Episode 48 - Brendon Small / Dr. Barry Maron

Episode 48 • Released February 17, 2010 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest 5:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Marc:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Marc:Really?

00:00:08Marc:Wait for it.

00:00:09Marc:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Marc:Wait for it.

00:00:12Marc:Pow!

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck?

00:00:14Marc:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Marc:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Marc:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest 2:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest 2:With Mark Maron.

00:00:24Marc:Okay, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:28Marc:Whatever the fuck you want to be called.

00:00:30Marc:I thank you for being here.

00:00:31Marc:I appreciate your business.

00:00:34Marc:I don't know what business that is.

00:00:35Marc:I mean, the business of listening to me during your day.

00:00:39Marc:I hope you're having a good one or night or wherever the hell you are.

00:00:42Marc:Drive, whatever the fuck you're doing.

00:00:44Marc:I hope it's fine.

00:00:45Marc:I hope you're doing okay.

00:00:46Marc:I am okay.

00:00:48Marc:I'm in my garage.

00:00:49Marc:It's nice here in LA.

00:00:50Marc:All of a sudden the sun came out.

00:00:51Marc:It rained for like a month.

00:00:53Marc:It was chilly, but I ain't complaining.

00:00:55Marc:I know some of you can't even leave your homes, but it was a little chilly.

00:00:58Marc:Prefer it that way.

00:00:59Marc:Now it's fucking hot.

00:01:02Marc:I'm wearing sandals.

00:01:03Marc:I got my nerd cock T-shirt on.

00:01:04Marc:I got my sweatpants on.

00:01:06Marc:I'm in the garage.

00:01:07Marc:And it's hot out there.

00:01:09Marc:Even Boomer, the dirt cat, can't muster up the energy to get out of a goddamn chair he's been sitting in for a day.

00:01:15Marc:And then I think there's something wrong with him.

00:01:17Marc:And then I realize there's nothing wrong with him.

00:01:19Marc:It's a cat.

00:01:20Marc:It's a cat.

00:01:22Marc:All right, I'm a little aggravated.

00:01:24Marc:It's nothing big.

00:01:25Marc:It's my own problem.

00:01:27Marc:It's my own problem.

00:01:29Marc:Some of you know that I got kind of a deal on some stakes.

00:01:32Marc:Only two stakes, and the only reason you would know that is if you were following me on Twitter or Facebook.

00:01:38Marc:You can follow me if you want.

00:01:40Marc:I'm at Mark Maron at Twitter or at WTF pod at Twitter, or you can, I can't take any more friend requests on Facebook.

00:01:48Marc:I'm all stacked up.

00:01:49Marc:I ain't complaining again, but I didn't realize there was a limit.

00:01:51Marc:So you can go to the fan page.

00:01:53Marc:you know i'm not plugging that shit it doesn't matter all i'm trying to get at is i posted up there that i went to fresh and easy which is this store here that i think it's a chain i think it's a british chain it's okay i like going there because i can check out my own groceries and that somehow makes me feel like i have a job and it's fun it's fun to me i i can't uh i can imagine that if you had to do it for a living it would be horrible but for me to run the little things across the scanner it's very exciting i i

00:02:20Marc:I have a very mundane life sometimes, and I get a kick out of that.

00:02:25Marc:So I'm there.

00:02:27Marc:Generally don't buy meat there, but they had these deals.

00:02:29Marc:They had like 30 T-bone steaks, two in a package for $3.99 because they were expiring the next day.

00:02:37Marc:So I thought that's a great deal.

00:02:39Marc:Two T-bone steaks, $3.99.

00:02:41Marc:What the fuck?

00:02:41Marc:I'm in.

00:02:42Marc:Let's do this.

00:02:43Marc:Knowing good and well that I'm not going to get the best meat in the world.

00:02:46Marc:I figured they'd be okay.

00:02:47Marc:And they were okay.

00:02:48Marc:It was fine.

00:02:49Marc:Except I had two T-bone steaks.

00:02:51Marc:It was Valentine's Day on top of everything else.

00:02:54Marc:And I didn't have anybody to eat them with.

00:02:56Marc:So I ate a T-bone alone, which isn't sad.

00:02:58Marc:I watch television.

00:03:00Marc:So I was engaged and I was quite happy with it when did some comedy.

00:03:03Marc:That was sad.

00:03:04Marc:Comedy on Valentine's Day.

00:03:05Marc:Fucking awful.

00:03:06Marc:OK, another story.

00:03:08Marc:So then the next day I got one more T-bone.

00:03:10Marc:I eat that the next day.

00:03:11Marc:All right.

00:03:12Marc:And then and then the day after that, which was yesterday, I got meat in my blood and I can't stop eating fucking meat.

00:03:20Marc:I ate two, I ate a meatball and sausage sandwich because I had that leftover.

00:03:25Marc:And then I had three hot dogs for dinner.

00:03:28Marc:And then I'm out late night last night and I ate bacon and lettuce tomato sandwich.

00:03:33Marc:I'm like packed with meat.

00:03:34Marc:I can't, why can't I fucking do anything without it becoming this chain reaction to doing everything of that thing?

00:03:43Marc:God damn it.

00:03:45Marc:But I'm all right.

00:03:46Marc:You know, I'm not complaining.

00:03:47Marc:I'm just full of meat.

00:03:49Marc:I'm full of meat.

00:03:50Marc:So now, of course, I've, you know, then I have that morning, which was today.

00:03:55Marc:This is it.

00:03:56Marc:This is bullshit.

00:03:58Marc:I did this last week, too.

00:03:59Marc:I had a day this last week.

00:04:00Marc:Steam up some vegetables, make some brown rice, get some oatmeal going, maybe get to the gym.

00:04:05Marc:That's the other thing about that fucking thing.

00:04:08Marc:This is my own stupid life.

00:04:10Marc:My head.

00:04:12Marc:It's my head.

00:04:14Marc:I'm sitting here, I'm thinking like, I gotta go to the gym, I gotta go to the gym, but it's hot out, I don't wanna go to the gym, but I wanna crawl out of my fucking skin.

00:04:21Marc:but I don't want to go.

00:04:22Marc:And then I start to realize, dude, dude, I call myself dude.

00:04:28Marc:Or sometimes I'll go, if I, if I'm like really want to get through to myself, I'll go Mark, Mark.

00:04:34Marc:But it always starts out with dude.

00:04:36Marc:And then when I, when I don't listen to myself, I got to go Mark, Mark.

00:04:41Marc:And then if I really am not listening, I go Mark M. Marin.

00:04:45Marc:And M's not even my middle initial.

00:04:48Marc:That's what's fucked up about that.

00:04:49Marc:I don't even know what it stands for in that context.

00:04:52Marc:That aside, I had to ask myself, do I like this feeling?

00:04:59Marc:Do I like being on the edge of me now?

00:05:03Marc:Like I did all this shit that I'm beating myself up about, which is another issue entirely.

00:05:07Marc:I don't need to beat myself up about it.

00:05:08Marc:So what?

00:05:09Marc:I spent two days eating meat.

00:05:10Marc:Some people do that every day of their life.

00:05:12Marc:It's no big deal.

00:05:13Marc:So I'm choosing to beat myself up about that.

00:05:16Marc:And knowing that the resolution is, dude, just pace it out.

00:05:19Marc:Or Mark, just pace it out.

00:05:21Marc:You know, eat some healthy stuff, balance it out, go to the gym.

00:05:24Marc:But then there's like, I don't want to.

00:05:27Marc:I don't want to.

00:05:28Marc:And then I make the excuse, but like I had all that meat in my refrigerator.

00:05:31Marc:There's a lot of things in my refrigerator.

00:05:33Marc:My question to me is, do I like this struggle, this bullshit struggle?

00:05:40Marc:Of like, you're an asshole.

00:05:41Marc:If you go to the gym, you'll feel better.

00:05:43Marc:And then you feel better.

00:05:43Marc:And then you can go back to being an asshole to yourself again.

00:05:46Marc:I don't even fucking know.

00:05:48Marc:But it was one of those moments where I'm like, because people say that maybe you like your anger.

00:05:52Marc:Maybe you like your discomfort.

00:05:54Marc:Maybe you like your self-hatred.

00:05:55Marc:Maybe you like judging yourself like that.

00:05:57Marc:That's what you're comfortable with.

00:05:59Marc:It's very controllable.

00:06:01Marc:You know what's going to happen in that little paradigm, the paradigm of you kicking your own ass.

00:06:05Marc:Do you do something that makes you feel better for a few days and you kick your own ass again for something you shouldn't have done?

00:06:10Marc:Or it didn't really matter if you did it, but you did it anyways.

00:06:13Marc:It's not that confusing.

00:06:14Marc:But God bless you for being on the treadmill right now.

00:06:17Marc:Anybody else?

00:06:18Marc:I think you know what I'm talking about.

00:06:21Marc:I got an email from my father today in the subject line.

00:06:27Marc:Idea.

00:06:29Marc:That's all it said.

00:06:31Marc:Idea.

00:06:33Marc:And then the first sentence says in caps.

00:06:38Marc:This is all in caps.

00:06:40Marc:Not manic.

00:06:43Marc:Colon.

00:06:45Marc:Not manic.

00:06:47Marc:Okay.

00:06:48Marc:Well, we'll call my dad and see if that's true.

00:06:51Marc:Also, Brendan Small is coming in.

00:06:54Marc:He's very funny.

00:06:55Marc:He's also the creator of the very popular cartoon Metalocalypse on Adult Swim, and he's a wizard on the guitar.

00:07:03Marc:So I've got this big plan.

00:07:05Marc:I've got a big plan for Brendan Small.

00:07:08Marc:I feel like I'm lisping.

00:07:09Marc:I've got a big plan.

00:07:10Marc:I play guitar, but he's really good.

00:07:12Marc:He writes all the music and performs it for Metalocalypse.

00:07:16Marc:I'm going to put my amp out and I'm going to put a guitar out.

00:07:18Marc:I'm just going to have it here when he comes in.

00:07:21Marc:Just going to have it there.

00:07:22Marc:And I'm going to see what happens.

00:07:24Marc:That's my plan.

00:07:26Marc:I get an email.

00:07:28Marc:Love the podcast, man.

00:07:30Marc:I'd love to hear you do one about bombing on stage.

00:07:33Marc:I mean, BOMBING, all caps.

00:07:36Marc:You're a great comic, but everyone...

00:07:39Marc:has been a dear at some point.

00:07:42Marc:Thanks, MC.

00:07:43Marc:P.S.

00:07:44Marc:I know you could give a fuck less, but here are my tunes.

00:07:47Marc:And then he gives me a link to his music.

00:07:49Marc:Not trying to get on the podcast, so take it easy, cunt.

00:07:53Marc:Well, I think you just sealed you not getting on the podcast there with that sign off.

00:07:59Marc:But the bombing thing I will address.

00:08:01Marc:Here's the international bombing story that some of you may know.

00:08:07Marc:I was sent home from a country because I bombed sent home from a country.

00:08:15Marc:It was my own fault.

00:08:17Marc:OK, in some respects.

00:08:20Marc:Here's the situation.

00:08:22Marc:I guess it was 1992.

00:08:23Marc:That means I was 29 years old.

00:08:27Marc:Is that right?

00:08:27Marc:29 years old.

00:08:28Marc:And I'd hit a wall.

00:08:30Marc:My career was in the garbage again.

00:08:32Marc:Barely had a career.

00:08:33Marc:I was living in New York.

00:08:34Marc:I had started doing drugs again after I'd been off for a little while.

00:08:38Marc:I was losing my mind and I'd broken up with a woman.

00:08:42Marc:I was in trouble.

00:08:43Marc:I was in a bad place.

00:08:44Marc:OK, so what I did when I get into trouble, when at that point in my life, I'm going to pack up everything that fits in my car, give my bed to the guy who lives across the hall, who's a realist painter, whatever that means, and give the rest of it to the homeless people on the street so they can sell it on the street and drive across country to San Francisco, knock on the door of the woman who I was going out with and broke up with and say, hey, I'm here.

00:09:09Marc:Can you love me again?

00:09:11Marc:so i did that i drove across country you know with a bag of pot and some other goodies made it in three and a half days driving one 23 hour stretch through the upper i guess it was nebraska probably in those areas down into san francisco hello good morning hi kim uh can i live here now remember me i you the one that that broke up with you when you were sick well i'm here i love you all right so i moved to san francisco got nothing got no leads got no career

00:09:39Marc:Can do comedy for about 40 minutes.

00:09:43Marc:Get a call not long after moving back to San Francisco.

00:09:45Marc:Hey, Mark.

00:09:47Marc:And that's a bad accent.

00:09:48Marc:I forget your name.

00:09:50Marc:I forget his name.

00:09:51Marc:Hey, it's this guy from Australia.

00:09:53Marc:And I wanted to know if you wanted to come out and do a season in Australia.

00:09:57Marc:What we do is we fly you out.

00:09:58Marc:You stay for like...

00:10:00Marc:Five weeks.

00:10:03Marc:I can't do Australian.

00:10:04Marc:You stay for five weeks.

00:10:07Marc:Four weeks is the run, and then we extend you for one week, and we'll put you up, and we'll pay you, and we'll promote it.

00:10:13Marc:Sound good?

00:10:13Marc:And I knew in that moment, like headline, Australia.

00:10:17Marc:Don't like traveling internationally that much.

00:10:19Marc:Don't have the material, the headline.

00:10:20Marc:Can really do 40 minutes at that point max.

00:10:23Marc:Yeah.

00:10:23Marc:Uh, this is not the right thing for me to do.

00:10:25Marc:It would be a disaster.

00:10:26Marc:So I say, hell yeah.

00:10:28Marc:Hell yeah.

00:10:29Marc:Send me the contracts.

00:10:30Marc:So I get the contracts.

00:10:31Marc:I signed the contracts and now I'm starting to fester.

00:10:34Marc:I'm like, oh man, Australia, it's far away.

00:10:36Marc:It's like not even like it's the day before yesterday there or day after tomorrow.

00:10:40Marc:I don't even know what fucking day it is, what time zone it is.

00:10:42Marc:It's like a 22 hour flight, you know?

00:10:44Marc:And of course I'm newly sober again and I'm doing this thing and I got no other leads, but I tell the woman I'm with, I'm like, it'll be fine.

00:10:50Marc:I'll be there for a month.

00:10:51Marc:or five weeks it'll be a good experience knowing perfectly well i did not have the time to do the headline spot and i would be stranded in an international situation not comfortable going internationally at that point in time barely comfortable with it now but cut to i'm flying to australia

00:11:08Marc:Over the ocean, like 15 hours, land in New Zealand, go to the bathroom.

00:11:13Marc:I pee.

00:11:14Marc:I get to Australia.

00:11:15Marc:I didn't sleep because I'm panicking about what I'm going to do.

00:11:18Marc:A woman picks me up in Australia right away.

00:11:20Marc:We're on the wrong side of the street.

00:11:22Marc:We're driving.

00:11:23Marc:I see kangaroos.

00:11:24Marc:I don't know if that really happened, but in my mind, I saw kangaroos along the side of the road.

00:11:27Marc:That might be something my memory added to embellish the story, but I'm going to hold on to it.

00:11:32Marc:There were kangaroos jumping along beside the car.

00:11:36Marc:I don't know how to judge them.

00:12:04Marc:I've only seen a few movies about the place.

00:12:07Marc:I think, you know, like Gallipoli, Walkabout, and Crocodile Dundee.

00:12:12Marc:That is my Australia frame of reference.

00:12:17Marc:So already I'm starting to freak out.

00:12:18Marc:Between everything being on the wrong side of the road, kangaroos, lack of sleep, I'm starting to bug out a bit.

00:12:22Marc:Then we go to where the club office is, and there's a huge billboard of me in my face on a wall with quotes that are not true.

00:12:30Marc:They invented these quotes in magazines about my act.

00:12:34Marc:That made me feel creepy.

00:12:35Marc:That made me feel like I was being lied about and misrepresented.

00:12:38Marc:And I looked at the billboard, and I'm like, oh my God, a lot of work went into this production here.

00:12:43Marc:I don't know if I can live up to this billboard.

00:12:44Marc:Starting to freak out more.

00:12:46Marc:Then they take me to the...

00:12:47Marc:The apartment that I'm going to be staying at, this little efficiency apartment.

00:12:51Marc:Everything is peculiar to me there.

00:12:54Marc:They have Weedabix.

00:12:56Marc:They have Vegemite.

00:12:57Marc:That's sort of hackneyed to talk about.

00:12:59Marc:But they only have a few kinds of cereal.

00:13:01Marc:I don't know.

00:13:02Marc:I'm not having a good time already.

00:13:04Marc:And then, like, okay, so we get to the show, and they do a week of previews for press.

00:13:09Marc:And here's how they work the show.

00:13:11Marc:This club is huge.

00:13:13Marc:It's like a circus tent.

00:13:14Marc:It's not there anymore.

00:13:15Marc:I think it was called The Last Laugh.

00:13:16Marc:Like, seats must seat, like, 400 people.

00:13:18Marc:It's this huge room.

00:13:19Marc:All right, here's the structure of the show.

00:13:21Marc:There's a comedian hosting, and then there's an act with these two women who have funny hair and play an accordion.

00:13:27Marc:And then there's a guy who escapes from it.

00:13:29Marc:He closes with this.

00:13:30Marc:He escapes...

00:13:31Marc:He escapes from a straitjacket on stilts.

00:13:36Marc:That's his closer.

00:13:38Marc:He's a contortionist or something.

00:13:39Marc:I don't fucking remember.

00:13:41Marc:And then there's an intermission and then me.

00:13:44Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?

00:13:46Marc:Now I don't even have the time to do this.

00:13:48Marc:So I'm sitting backstage watching this guy get a standing ovation for escaping from a straight jacket on stilts.

00:13:54Marc:Then they're going to eat dessert and bring me on.

00:13:57Marc:So the first night up is kind of dicey.

00:13:59Marc:I do okay.

00:14:00Marc:The guy who runs the place says, hey, you know, you're going to have to cut this joke and that joke, but you got plenty of material.

00:14:05Marc:I'm like, um...

00:14:06Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure.

00:14:07Marc:So it keeps chipping away, keeps chipping away at my act because it's inappropriate or the reference isn't going to work.

00:14:13Marc:So now I'm looking at 35 minutes out of the 50 I have to do, and it's fucking horrible.

00:14:18Marc:But I start improvising a little bit.

00:14:20Marc:I'm riffing shit.

00:14:21Marc:I'm doing half-baked jokes.

00:14:23Marc:So we do a few days of previews.

00:14:25Marc:And then they have a second room where you can go up and there's like it seats like 50.

00:14:29Marc:And that was a little better.

00:14:30Marc:But I'm starting to lose it.

00:14:32Marc:I'm not doing well.

00:14:33Marc:Things aren't looking good.

00:14:34Marc:I'm starting to be like, oh, fuck.

00:14:36Marc:And I'm watching the guy on stilts every night.

00:14:37Marc:And I'm like, this is crazy.

00:14:38Marc:Why do I have to follow this?

00:14:40Marc:And so the Saturday night, the first Saturday night, the first week where they sell tickets.

00:14:44Marc:It's a big room and they pack it out.

00:14:47Marc:And at this point, I've completely come unhinged.

00:14:50Marc:I'm sweating.

00:14:51Marc:I'm nervous.

00:14:52Marc:I'm not connecting with the crowds.

00:14:53Marc:Now there's 400 people in the room.

00:14:55Marc:All right.

00:14:56Marc:Boom.

00:14:56Marc:That host goes on.

00:14:57Marc:Hey, everybody gets laughs.

00:14:59Marc:Second, two girls with the funny hair and accordion.

00:15:01Marc:Oh, how fun is that?

00:15:02Marc:Third, bam.

00:15:03Marc:Wow.

00:15:03Marc:The guy just got out of a straight jacket on stilts.

00:15:06Marc:Holy shit.

00:15:08Marc:It's like Jesus has come back.

00:15:10Marc:Then intermission.

00:15:12Marc:Intermission.

00:15:12Marc:And now Marc Maron.

00:15:14Marc:Here's Marc Maron, your headliner.

00:15:16Marc:I walk out on stage.

00:15:17Marc:I'm smoking a cigarette.

00:15:19Marc:I'm wearing a vintage jacket that I liked a lot.

00:15:23Marc:And I get on stage.

00:15:24Marc:I stand at the mic.

00:15:25Marc:And before I even open my mouth, I hear a voice say, where'd you get that jacket?

00:15:31Marc:In a room full of 400 people.

00:15:33Marc:And it was an American.

00:15:34Marc:That made it even worse.

00:15:36Marc:And I couldn't even answer him.

00:15:38Marc:I just stood there.

00:15:40Marc:And I started doing my jokes.

00:15:42Marc:And for 45 minutes, all I heard were the embers of my cigarette burning with each drag I took on it.

00:15:53Marc:Everything was in slow motion.

00:15:56Marc:I just look at this room full of people looking at me.

00:15:58Marc:Nothing is connecting.

00:15:59Marc:There's a vacuum in the room.

00:16:01Marc:I feel myself trying to leave my body.

00:16:03Marc:But I said, Mark M. Marin,

00:16:06Marc:That's not even my middle initial.

00:16:09Marc:Stay in your body.

00:16:10Marc:Take the hit.

00:16:14Marc:And I walked off stage, and it was as if I had seen an explosion.

00:16:20Marc:It wasn't even a bomb.

00:16:21Marc:I didn't bomb.

00:16:22Marc:I had the visceral feeling of having just seen everything that I'd worked toward blow up in a fire.

00:16:31Marc:And it must have looked like that on my face, because the owner came up like, are you okay?

00:16:34Marc:I'm like, yeah, no, I'm good.

00:16:36Marc:I'm good.

00:16:37Marc:Are you okay?

00:16:39Marc:And the host was like, you going to be all right, man?

00:16:40Marc:I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good.

00:16:42Marc:I'm good.

00:16:44Marc:And I'm sweating.

00:16:46Marc:And then the next day, the Sunday, the owner takes me out to breakfast.

00:16:52Marc:And he says, I don't think this is working out, mate.

00:16:55Marc:Here's what we're going to do.

00:16:56Marc:We're going to pay you for three weeks and send you home.

00:16:58Marc:It was my mistake.

00:17:00Marc:And I'm like, really?

00:17:02Marc:Inside, I was like...

00:17:05Marc:And then the waiter comes up and says, hey, I just saw you on the Steve Visart show.

00:17:09Marc:You're really funny.

00:17:10Marc:Where are you playing?

00:17:11Marc:And I looked at him.

00:17:11Marc:I said, I'm going home.

00:17:15Marc:I'm going home.

00:17:19Marc:I got on the plane and immediately relapsed, drank like maybe 12 Smirnoff vodkas, got home, was sweating, you know, alcohol.

00:17:30Marc:I had no idea what the future held.

00:17:32Marc:I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be a comedian because I had been sent home from the country of Australia.

00:17:46Marc:Now, I pulled the guitar out specifically.

00:17:53Marc:Hold on.

00:17:55Marc:What gauge pick do you use, Brendan?

00:17:59Guest 2:Right now I'm playing 1.4s.

00:18:00Guest 2:I'm playing pretty fat picks.

00:18:03Guest 2:I'm playing these new Altexes.

00:18:05Guest 5:Are you plugging on my podcast?

00:18:07Guest 5:I mean, are you... I'm actually... Are you whoring?

00:18:10Guest 2:Oh, that's the sound of a single-coil pickup.

00:18:15Guest 2:Oh, shit.

00:18:15Guest 2:In a big tube amp.

00:18:17Guest 2:Oh, it's coming back.

00:18:18Guest 2:Yeah!

00:18:19Guest 2:Now the podcast is starting.

00:18:21Guest 3:That's pretty good.

00:18:23Guest 3:That is the only way.

00:18:26Guest 3:That's the thing.

00:18:27Guest 3:That's the only way.

00:18:27Marc:My guest in studio here at the Cat Ranch here in the garage overlooking the Hills Highland Park is Brendan Smalls.

00:18:34Guest 2:Small.

00:18:34Guest 2:What's the singular?

00:18:35Marc:Just one small.

00:18:39Marc:That's my guitar.

00:18:43Marc:That's my guitar being played by Brendan Smalls.

00:18:48Marc:Now, can you tune it?

00:18:50Marc:Can you just tune it by listening?

00:18:51Marc:Is it pretty in tune?

00:18:53Guest 2:It's in the ballpark.

00:18:54Guest 2:We call that in the ballpark, yeah.

00:18:55Guest 2:And what's already happened in this podcast so far is I've stopped listening to you.

00:19:00Guest 2:It's what happens when a guy gets a guitar in his hand.

00:19:03Marc:Brendan Small, of course, is the mastermind behind Metalocalypse.

00:19:08Guest 2:You said it right.

00:19:08Guest 2:That's pretty impressive.

00:19:09Marc:Well, I didn't say your name right, so I had to get something right.

00:19:12Marc:Yeah, you got that right.

00:19:13Marc:See, I'm sitting here thinking, that needs a little volume.

00:19:17Guest 7:This is a great guitar I'm holding.

00:19:22Guest 2:What is this?

00:19:22Marc:This is a TV Junior, Gibson TV Junior, custom shop reissue.

00:19:27Guest 2:With a P90 single coil pickup.

00:19:29Marc:That's not the same as a PAF.

00:19:31Guest 2:That's a P90.

00:19:32Guest 2:PAF is this double coil, and that's the first.

00:19:35Marc:Now, you know, I'm exclusively a garage guitar player.

00:19:39Guest 2:Yes.

00:19:40Marc:I don't play out.

00:19:41Marc:No.

00:19:42Marc:And I'm not sure what I'm looking to you for.

00:19:44Marc:Yes, but I'll help you.

00:19:47Yeah.

00:19:48Marc:Now, okay, so you do Metalocalypse, which is a cartoon that many of the metal people are very excited about and also regular people that aren't necessarily metal people.

00:19:56Marc:It's on Adult Swim.

00:19:58Marc:It's about a heavy metal band.

00:20:00Guest 2:Yes.

00:20:00Marc:And you compose and play most of the music.

00:20:03Guest 2:All of it, yeah.

00:20:04Guest 2:All of it.

00:20:04Guest 2:So I write the scripts and I write the music and I do the voices and stuff like that.

00:20:08Guest 2:So I get to...

00:20:09Guest 2:It's called job security.

00:20:11Guest 2:I created a job I can't get fired from.

00:20:13Marc:Yeah, we're doing that now in my garage.

00:20:15Marc:I just haven't figured out how to make money.

00:20:17Guest 2:Yeah, the money part's the only thing that's lacking.

00:20:19Marc:Yeah, that's missing.

00:20:20Marc:It's starting to happen.

00:20:21Marc:That's good.

00:20:22Marc:Like right now, if you donate $20 to WTF at WTFPod.com, Brendan Small will play his favorite lick.

00:20:34Marc:Oh, man.

00:20:37Marc:That one?

00:20:38Marc:An Albert King thing?

00:20:39Guest 2:That's an Albert King, yeah.

00:20:40Guest 2:That's all Albert King.

00:20:43Guest 2:I listen to a lot of Albert King, believe it or not, because I went to music school before all this stuff, before all the Death Clock stuff.

00:20:49Marc:Well, let me ask you a question before you go on with that.

00:20:51Marc:You're in music school.

00:20:52Guest 2:Yeah.

00:20:53Marc:You're studying with people like John Mayer, who told me to get that amp.

00:20:57Marc:I'm not claiming that I know him.

00:20:58Marc:He used to hang around comedy clubs, and I was in New York for a brief time.

00:21:01Marc:I said, I need something for a while.

00:21:02Marc:I'm here.

00:21:03Marc:And he said, get the Fender Blues Man.

00:21:05Guest 2:yeah is that a blues man it is i think i i don't know i don't know it's what it is is a big tan tweed amp and it looks like a reissue blues jr the blues jr but it's got one big volume knob and it's one of those no it's got two you can do game if i kick you up here okay and give you

00:21:23Guest 7:Give you a little reverb.

00:21:28Guest 7:Pop that up a little further.

00:21:30Guest 7:Is that dirty?

00:21:31Guest 2:Is that dirty enough for you?

00:21:32Guest 2:It sounds really good.

00:21:33Guest 7:That's great.

00:21:35Marc:And I got none of your high-tech toys, none of your podcasts.

00:21:40Marc:pods none of your mxrs do they make those anymore they make mxr pedals and we actually the first thing i did when i sold the show was i got endorsement deals with tons of different companies including gibson and mxr and um we're in the middle of uh i got an endorsement deal with a coffee company just coffee.coop and they uh they send me maybe like five or six pounds of beans a month that i drink yeah yeah but i'd much rather be in your position

00:22:05Guest 2:Getting guitars.

00:22:05Guest 2:I call it... Well, I know that I've always considered a TV show to be the ultimate temp job because you never know when the fat lady's coming back to work.

00:22:13Marc:But getting back to what I was saying, so you're in music school and you're a funny guy, but obviously this is what you love, I can tell by the way.

00:22:20Marc:Like right now you're talking to me, but there's some party that's like, why can't I just be playing?

00:22:24Guest 2:That's what happens when you put a guitar.

00:22:25Marc:That's why I did it because I enjoy some good guitar playing and there's a couple things I need to learn.

00:22:32Guest 2:but what made what yeah all right what made you uh do the com what made you say fuck this well um you started in boston it's really i started in boston i went to berkeley cause of music and i i think i did go at the same time that john mayer was there i don't know him personally i thought you told me that he was around that's what i that's what i knew that's all he was around

00:22:51Marc:Now, why the comedy thing then?

00:22:53Marc:What the hell happened?

00:22:54Guest 2:Well, you know what happened is that somewhere in the middle of learning music for four years, you kind of start to realize, well, first of all, no one's playing, no one's really playing rock anymore, at least at the time.

00:23:03Marc:I do here in my garage.

00:23:05Guest 2:I rock here.

00:23:06Guest 2:I'm sure that you do.

00:23:07Guest 2:But at the time- What year was that?

00:23:09Guest 2:That was, I graduated in 97.

00:23:11Marc:So what had happened to music?

00:23:14Guest 2:People stopped playing.

00:23:15Guest 2:It was a really dark time for guitar, I thought.

00:23:17Guest 2:I call it the dark ages, the guitar dark, because people stopped playing solos and songs.

00:23:21Guest 2:Metal was not cool anymore.

00:23:22Guest 2:And the stuff that I grew up listening to, like Metallica, Sabbath, and blah, blah, blah.

00:23:27Marc:People who knew how to play period was not cool anymore.

00:23:29Guest 2:Yeah, so, you know, I kind of wasn't into it, and I didn't know what I was going to put with... I didn't know what I was going to do with my guitar, so I knew that I had friends that were going to Emerson College, and I had a buddy who was an intern at Conan O'Brien at the time, and when I was interning at Jingle Houses in New York and stuff, and I just...

00:23:48Guest 2:i thought this guy's got the coolest internship he's doing it he's doing what i wish i could do right and um but that's after you knew you already had a very specific and mind-blowing craft in place i knew how to play guitar fast pretty much that's to me to me i listened to like a lot of albino you did you listen out to me yeah

00:24:09Guest 2:like all those like you know all the shredders have you seen those shred videos where people oh yeah dub I laughed I mean I never I'm not a good laugher I think for the most part but I laughed until my face hurt when I saw um the shred series Steve Vai shreds in Denver that is the best one and Paco De Lucia is pretty good I haven't seen that one that's a beauty because the people that are doing those these if you don't know these are videos of people who are great guitar players being overdubbed by people who know how to play guitar but they do it badly on purpose

00:24:38Guest 2:It's one of the funniest things in the world because Steve Vai, who I think is, you know, he's an ultimate guitar hero and a guy who've actually, who's done voices on my show and I've become friendly with him.

00:24:50Guest 2:It's one of the funniest, this guy in like Finland overdubs bad guitar on top of a really great looking solo.

00:24:58Guest 2:Like you can tell that Steve Vai is just really selling it with his face.

00:25:01Guest 2:There's so much emotion.

00:25:02Marc:And the guitar's got like four necks in that thing.

00:25:04Guest 2:It's like a three neck guitar.

00:25:06Guest 2:Yeah.

00:25:06Marc:So it's so pretentious.

00:25:08Guest 2:It's out of tune.

00:25:09Guest 2:The pickups are buzzing.

00:25:10Guest 2:It just sounds terrible.

00:25:11Guest 2:And he's acting like, and he's got this bravado about him and just that juxtaposition works.

00:25:15Marc:It's great.

00:25:16Guest 2:It's so funny.

00:25:17Marc:I laughed so hard the one time.

00:25:19Guest 2:Yeah.

00:25:19Marc:And the Paco de Luce one is great because it's a classical guitar.

00:25:22Marc:So the guy who overdubbed it did it with an acoustic, but you just like, it's just a tangling of strings.

00:25:28Marc:And then at some point he breaks into deliverance.

00:25:30Marc:and it synced up perfectly with the lucio like making that face like oh it's pretty good and the audience is i mean and the audience in this world is loving it too it's hilarious but i know there's a lot of copies of it out there but if you can find the original i think they're just called like shreds in denver like it's saint somebody saint

00:25:50Guest 2:something oh that's the guy who put him up on youtube yeah yeah and i saw him on like jimmy kimmel at one point they brought him up oh to talk about those yeah yeah so okay so you you leave berkeley and then you get an internship where oh i well i was uh still at berkeley what happened was i i got i got an internship at jingle houses in new york what is that it's it's a place where they write the music for commercials and stuff so i sat there and i watched people write music you know they right they had a job they had to do it very quickly you can write and read music

00:26:17Guest 2:I, um, not really that well.

00:26:18Guest 2:I'm like one of those guys that graduates from high school who didn't really know how to read.

00:26:21Guest 2:That was the part you didn't do.

00:26:22Guest 2:You're just like, I just want to play pretty much.

00:26:24Guest 2:And my theory is good.

00:26:26Guest 2:I know all my modes and scales and all.

00:26:27Guest 2:Yeah.

00:26:28Guest 2:Yeah.

00:26:28Guest 2:And I know all that stuff really well, but it's just like, if you throw music in front of me, I never practiced it.

00:26:32Guest 2:I'm like, I don't, I don't care.

00:26:33Guest 2:It's not going to come up.

00:26:34Guest 2:And how's your ear?

00:26:36Guest 2:It's pretty good.

00:26:37Marc:Like, can you, like, can you do like, um, do you listen to Angus Young?

00:26:42Guest 2:Yeah.

00:26:42Marc:Can you play Angus Young?

00:26:43Guest 7:Yeah.

00:26:45Yeah.

00:26:45Guest 7:Like that?

00:26:57Marc:Oh, shit.

00:26:58Marc:That's half of a... That would take me three days to figure out.

00:27:02Guest 2:But the thing is that it's just like, you know, stupid voices and all that stuff you do as a kid.

00:27:07Guest 2:Like, you do impressions on all that stuff.

00:27:09Guest 2:That's all guitar for me, too.

00:27:10Guest 2:You just do impressions of...

00:27:12Guest 7:Bye.

00:27:21Guest 2:You know I'm messing it up.

00:27:24Marc:But you have to know where that is in your mind and the connection to your fingers.

00:27:28Guest 2:Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing.

00:27:31Guest 2:That's muscle memory at some point.

00:27:34Guest 2:That's not tough.

00:27:35Guest 2:You figure that part out.

00:27:37Marc:So you can do that, yet you go on stage at the same time knowing how to do that.

00:27:41Marc:You're like, I'm going to put that aside and do the Boston voice.

00:27:43Guest 2:I'm going to do the stupidest thing I can think of.

00:27:46Guest 2:And yes, I do categorize comedy as being, if it's stupid enough, maybe I'll do it.

00:27:50Marc:What's that character you do?

00:27:51Guest 2:The old guy?

00:27:52Marc:Captain Mustache, which is basically- But didn't that start as a, wasn't it originally a Boston comic?

00:27:58Guest 2:Yeah, I still do it that way too.

00:28:00Guest 2:What do you call him?

00:28:01Guest 2:He was just like, he's an old, basically he was- I knew the guy you're talking about.

00:28:04Guest 2:There's like eight guys that it is, kind of like a combination.

00:28:07Guest 2:When I was starting to do stand-up in Harvard Square,

00:28:09Marc:Right.

00:28:11Marc:You started at the Hong Kong.

00:28:12Guest 2:At the Hong Kong, yeah.

00:28:13Marc:I started at Catch a Rising Star.

00:28:14Guest 2:Yeah, yeah.

00:28:14Marc:And there was a guy, I forget his name.

00:28:17Marc:He had a mustache and glasses.

00:28:18Marc:He's kind of shaky.

00:28:19Marc:Hey, how are you, Mac?

00:28:20Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:28:21Marc:How's everything going with you?

00:28:22Marc:You want a coffee?

00:28:23Marc:You want a medium regular?

00:28:25Guest 2:Yeah.

00:28:27Guest 2:So stupid.

00:28:28Guest 2:It's the best accent in the world.

00:28:30Guest 2:It is the best.

00:28:31Guest 2:That was the whole thing while I was at Boston.

00:28:32Guest 2:If there's one thing I will leave here with, it may be a musical education, but I'm going to learn how to do that accent, or at least a really... Where'd you grow up, though?

00:28:42Guest 2:In...

00:28:43Guest 2:California.

00:28:44Guest 2:I was born in the Midwest in Springfield, Illinois.

00:28:48Guest 2:Then I grew up in Salinas, California, which is just like a... It's outside of San Francisco, right?

00:28:52Guest 2:Yeah, it's the Steinbeck country.

00:28:54Guest 2:So, I mean, it's a tumultuous, overcast kind of place.

00:28:57Marc:So you grew up in a shanty?

00:28:58Marc:It may as well have been.

00:29:00Marc:At times, going out with the family in the large truck with the pans rattling on the sides?

00:29:05Guest 2:Yeah, and well, it's basically... Trying to get farm work?

00:29:09Guest 2:Exactly.

00:29:10Guest 2:Well, that's the thing.

00:29:11Guest 2:Steinbeck, I think...

00:29:12Guest 2:He put it the best way, which was basically that it's the place where you go to shoot your retarded friend in the back of the head for killing a lady.

00:29:20Guest 2:It's the best place to do that, bar none.

00:29:22Guest 2:Yeah.

00:29:23Guest 2:So that was Salinas, and I was there, and I remember going there from the Midwest and coming there as an eight-year-old and going, these kids, the white kids, they can't conjugate the verbs.

00:29:34Guest 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:35Guest 2:And they're throwing rocks at each other.

00:29:37Guest 2:Everyone's mean to each other.

00:29:38Guest 2:I'm like, this place fucking sucks.

00:29:40Guest 2:Yeah, yeah.

00:29:40Guest 2:I better develop a sense of humor about this.

00:29:43Guest 2:In the meantime, I'm going to grab a guitar and listen to Yngwie Malmsteen.

00:29:46Marc:Did you do that in high school?

00:29:47Guest 2:Yeah.

00:29:48Guest 2:It was like when I turned 14 was the big... I don't know.

00:29:50Guest 2:Was that for you also, the big guitar year?

00:29:53Marc:The weird thing about me with guitar is that I was completely... For some reason, my father used to play American Graffiti soundtrack all the time.

00:30:01Guest 2:Okay.

00:30:01Marc:For me...

00:30:02Marc:uh chuck berry i i i was still like what was i 13 and you know 76 or but right so that thing to me was like that was masterful right and then i was in a stage band yeah in uh in high school and some guy named adolf a latino guy knew how to do that like show me how to do that yeah and when i learned how to do that i'm like i think i'm done yeah like i thought it was great but i've always been a blues guy i was never a metal guy but i in high school like i ended up seeing the nudge like three times okay i saw i saw

00:30:32Marc:stanley clark and ray gomez okay with his band i saw mclaughlin because my buddy dave was a guitar head and he was classically trained sure saw blackmore uh okay with rainbow i saw van halen on their first tour

00:30:56Guest 2:Yeah.

00:30:57Guest 2:Richie Blackmore's so badass.

00:30:58Guest 2:Is he?

00:30:59Guest 2:Yeah, he is.

00:31:00Marc:I mean, I like the Deep Purple stuff.

00:31:01Marc:I never got into the Rainbow stuff.

00:31:02Marc:But still, when you talk to me, I would rather listen to them doing Hush than them doing Highway Star.

00:31:09Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:10Marc:Only because I got such a blues-based brain.

00:31:12Marc:So my ex-wife was a big metal head.

00:31:15Marc:Right.

00:31:15Marc:And I can listen to it, and I can listen to Metallica, but it doesn't move me the same way as sort of like ACDC.

00:31:21Guest 2:Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, they're both great.

00:31:24Marc:This is so funny, this heavy pick, because I took lessons from a guy named Vaughn McMillan, who only played with heavy picks, and he had me playing with a stainless steel pick for a while, and then a rock.

00:31:35Guest 2:A piece of rock.

00:31:36Guest 2:I'll tell you, guitar is filled with this magical pick theory, or this magic amp theory, this thing that just sells amps, guitars, and picks to people like me all the time.

00:31:46Guest 2:And it's taken me 20 years of guitar playing to realize that it doesn't matter what the pick is.

00:31:50Guest 2:Yeah.

00:31:50Guest 2:All you need is a good guitar and a good amp and everything else is your fault.

00:31:54Marc:Right.

00:31:54Guest 2:And that's the saddest thing I can say.

00:31:56Marc:I am sort of like, and we talked about this the other night, I become more of a purist.

00:32:02Marc:My ex-wife got me one of them pods where you got 8 million amp sounds and a million things I don't understand and you got to program that.

00:32:09Marc:For me, if I can play a Fender through a Fender amp and dirty it up if it's got two volume things on it, I'm good.

00:32:16Marc:That guitar you're holding, let me see it.

00:32:18Marc:I'll show you where I'm at.

00:32:19Guest 2:Let me put this around this way.

00:32:22Marc:Here we go.

00:32:23Marc:Maybe I need a guitar lesson real quick.

00:32:25Guest 2:Yeah, yeah.

00:32:27Guest 2:That's a great guitar.

00:32:28Guest 2:I mean, you can't go wrong with that.

00:32:35Marc:Absolutely, yeah.

00:32:37Guest 5:Yeah.

00:32:44Guest 5:Like, I can do that.

00:32:45Guest 7:You got it, yeah.

00:33:02Guest 3:I can use a little help on that rhythm.

00:33:05Guest 3:I'm just keeping the tempo.

00:33:08Guest 2:Well, listen, you've got the thing that I would... If I were your guitar teacher, first of all, I'd say, like, you don't need... I mean, you want to play blues?

00:33:23Guest 5:I can do that.

00:33:24Guest 2:You can do it, yeah.

00:33:25Guest 2:How do I shred, though?

00:33:26Guest 2:Oh, how do you shred?

00:33:26Guest 2:Well, that's where it takes, like, the... That takes the time.

00:33:30Guest 2:I just want to know how to shred.

00:33:31Guest 2:I mean, if you... Let me get this... Oh, man.

00:33:33Guest 4:One problem.

00:33:34Guest 4:Yeah, and that's another problem.

00:33:36Guest 4:I have a playing guitar.

00:33:39Guest 7:I Sweat I immediately start sweating You gotta it's just all I

00:33:56Guest 2:What the hell just happened?

00:34:04Guest 2:Holy shit.

00:34:05Guest 2:One other thing that happens with shredding is the conditions have to be right.

00:34:08Guest 2:That's what I tell people that are learning how to shred.

00:34:10Guest 2:You have to have enough gain.

00:34:14Guest 7:Right now, we're not quite set up for shredding.

00:34:22Marc:And the fact that you can do that as clean as it is, because, you know, when you jack up the game, it's a little more forgiving, isn't it?

00:34:42Guest 2:It is sometimes.

00:34:43Guest 2:You know what, though?

00:34:44Guest 2:I mean, it depends.

00:34:45Guest 2:You can't fake it.

00:34:45Guest 2:You can hear the mistakes.

00:34:46Guest 2:I mean, the thing that makes you a good guitar player is when you start recording yourself.

00:34:49Guest 2:You start hearing where the problems are and all that stuff.

00:34:52Guest 2:And that made me a better guitarist almost than anything else was sitting there with a naked tone without any reverb or anything.

00:34:59Guest 2:But, yeah, it's all sitting with a metronome.

00:35:01Guest 2:You know what they say?

00:35:02Marc:So, of the practices.

00:35:04Guest 2:Yeah.

00:35:04Guest 2:It's just boring.

00:35:06Guest 2:It's having a high school career with no girlfriend.

00:35:08Marc:So now we got this thing where you've got Metalocalypse, where you're actually doing exactly what your dream was, and you're doing the comedy as well.

00:35:16Guest 2:Yeah, pretty much.

00:35:17Guest 2:I get to have my cake and eat it too, which is pretty cool.

00:35:20Guest 2:And, you know, it's hard for me to think of a cooler job, but at the same time, you know, it's TV, so you know your number's up at some point.

00:35:30Marc:Yeah, but the thing is, is that when you have that audience, like the one thing that has been determined is that, you know, comedy has gotten popular with some fairly groovy type of kids.

00:35:39Marc:There's a lot of comedy nerds out there.

00:35:40Marc:And there's, you know, tons more metal nerds.

00:35:44Marc:And the thing is, like, comedy sort of comes and goes, but it seems that metal is here to stay.

00:35:49Marc:Forever.

00:35:50Guest 3:I think it's true.

00:35:50Guest 3:Yeah, I think it's true.

00:35:51Marc:So the issue with Metalocalypse is that generations, the thing about music is that I still listen to the music that my father listened to, and that's what got me into guitar.

00:35:59Marc:Right.

00:36:00Marc:And even when Zeppelin, I mean, I listened to Zeppelin, but I was already in high school, so that was 77.

00:36:05Marc:They were almost done.

00:36:06Guest 2:Yeah.

00:36:07Marc:But yet it's still there.

00:36:08Guest 2:It's still there, yeah.

00:36:08Marc:So it's all still going to be there.

00:36:10Guest 2:No, musically, I'm not joking.

00:36:12Guest 2:I mean, people think like, oh, I mean, somebody came up to me at the San Francisco Comedy Festival, and they said, hey, Brendan, I love the show.

00:36:19Guest 2:I love how you're taking the piss out of metal.

00:36:20Guest 2:And the truth is that I actually really like it a great deal.

00:36:23Guest 2:Yeah, I don't feel that.

00:36:26Guest 2:I mean, that's not the goal anymore.

00:36:28Marc:Well, you're not taking the piss out because the thing that I think is interesting is that the music holds up.

00:36:33Marc:And the people that love metal, they feel like it's a homage.

00:36:38Guest 2:It's a celebration of metal.

00:36:40Guest 2:And the people that I think that metal's a joke probably think that I'm taking the piss out of it.

00:36:44Marc:But you've got metal guys on the show.

00:36:46Marc:I mean, who has done voices on that show?

00:36:48Guest 2:I just got Kirk Hammett like a week ago to come back.

00:36:50Marc:Were you able to play with him?

00:36:51Guest 2:No, but we talked guitar and stuff like that.

00:36:54Guest 2:It's really funny because I got him.

00:36:55Guest 2:He's one of the first voices I got to do on the show, and it's been almost five years ago.

00:37:00Guest 2:And then he came back and wanting to do more.

00:37:02Guest 2:Now he's become a fan of the show and just a super cool guy and just really fun to hang out with.

00:37:07Guest 2:And Steve Vai too?

00:37:07Guest 2:Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, a lot of my guitar heroes.

00:37:10Guest 2:Ace Frehley came and did some stuff this season.

00:37:12Guest 2:It's been really great.

00:37:13Guest 2:Just musically, it's just so different than comedy.

00:37:15Guest 2:And you sing?

00:37:16Guest 2:If you want to call it singing, yeah.

00:37:18Guest 2:They call it Cookie Monster voice?

00:37:19Guest 2:Kind of Cookie Monster voice.

00:37:21Guest 2:Kind of...

00:37:21Guest 2:Yeah.

00:37:23Guest 2:We're being sued by Sesame Street right now.

00:37:24Guest 2:Are you really?

00:37:25Guest 2:No.

00:37:25Guest 2:But wouldn't that be funny?

00:37:26Marc:But isn't that a common thing to call it?

00:37:29Guest 2:Yeah, it is.

00:37:30Guest 2:My ex used to call it Cookie Monster voice.

00:37:32Guest 2:It is kind of that low guttural, that kind of lower kind of thing.

00:37:36Guest 2:That seems to be the thing.

00:37:38Guest 2:And it's more of a percussion instrument than singing.

00:37:40Guest 2:Exactly.

00:37:46Guest 2:To be totally honest, something along those lines.

00:37:49Guest 2:Yeah.

00:37:49Guest 2:so when i'm making the music and stuff and again like i said i'm not joking when i'm doing the music stuff this is my only opportunity to really play guitar so i'm going to try to make it cool yeah so the thing is that if you've just got this kind of you know guttural percussion on top of stuff all the melody's got to be in the guitar so you got to have to have you know so but what you're playing was a lead what's a what's a metal rhythm

00:38:11Guest 2:Like, I mean, this is, this is like, this is one song I was playing called, it's called Thunder Horse.

00:38:19Guest 2:Is that as gany as that gets?

00:38:20Guest 2:That's probably.

00:38:31Guest 2:So something like that, you know.

00:38:39Guest 2:Something like that, yes.

00:38:44Fuck yeah!

00:38:50Guest 2:Fuck yeah!

00:38:54Guest 2:So like that kind of stuff, you know.

00:38:56Guest 2:I love that I'm playing that through a Fender Tweed on an old like a... To me, it's a testament to your chops.

00:39:01Guest 2:Oh, thank you.

00:39:01Guest 2:I don't know.

00:39:02Marc:Because like any lesser metal guy would have come in and go, I can't do it through that amp.

00:39:07Guest 2:Yeah, you know, hopefully this won't be held against me sometime in the future.

00:39:10Fuck me!

00:39:10Marc:No, I want people to be clear that there's no pedals here.

00:39:13Marc:We're dealing with a blues... What do I call it?

00:39:15Marc:A blues junior.

00:39:16Marc:It's a blues junior.

00:39:17Guest 2:It's a good amp.

00:39:18Guest 2:I like it, yeah.

00:39:18Marc:And a single P90 on a Gibson Les Paul TV junior.

00:39:22Guest 2:You know, I did a show called Home Movies a long time ago.

00:39:24Marc:I wanted to talk about that because people love you for that and they don't realize that you're this metal monster.

00:39:28Guest 2:They don't... Well, there's a little bit... There's a little...

00:39:31Guest 2:tiny doorway into that inside of home movies but um but yeah when i did that you know the show kind of it got canceled twice yeah um on upn once and then on adult swim and it just kind of never really i mean it found its audience way after so now people like the show were the other voices on that didn't sam cedar do a voice on that sam cedar did a voice a bunch of john benjamin a bunch of the dr katz people like uh jonathan katz it's the same production company yeah

00:39:55Guest 2:A lot of comics, you know.

00:39:59Guest 2:It was kind of like what Metalocalypse is with kind of my metal heroes with that show at the time.

00:40:05Guest 2:And it was just this tiny little thing.

00:40:06Guest 2:You know, we're all inside of Boston.

00:40:08Guest 2:We didn't know anybody else outside of Boston.

00:40:10Guest 2:And Paula Poundston was an original voice.

00:40:13Guest 2:Oh, wow.

00:40:13Guest 2:You want to hear something?

00:40:14Guest 2:I don't like cartoons that much.

00:40:16Marc:I don't watch them that often.

00:40:18Marc:And people criticize me for it.

00:40:20Guest 2:It's good for comedy and it's also good for, you know.

00:40:24Marc:Now, what about groupies, man, with the rock and roll?

00:40:26Marc:But mostly, isn't it mostly like, you know, frustrated teenage boys?

00:40:30Guest 2:There's a lot of that.

00:40:31Guest 2:And then there's like, you know, you know,

00:40:36Guest 2:I'd have to say that there are a lot of girls out there that are really interested in rock bands and stuff like that.

00:40:41Guest 2:No.

00:40:42Guest 2:Yeah.

00:40:43Guest 2:The last tour we did, they come out of the woodworks and stuff.

00:40:46Guest 2:And at the time, and still I have a girlfriend, so it's a very frustrating place to be.

00:40:52Guest 2:And I can go to my girlfriend and blame her for that somehow.

00:40:55Marc:Sure.

00:40:56Marc:Like, I could have done so much.

00:40:58Guest 2:Yeah, and make her life miserable.

00:40:59Guest 2:It's not a good thing to do.

00:41:00Guest 2:Yeah, you run them right out.

00:41:02Guest 2:They'll just go.

00:41:03Guest 2:Yeah, they'll just tell you to go fuck yourself.

00:41:05Guest 2:Yeah.

00:41:06Guest 2:I guess I like you.

00:41:08Guest 5:Yeah, there's a... One more guitar lesson, I think.

00:41:10Guest 2:You think so?

00:41:10Guest 2:Okay.

00:41:12Guest 2:I can do whatever, yeah.

00:41:16Guest 5:Let's see.

00:41:18Guest 5:Picking.

00:41:18Guest 5:But see, now, you know... Sorry, buddy.

00:41:21Guest 5:That's all right.

00:41:21Guest 5:You know your scales.

00:41:23Guest 5:Yeah.

00:41:23Guest 5:Right?

00:41:24Guest 5:Sure.

00:41:24Guest 5:and i you know like i don't let me see i'll use the heavy pick like this is mark this is you playing i just want to make sure i just want to make sure i want to make sure no one thinks this is me that was the best part of the podcast he wanted brendan wanted to make sure i know i did that with all sincerity everyone knew the guitar changed hands this has nothing to do with him

00:41:48Guest 7:Yeah, yeah.

00:41:51Guest 2:I could work.

00:41:51Guest 2:That's something I could work with.

00:41:52Guest 7:I could help you with that.

00:41:58Guest 2:It's not bad.

00:41:59Guest 2:It's pretty fast, right?

00:42:00Guest 2:It's not bad.

00:42:00Guest 2:The thing is, like, the whole thing with getting all that fast stuff is knowing what your tempo is, you know?

00:42:05Guest 2:And playing that.

00:42:06Guest 2:So if you have, like... Like, okay, so...

00:42:15Guest 3:That's it.

00:42:19Guest 3:Yeah, you got it.

00:42:22Guest 3:Hey, listen.

00:42:22Guest 7:I can't fake that?

00:42:27Guest 2:Did you see the mistakes there?

00:42:29Guest 2:When you do it that way, I can tell that you're faking.

00:42:31Guest 2:I can tell you're full of shit.

00:42:33Guest 7:Let's try another one.

00:42:39Okay.

00:42:40Guest 3:You know what?

00:42:40Guest 3:I love it.

00:42:41Guest 3:I say don't change a thing.

00:42:42Guest 3:It's making me laugh.

00:42:45Guest 3:You know what, Mark?

00:42:47Guest 3:You're a good guitar player.

00:42:53Guest 2:You are... Yeah.

00:42:55Guest 2:You know what?

00:42:55Guest 2:I have to say, the mark of a guy who knows what he's doing on guitar is that it doesn't matter how fast or slow he plays.

00:43:01Guest 2:It's that he's got just enough vibrato to sell it.

00:43:04Guest 7:Yeah.

00:43:07Guest 2:Yeah.

00:43:08Guest 4:Not bad.

00:43:19Guest 4:Not bad.

00:43:19Guest 4:That was me.

00:43:23Marc:Yeah.

00:43:26Marc:My problem is I don't have control of the scales enough to make different options.

00:43:31Marc:If I'm trying to learn a riff, which I never did that.

00:43:33Marc:I always just played with feeling how I wanted to play it.

00:43:36Marc:So I never picked up licks until occasionally Jimmy Pavino at Conan would show me blues licks.

00:43:42Marc:I'd be excited because they're gateways.

00:43:44Marc:He showed me that Albert King riff and a couple of things and I would listen to Mike Bloomfield.

00:43:48Marc:But because I don't have enough control over where the notes repeat themselves, if I'm trying to learn something, I'll start down there and I'll end up way up here without realizing naturally just to go there.

00:43:59Guest 2:It's funny.

00:44:00Guest 2:I don't know.

00:44:00Guest 2:I mean, guitar is just about showing up prepared.

00:44:03Guest 2:It's just if you know what you're doing and if you want that lick bad enough, it's yours.

00:44:08Guest 2:I think the reason that I became...

00:44:11Guest 2:You know, competent on guitar was because of my first real guitar incident, which was total humiliation.

00:44:21Guest 2:Humiliation.

00:44:22Guest 2:What happened?

00:44:22Guest 2:I entered a guitar competition when I was 14 years old, and I'd been playing... Maybe I was 15.

00:44:28Guest 2:So I'd been playing for about a year and a half of guitar.

00:44:31Guest 2:And, you know, I wasn't bad.

00:44:32Guest 2:You know, I...

00:44:33Guest 2:you know yeah yeah and then a couple of things i've been listening to joe satriani and i thought i could you know i was deluded you know step out on the ice a little bit but my buddy he's he said you know we went to our local guitar store and he said hey look there's a poster guitar competition you play three to five minutes of music you uh it has to showcase uh musicality uh technical ability and showmanship

00:44:56Guest 2:And he said, let's enter because you can win this piece of shit Yamaha guitar.

00:45:02Guest 2:This pearl essence.

00:45:03Marc:Was it a good guitar to you at the time?

00:45:05Guest 2:It was a free guitar to us at the time.

00:45:07Guest 2:So we thought that that was important.

00:45:09Guest 2:So we enter and I've got about two weeks to put something together.

00:45:13Guest 2:And during those two weeks, I took guitar very seriously for the first time in my life.

00:45:17Guest 2:Yeah.

00:45:18Guest 2:Stayed up till two o'clock in the morning.

00:45:19Guest 2:Woke up at like six in the morning.

00:45:21Guest 2:Yeah.

00:45:21Guest 2:Played, played, played, played.

00:45:22Guest 2:Got home early, you know, and just played and played and played.

00:45:25Guest 2:Finally, the day of the show comes.

00:45:26Guest 2:And I'm the youngest one there, I think.

00:45:29Guest 2:And I've probably, in my mind, I'm like, I can do this.

00:45:33Guest 2:But I didn't really realize what it would be like to be on stage.

00:45:35Guest 2:I had not factored in the idea of an audience or any of that.

00:45:38Guest 2:Choking.

00:45:38Guest 2:And what that would mean to me.

00:45:40Guest 2:Oh, boy, was I in for a lesson.

00:45:44Guest 2:what happened oh it was awful it was the worst day of my life up until that point i had never like i didn't know that the world could be such a cold and horrible place what happened well okay so first of all i'm in salinas steinbeck country shoot your retard from the back of the head yeah yeah you know uh and uh

00:46:02Guest 2:there's a bar and i'd never really been in an adult bar either as like a teenager and i was very you know nervous vulnerable teenagers sure did you have long hair not yet i think i was trying to grow it out at the point it just wasn't happening yeah right yeah and i had like a stupid silk shirt on i was fat and knocky kind of like you know like braces still i think oh yeah just a just a mess you know bad skin everything

00:46:24Guest 2:Just, yeah, just the kid that you want to go and give a hug to if you ever go back to high school.

00:46:29Guest 2:You poor son of a bitch.

00:46:30Guest 2:Give little Brendan a hug.

00:46:34Guest 2:So, you know, we're waiting outside.

00:46:35Guest 2:I'm listening to some kid, like, rip off, like, a Steve Lukather solo from Rosanna in front of me and just eating shit.

00:46:41Guest 2:And I'm like, wow, these people are really eating shit.

00:46:43Guest 2:The audience is making fucking mincemeat out of them, you know.

00:46:47Guest 2:So they finally introduced me.

00:46:48Guest 2:And the other thing is, you know, when you play out of an amp at bedroom volume, it's a very different thing.

00:46:54Guest 2:Than playing through a Marshall full stack in front of like a bar full of smoking.

00:46:59Guest 2:It'll plow you over.

00:47:00Guest 2:Oh, yeah.

00:47:00Guest 2:You don't know.

00:47:00Guest 2:It's like when someone draws a caricature of you and exaggerates your worst feature.

00:47:04Guest 2:Right.

00:47:05Guest 2:That's what a loud amp will do.

00:47:07Guest 2:Yeah.

00:47:07Guest 2:So a guy hands me a thing.

00:47:09Guest 2:He's like, what kind of sound are you?

00:47:11Guest 2:And I'm like, I don't know.

00:47:11Guest 3:Distortion.

00:47:13Guest 2:I don't know.

00:47:13Guest 2:okay when the guy just yeah makes it as loud as possible the local djs there now we have brennan small his influence has already been here he's been playing for a year and a half let's go brennan and my guitar is totally out of tune i look over to try to tune it my hand is dancing around i can hardly grab onto the thing my i have like i have like nervous like uh yeah yeah uh youth on set parkinson's oh

00:47:37Guest 2:Oh, no.

00:47:38Guest 2:It was horrible.

00:47:39Guest 2:I was like, that's good enough.

00:47:42Marc:You couldn't get it into it?

00:47:43Guest 2:It was freezing outside.

00:47:44Guest 2:My guitar buckled.

00:47:45Guest 2:It was horrible.

00:47:46Guest 2:So I can't get into it.

00:47:47Guest 2:I'm trying desperately.

00:47:48Guest 2:I can hardly even grab my guitar.

00:47:50Guest 2:My knees are now actually knocking on each other.

00:47:53Guest 2:Mm-hmm.

00:47:53Guest 2:um and uh it's time to start and i have this this whole piece with the beginning middle and end that i wrote and there was an original composition and you know there's a part where i was gonna wow them and you know like make faces at the audience and like just stuff that's you know oh it's not gonna happen it's just not gonna happen none of this is gonna happen you're fighting disappearing right my sister somewhere in the middle of this thing uh she uh she asked she asked to come my parents asked to come i said no no this is i gotta do this by myself yeah you know

00:48:19Guest 2:My sister said, I'm going to come.

00:48:21Guest 2:My sister's got like older cheerleader friends.

00:48:23Guest 2:They're all attractive and stuff.

00:48:24Guest 2:They'll look at me and stuff.

00:48:25Guest 2:She brings all of her friends.

00:48:26Guest 2:Right.

00:48:26Guest 2:Somewhere in the middle of me, it sounds like I'm strangling six individual cats.

00:48:34Guest 2:For each one of the strings.

00:48:35Marc:Yeah.

00:48:35Guest 2:And amplified loud.

00:48:37Guest 2:And people just kind of averting their eyes.

00:48:39Marc:Like were they putting their hands on their ears?

00:48:41Guest 2:Yeah, kind of like doing that and then looking up and like, I don't know.

00:48:44Guest 2:Somewhere in like almost like the crowd parts and the light shines on my sister's table and the light shines on me and the music all goes away.

00:48:50Guest 2:And she looks at me like, what's happening up there?

00:48:53Guest 2:And I'm like, I don't know.

00:48:56Guest 2:And I'm editing the piece.

00:48:57Guest 2:I'm like, we're not going on for nothing because I'm not going to land that one.

00:49:01Guest 2:And I've never listened to worst guitar playing in my life.

00:49:04Guest 2:And I'm just as amazed as the audience is.

00:49:06Guest 2:It's the shittiest, shittiest night of my life.

00:49:09Guest 2:Oh, no.

00:49:11Guest 2:And my buddy who's talking into it also blows his.

00:49:15Guest 2:He goes the other way.

00:49:16Guest 2:He's going to play acoustic.

00:49:17Guest 2:Right.

00:49:17Guest 2:And do something that sounds like the beginning of like Crazy on You.

00:49:20Guest 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:49:21Guest 2:Yeah, whatever.

00:49:22Guest 7:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:49:24Guest 2:Some kind of like acoustic.

00:49:25Guest 2:And his guitar is bouncing all over his knee.

00:49:29Guest 2:It's just like someone unleashed stage fright onto all these cocky guitars.

00:49:33Guest 2:And everyone's just dying a thousand deaths.

00:49:35Guest 2:It's like the beginning of Saving Pride.

00:49:37Guest 2:Everyone's getting shot to pieces.

00:49:40Yeah.

00:49:40Guest 2:holding their entrails yeah and that everyone's yeah holding their guitars broken in pieces on the way their egos are just flushed away how'd you put it together after that i mean you know what it was it's it's it's the profound moment in my kind of like uh in my creative life which was basically i went home that night and i looked at my guitar i looked at my hands and i'm like what happened out there you know what the fuck what happened kid what i

00:50:03Guest 2:How did we let that happen?

00:50:04Guest 2:I am me.

00:50:06Guest 2:And I buckled and I turned into a coward.

00:50:10Guest 2:And I, oh my God, how could I allow that to happen?

00:50:14Guest 2:And I just basically said to myself, I can't let that happen again.

00:50:19Guest 2:I know I can play guitar better than that.

00:50:21Guest 2:Yeah.

00:50:21Guest 2:There's got to be a way to, I mean, I had not even known what an audience would be.

00:50:27Guest 2:Right.

00:50:27Guest 2:From that day, I mean, it took me like a decade to get in front of an audience and be able to think clearly, you know, and be able to have your own thoughts.

00:50:34Guest 2:And not just get carried away with the noise.

00:50:36Guest 2:Yeah, you know, even with like comedy and stuff like that.

00:50:38Guest 2:Sure.

00:50:38Guest 2:You know, there's an amount of time that has to pass before you're

00:50:41Marc:Yeah, there's moments where I still panic.

00:50:43Marc:And when I did radio, where you're like, oh, my God, there's a silence here.

00:50:47Guest 2:Yeah.

00:50:47Marc:Where to, like, intentionally say, like, just shut up.

00:50:50Marc:Yeah.

00:50:50Marc:Just, you know, just sit in it for a minute.

00:50:52Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:50:53Marc:What's the worst that can happen?

00:50:54Guest 2:Absolutely.

00:50:55Marc:Now, when you do comedy, though, like, the...

00:50:58Marc:i think the the thing that people always say about comedy and about music is that you know when you're with a band you know there's you got four other guys up there absolutely you know and it's about you guys you know all working together and and when you're doing comedy yeah it's just fucking you and the relationship is very emotional it's very connected yeah and you have no distance whatsoever right right right but it's a different thing yeah

00:51:21Marc:But I imagine that the reward of playing a great fucking riff with a bunch of guys and you're all fucking hitting on all cylinders has got to be transcendent.

00:51:30Guest 2:You can't compare it to comedy.

00:51:33Guest 2:For me, I don't know.

00:51:34Guest 2:I consider myself a dabbler.

00:51:37Guest 2:I don't make a living out of comedy.

00:51:39Guest 2:I go and do it to keep my chops up in one way or another.

00:51:42Marc:Well, you do cartoons.

00:51:43Marc:I mean, you are making a living out of comedy, but stand-up specifically.

00:51:46Guest 2:Yeah, yeah, stand-up specifically.

00:51:47Marc:And you do a lot of character stuff, too.

00:51:48Guest 2:Yeah, I'll do a lot of character stuff, and that's more of my forte.

00:51:51Guest 2:But yeah, my few experiences with really, really loving stand-up were the times where things are happening in the moment, you know?

00:52:00Guest 2:Right.

00:52:01Guest 2:Right, right.

00:52:01Guest 2:Or it's just like improvisational.

00:52:03Marc:When you really get into a groove with a band, the feeling after the song is done is like you've just re-entered the atmosphere.

00:52:10Guest 2:You know what?

00:52:11Guest 2:Totally.

00:52:12Guest 2:Absolutely.

00:52:13Guest 2:After doing the whole death clock thing, playing death metal with Mastodon, six nights on, one night off for eight weeks, I got to do a show here in Los Angeles at the Baked Potato with Mike Keneally.

00:52:26Guest 2:with gene hoagland and uh rick musolem on bass and we played jeff beck tunes and we played uh steely dan yeah and we played uh anything but metal and it was and it was improvisational and it was so much fun it was just it was connecting and uh paying attention to each other on stage and improvising it was the most fun i've had in so much i bet so long i bet yeah well that was good talk man that was good talk you want to play us out i'll play us out

00:52:53Thank you.

00:53:00Marc:Okay, that was Brendan Smalls on the... Brendan Small, sorry.

00:53:04Marc:I know a Robert Smalls.

00:53:06Marc:I'd like to thank you for joining us here at the garage looking over the barrio here in Echo Park.

00:53:13Marc:And hope you have a great night and be careful.

00:53:17Marc:If you drank a little too much, maybe have a friend drive you home.

00:53:20Marc:And we'll be here next week.

00:53:23Marc:I think we're going to have some special people sitting in with us.

00:53:26Marc:But I don't know, we haven't called them yet.

00:53:29Marc:And this is going on a little long, but thanks for listening.

00:53:40I'm Aaron.

00:53:52Marc:Hey, it's Mark.

00:53:56Guest 1:How you doing, man?

00:53:57Marc:Good.

00:53:57Marc:How you doing?

00:53:57Marc:What are you doing?

00:53:58Marc:You just sitting there sending me emails?

00:54:00Guest 1:I had some ideas.

00:54:01Guest 1:I just don't mention it.

00:54:02Marc:All right, hold on, hold on, hold on.

00:54:03Marc:Everything's cool.

00:54:04Marc:What, are you sitting there with a patient now?

00:54:06Guest 1:No.

00:54:07Marc:All right.

00:54:07Marc:Well, let's talk about this idea.

00:54:10Marc:Let me see if I got the email here.

00:54:12Marc:Not manic, colon.

00:54:17Marc:Friend patient likes me.

00:54:18Marc:Has 8,000 acres in Rio Doso.

00:54:20Marc:Running cattle and real cowboy.

00:54:22Marc:Still rides bulls at age 59, but it's time to quit.

00:54:25Marc:We'll let you have as much land as you want.

00:54:27Marc:Put a studio on it.

00:54:28Marc:or playhouse or theater.

00:54:30Marc:Don Imus can make use of some competition.

00:54:33Marc:He likes, Imus, an idea.

00:54:34Marc:If you can see it and conceive it, you can do it.

00:54:36Marc:Now, what are we talking about here?

00:54:38Marc:I can have some land?

00:54:41Guest 1:He'll give you the land.

00:54:42Guest 1:Right now, he's a very good guy.

00:54:46Guest 1:He's a very good patient.

00:54:47Guest 1:I don't know what his assets are, but he owns 8,000 acres.

00:54:49Guest 1:He's got a couple of brothers.

00:54:51Guest 1:And his life has been just riding bulls right up until yesterday.

00:54:55Guest 1:But he had a seizure, grandma's seizure on Sunday, another one on Monday.

00:54:58Guest 1:Drives all the way in from Rudolph to see me because I'm the guy who's taking care of him.

00:55:04Guest 1:I suggested just, you know, I said, first of all, you got all this land.

00:55:07Guest 1:Why don't you use it?

00:55:08Guest 1:Why don't you, like, fill my scout ranch?

00:55:10Guest 1:Get my house.

00:55:10Guest 1:See if they want an extended area to send Boy Scouts to.

00:55:14Guest 1:You know what I mean?

00:55:14Guest 1:Number one.

00:55:15Guest 1:Number two, I said, Don Amos.

00:55:16Guest 1:Yeah, he listens to Amos.

00:55:18Guest 1:I think he's got this thing going from not far from, I guess, up over there near Santa Fe.

00:55:22Guest 1:Yeah, I know where that is.

00:55:23Guest 1:And I said, you know, maybe get in touch with Imus and see if he wants to extend his holdings and increase his share because he gives a lot of, supposedly, a lot of access to kids to go up there and play cowboy and to rehabilitate their screwed up lives in the cities, right?

00:55:42Guest 1:Right.

00:55:42Guest 1:And then I was thinking, you know,

00:55:44Guest 1:If he's got this land and you've got some connections, you've got a few people that you want to set up there near Ruidoso.

00:55:50Guest 1:I don't know where it is near.

00:55:51Guest 1:You have to go out and look at it.

00:55:53Guest 1:And you want to set up access there and put up a playhouse and whatever, a little bit of that, and run a show place out of there and be a radio personality, which you would seem to like to do, you've got an option here to do it.

00:56:12Marc:No, no, I mean, I think it's an interesting idea that, you know, I'm doing it out of my small garage behind my house, but somehow or another that if I had a lot of land, that that would somehow make it better, easier for me to do radio, just because Imus is down the street.

00:56:30Marc:I like the idea.

00:56:31Marc:That somehow or another, in your mind, look, Imus has got property nearby.

00:56:36Marc:So I figure if you get my son set up on a compound, that him, yeah, maybe he could just hijack some of Imus' signals.

00:56:42Marc:Or maybe, who knows, Bob, maybe I could call Imus and say, hey, why don't I just run a wire from your place down to my house?

00:56:51Marc:And we'll, you know, we'll just, I'll be on your, like, a secondary channel.

00:56:56Marc:You know what?

00:56:58Marc:Let's have the bull rider call Don Imus.

00:57:00Marc:And then you get me and you conference me in.

00:57:02Marc:And then you can be there, too, in case people aren't clear about it.

00:57:06Marc:So let me get this idea.

00:57:07Marc:We got the rodeo rider and we got Don Imus and you on the phone.

00:57:11Marc:And you say, look, Don, my son wants to do radio.

00:57:14Marc:And my friend who rides bulls, he's on the phone, too.

00:57:17Marc:He's got somewhere not far from you.

00:57:21Marc:So I figured there's got to be a way we can work this out.

00:57:23Marc:You know what happened after that?

00:57:25Marc:They would take you to the hospital.

00:57:27Marc:They would take you to the hospital.

00:57:31Marc:But I like the idea.

00:57:33Marc:It's a good idea.

00:57:34Guest 1:Yeah, you could pull something off.

00:57:36Guest 1:I mean, you know, at your point in life, you know, you're doing this, and I don't know what you're doing, but whatever you're doing, if you're happy, that's great.

00:57:43Guest 1:But if you've got an opportunity to do something that seemed like a great idea, there's nobody else out there in Ruedoso, you know, broadcasting or having a playhouse, I mean,

00:57:52Guest 1:You've got all these connections.

00:57:53Guest 1:You've got all these talents.

00:57:55Marc:All right, let me just ask you something practical.

00:57:57Marc:All right, so let's examine the playhouse idea.

00:58:01Marc:So now how do you see that exactly?

00:58:03Marc:So he's got a lot of land out there.

00:58:05Marc:Now there's dirt roads to the areas.

00:58:07Marc:Like he's going to give me a – let's say he gives me five acres.

00:58:11Marc:Is that near the highway?

00:58:13Guest 1:I don't know.

00:58:14Guest 1:I have no idea how it's set up.

00:58:15Guest 1:I'm sure it would be – I'm sure he would give you anything you wanted because –

00:58:19Guest 1:He's, he's, he's, he would do that for me.

00:58:21Guest 1:Okay.

00:58:22Guest 1:All right.

00:58:22Marc:All right.

00:58:23Marc:So let's say we get it kind of near the highway and then we get, you know, we, we have someone design a playhouse.

00:58:28Marc:All right.

00:58:29Marc:And again, then, okay.

00:58:30Marc:So then I got the playhouse in Rio.

00:58:32Marc:So it's near the highway and we can maybe even put on the billboards, not far from Don.

00:58:36Marc:I miss his ranch.

00:58:38Marc:And I call a couple of my friends.

00:58:41Marc:I say, you guys, you want to come do a comedy show?

00:58:43Marc:And they go, where?

00:58:45Marc:How much does it pay?

00:58:46Marc:I'm like, well, no, it's just a playhouse.

00:58:48Marc:It's in Rio Doso, New Mexico.

00:58:50Marc:It's not far from Don Imus' place.

00:58:53Marc:I figure we'll see what we make and we'll split it.

00:58:57Marc:You'll come out.

00:58:57Marc:This is my dad's idea.

00:58:59Marc:It's great.

00:59:00Marc:Well, I don't know.

00:59:00Marc:Hold on.

00:59:01Marc:I've got to call him and ask him where the fuck you fly into because I don't know.

00:59:07Marc:Wait, let's wait.

00:59:09Marc:Where would they fly into?

00:59:11Marc:Do they drive out?

00:59:12Marc:Where do you fly into to go to Rio de Janeiro?

00:59:14Marc:Albuquerque?

00:59:16Guest 1:Albuquerque or let me think.

00:59:20Guest 1:I guess Lubbock.

00:59:21Guest 1:You go to Lubbock, too.

00:59:22Guest 1:Lubbock could work.

00:59:23Marc:Oh, this is a good sell.

00:59:25Marc:All right, so look, you can either fly into Albuquerque or Lubbock, Texas, and then you rent a car and you drive out.

00:59:31Marc:How far of a drive is it from Albuquerque?

00:59:34Guest 1:About two and a half, three hours.

00:59:36Marc:Oh, not a problem.

00:59:39Marc:So you come down to Mark Maron's Playhouse near Don Imus' place.

00:59:43Marc:You drive three hours.

00:59:44Marc:I'm sure we'll get a crowd.

00:59:46Marc:We just got to put it in the Albuquerque paper and the Lubbock paper, and maybe we'll run a bus or something.

00:59:53Marc:Dad, let's open a casino.

00:59:55Marc:Does this guy know any Indians?

00:59:56Guest 1:It's not far from the Miscalera Apache.

00:59:59Marc:okay all right all right this is a this is a workable idea i'm glad you sent me these emails because yeah i was a little i was i woke up with a little that feeling like i don't know what i'm gonna do with my life and i took my vitamins i opened up my emails i'm like thank god my dad has an idea that's not manic

01:00:24Guest 1:I believe in using all resources that are handed to you.

01:00:31Guest 1:Okay.

01:00:32Guest 1:You're handed 8,000 agents with all your talents and smarts and contacts and experience.

01:00:37Guest 1:Theoretically, you could set up a trailer there and just test it out.

01:00:41Guest 1:All you need is a freaking microphone and a tower, right?

01:00:44Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:00:45Guest 1:You got a radio station, yeah.

01:00:47Marc:Okay, all right.

01:00:47Marc:Well, okay, I understand.

01:00:48Marc:That's a little more practical than the Riodoso Playhouse, I think.

01:00:54Guest 1:Yeah, but you might be able to get a great audience.

01:00:56Guest 1:I mean, this, you know, the other guy that you don't like, you know, Bill Summers, who has this radio show on Saturday morning, 8 o'clock.

01:01:02Marc:This is the guy that sells the memory revitalizer?

01:01:05Guest 1:Correct.

01:01:06Marc:Look, as much as I may not like him, I went to his office and bought six jars of memory revitalizer.

01:01:13Marc:I had to say to the guy at the office, I go, come on, really?

01:01:16Marc:I mean, what's in this?

01:01:21Marc:And he had to tell me that it's all good stuff.

01:01:25Guest 1:Yeah, that was Roy, the rotund Roy, who will miss anybody and lose some weight.

01:01:29Guest 1:Meanwhile, Bill Summers had a heart study on this new thing I'm doing, which you find interesting.

01:01:35Guest 1:It'll be set up by the time you get to New Mexico or whatever that is.

01:01:38Guest 1:But we're doing central arterial pressures.

01:01:41Guest 1:And if your blood pressure is high, even though your brachial pressure is okay, your central pressure is high, then you're on dosing of arginine and citrulline as well as D3s.

01:01:54Guest 1:Over three months, you come down to normal.

01:01:55Guest 1:There's big studies going out there now.

01:01:57Guest 1:It's going to hit the main line, and we're going to be in on it.

01:01:59Guest 1:I'm going to be lecturing on that.

01:02:01Marc:You're going to lecture on that?

01:02:03Marc:Yep.

01:02:03Marc:I can have you down at my theater in Rio Doso if you want to.

01:02:06Marc:If you think you can pull in some people.

01:02:10Marc:We'll put a billboard up and everything.

01:02:11Marc:Dr. Marin, don't miss it.

01:02:13Marc:This weekend only.

01:02:14Marc:Lecture on arginine.

01:02:17Marc:I think it's all coming together for us.

01:02:19Marc:I think we've got a real future.

01:02:21Marc:Call the guy who rides bulls but can't do it anymore.

01:02:23Marc:Tell him to build the theater and then tell him about the vitamin radio comedy presentation.

01:02:31Marc:This is going to be great.

01:02:33Marc:We're actually going to be in business together.

01:02:34Marc:I can't wait.

01:02:37Guest 1:I think someplace in all this mishmash that we're talking about, I think theoretically it is obvious.

01:02:44Guest 1:All it takes is somebody with a big pair of gonies to say, hey, come on in here with your deep pockets.

01:02:49Guest 1:Let's set up a studio for three months, see what happens, and just get me to contact with a...

01:02:55Guest 1:with a radio station that I can be a mainstream radio coming out of Ruidoso, New Mexico.

01:03:00Guest 1:Okay.

01:03:01Marc:Yeah, I like the fact that I've, you know, several times now made it seem ridiculous in its conception, and you've laughed a lot at it, but we still come around to the idea that you're like, no, no, no, no, this is doable.

01:03:13Marc:This is doable.

01:03:14Marc:I appreciate the tenacity of your fantasy.

01:03:17Guest 1:How did I just get started in the radio out there in the middle of nowhere?

01:03:20Marc:Well, I'm working out of my garage here.

01:03:22Marc:But we're doing okay with the podcast.

01:03:26Marc:But I'll keep this in mind.

01:03:29Guest 1:Okay.

01:03:30Guest 1:I love you.

01:03:30Guest 1:Bye.

01:03:31Guest 1:Bye.

01:03:37Marc:All right.

01:03:37Marc:Well, now you know where I come from.

01:03:39Marc:That's who I come from.

01:03:40Marc:That's my dad.

01:03:42Marc:Hold on.

01:03:42Marc:We didn't get one of these in.

01:03:45Marc:Pow!

01:03:47Marc:Oh, I just shit my pants.

01:03:49Marc:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com, along with WTF shirts, Nerdcock shirts.

01:03:55Marc:Perhaps we'll be seeing the Sex Clown shirts.

01:03:57Marc:I haven't decided.

01:03:58Marc:But you go there.

01:03:59Marc:We're putting videos up.

01:04:00Marc:Go there.

01:04:01Marc:Oh, you've got to check out the...

01:04:02Marc:The guy who did our theme music made this great video of himself making the theme music.

01:04:08Marc:And that's at WTFPod, along with some other videos.

01:04:11Marc:Enjoy.

01:04:12Marc:And please, if you're interested in comedy, go to PunchlineMagazine.com for all the comedy stuff.

01:04:18Marc:All right?

01:04:19Marc:Are we good?

01:04:20Marc:Send some money if you want, because I like it.

01:04:24Marc:Don't you?

01:04:24Marc:Oh, that was fucking ridiculous.

01:04:27Marc:All right.

01:04:28Marc:I love you.

01:04:29Marc:I do.

01:04:30Marc:I really love you.

01:04:32Thank you.