting you know in my living room by myself and I just thought that poor kid like imagine raped to death and then the light came out like holy shit I almost got raped to death a bunch of times
Guest:And, you know, you've got a couple of choppy weeks after that.
Guest:And that isn't being some wimp.
Guest:PTSD is real.
Guest:Yeah, this stuff is serious.
Guest:And, you know, you've got to wrestle every wolfman that knocks at the door and get through it.
Guest:You can't go around things.
Guest:You have to go through them.
Guest:But that doesn't mean it's my whole identity or whatever.
Guest:I'm like a million other things.
Marc:Well, how do you go through that kind of, how do you grieve and resolve that type of anger as a grown man?
Marc:Well, you know, I mean, it's weird.
Marc:What do you think was taken away from you?
Guest:Well, my childhood.
Guest:I was in shock from my childhood.
Guest:I mean, I was just sort of not present.
Guest:And there's so many kids that are like that.
Guest:There's sweethearts sitting somewhere where this podcast is being listened to that are already in...
Guest:that shape and that isn't fomenting some sort of huge panic or anything you know there's there's bad cases where peep cops want to railroad people about child abuse and it's nonsense but for every one of those cases that you read a huge story about you could you could match it with like little one inch stories of kids that are you know yeah so hurt and you know i mean i think that if children can if if you the politically why it's such an important issue to me is
Guest:that I think people go along with a lot of stuff because they grow up not trusting their hearts because nobody else has taken the rap for how they feel.
Guest:No one else has taken any responsibility.
Guest:So eventually kids figure, well, it's got to be me.
Guest:You know, that's me.
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:That's my fault.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then you begin to behave in a fashion that corroborates yourself, loathing, and then you go off, and however long that takes, and then maybe if you get lucky...
Guest:You sort it all out.
Guest:I was lucky that I didn't have a natural tendency to chemical dependency.
Guest:I was at every party.
Guest:I drank plenty.
Guest:I smoked dope.
Guest:I did whatever.
Guest:But for whatever reasons, I didn't have the chemical predisposition to just go off that cliff.
Guest:So once I figured out what the deal was and what I had to work out,
Guest:And it's like, now I'm in the Mark Twain Club.
Guest:When the others drink, I like to help.
Marc:But at what age were you when you feel like you did have a handle on the feelings from the PTSD?
Guest:I mean, it was fairly recently, right?
Guest:When I was about 38, so the last 20 or so years.
Guest:Actively seeking help.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's funny.
Guest:When I first was dealing with it, and you're talking to a friend about it, and they go, are you talking to anybody about it?
Guest:Yeah, I thought I was fucking talking to you.
Yeah.
Guest:Apparently I've got to go pay some asshole a whole bunch of money, and he's going to try to put me on pharmaceutical dry ice, which I avoided.
Marc:But let's not completely poo-poo therapists.
Marc:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:No, I'm not.
Marc:I'm not.
Guest:There's great therapists.
Guest:But what I'm saying is, I was doing that too, but I was breaking silence with people who should trust me and who knew me well enough to know that I was...
Marc:being serious yeah and and you know that i wanted people to understand well that's the weird thing what you say there because there is a vulnerability towards you know there are certain i believe in in in even having a conversation with you about this and in talking to people on the podcast that you know human beings are built to to to handle and carry each other and process yeah but but you know when people have you know deep issues even if they want to talk to
Marc:to them, you know, people who you talk to are like, ah, it's a little out of my wheelhouse.
Marc:It's like, I'm not asking you to do anything but listen.
Marc:You know, and open your heart.
Marc:And people are like, I can't, you know, I got a thing.
Guest:And they don't even, and with me, they didn't even, I mean, it wasn't even that literal, but you just,
Guest:You wanted to be open about it.
Guest:And it just struck me as humorous.
Guest:Whenever anybody asked me if I was talking to anybody, I was talking to somebody.
Guest:I was talking to you.
Marc:But what do you think, in looking back on it as an intellectual person, do you think that your compassion for the underdog and the victims of the world in any way were influenced by your heart being broken and being destroyed?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I'm an empath.
Guest:I'm a tuning fork for agony.
Guest:And I would rather risk the disdain of everybody than risk my own self-loathing for not...
Guest:Saying what I think I need to say.
Guest:And, you know, that isn't as much fun on a Saturday night as some people are looking for.
Marc:I'm in the same club.
Marc:I mean, you know, there's that weird wavering between, you know, the guy who wants to drag everyone down with the sadness.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And or the guy that's too angry to hang out with.
Marc:Right, right, right, right, right, right, right.
Marc:How do you exist between those two wonderful polies?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm pretty good now.
Guest:No, you seem good.
Guest:I am pretty good now.
Guest:And there was just a few years where, you know, some of the shows I did were like, you know, I mean, it would be great.
Guest:Stuff that I used to stop an audience in its tracks and they wouldn't laugh at, like Death Squad material.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would laugh at it like it was the beginning of truth or consequences if I was just getting away from the child abuse stuff.
Guest:They were going, oh, a good death squad joke.
Marc:So were you able, did that material ultimately serve a personal purpose and you were able to help move through it by doing the material and now it's refined and you have some distance around it?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, here's the thing.
Guest:I was accustomed to talking about on stage...
Marc:wherever i was at you weren't afraid to lose an audience oh no wait so so that gave you a freedom that a lot of comics yeah you know don't i don't have the courage to deal with so you already knew what it was like to to piss off an oh i mean i you know i won't be happy till i gut this room was a common quote but
Guest:But the thing is, you know, but that's the thing.
Guest:I mean, that's such a fun dance to do where you really test it and test it.
Guest:But then, you know, you know, you're going to ad lib something really funny that just sets it about and it's everything's fine.
Guest:And then they still heard it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, but I mean, I think I'm I'm going to defy you people that like me right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But not because I'm a prick, but because I'm sticking up for somebody.
Guest:I'm not assigning blame downwards.
Marc:But what's interesting is that even before you were conscious of all this stuff, you were sticking up for yourself.
Marc:And what the comedy stage afforded you was to enact your fundamental distrust of all those fuckers.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And have your own voice.
Marc:I mean, because that's what, you know, when people talk to me about why I do comedy, it's like, because I think you're the same way and I'm just realizing it now, is that like, I didn't get in this to be an entertainer.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I get into this so I could speak for myself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, when you come from a place where you came from, whether you know it or not psychologically, it's like, I'm not here to be a song and dance, man.
Marc:I'm here because I've chosen this medium so I can have a point of view and a place to talk.
Guest:Right, absolutely.
Guest:And be seen.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Because one thing that being raped as a child does is it erases yourself.
Guest:Yeah, well, it sure can.
Marc:So the fight of your life is to really have a sense of self.
Guest:Yes, and to survive.
Guest:And to get to the point where, I mean, the day I found out who the rapist was, a social worker where the piece was rerun in Syracuse.
Guest:The piece I wrote for the Boston Phoenix about it was rerun in Syracuse.
Guest:I get a call from a social worker.
Guest:She knows the guy.
Guest:He was around the corner at the time.
Guest:She says the name.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's who, you know.
Guest:And she told me, well, I said, well, where is he?
Guest:She said, well, he died in prison.
Guest:I was involved in that case.
Guest:He died in prison last year.
Guest:And the first thing I felt was pity for the guy.
Guest:And that makes people really, some people get really mad at me about it.
Guest:But I just thought, what a complete waste of a life.
Guest:And thank God.
Guest:And I wanted to go.
Guest:I tried to find out from New York State where he was buried so I could go put flowers on his grave to say, I didn't become you.
Guest:I didn't become what I resisted.
Marc:As opposed to go pee on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's what everybody wants you to do.
Guest:But I became a human rights activist and not someone that offends human rights.
Guest:And I wrote a screenplay about it.
Guest:Goldthwait wanted me to write it, but it's kind of gotten mired down.
Guest:But...
Guest:I called it Call Me Lucky because, you know, what if I was raped one more time?
Guest:Maybe then I do become a rape.
Guest:You know, what if I did end up becoming a heroin addict and die in it?
Guest:You know, like just so many things.
Guest:I mean, I was just lucky.
Guest:I was just...
Guest:I was lucky that I had the wherewithal like, you know, I don't know what I'm like a lapsed agnostic.
Guest:But, you know, if if there's if somebody was going to be raped, maybe it was supposed to be me because I know how to I spent years telling people shit they didn't want to hear.
Guest:So this is the thing people really don't want to hear.
Guest:And a lot of the reason they don't want to hear it are two not terrible things.
Guest:One is just sort of typical cowardice.
Guest:It's real scary to think in those terms, to graphically get it.
Guest:But then the other thing is kindness.
Guest:People don't want to live in a world where people do this shit to children.
Guest:That really gets done to children every day.
Guest:And they have defenses against it.
Guest:And I can't be mad at them about that.
Guest:You know, I mean, I can't be.
Guest:You know, I can't.
Guest:And I also learned relatively early on, thanks to a good friend of mine from this town who said something to me.
Guest:He's one of the comics that started with Goldthwait and Kenny and me.
Guest:Do I know him?
Guest:His name's Wendell Wilde.
Guest:A lot of guys know him.
Guest:But he's became a...
Guest:In this town, in Buffalo, he became a social worker in the school system.
Guest:He saved so many kids over the years.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:But, you know, he made it clear.
Guest:You know, I mean, just because of a talk within my head one day, I drew the conclusion myself, but it was, you know, you're setting yourself up.
Guest:Like, people who have been abused and been through terrible stuff, they know how to lose.
Guest:It's a comfort zone.
Guest:You know, getting up and doing something like getting out of that pit, you know, your own shit.
Guest:Well, you like the temperature of it.
Guest:You're kind of used to the smell.
Guest:And if they stand up and hose you up, it's kind of shocking.
Guest:But a half hour later, when you've gone and taken a real shower and put on clean clothes.
Guest:Oh, my God, do I feel better?
Guest:You know, so but but a lot of people set up.
Guest:A lot of the sort of approach to child abuse survivors is that they were sort of like expecting the whole world to come up and apologize to us.
Guest:Well, the whole world is going through its own shit, and it's not going to happen.
Guest:If you set up that impossible thing, then you're just going to always lose, but you're comfortable there, and here, have some more pills.
Guest:You sit there, and that's that.
Guest:Well, so, you know, fortunately, I got up.
Guest:I got rinsed off.
Guest:I got a shower.
Guest:I got the clean clothes on.
Guest:And I mean, and I had a lot to process.
Guest:But, you know, as I mentioned it before, but that's my little metaphors.
Guest:I wrestled every wolfman that knocked at the door for a couple of years, and then they stopped coming after a while.
Guest:Then they show up once in a while, and you do what you have to do with it.
Guest:But, I mean, I've been 15 years until I had a couple bad weeks lately.
Guest:so you know and i'm fine and i processed that and figured out what i oh i needed to know oh that was the asphyxiation thing you know but you could like you get physical reaction yeah yeah a little bit yeah right your tightness in the chest yeah oh my god breathing yeah yeah couldn't breathe yeah
Marc:That's frightening, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's an amazing feat you accomplished to not only have the sort of self-awareness and then to actually process the feelings head on, like you said.
Marc:And I think comedy must have fucking helped.
Guest:Oh, well, it sure did.
Guest:And it really helped when I kind of got through it and got back to it.
Guest:and went out there, and now I don't have that self-loathing that you have before you work your shit out, so I mean, I get out there and go, you know, I'm pretty good at this.
Marc:So that's a relatively new feeling for you?
Guest:Relatively.
Guest:I mean, I knew...
Guest:I was good.
Guest:I knew how to do it or whatever.
Guest:But I mean, the degree of difficulty of what I was doing was always so hard.
Guest:You know, like my whole work is putting the segues together.
Guest:You reveal the wrong piece of information here, you can lose 15 minutes later on because, you know, it's all about surprise and when you reveal things or whatever.
Guest:So for me, I mean, I could spend five or six hours putting together an hour set for one night.
Guest:I mean, pretty much every show I ever did was like that.
Guest:I worked that hard on it just to have the segways, right, so it would flow and seem conversational.
Marc:And also because you're doing directly, like I've gotten away from talking about almost anything but myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I don't want to be tethered to the news cycle.
Marc:But when you're doing politics, you have to be tethered to the momentum and the ebb and flow.
Guest:And the thing that I got away from in that sense was, I know what I'm talking about.
Guest:You know, I mean, I used to keep, you know, newspapers for 20.
Guest:I can prove it to you here.
Guest:Let's go out to the garage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, except, I mean, I was it wasn't like it didn't look like I was a hoarder, but it was all there and you could never find it anyway, you know.
Guest:And I knew this stuff.
Guest:Now you've got the Internet.
Guest:It's there.
Marc:Let's talk about the evolution, then, of being a comedian and being a political activist.
Marc:I assume you end up in Boston.
Marc:You mentioned the Ding Ho.
Marc:And the Ding Ho is a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge.
Marc:And, you know, it was a fairly famous place.
Marc:It's been mentioned on my show before.
Marc:You got that whole Boston contingent that started there.
Marc:Stephen Wright, the Clarks.
Marc:You know, Jimmy Tingle was a bartender there.
Marc:You got Kenny and Lenny and Don and everybody else.
Marc:Who was the crew at that time that you were close to, if you can remember?
Marc:Well...
Guest:i was you come down from upstate well what happened was my father was in a va hospital in martinsburg west virginia and real sick and they thought he was going to die and then he didn't and so and you know i'm a young comic you like the guy what my own yeah sure yeah and i my mother too my mother's visiting now she's 89 years oh well good uh she's great but um how did they respond to this revelation
Guest:Well, my father was old and quite sick.
Guest:I mean, he was quite sick, so he didn't deal with it.
Guest:My mother just said, whatever I can do to help, let me know.
Guest:She was the greatest.
Guest:So, anyway, I'm in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Guest:I'm in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and I...
Guest:My old man's going to make it now.
Guest:So I figure I'll hitchhike up to New York and see if I can do some sets.
Guest:Well, I'm hitchhiking, and it's raining like hell.
Guest:I mean, it's pitchforks and hammer handles.
Guest:And so this guy picks me up, and he says, well, I'm not going to New York.
Guest:And I'm kind of cutting around New York because I'm going to Boston.
Guest:And I say to myself,
Guest:Boston's in the American League.
Guest:I'll go to Boston.
Guest:Boston's huge to me.
Guest:So I go to Boston, and it's Memorial Day weekend, and I go over and I do a set.
Guest:The Connection has a show at Springfield Street Saloon, which was what became the Ding Ho.
Guest:And so I did a set, and it went great.
Guest:And then the guys...
Guest:pay me like $8 and say, don't tell the other guys we gave you this much money.
Guest:And I went, man.
Guest:And then they said to me, you know, Boston will never be a weekend comedy town.
Guest:Well, this was a Sunday night on a three-day weekend, and it's completely sold out.
Guest:It was a weekend night.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:We only do Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Guest:So what is it, 77, 78?
Guest:That was 79.
Guest:So that's when –
Guest:So I went back to the Ding Ho just to see what was going on.
Guest:And I ended up becoming the bouncer and booking the bands because they still had bands and stuff.
Marc:This is when I was at the Chinese restaurant?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I became friends with Chun Li.
Guest:And I said, we should do more comedy.
Guest:Comedy's coming on.
Marc:So you were actually the guy that started this shit?
Guest:Well, at the Ding.
Guest:Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:At the ding.
Guest:Well, I mean, other people did use the room, but I was, you know, the ding was, what the ding was first was the first full-time comedy club.
Guest:We did weekends and whatever.
Guest:In Boston.
Guest:Yeah, and I knew that in those days, you had to wait around like you were in the National Guard, and if they might call you on the day of the show to tell you to come do it.
Guest:I booked everybody a month in advance.
Guest:I upped the pay to, like, you get 15, 20 bucks a set or whatever, and if you hosted, you made 35 or 50, and then on the weekends, and it escalated.
Marc:Who were you booking?
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:Uh...
Guest:At the beginning, it was Chance, of course.
Guest:Chance Langton.
Guest:The great Chance Langton.
Guest:Lenny Clark.
Guest:Sweeney.
Guest:Mike Donovan.
Guest:Paula Poundstone.
Guest:Jack Gallagher.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Stephen came along in about six months.
Guest:Then Stephen and I became...
Guest:Really good friends.
Marc:So many of these people have done my show.
Marc:Paula has.
Marc:Mike Donovan was on the live one.
Marc:Stephen Wright's done my show.
Marc:Gavin has not.
Marc:Lenny has not.
Guest:Mike McDonald was one of the first guys who would headline a show there.
Guest:A lot of people.
Guest:I know Bob and Ron.
Marc:They were tremendous.
Marc:That's where I first saw them.
Marc:I went to the Ding Ho when I started doing open mics in 19...
Marc:82, 83.
Marc:That's about when I first saw you do it.
Marc:So you were booking it.
Guest:I booked it.
Guest:I booked everybody.
Guest:Because I had been a comic.
Guest:I had been around the country.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:I'd been around the country and I saw how shitty comics were treated.
Guest:And I just had the idea that it... You were doing sets all around the country at that point?
Guest:You know, I'd been to the Holy City Zoo, and I tried to get on in L.A.
Marc:and couldn't, and then did some... Oh, so you made the rounds, and by the time you came back when your dad was in the hospital, you had tried to get in other scenes.
Marc:Yeah, and I saw... What happened in San Francisco?
Guest:Well, the zoo was about the best I did.
Guest:I got on sometimes there and I met some guys.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, that's when I met a Whitney Brown.
Guest:We remain dear friends.
Guest:Is he all right?
Guest:He's great.
Guest:So anyway, I put it together and it immediately takes off.
Guest:Because, you know, no one's done that.
Guest:And I mean, there's such great talent there.
Guest:You know, Gallagher, Lenny Wright, Sweeney, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Guest:And it just took off.
Guest:And the room was really good physically for comedy.
Guest:And...
Guest:You know, those are the days.
Guest:I'm happy to talk about it here.
Guest:A lot of times it's just like, you know, your four millionth Little League reunion.
Guest:You know, like, I don't care anymore.
Guest:But, I mean, it was just great.
Guest:And it just built to the point where Stephen got the Tonight Show and...
Guest:Then it sort of, then it became more real after that.
Guest:But it was a really good training ground.
Guest:And I mean, I just did stuff like if people's families came in, we fed them for free.
Guest:Drinks on the house, whatever, so that the parents didn't think it was so weird.
Guest:Suddenly, it's kind of cool your kids in show business.
Guest:rather than a two-drink minimum and blah, blah.
Guest:The community.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:And, I mean, treating people well works.
Guest:Giving people a chance, you know, and it's self-esteem.
Guest:You feel like somebody.
Guest:You treat them like someone.
Guest:They walk out on the stage.
Guest:They act like they're something.
Marc:Well, this is interesting because...
Marc:it's uh you know it's not show business what it is is like you know the the Boston scene which you know from what you're telling me yeah you know was sort of on your shoulders a bit because I'm sure there were gigs around there was obviously there were comics developing there yeah and they had places to perform I don't know if Nick's was there yet or Nick's came along later right so like this is an organic this is really the heart of you know what what became the Boston scene and what remained I mean the connection deserves a lot of credit for sort of like getting the original talent together right and then I sort of
Guest:but it was like you had the other outlet i was like the team you know the player psychiatrist you know yeah they were sending people out you know yeah you know like here's your direction right right and and you were like yeah well you can hang out here just be yeah and be original you know and i mean i never use that trite thing you can you have a chance to suck here i don't want you to suck but you know they you know they usually didn't but you could try shit
Marc:Yeah, but by the time I got there, it was interesting because I never quite understood how you were ingrained in all that because by and large... Well, I was bitter because of the cocaine.
Guest:Cocaine really did a lot of damage to the Boston comedy scene.
Guest:But not to you?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, well, except it damaged this thing that was very dear to me.
Guest:I mean, it got to the point where, because I didn't do coke, at one point, a rumor got back to me that I was a narc, which is, you know... Ridiculous.
Marc:Fucking hilarious.
Marc:But I just, like, from my point of view, coming in as a young comic, I was like, this guy is doing a type of comedy that, you know, these other guys really stay away from.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, because by the time I first saw you, you were aggressively political.
Marc:There was not... You know, you had your jokes that people could understand, like you said.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I remember the true cigarettes, you know, the...
Guest:I smoke true cigarettes.
Guest:They are truthful because on the front of each and every pack they have a cross section of the valve that will have to be placed in your heart if you smoke these babies for a while.
Guest:I mean, I can write those kind of jokes.
Guest:I could be one of those comics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't enough for you.
Marc:You had a higher purpose.
Marc:Or I was an idiot.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:We can be humble.
Marc:But I just remember sitting there in the dressing room at Stitches with you.
Marc:And you kind of held court.
Marc:It was your night.
Marc:And people would hang around.
Marc:And somehow or another, I was drunk.
Marc:And you were railing about racism.
Marc:And I don't even remember what the hell the conversation was.
Marc:But I somehow brought it around to Danny DeVito.
Marc:And I don't even know what it was.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:No, but I just remember I had this weird memory.
Marc:It's like, I don't understand what you're saying.
Marc:You're saying Danny DeVito is racism?
Marc:Because in my mind, I'd put something together about the way he is short.
Marc:Who the fuck knows?
Marc:But I do remember you were sort of holding court.
Marc:And I still couldn't understand because there was this whole community of people.
Marc:But it felt like you were different and that you were looked at differently.
Marc:Maybe not negatively, but you stood alone.
Guest:Yeah, well...
Guest:You know, sometimes you have to.
Guest:But, I mean, it was fine.
Guest:But they all must have respected you for giving them time.
Guest:I mean, here's the thing.
Guest:A lot of people over the years have sort of apologized to me because they don't do what I do.
Guest:And I've always said, no, see, I'm the guy that's supposed to be doing what I do.
Guest:You figure out what you're supposed to do.
Guest:Do it the best you can.
Guest:And, you know, that's only going to make things better for me.
Guest:And hopefully if I'm doing it right, I'm only going to make things better for you.
Guest:Now I really like.
Guest:Now we get to the next part of my career when I start touring with these musicians.
Guest:And they really dig what I do.
Guest:And these people were my heroes.
Guest:You know, Jackson Brown.
Guest:I mean, I'm listening to Lives in the Balance after eating it on stage, talking about Death Squad somewhere in New Hampshire, listening to Lives in the Balance.
Guest:And two months later, I'm on tour with Jackson Brown.
Guest:and then Billy Bragg and Dar Williams, and who really saved me and who really subsidized me as a comic was Stephen, because he took me out to open for him forever.
Guest:And he and I would ride around the country on the bus with Tim Sarkis, his manager, and then a variety of tour managers afterwards.
Guest:And we were riding around on the bus, and then I'd get off and walk out, talk to Stephen's 3,000 people about the environment as three guys are traveling the country on a bus.
Guest:And how'd you do?
Guest:Oh, great, because his crowd was smart.
Guest:We call it the both sides of the brain tour because I'm kind of literal.
Guest:But Stephen and I have very similar senses of humor, and we really enjoy.
Marc:And there's a subtlety.
Marc:There's a sort of engagement with the, I don't know what you would call it.
Marc:You've got to use your brain.
Marc:It's not look shiny.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That there's a depth that has, they have to do the math themselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a slyness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but there's literally problem solving to get the joke.
Marc:Right, right, right, right, right.
Marc:And, you know, and that's a very different thing.
Marc:So, you know, basically, you know.
Guest:I mean, imagine running around the country with him when, I mean, you know.
Marc:At the top of his game.
Marc:And, you know, I think he remains there.
Guest:I mean, what a great thing.
Guest:I mean, that's why, I mean, I look at these things, you know, like we told the earlier part of my story, but, you know.
Guest:I think Howard Zinn as a mentor, I get Steve, he ride around with Steven.
Marc:Well, this is interesting because like, you know, because like I've told people about, you know, I did my own time, you know, trying to do politics and I was a reactionary thinker.
Marc:And I think I was heavily influenced by, you know, Bill Hicks and also
Marc:I found that what you were doing was exciting.
Marc:And I wanted to do that and I tried to do that.
Marc:But I didn't think – relatively recently, once the anger started to dissipate and once I spent two years doing lefty talk radio and realizing it's very hard to find your actual own voice in the midst of talking points and platforms, whether they're far left, middle, whatever it is.
Guest:And there's not much far left that you can find around here.
Marc:No, but far left on some level, it's not that it's esoteric.
Marc:There are comics that do it.
Marc:But for some reason, it's kind of a boutique racket in the sense that it's a niche market.
Marc:That ultimately what you want to do is change the minds of people that don't think like
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And that's why we should have been out in America with that station that called itself America.
Guest:Instead, we're on Park Avenue telling everybody what to do.
Marc:There's a lot of problems.
Marc:I can't even.
Guest:I mean, yeah, I just I just wish that we went.
Guest:You know, there's a steel strike.
Guest:They're ruining these people in, you know, London, Ohio or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and put their voices on the air.
Guest:That's what we did at Camp Casey.
Guest:And that was a great moment for that that network, because we really helped build up the crowd from right there.
Marc:So what I say is that there's only a few guys that do this stuff well, that do it well.
Marc:You're one of them, and there's a few others at any given time.
Marc:Political comedy is, some people dismiss it because it just doesn't exist in its pure form as it should, and there's only a few people that can do it.
Guest:And it's hard to develop an audience.
Marc:We end up preaching to the choir.
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I've got an answer to that one, though.
Guest:The choir are the greatest people in the world, and they're out there getting the shit kicked out of them a lot of times.
Guest:So if they come in and get a shot in the arm from me and some answers, you know, like they can turn around, if you don't live in this country, why don't you get out of it?
Guest:Because I don't want to be victimized by its foreign policy.
Guest:Yay, they got something.
Guest:Here you go.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:They deserve the relief, and they deserve the support, and it's good to rally.
Guest:But I mean, like I said, I could play the Stevens crowd, and that's not...
Guest:You know, and they get it.
Guest:You know, I mean, I you have to know who you're playing to.
Marc:But sometimes as a comic, you know, you connect in a way where you don't even realize it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm sure this has happened to you.
Marc:You know, people come up to you like, you know, I you know, I don't know.
Marc:You would ever remember this, but you were opening for Stephen Wright.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who you were.
Marc:And you changed the way I thought about everything.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, that one joke changed the way I thought about everything.
Guest:I have a great story about that.
Guest:I'm arrested at Seabrook.
Guest:I'm handcuffed to a kid.
Guest:The kid says to me, my friend started bringing me to your show at Stitches two years ago.
Guest:I was in the Young Americans for Freedom.
Guest:Now I'm fucking handcuffed to you in a nuclear... LAUGHTER
Guest:Ah, a good day for a subversive.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's like, welcome, welcome.
Marc:So where was the moment where, obviously knowing what you were doing and standing for what you stood for, how did the alignment...
Marc:That's a bad word.
Marc:How did the relationship... Alignment would be the other side's word.
Marc:Well, he was aligned with Zinn.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:How did the relationship with Howard Zinn begin?
Marc:Because I know he taught at my college, and I was not politically activated, and I missed out on his lectures and his class.
Marc:But he was...
Marc:You know, the foremost sort of humanitarian historian of what really happened in the world and in America.
Marc:Bottom-up history.
Marc:Yeah, bottom-up history.
Marc:So how did you see Kim out, or how did he find you?
Guest:Well, we ended up speaking at a lot of the same rallies.
Guest:And then Howard came to me, I mean, and said, Barry, what you do is very important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, Howard has said such lovely things.
Guest:I mean, he introed me on that.
Guest:I did an album called Kill the Messenger in 91.
Guest:And I just listened to it again recently.
Guest:And I'm really proud of it now.
Guest:At the time, I heard everything that was wrong with it.
Guest:Now it's like it's strong.
Guest:Howard intros me and compares me to Twain, Dick Gregory.
Yeah.
Guest:uh finley peter dunn and i can't and lenny bruce yeah you know howard zinn did i mean like call me lucky yeah i mean you know like pretty good like he's his word stands for a little something i got to do a show with kurt vonnegut once i got to do i mean this you know this stuff like i haven't gotten some of the payoffs that you get
Guest:It's a commercially successful comic.
Guest:But on the other hand, I've had this rich life of these wonderful friends.
Guest:I wrote for the Boston Phoenix whenever I wanted to for 20 years.
Guest:And I had this great editor, Cliff Garboden, who basically taught me to write by editing me.
Guest:I mean, I've had all these incredibly good turns happen to me.
Guest:And I'm thankful and fortunate.
Guest:I'm ready.
Guest:I'm turning 60, and I'm ready to take, you know, I mean, it's not really a victory lap, but I might be able to play the thing to a tie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and I want to go out.
Guest:Find some audiences, you know, and convey some stuff.
Guest:And like I say, we might be at one of those moments of Zen optimism where people catch on that these people that we argue with each other about all the time don't give a shit about any of us.
Guest:You know, so we have to care about ourselves and pull together and have the courage to be part of a collective.
Guest:We get so rugged individualism.
Guest:Well, it takes guts to say, you know, I need to be in a group.
Guest:I need to be with more people.
Guest:I need the help of others.
Marc:Yeah, because we live in a culture that, you know, is being presented to us as, you know, interconnected like it's never been before, but it's never been more isolating.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And I think that's a good place to end, but I don't want to because I want to talk about when comedy crosses over, when you talk about guys like Randy Credico and you talk about what you guys did in Nicaragua, which I don't even know.
Marc:And I've paid lip service to myself in the sense that, well, if you can't remain objective, then how are you being an effective satirist?
Guest:Well, there's phony objectivity.
Guest:You know, I mean, you got a point of view.
Guest:If you pretend like you don't have a point of view, you're a liar.
Guest:You know, I mean, I mean, you know, but some people say child abuse can be good for the kid.
Guest:You know, I mean, you know, like that phony balance.
Guest:I just want to be on the level and you can be on the level and have your point of view.
Guest:OK, you see.
Guest:So I just try to be on the level and people know where I'm where I'm coming from.
Marc:But what happened with the with the with the contrast?
Guest:Well, we went down there and, you know, I mean, Tingle was there and several people.
Marc:And Ortega asked you to come?
Guest:Well, we were friendly with the Sandinistas.
Guest:People asked me if I met with the opposition.
Guest:I said, yeah, I had two layovers in Miami.
Guest:But what we did was shows mostly for the international brigades that were there building power.
Guest:I mean, they'd been through earthquake and war and suffering from the worst dictator in the history of the Western Hemisphere until that point anyway.
Guest:And that country was just so ravaged, but the people were beautiful, and they could separate us from our country's policy.
Guest:So we went around and did these shows.
Guest:I called it, and it wasn't a USO's tour, it was a US-OUT tour.
Guest:And we got taken at one point, and they all love Credit Cook, because he'd been down there a lot, and they brought us up to this field hospital.
Guest:They never brought foreigners to this place.
Guest:And there was a field hospital, and it was full of
Guest:Full of kids.
Guest:I mean, if any of them were 16 years old, they would be real senior members.
Guest:And every kid, there had to be 90 beds in this tent.
Guest:It was hot out in the jungle.
Guest:And every kid had lost at least one limb.
Guest:And somehow it fell upon me to give, to make the remarks for the delegation.
Guest:And I don't remember what I said, but I remember what happened.
Guest:When I finished, I mean, people, tears are coming.
Guest:I just told them, you know, they weren't my enemy where Ronald Reagan was.
Guest:I did that.
Guest:Everyone in my country doesn't look at kids like you and think that you need to be harmed, and you need to live in war, because you just want to fear or shake.
Guest:Anyway, I finished.
Guest:There's a lot of tears, and then they start to applaud.
Guest:hitting a hand on the chest because they don't have two hands a lot.
Guest:So I know the sound of one hand clapping, and it's my conscience.
Guest:So when I continue to, I mean, that has stayed with me ever since then, and it's kept me as honest as you can keep somebody like me.
Marc:Well, this is certainly a unique comedy tale, and I appreciate you talking to me, Barry.
Guest:Thank you very much, Mark.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:You bet.
Guest:Thanks so much for having me.
Guest:What an honor it is to be on the show.
Marc:It's great to see you doing so well.
Marc:And we'll go do some comedy later.
Guest:Yeah, let's have fun.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Thank you, Barry.
Marc:Respect, my friend.
Marc:And I hope you're doing well.
Marc:I know you're listening.
Marc:I appreciate your time.
Marc:If you want anything WTF pod related, go to WTF pod dot com.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Get that app.
Marc:Upgrade that bitch.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:That's not a sexist thing.
Marc:You know, I'm feminizing an app and it's my app.
Marc:So I think I get a do I get a pass?
Marc:Yeah, if you get the free app, you can upgrade and get all the episodes.
Marc:You can leave some comments.
Marc:You can buy some merch.
Marc:We're restocking for Christmas.
Marc:Ceramic mugs soon.
Marc:WTFpod.com.
Marc:Justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Available there.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I got to get off the fucking nicotine.
Marc:I got to do something.
Marc:Look at that fucking pain in my arm.
Marc:I'm getting achy.
Guest:Boomer lives!
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