Episode 579 - Nick Tosches
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters i'm mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show thank you for being here i appreciate it it's nice to talk to you so i want to get you know be right up front with you about this i i did not watch the oscars yet
Marc:I'm recording this before the Oscars because I wanted to have a clear head.
Marc:I know like after the Oscars are done, it's going to be a whole new world out there.
Marc:Everything's going to be different.
Marc:No one's going to be thinking the same.
Marc:No one's going to have the same feelings about anything.
Marc:Everything will be different.
Marc:And I just wanted to have this one hour here or this one intro where I'm still of pure mind and not fucked up.
Marc:In my head.
Marc:The Oscars are the Oscars.
Marc:I generally watch them for a little while.
Marc:I enjoy the pomp and circumstance of American royalty, which are celebrities occasionally I enjoy.
Marc:I like movie stars, and I've been candid about that.
Marc:You know, I don't fawn over them.
Marc:I'm not some sort of...
Marc:pandering fanboy but I do you know from a very young age I've always been sort of excited by the movies and movie stars and I am sort of excited to say that I've had a couple of Oscar nominees on this here show
Marc:And I don't know who's going to win.
Marc:I don't know if Michael Keaton will win, but I do know that he's episode 349 of this show.
Marc:I do know Laura Dern.
Marc:I don't know if she's going to win.
Marc:I hope she wins.
Marc:I love her.
Marc:She's episode 430 of this show.
Marc:You get the app.
Marc:You upgrade to premium app.
Marc:You can go listen to those.
Marc:The Michael Keaton was phenomenal.
Marc:Laura Dern, phenomenal episodes of this show.
Marc:There's also two other nominees, Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, both available still for free.
Marc:That's episodes 565 and 566.
Marc:Incredible conversations with creative people.
Marc:But yeah, I've always been fascinated with movie stars, but also fascinated... I was thinking about this because my guest today is...
Marc:Nick Toshis, one of the great explorers of darkness, one of the great portals to the possibility and reality of human corruption and the battle in our hearts with the darkness, with the evil.
Marc:Not even so much major evil.
Marc:Yes, a major evil.
Marc:He definitely deals with some major evil.
Marc:But Nick Toshius was one of those doorways for me.
Marc:You know, I don't know where it started for me.
Marc:If you have a fascination with darkness, can you place a memory on it?
Marc:Where does it start?
Marc:Where does it start?
I don't know.
Marc:I vaguely remember seeing those horrible true detective magazines on the rack at Skaggs Drugstore in Fair Plaza in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:Then I became sort of fascinated with the mafia.
Marc:I got a book that all the pictures of the...
Marc:of the gangsters dead and alive those crime scenes i must have been like eight or nine i think i got my parents to buy it for me at the airport it was an encyclopedia of the mafia i could tell you right now what longies willman looked like i had this weird obsession with uh just the faces black and white pictures of of of darkness manifesting in people i had i had a just a compulsive fascination with same with um tabloid hollywood old tabloid hollywood i'd created a collage in my room when i was a kid
Marc:maybe 12, 13, like Fatty Arbuckle and Jane Mansfield and all those horrible sort of early tabloid stuff.
Marc:I was sort of fascinated with just looking at those pictures, looking at the juxtaposition between this extreme celebrity, this almost royal feeling and mythic presence, and then just these gutted police shots and fucking sordid business.
Marc:You know, bodies, missing heads and whatnot and murder scenes and the mob.
Marc:And I just it just blew my mind.
Marc:Then there was also, of course, Hitler loomed large.
Marc:If you were fascinated with darkness, like, who is that guy?
Marc:Look at all this.
Marc:I was just looking at pictures.
Marc:I was just fascinated with pictures.
Marc:of people who are emanating darkness.
Marc:And then as I got older and I started to sort of look at art and I got very involved with the art of Joel Peter Witkin and then reading Burroughs and sort of excavating human darkness.
Marc:And it just sort of, it all hangs there in my heart somehow.
Marc:You know, you just don't want to get... The weird thing about having a compulsion towards darkness or a morbid fascination, there was, you know, Manson period with me as well, is that, you know, when you really get close to it, you know, it's very...
Marc:It's disconcerting because there's part of you that wants to drift in.
Marc:And if you're ever unfortunate enough to have that moment where you're like, I think I've crossed a line, you know, you got to either hope you get out or figure out how to live there.
Marc:If you're in, you're in.
Marc:Well, Nick Toshis always represented one of those doorways for me.
Marc:And I can't even remember when I read the first Nick Toshis book I read.
Marc:But I believe it was Dino.
Marc:And Dino is, what's the full name of the book?
Marc:Dino, Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams.
Marc:Someone recommended, it's a biography of Dean Martin.
Marc:And someone recommended that book to me and said,
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:Dean Martin doesn't matter.
Marc:This is not about Dean Martin.
Marc:This is about darkness.
Marc:This is about that period in Hollywood.
Marc:And I have a real fascination with that period in Hollywood.
Marc:But there's no better celebrity biography ever written.
Marc:than Dino, the Nick Tosh's book.
Marc:It just, it blew my mind.
Marc:It was written like a novel and I couldn't fucking put it down.
Marc:Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, Dino.
Marc:Check that, that was my entry into Nick Tosh's.
Marc:He built a life based on research around Dean Martin, and he just struggled for access into whatever was going on inside of Dean Martin through the world that was swirling Dean Martin through it.
Marc:By the end, there's an emptiness to it.
Marc:There's a very profound and not necessarily that corrupt of a darkness.
Marc:that he finds in an aging Dean Martin.
Marc:And then I went on, and then you just start, that opened the door.
Marc:And then I got Hellfire, which was his first biography of Jerry Lewis, which is spectacular, a little more poetic, a little bit leaner.
Marc:Then Dino, and then I got his, he did some nonfiction stuff, some journalist stuff.
Marc:The Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll, The Birth of Rock and Roll and the Wild Years Before Elvis.
Marc:Great book.
Marc:Introduced me to the amazing Winoni Harris and a few other people.
Marc:And then there's the book Country, another journalistic book, The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll, which gets a little hung up on research, but not a bad book.
Marc:And then there's the nonfiction books.
Marc:He wrote several novels.
Marc:But there's also a tricky book called King of the Jews about Arnold Rothstein, one of the original gangsters.
Marc:And it has a lot of Christ mythology.
Marc:He's very hung up with the Jesus and with the sin and with the evil and with the transgression.
Marc:And I recently read part of his new novel, which was...
Marc:Me and the Devil, which was a little bit autobiographical, quite disturbing about an aging man with a younger woman.
Marc:Deals with blood.
Marc:But the bottom line is, is that Toshis...
Marc:was almost a mythic character to me.
Marc:And getting the opportunity to talk to him was a bit overwhelming because there are people that I think possess the keys, man.
Marc:There are people that I think possess the keys, the understanding of darkness.
Marc:Everybody wants to have an understanding of darkness without losing themselves in it.
Marc:That's the allure of it.
Marc:How do I get a little bit of that without becoming that or without being enveloped in it?
Marc:And there are certain artists that you pick as your guides.
Marc:And he was sort of one of mine.
Marc:So meeting him was sort of a big deal.
Marc:Oh, yeah, before I forget, I believe it's been over like, it's been about three months.
Marc:I can find out exactly, but I know it's been, I think it's over three months or maybe about three months that I haven't had any nicotine.
Marc:But during this Nick Toshis interview, I did have the lozenges out, and he did show some interest in them, and it did provoke a bit of conversation about addiction and whatnot.
Marc:So that's what's happening if it's unclear when you reach that point in the interview.
Marc:um what else oh i'm i apologize i was on girls yesterday so go dvr that or don't dvr it go on demand it go watch it online go do hbo on the go or if you're watching it i i had a great time doing it sometimes things just get away from me and i forget to plug myself but you can certainly go watch it i think i was funny
Marc:I met with Nick Toshes at the Bowery Hotel in my hotel room.
Marc:I waited for Nick Toshes.
Marc:I had my mic set up and I was nervous.
Marc:You know, all I'm looking for is the conversation to flow.
Marc:If anything happens above and beyond that, that's great.
Marc:If that doesn't happen, it's trying for me.
Marc:And when I'm looking at somebody who I consider one of the great dark Buddhas, there are a few that I've known in my life that I've met and some that I haven't met.
Marc:Joel Peter Wittgen, Jerry Stahl, William Burroughs, Hubert Selby.
Marc:There are people, the windows man, the ones that went in, navigated, came out, told the tale.
Marc:Dark Wizards.
Marc:I didn't know anything about what Lenny Bruce actually did.
Marc:I mean, I listened to him.
Marc:But I mean, imagine to sit there and watch a guy like that as opposed to listen to records 20 years after the fact.
Marc:It's got to be a different thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me, Lenny Bruce always seemed sort of dated.
Guest:Even when he was doing it?
Guest:Well, I don't really, you know, I mean, he was still alive when I was a kid, but my cousin Louie had the records and seemed a little dated.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Well, because he was using a lot of those old show business, you know, like tropes and bits and mimicking.
Marc:And I think all of his references were kind of like he was sort of a shitty comic that kind of broke open, became this other thing.
Marc:So, like, it was all kind of sourced and shit that seemed kind of dated and hacky.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know,
Guest:I liked Stanhope's comment on him, you know.
Guest:It's just like, you know, if this guy had lived, he could be, like, doing an Andy Rooney spot.
Guest:Who knows, you know, if these people would be any good if they lived.
Guest:Well, that's a fucking good question, though, isn't it?
Guest:It's a great question.
Guest:I mean, I wonder.
Guest:Sometimes, you know, the temptation... The inclination is, if you like somebody, think that, well, they would have only gotten better, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:God knows.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Well, you lived.
Marc:We lived.
Marc:You're a little older than me.
Marc:But I wonder that a lot about people.
Marc:The first time I read your book, and one of the first books I read was Dino.
Marc:And that sent me down this rabbit hole of wondering who the fuck you were.
Marc:And I recommend that book to anybody who gets into show business.
Marc:Like, I tell them, I say, like, it doesn't matter if you like Dean Martin.
Marc:You know, understand what you're getting into.
Marc:Because there seems to be some sort of constant there.
Marc:That you're entering a world of darkness.
Marc:That there's no way around it.
Marc:Even if it was that different time, even if it was the 40s, the 50s, it doesn't matter.
Marc:It seems to me that all the...
Marc:The structure of show business, for some reason, given the money and the idea of entertaining people, there's going to be an emptiness there.
Marc:There's going to be a darkness there that you're going to walk into.
Guest:A complete darkness, complete emptiness, and some things do never change.
Marc:I was trying to figure out how I was going to go about talking to you about this.
Marc:Because the ones I've read, I've read Dino once or twice, and then Hellfire I read, and Country I read.
Marc:That was a lot of research, Country, huh?
Guest:It was research in the sense that it was the first book I ever published.
Guest:And...
Guest:The research was so intense because I was pulling off the writing of it.
Guest:It's much easier to...
Guest:to write a book when you're not writing it.
Guest:You know, when you say this is all for the book.
Guest:That's why you meet these characters that go through life like 30 years working on a book.
Guest:Why did they want to do that?
Guest:Well, now I guess it's a screenplay or something.
Guest:But I've always loved research, but I realize...
Guest:When I'm not doing it for my own self-satisfaction, it's basically to avoid the actual writing.
Marc:But when you do the research and you start going down like that, that rabbit hole of what that music was and these characters that you were going to explore, did at least...
Marc:The process of research gets you to a point of frustration and self-hatred or something to where you were able to burrow into the shit that you really wanted to get to?
Guest:I don't know where self-hatred enters into it.
Guest:But see, back then, it was like real research.
Guest:Now what is research?
Guest:You go on the internet.
Guest:For two seconds.
Guest:All you've got to do is Google it.
Guest:That's research.
Guest:And I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say that...
Guest:Once in a while, I don't do it.
Guest:But you have to be aware when you're doing it that the misinformation is as plentiful, if not more, than the information.
Guest:Whereas, you know, going blind with microfilm and old books...
Guest:It's a completely different deal.
Guest:I don't do much research anymore.
Guest:Then again, I'm going to retire.
Guest:I'm not going to write.
Guest:What do you mean, going to retire?
Guest:Well, you know, I'm now technically older than dirt, so I'm going to have my 65th birthday party very soon and celebration.
Guest:It's not a party.
Guest:To me, a party is not a party unless it has booze.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:But celebration and the retirement may be delusional.
Guest:But at least I'll be retired for one night permanently.
Guest:Yeah, at 65.
Guest:Somehow or another you put the... We associate the two.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:So why the hell not?
Guest:So I'm just going off.
Guest:And celebrating my, what is it, the golden years.
Guest:Oh, yeah, this is it.
Guest:Isn't it called the golden years?
Guest:Yeah, how does that feel for you?
Guest:What a line of shit that is, the golden years.
Guest:You fall apart and that's gold.
Guest:It's about as gold as a commemorative coin.
Guest:It's like 12-carat gold-plated, electro-plated.
Marc:And you just see the nickel under it as it... Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then it tarnishes, you know, the real stuff.
Guest:So... But when did you start?
Guest:You started, you know, you grew up where?
Guest:I was born in Newark, and I grew up in both Newark and Jersey City, and then moved to New York in my late teens.
Yeah.
Marc:My father's from Jersey City.
Guest:Whereabouts, you know.
Marc:He went to Snyder High School.
Guest:Yeah, my cousin Dorothy went to.
Marc:It was one of those things where I always knew he grew up in Jersey City.
Marc:I remember visiting my grandparents over there once when I was really young, and then years later we went back, and he was like, hey, there's my old place.
Marc:I'm going to get out of the car.
Marc:I'm like, why don't you stay in the car?
Guest:Yeah, Snyder, their colors were black and orange, like fucking Halloween or something.
Marc:Yeah, I think I was born in Margaret Haig Maternity.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's where I was born.
Guest:I was born in Jersey City.
Guest:Mayor Haig, named after his wife.
Marc:So you're there in Jersey.
Marc:What did your old man do?
Guest:Well, by the time I was, let's see, what did he do?
Guest:He got out of the service.
Guest:He became a bouncer and then got in the bar business.
Guest:And that was basically what he did.
Marc:And then what were your first jobs?
Guest:He gave me a great job as a porter in his bar.
Marc:What's a porter do?
Guest:Cleans up the puke and piss from the previous night.
Guest:The wadded up toilet paper with lipstick in the ladies room.
Guest:And learns very early on that women are much bigger slobs than men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the first lesson.
Guest:I did that before I went to school in the mornings.
Marc:There's something about that, about being in a bar when you're younger, when you don't know that life, and just having to deal with the aftermath of whatever went on the night before.
Marc:It's sort of a weird entrance into that world of like, yeah, grown-ups are up to something.
Guest:And then to be part of it later on, these vague memories.
Guest:But I...
Guest:I never threw a cigarette butt in a urinal, I remember, in my adult years.
Guest:That's what you learned?
Guest:I remember picking them out, you know.
Guest:And there were none of these sanitary gloves involved.
Guest:Just washed up after.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I wanted to be a writer, a poet, you know, and so I started writing.
Marc:What inspired you to do that?
Marc:Who were you guys, I mean, at that time when you read?
Guest:Well, I was reading just trash.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, but there's something about writing that appealed to me.
Guest:It was...
Guest:I felt the need to communicate, and there was really no one around to communicate to or with.
Guest:And being a coward by nature, writing is a great way to, like, you know,
Guest:communicate whilst you know hiding in a corner facing a wall it's basically an act of fear and then if you're fortunate you get over the fear and then you're stuck with this writing Jones and then you you start to learn how to write right it's like anything else a coward by nature
Guest:yeah yeah well hell yeah I still am I mean I don't want to die right well does that make you a coward or just a person well if
Guest:well person is even more generalized and coward everybody's probably it's got to be a little driven by fear especially those who pretend they're not yeah they're the worst all that bravado these days i don't i don't want to be a person i mean i look around the streets and uh yikes is this my species you know yeah yeah so okay so you start writing you get you know you get your chops and what you come into the city
Marc:Or did you have other jobs?
Guest:I had other jobs.
Guest:I was a snake hunter in Florida.
Marc:How long would that go on for?
Guest:So like a bit.
Guest:So like a bit.
Guest:Well, how'd you get down to Florida?
Guest:Oh, I was just...
Guest:bumming around with this buddy of mine and they were building they were finishing the building of Disney World I guess in Orlando right construction jobs there then we had other jobs and got laid off and
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We ended up drifting south in Florida, tried to rob a boat from a boat basin in the scheme of going catfishing and making a ton of money.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:On a stolen boat?
Guest:Yeah, you know, nothing worked out.
Marc:The plans didn't go, didn't happen?
Guest:Nothing worked out.
Guest:I came back to New York.
Guest:I got married.
Guest:Did you go to college?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I didn't want to.
Guest:I mean, I wanted money to...
Guest:to drink with.
Guest:And back then, I was making $125 a week working for a lovable underwear company at 200 Madison.
Guest:And for $125 a week, you could pay your rent, eat,
Guest:and get drunk.
Guest:Imagine that now.
Guest:I still have the same amount left over at the end of each week.
Guest:It takes a lot more.
Guest:And there's no inflation, the government says.
Marc:All right, so you're here.
Marc:You've done some snake hunting.
Marc:You've cleaned up urinals.
Marc:You've worked for an underwear company.
Marc:And now you're living in New York.
Marc:Where were you living initially?
Guest:My first place in New York was between Central Park and Lincoln Center, 63rd Street, I believe, and the rent was $90 a month.
Guest:For a studio?
Guest:No, one bedroom.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And then when I got married, when I came back from Florida, I was living in a flop house called the Alton House on 14th Street near 7th Avenue.
Guest:And I met this young lady that lived around the corner on 15th Street and 7th Avenue in a real apartment.
Guest:So I married her, or first I snuck out of the flophouse without paying a week's rent with my typewriter, moved in with her, was married for five years, got married in New York, moved down to Nashville, where I finished writing that book Country that you mentioned, and came back divorced.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Nashville at that time.
Guest:I got it out of my blood.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Look, I've been through two.
Marc:I got no kids.
Guest:Why the second time, though?
Guest:That's the one that always gets me.
Guest:Well, I left the first one for the second one because that had to be the answer.
Guest:You was a guy.
Guest:I remember it was $75 to get divorced in Tennessee.
Guest:And this guy, Bart Durham, this black divorce law.
Guest:I'll never forget.
Guest:I'm sitting in his office.
Guest:The phone rings.
Guest:And it's some guy who wanted to know if his divorce was finalized so he could get married.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was you.
Marc:Well, you know, it was one of those things where, you know, sometimes you get married because, you know, you think you sort of...
Marc:you're sort of wired for it somehow or another culturally.
Marc:It's like thinking you need to retire at 65.
Marc:There's something in your brain that thinks like, well, this ought to fucking solve it.
Marc:This is what people do.
Guest:And then you do it, and you're like, what the fuck did I do this for?
Guest:That's right, but did you ever come up with an answer other than that?
Guest:It's what other people did.
Guest:That was part of my reason.
Guest:I mean, I was hanging out in a bar, and at about a certain hour every night, these guys would say, well, I'm going to go home and eat.
Guest:I'll see you in a little while.
Guest:And they'd go home and they'd get a meal and then come back out.
Guest:And I said, that's just how I'm that bad, you know?
Guest:I mean, it's just somebody who feeds you.
Guest:Yeah, it's a good way to, like, never learn to take care of yourself, you know?
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:I guess I don't know what the hell my idea was because I didn't end up having any kids, you know?
Marc:But I'm still working with that.
Marc:I'm still working on that shit.
Marc:I don't fucking know anymore.
Marc:well i mean just you're getting ready for number three or no i think i've gotten too cynical too cynical well i mean whatever the virtues of it are you know the the first one was you know appropriate and seemed like i could have entered the world of a sort of middle class security or some sort you know they should come from a pretty good family grounded the second one was stunning left me crushed me didn't really bounce back
Marc:Well, how long do you stay crushed for?
Marc:A year?
Marc:Maybe three.
Marc:I find that with the heartbreak, if it's deep enough, it doesn't ever really go away.
Marc:It just sort of kind of mumbles along.
Guest:Well, it's good to live with heartbreak.
Guest:I mean, heartbreak's easier to live with than most women.
Guest:It's sort of like once you give up hope, life is more pleasant.
Marc:Yeah, there is.
Marc:There's a little bit of a weight to it.
Marc:To hopelessness and to... Yeah, there's a freedom to it.
Guest:And then you reach a certain age and it's sort of like, huh, who's going to take care of me?
Guest:Let's see.
Marc:Can I do this myself forever?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I think that's what kids ultimately are.
Guest:Yeah, but don't kids usually...
Guest:They dump their parents.
Guest:Yeah, throw them in the home.
Guest:That's the real heartbreak, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So at least we avoid that.
Marc:Well, back when you were a kid, and probably maybe just after I was a kid, I mean, you know, if grandma was dying, you did it in the house.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:You go over there, there was a hospital bed in the living room.
Guest:There seemed to be something not unlike love.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Among... Family?
Guest:Among family.
Guest:And now it seems like, whoa, I don't know.
Marc:It's hard to figure out because, you know, this sort of weird selfishness and I don't know if it's narcissism or what, but the sort of importance of self is elevated above all else.
Guest:I mean, do these like Gordon Gekko types that are aging as we speak?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, with the... The billion dollars?
Guest:The cute wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the kids that are raised by the...
Guest:300 pound Haitian nannies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The dog with the dog walker.
Guest:Do they experience love?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Or is it sort of like fun?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's an historical thing that they have no consciousness of.
Guest:Fun, love.
Guest:They go through the motions.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:It's sort of like the end of Dino.
Marc:I mean, you know, what's in there?
Marc:What's in there?
Guest:yeah dean i would say in a way was an inspirational character i mean he showed how to deal with all that stuff that destroys people just by removing himself partly from it yeah have you figured that out from his own life right well when what's like let's go back to nashville for a second so you were in nashville for a few years
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why there?
Marc:Just to research?
Guest:I had gone down.
Guest:Somebody offered me a job down there.
Guest:And I went down.
Guest:It was a great job.
Guest:Doing nothing, basically.
Guest:Drinking.
Guest:And it was pleasant down there.
Guest:I really enjoyed Nashville in those days.
Guest:I've been back.
Guest:It's not the same place.
Guest:The countryside around there was beautiful.
Guest:I eventually finished that book there.
Guest:And then, as I said, after I got divorced, when I got divorced, I came back here.
Marc:When did you start writing about music, though?
Marc:What drove you towards it?
Guest:Well, it was because there were all these so-called...
Guest:underground rock and roll places where you could write and make like 10 or 15 or 20 bucks even.
Guest:I think that was Rolling Stone.
Guest:It was like 20.
Guest:They paid you 20 bucks.
Guest:So you just saw it as a gig.
Guest:Yeah, it was a way to get published and make a few bucks that since, you know, the big glossy magazines were impossible to break into.
Guest:People these days don't have those opportunities.
Marc:But you weren't in a sense that, you know, it's nicotine.
Marc:I haven't smoked a fucking cigarette in 10 years, but I eat those things all day.
Guest:10 years?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow, God bless you.
Guest:Yeah, the doctor's trying to get me, wants me to take Shantax.
Marc:Yeah, I, you know, this shit will give you the shit.
Marc:Like, I get the nicotine.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm basically addicted to smoking.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:Not to nicotine.
Marc:I thought I was.
Guest:Well, 10 years on these things?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Woof.
Marc:No, the good thing about these, man, is that you can regulate how much you're getting.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, and so obviously you're still addicted because you're taking these pills.
Marc:No, they're candy.
Marc:You suck on them.
Guest:They're nicotine candy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But nicotine's a drug.
Guest:I mean, it's a pill.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:But it's like there's a pleasure to it.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I try not to go to that place.
Guest:Enjoy them.
Guest:I mean, I like this.
Guest:Yeah, poison.
Guest:So 10 years without smoke, but how long without one of these have you gone?
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:I guess a year or so ago, I went about a month without anything, and it was just...
Marc:unbearable the amount of anger that was available to me well have you tried other substances yeah i don't do nothing no more i got 15 years sober 15 years clean i don't do nothing no more yeah i don't do nothing no more you uh well
Guest:Cigarettes, cigars are a pleasure, not an addiction.
Guest:They're great, right?
Guest:I really like them, but I got busted for buying cigars through the internet.
Guest:What, the Cubans?
Guest:Yeah, Homeland Security.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you mean, busted?
Marc:They arrested you?
Guest:I got a notice from Homeland Security.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like if I wanted my impounded goods, come and get them.
Guest:It was like a 20-page document, a day of the paperwork reduction.
Guest:But I was in England recently, and I enjoyed them there.
Guest:I plan to enjoy them at my retirement celebration, my birthday celebration.
Marc:It's one of those things that any average asshole really can afford the best
Guest:of a best cigar it's an affordable luxury really you know what i mean i really enjoy that a cup of coffee yeah i'm i'm good or you know maybe a glass of port but no i don't do anything much anymore i've been i had to stop reef stop smoking reefer because my diabetes because reefer would make me want to eat the worst possible oh yeah it never makes you want to eat like a steak and a salad it's a pint of ice cream
Guest:Yeah, you know, things are just, oh, Drake's ringdings.
Guest:Yeah, a box of those.
Guest:Is the strawberry ice cream enough?
Guest:They'll go well with the butter pecan.
Guest:Oh, fuck yeah.
Guest:Two pints.
Guest:So that's why I stopped smoking reefer.
Guest:And I basically lost my thirst for booze.
Guest:You never got strung out, though?
Guest:Yeah, I've been strung out on a couple things over the years long ago.
Guest:I just basically stopped taking everything.
Guest:I like to be present in my own life, both for better and for worse.
Guest:I'm getting off on that.
Guest:I'm getting off on watching the whole... I never thought the apocalypse would be such a mediocrity that nobody would notice it.
Marc:Such a bore, yeah.
Guest:I'm really getting off on watching the world just completely go to hell
Guest:And looking at all these idiots around me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's terrific.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think the world ended about six years ago.
Marc:Now we're just.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was so dull.
Guest:Everybody's waiting for.
Guest:You know, there's a $300 million Hollywood production here with special effects.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:No, this is the post-apocalypse.
Guest:This is the post-apocalyptic world.
Guest:And they keep making those movies.
Marc:It just keeps repeating itself.
Marc:Have you noticed that as you get older?
Marc:The promotion and the movies themselves.
Marc:It's just this repetition of garbage.
Marc:Seasonal garbage.
Marc:It's just like the same thing over and over again.
Guest:It gets bad when you want to go to a movie theater on a weekday afternoon in the dead of summer just for the air conditioning, and you can't bear the prospect of having that even... You'd rather be in the heat than deal with what you're going to have to put in your head.
Guest:And you always hear, these movies fall down in their face, and you always hear...
Guest:But it'll do well overseas.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're thinking like, what kind of morons?
Guest:Is that like some kind of like American arrogance that, you know, no, that's how we met.
Guest:We shit.
Guest:They eat it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We're exporting the apocalypse.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The subtle apocalypse is making money overseas.
Guest:The United States of America was like twice around the fountain and into the dirt.
Guest:The American dream.
Guest:It was like the only country that ever saw ourselves as a dream.
Guest:No, it's real, Jack.
Guest:And it's over.
Guest:It's no good.
Marc:So back in the 70s, you weren't like a diehard rock and roll guy.
Guest:In the 70s, I always liked the older...
Guest:R&B.
Guest:My cousin Dorothy is older than I, and I listen to a lot of the stuff she listened to.
Guest:Yeah, and so it was rock and roll, and then I sort of...
Guest:Lost interest in that by the 70s.
Guest:It was in the 70s that I lost interest.
Marc:But you weren't part of the whole, like, you know, Legs McNeil.
Marc:Is he a friend of yours?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I wouldn't say friend.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you weren't part of the defining voice of that punk thing.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I didn't even know what the hell it was, to tell you the truth.
Guest:I mean, I remember the 70s.
Guest:A lot of people think I was because I wrote this article in 1969 called The Punk Muse.
Guest:This guy coined the phrase.
Guest:That's not what I had in mind.
Guest:You were misinterpreted and you became... I don't know.
Guest:Well, to live is to be misinterpreted, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Only you know if you're lucky.
Guest:Well, you just go to a deli counter, you know.
Guest:No, I didn't say that.
Guest:So you got kind of lumped in with that crew?
Guest:Yeah, it didn't bother me.
Guest:I mean, it didn't bother me.
Guest:And then, as I said, the music was really tied into just having an outlet, a place to write.
Guest:And a lot of the so-called music stuff I did had, like, nothing to do with music itself.
Marc:That was happening then.
Guest:Or that was happening, period.
Marc:Well, I mean, The Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll.
Guest:Yeah, that was fun.
Guest:That was fun.
Guest:Well, that started out as a column for Cream Magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:More people have told me that that book makes them laugh than any other thing I read.
Marc:Not only that, it makes me laugh, but I didn't know who Winona Harris was.
Marc:So after I read that book, I started amassing those records and listening to them because I had to complete my own education.
Marc:So I mean, it was an informative book.
Guest:Well, it was great stuff.
Guest:And back then,
Guest:If you wanted to hear Wynonna Harris, you had to get the old records, 78s or King LPs.
Guest:These days, you know, it's all available, which is good.
Marc:Which is good, yeah.
Marc:And when you wrote, when you decided to write on Jerry Lee Lewis, which was, you know, that was really the first biography you did, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was a biography.
Guest:It was...
Guest:I don't know how the hell to describe it.
Guest:Jerry Lee fascinated me as a human being.
Guest:And when I write a biography, I have to be completely fascinated by some historical figure whose core is a mystery...
Guest:that remains unsolved and usually has something to do with the mystery in me that is unsolved, even to myself.
Guest:And Jerry Lee struck me as the kind of guy, he's probably the only person I can think of...
Guest:whom egomania fitted was becoming.
Guest:He was also, if, you know, there's no heaven, no hell, but he's going to invent hell just so he can go there.
Guest:And he's a great artist.
Guest:Talk about it strung out and...
Guest:Self-abuse.
Guest:Here's a guy.
Guest:You look at a picture of the so-called Million Dollar Quartet.
Guest:You got Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who on earth?
Guest:What would the odds have been that the last one alive is Jerry Lee?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:He's a great man, a great American.
Guest:God bless him.
Marc:And then also in the book, he played him against his cousin.
Marc:Jimmy Swagger.
Marc:Jimmy Swagger was his cousin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and you had this sort of self-righteousness versus the devil, and it turns out that the self-righteous guy was infinitely more evil in a way.
Guest:Oh, he was a true hypocrite, and Jerry Lee never was.
Guest:I remember Jerry Lee used to...
Guest:pointing out before Swaggart's downfall, he would say, yeah, my cousin Jimmy, the big man, the Holy Ghost feels.
Guest:I like that guy.
Guest:The Holy Ghost feels.
Guest:That's beautiful.
Guest:That's like the word racket.
Guest:I like the word racket.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:One of my favorites.
Guest:It's so all-encompassingly descriptive.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Everything is crooked or people want it to be.
Guest:Everybody has a gimmick.
Marc:Well, that's one of the benefits of... That's one of the good things about America.
Marc:Is that like you want to invent yourself?
Marc:You want to sell some bullshit?
Marc:Go ahead.
Guest:See what you can do with it.
Guest:The market's there.
Guest:The market's there, but the trick is...
Guest:These days, I don't know, what does sell these days?
Marc:Well, who's in charge of the bullshit?
Marc:That becomes a big question.
Marc:Because it seems like it's about 90% bullshit.
Marc:And there's a lot of it.
Marc:And now you've got these machines that are just hungry for content.
Marc:What do you got?
Marc:What can you give us for nothing?
Guest:The people are waiting.
Guest:That was a great revelation to me within the last year that I always thought I was a writer.
Guest:And then I found out the new phrase for writing is providing content.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So if somebody asked me what I did for a living, I would say it was content provider.
Guest:It's like I run into a guy in a bar and he starts talking to me and I say, what do you do for a living?
Guest:I'm an entrepreneur.
Guest:I mean, period.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's not entrepreneur of.
Guest:But I mean, imagine the way people describe themselves.
Marc:Yeah, I'm in the content providing field.
Guest:I mean, that's probably the new euphemism for unemployed entrepreneur.
Marc:Sure, yeah.
Marc:That's something that can happen entirely in your head.
Guest:Yeah, and we have all these experts that are not expert at anything.
Guest:Can you hook up this TV so that it works with the amp properly?
Guest:I only want one remote control.
Guest:Can't find anybody who can do it.
Guest:The computer guy who sits there and does the same thing you do, and you're watching him, and he's getting paid by the hour to do the same unsuccessful thing.
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it's like to hell with everybody.
Guest:I'm enjoying watching everything go down.
Guest:I got two books coming out, so I feel like I've done enough.
Guest:I've done enough.
Marc:You got them coming out now?
Guest:Well, I got one coming out very soon.
Guest:This is my first children's book, my first and last children's book.
Guest:And then I have my next really big novel coming out next summer.
Guest:I finish that.
Guest:It's the one true...
Guest:The one true gospel, it's a true story of Jesus Christ.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it actually is.
Marc:What'd you do for research on that one?
Guest:I studied the Gospels, both the Orthodox ones and the Apocrypha, and read around.
Guest:The basic theological and historical thought now is, well, nothing in the Gospels could have happened
Guest:None of this was possible.
Guest:None of it did happen, and yet I believe.
Guest:It's always written by these believers that can't even believe the pitch.
Guest:So I took it from there.
Guest:I took it from there.
Guest:I got a little inspirational history going.
Guest:So that may be my last book.
Guest:Or I might write a book called Live Wrong, Live Long.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:I mean, like, real, real help for people that, like, you know, how to, like, not, you know, you ever see this guy, Dr. Andrew Wheeler, Violet?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, who buys this guy, you know?
Guest:And it's like...
Guest:He smiles right.
Marc:He's got that beard.
Guest:He smiles right.
Guest:He's got the avuncular beard.
Guest:He's not in it for your money.
Guest:He's there to help.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would just wish he would just keel over and drop dead while he was doing one of his things.
Guest:He's going to help you.
Guest:Eat nuts.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But the guys who...
Marc:Like somebody like Jerry Lee, who can't help but be himself.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So he's going to push the envelope on that.
Marc:But I think it's interesting that the idea that live wrong, live long is that maybe if you're at least honest with your desires and impulses and you push it out into the world, maybe part of your karma or whatever the fuck you want to see is that you're going to live longer than anybody else and you're going to have to live with that.
Guest:Or you just, I mean, I remember thinking when I was in my 20s that, okay, I'll live to be 32.
Guest:That's enough.
Guest:And then it's just sort of like, you know, death doesn't want you.
Guest:You know, it's like, yeah, honestly, that is...
Guest:the most difficult thing because increasingly people not only are dishonest but they don't know what honesty is because they've never met themselves yeah yeah yeah go to a job between lying to your co-workers and your boss lying for a living that's most of your waking hours then you lie to your wife and
Guest:I mean, then you just lie to people in social situations to impress them.
Guest:And now it's so easy with all this communication.
Guest:Social networking platform.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like, I mean, is there honesty anymore of any kind?
Guest:I think, you know, like I said, most people have never met themselves.
Guest:They'll go from the womb to the grave without ever meeting themselves.
Guest:you can meet yourself, you can love yourself, hate yourself, but at least you're there.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, I think that... I don't think anyone can be truly honest because everybody's lying to themselves.
Guest:Well, to a certain... Well, everyone lies to himself, but...
Guest:Honesty is such a gasp because it really upsets people.
Guest:It scares the shit out of them.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:I mean, it really does.
Marc:That's why Stanhope is so compelling.
Guest:You think that's it?
Guest:That's the secret?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Let's say you're going to be honest about how you're feeling or where you're at.
Marc:A lot of times when you're honest, there's a desperation to it.
Marc:Sometimes people are the most honest when they're in the most fear and they need help.
Marc:And I think what frightens me is that when I talk to people, and I've talked to a lot of people one-on-one, is that human beings are built to shoulder the burden of others.
Marc:They can do it.
Marc:But in the culture we live in now, no one's got fucking time for it.
Marc:So you lose that whole element of communication.
Marc:And everybody's just set adrift on their own to sit in their own shit, which I guess you do anyways.
Marc:But I think there was a time, I think, when you talk about when you were younger about family and about that kind of shit, it was sort of understood that at least you had that to fall back on.
Marc:And I think that's gone.
Guest:Well, hence the increased edge to the desperation.
Guest:No doubt.
Guest:There is nothing to fall, nobody's arms to fall back into.
Guest:If you do, you're going to crack your skull open on the street.
Guest:But it's a gas, like, allowing yourself to time, freedom,
Guest:Silence and solitude to truly experience how desperate you are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rather than turn it sideways or shut it off with television or a cell phone or an app.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That can really be accommodative.
Guest:And when you look around with those fresh eyes, you really see, you thought you were desperate.
Guest:Look at the desperation around you.
Guest:You get the clarity.
Guest:I mean, even every one of these smiles and giggles and laughs and
Guest:It chatters.
Guest:It's all total desperation.
Marc:And again, I love it.
Marc:Well, that's the interesting thing about some of the guys you write about.
Marc:When you say that you choose somebody to write about, if you can find that mystery in yourself that you haven't resolved and there's something compelling about how they've wrestled with it or transcended it.
Guest:Or just embody it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you look at somebody like Dean Martin, these are guys that, especially at the end of Dino, and we can move through the other books as well, that at the end, you don't really get an emptiness, but you get a guy that somehow or another, despite everything he's given to the world or however he's been interpreted, he's sitting with the truth of himself, and nobody knows about him.
Guest:If he's fortunate like Jerry Lee to be aware that the truth of himself is always present beside him and not being expounded upon completely.
Guest:If it comes out, it comes out askew by mistake or it slips out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And what about somebody like the Sonny Liston book was fucking phenomenal.
Marc:But did you see Sonny Liston as a victim?
Yeah.
Guest:I saw Sonny Liston, well, it's hard to call a guy who went around beating up old men for change a victim, but yeah, he was.
Guest:And what fascinates me to this moment about Sonny Liston is as a late, great...
Guest:My countryman from Newark, Leroy Jones, Amiri Baraka said he was the big black spook in every white man's doorway.
Guest:It was like white people hated him and feared him and black people wanted nothing to do with him because they were trying to be respectively middle class.
Guest:And...
Guest:Yeah, he was, I mean, he was undefeatable physically, and his soul was so out of place in this world.
Guest:I mean, I've seen letters he attempted to write.
Guest:Well, I wrote about them in the book, those letters.
Guest:Yeah, Liston, you know, what a, I mean, who cares about, you know, these million-dollar baseball players, whether they're on dope or not.
Guest:You know, Sonny Liston was, he's just a great American, I know.
Guest:And, you know, glossed over by, the truly great Americans get airbrushed out of the picture by America.
Guest:It's like taking a cigarette out of Robert Johnson's mouth.
Guest:You see new $100 bills, you look at an old one.
Guest:Benjamin Franklin has a fur collar.
Guest:Not on the new ones.
Guest:It's like, this is a miracle, buddy.
Guest:You get that cigarette out of your mouth, get that politically incorrect collar off.
Marc:Where did they take the cigarette out of Robert Johnson's mouth?
Guest:A postage stamp.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:They're, you know, honoring black history.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like, well, we can honor it, but first we have to clean it up.
Guest:It's like...
Marc:Well, now that you see the end of it, and when you talk about true Americans, like Jerry Lewis and Sonny Liston, how do you define that for yourself?
Guest:People that stand out from the huddled masses yearning to be rich and mediocre people.
Guest:Because free has got nothing to do with this country.
Guest:This country every day is less free, and people accept it.
Guest:They embrace it.
Guest:They don't know what to do with... It's like the tales they used to tell after the Civil War.
Guest:They freed the slaves.
Guest:They got 10 miles down the road, and a lot of them turned back.
Guest:People can't handle freedom.
Guest:People...
Guest:No one in this country should ever make a comment about, I don't see how the German people allowed that to happen.
Guest:Because as a people, we do anything we're told.
Guest:Anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And if you're mediocre enough or big enough con arts, you become a hero.
Guest:When I was a kid, there were very few heroes.
Guest:Now it's like, what do you do for a living?
Guest:Well, I'm a hero.
Guest:A professional hero.
Guest:Hero.
Guest:I mean, what the hell hero?
Guest:I mean, these people get killed in this building downtown.
Guest:It's like nobody...
Guest:Nobody honors the cleaning lady that took the subway down at 5 o'clock in the morning to mop up those floors.
Guest:Anyway, many tangents.
Marc:Well, when you did The King of the Jews, which I go in and out of that book.
Marc:It's a very dense book.
Guest:On a rusting book.
Guest:Strange book.
Marc:Yeah, it is a strange book.
Marc:What was the agenda with that book?
Marc:What were you looking for?
Guest:Oh, he fascinated me because he was the patriarch of organized crime in New York and pretty much the United States.
Guest:In New York, I mean, he inaugurated the dope racket the day dope became illegal.
Guest:He was the mentor to all the more well-known characters from Meyer Lansky to Lucky Luciano who worked when they were kids.
Guest:They worked for him.
Guest:Back in the good old days of New York, I loved that period of New York history to read about it.
Guest:You know, Mayor Walker, Arnold Rustin, when it was a city that never sleeps.
Guest:Now it's, what is it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know how you call this place.
Marc:Well, the interesting thing that I noticed about Hollywood and about New York, too, is that there was a time when there were switchboards and it was a much more intimate landscape.
Marc:And, you know, the sort of hierarchy of both the criminal element and the non-criminal element is pretty well defined.
Marc:Like, I mean, any guy in the street would know who Arnold Rothstein was in New York at that time.
Marc:And now there's no fucking way.
Marc:To know what the hell's going on.
Guest:The criminal element is like a consortium between the governments and the banks.
Guest:We need to stimulate credit.
Guest:Why don't you use the word debt?
Guest:That's what you're talking about.
Guest:We need to get the entire country into deeper debt to make money.
Guest:And there is no more money.
Guest:There are just digits on computer transfers.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Yeah, you can just lose everything because someone forgot a number.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, you got nothing.
Marc:There has been a mistake made.
Marc:We lost a number.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:It's like, well, the tax system is almost like that.
Guest:It's like they can turn like $200,000 into $5,000.
Guest:You know, completely legally, I mean, according to since they make the laws.
Guest:What do you think of Burroughs?
Guest:Oh, a very interesting old crackpot queen.
Guest:You know, basically a science fiction writer with a dirty mind who got very lucky.
Yeah.
Guest:He's funny.
Guest:I mean, a lot of his ideas, they fascinate me only because they're just so bizarre.
Guest:And he had this pseudoscience thing going.
Guest:He had the cure for the common cold.
Guest:He couldn't cure his own cold.
Guest:He had a book.
Guest:He went on a retreat one time.
Guest:I'm going to quit smoking.
Guest:I got the book to teach you how.
Guest:I got to go off to the woods and do it.
Guest:And then there he is smoking.
Marc:Smoking.
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Guest:You know, stylistic, all this stuff with cut-ups, I mean, that's just part of, he cashed in pretty good at the end.
Guest:I like his Nike commercial, his sneakers commercial.
Marc:But he had that idea that I think that we're sort of talking about a little bit, the idea of a nation of rats.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, there is some prophecy to some of the weird shit that he was pulling out of it.
Guest:Well, that's stuff that interests me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because what you have now is that this idea that we were going to live in this kind of big brother-ish type of world.
Marc:And then you realize that, like, not only do we live in it, but we are it.
Marc:And, you know, and that's content.
Marc:That's how you provide content.
Marc:That with all the social networking, you know, that if you have any, you can't do anything without somebody seeing you somehow.
Guest:That's literally true.
Guest:The truth is a lie by nature.
Guest:It's like a Hollywood truth is a lie.
Guest:It's like that universally.
Guest:George Orwell, I mean, this is so beyond his being on target.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, the idea of Orwell was that we'd be up against something oppressive.
Marc:And the truth of the matter is we've embraced it, transcended it.
Guest:We're our own oppressors.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And we love it.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Self-flagellants, you know.
Guest:We just love it.
Marc:Well, when you write a book like the last novel, which was raw to the point of like, because I could not picture you as the protagonist in Me and the Devil.
Marc:I mean, I had to put you in there.
Marc:I got another friend, my buddy Sam Lipsight.
Marc:He's a great writer.
Marc:He's a novelist.
Marc:And whenever I read his books and I talk to him about it, and I say to him, it's like, you know that part where you're doing that girl?
Marc:He's not
Guest:me it's not me it's not me it's it's a fiction it's a fiction that's always the convene out I mean that's that's that's the best thing about you know writing under the rubric of fiction yeah that wasn't me it's a character that's my name but yeah nothing to do with it you know it's like
Guest:But how close was that one to you?
Guest:Oh, let's see.
Guest:How do I give an honest but somewhat accurate answer?
Guest:It was very close to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But not all the way, of course.
Guest:Not all the way.
Marc:Like, how Catholic were you when you were a kid?
Marc:I was not at all Catholic.
Marc:Because something I realized this morning is that the benefit, the gift of Catholicism is this elaborate notion of historical evil and that it has a face and that it has a methodology and that it has a mythology all its own.
Marc:And do you, in the sense of...
Marc:relationship with sin or the devil.
Marc:What are the struggles that go on in your own head about that?
Guest:I really don't have any.
Guest:I'm sort of free of that.
Guest:There might have been someone when I was a little boy.
Guest:My upbringing was not religious.
Guest:The trappings of religious were present.
Guest:There'd be a crucifix on the wall and next to it like a souvenir plaque from Asbury Park that said...
Guest:puppy's love leads to a dog life, you know, things like that.
Guest:It's like my grandmother from Italy would have told you, yeah, sure, Jesus Christ, he really existed.
Guest:But her religion was basically superstition.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It was like she'd see a license plate play that number.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:You know, don't open an umbrella inside the house.
Guest:She had scores.
Guest:And I'm becoming more and more like that the older I get.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I just believe in superstition.
Guest:I mean, I just, I'm superstitious.
Guest:I mean, it makes more sense than any other damn religion I can think of.
Marc:Well, what are some of them?
Guest:Jerry Lee Lewis pointed out, and he was right.
Guest:I went home and checked it.
Guest:The word religion is never mentioned in the Bible, in any language.
Guest:Religion has not been a big part of my life, except I'm fascinated by
Guest:I want to know whether man created the concepts of good and evil for self-protection or he invented the gods first.
Guest:And I think it was good and evil makes more sense.
Guest:And then the God just to protect himself, you know, thou shalt not kill.
Guest:I don't want you killing me.
Guest:So it's like God said, not me.
Marc:Got to make it a universal law.
Guest:Yeah, under punishment of suffering and hell.
Guest:You know what it is basically?
Guest:I don't give a damn about any of these gods or these religions or these things that people kill themselves for or believe in or shake people down over.
Guest:It's like I don't believe in Donald Duck.
Guest:And it's all away from me.
Guest:It's apart from me.
Guest:I like looking at this.
Guest:I sound like a sap, but maybe I am a sap.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I like looking at the...
Guest:Not today, not this gray cardboard colored sky, but I like watching the clouds roll by the sky.
Guest:I like the ocean.
Guest:I like birds.
Guest:I like money.
Guest:I like women's legs.
Guest:I like...
Guest:I like coffee.
Guest:These are a few of my favorite things.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:So when you talk about the good and evil thing, where do you land on that?
Guest:First of all, the world is evil in the most boring way.
Guest:Listen to anybody who's out to save the world.
Guest:They're out to grow fatter, richer,
Guest:off of your ass.
Guest:This is evil.
Guest:I mean, you know, charity.
Guest:That's another great racket.
Guest:People are just evil.
Guest:Anybody, it's a world of evil.
Guest:It's just that evil has become so boring.
Guest:I mean, it's so dull.
Guest:It's like trying to go to the movies.
Guest:Trying to find an evil that's interesting.
Guest:You have to create it.
Guest:You have to do it.
Guest:And then you sit around and say, what a deranged mind.
Guest:He's a guy who had a hobby.
Guest:You bored him, so he was going to make life interesting.
Guest:I'll sever a few heads.
Guest:I'll do some nice things to people.
Guest:Interesting things.
Marc:Like these guys, like all the guys that you were kind of fascinated with, what ultimately did you find out about these guys that helped you out or that made you grow or opened your heart in a certain way?
Guest:Well, one thing they had in common was that they did remove themselves from either...
Guest:By intention or by circumstance, they were removed from this mainstream of flowing mud that we call life in general.
Guest:And I saw that as a road to freedom and salvation.
Guest:I mean, all roads lead nowhere, but at least you look at some characters like that and it's...
Guest:They led exceptional lives.
Guest:They led exceptional lives.
Guest:I believe, as I said, Dean Morton's an inspirational character to me, more so than Jesus, Jerry Lee Lewis.
Guest:Sonny List, in a way, is tragic as his life was.
Guest:We don't turn to these people for inspiration.
Guest:What do we turn to these days?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That's like these books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Guest:I mean, what bullshit?
Guest:Give me a fucking break.
Guest:The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Guest:I mean, it's like Liberace said it better.
Guest:The Unbearable Racket of Being.
Guest:That says it.
Guest:Maybe after I retire, I'll write that book.
Marc:But the idea that it's sort of like, all right, once we get past all the bullshit, all you have is this strange little fucking, this compulsive desire machine that is never gonna be fucking happy and that is never gonna, if it's all bullshit, all you're left with is not really misery, but the truth of a relentless, meaningless process
Marc:that maybe you can find occasional moments of relief in.
Guest:Again, there's inspiration to it.
Guest:You can find it anywhere if you know where to look.
Guest:I mean, embrace the misery.
Guest:Who came up with this embrace shit?
Guest:Do that, embrace the misery, the desolation, the loneliness, and if you do and you realize that you're better off than 99% of the population,
Guest:who don't realize it, who cannot be alone with themselves for 10 seconds, who cannot bear a moment of silence lest they be frightened by the emptiness within them.
Marc:Because in the last novel, in Me and the Devil, it seems to me that's you sort of at the end of the rope of where desire is going to take you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's what it was, and it was like complete pitch black.
Marc:I can't imagine, because I feel like I'm approaching that, that anything you hung any sort of hope on, whether it be love or sex or going to the edge of desire itself, however evil you may see that in your own mind or however it's judged by others, the other side of that, if you come through and you don't do anything heinous, it's going to end up getting you in prison.
Marc:That all you have there is, then you got nothing.
Guest:Well, then you discover new things.
Guest:You discover new things.
Guest:You're back where you started from, basically.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:At least you've had fulfilled desires.
Guest:You come out of the other end of desire.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you realize, okay, you know, that's it.
Guest:You know, that dandruff shampoo is empty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So your desires become I don't want to say strange looks that is a bad implication, but you start to desire like Everything you've you've made like I've we always we most miss We long for what we never knew yeah, and most of us
Guest:live lives of desire, but we never lived, really.
Guest:And so, like, just like life can become a desire.
Marc:Yeah, but it's weird about desire that, like, when you, it seems to me that, you know, when you push it and when you keep going, you know, that...
Marc:There's no sort of like, all right, I did it.
Marc:It's just sort of the hunger expands.
Guest:Yeah, there's no such thing as satiety, satisfaction.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:That's not part of the deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's like...
Guest:oh if only I if only I and then you then that was it yeah there's no I'm good yeah I'm sad I'm sad there's like deathly resignation to one's life but there's no satisfaction there at all right you know it's like oh I didn't put the razor blades by the bed you know for good reason you're absolutely right satisfaction is not part of the deal for more
Guest:than, say, the satisfaction you would get from this present cigarette.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's as fleeting as that.
Guest:As a matter of fact, they just sell satisfaction.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, they try to.
Marc:I mean, the entire advertising industry is based on it.
Marc:That's the biggest lie there is.
Guest:Well, it's the business of lying.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, satisfaction, I mean, it's never going to happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's never going to happen.
Marc:So I guess to be... You're taking these pills, you should know something about them.
Guest:Dude, like, look... We're going to satisfy you, look, just by dish.
Marc:Well, yeah, I know, I know, I know.
Marc:Believe me, I am no stranger to the thrill of being placated by substance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when you talk about not being able to sit with yourself, for me, this is very relevant.
Marc:I just turned, I'm 51, and I've been through a certain amount of things, and you start to realize, at some point, it's like, I've been just fucking running.
Marc:I'm just running.
Marc:Running from that.
Marc:From that idea of being honest with yourself.
Marc:To have that weird, sort of horrible, weighty silence of just like, this is it.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:So, like, you know, when I hear you talking about that, and I'm a guy that, like, once I figured out how to use a fucking iPhone, I'm like, yeah, I'll be in it.
Marc:I'll be in it every fucking two minutes.
Marc:Are you on Facebook?
Marc:I can't do the Facebook.
Marc:I like Twitter, because I can just spurt shit out.
Marc:Yeah, so you tweet.
Marc:I do a tweet.
Guest:See, I've learned all the new verbs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Tweeting's kind of fun, because if you get a few people on the line, you can just fucking blurt shit out, and then a bunch of people go like, what the fuck?
Marc:And you're like, yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Marc:Fuck you.
Guest:You're sitting around waiting.
Guest:Waiting for what?
Marc:Well, it's the same.
Marc:It's like everything else.
Marc:Like an iPod, it's like having your earphones in, being on Twitter, having email with you all the time.
Marc:It's just a hit.
Marc:It's just a hit.
Marc:It's just a hit.
Marc:It's just a hit.
Guest:Everything is a hit.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's all addictive, too.
Marc:It's completely addictive, man.
Guest:Because it just fills in all those little emptinesses with another more electric kind of emptiness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what happens is you get that hit and your brain chemicals go one way or another depending on if it's a good hit or a bad hit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, that satisfaction thing.
Guest:Sometimes you talk to somebody for an hour and you come away feeling better.
Guest:Do you ever feel like, ah, that was a good tweet we had, you know,
Marc:yeah sure man you do yeah yeah because it's like how long does that last well the thing interesting thing about twitter is it makes it makes your thoughts relatively disposable you know but you can get them back you know they're all sitting out there right but like you know you got 140 characters to tighten it up man you know you're gonna fucking throw a punch and it's it's a writing thing it's definitely writing so you know if something picks up some traction you know a little bit of poetry or whatever the fuck you're gonna do in that moment
Marc:You know, I try to write things relatively, you know, not so much like cryptic, but like, you know, like I try to do something, Nick.
Marc:I'm trying to do something.
Marc:What are you doing something?
Marc:Like yesterday I tweeted, inconsistency abounds, apologists everywhere.
Marc:That was basically what we're talking about.
Marc:much more concise much more concise so like I'll throw that shit out into the world well good for you but do you ever do you ever okay let's close with this do you ever get a moment where you know because obviously the the the medicine for what we're talking about
Marc:It's exactly what is the bullshit, which is finding a God, finding a structure, finding a life that gives you the illusion of security, having faith, being able to believe.
Marc:So if you get rid of all that, did you ever once have a struggle where you were craving that and decided, well, maybe that's the way to go?
Marc:Or were you always fighting it?
Guest:I've always had a certain bit of envy for very stupid people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, and I do mean to be judgmental, those who are visibly more stupid than I, because they seem to get off so easy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Their non-satisfaction, fake satisfaction point is so much lower.
Guest:But did I ever try to reach out for a god or a system of salvation?
Guest:Oh, I might have, again, envied those people that do find peace in that form of lying to oneself.
Yeah.
Guest:But no, I find it's all you're looking for the fountain of youth, the elixir of life.
Guest:You know, you're the guy that found $10 million in a paper bag in the back of a cab, you know, who didn't give it back.
Guest:You know, I mean, what do these people give that shit back?
Guest:You know, I mean, get to who?
Guest:And then you realize, well, you know, you're alive.
Guest:You beat the racket.
Guest:You're still here.
Guest:And all these people have died around you.
Guest:And it's time to slow down and live, not speed it up and get somewhere because there's really nowhere to go.
Guest:Thanks for talking, man.
Marc:That was cool, right?
Marc:Talking to one of the dark Buddhas.
Marc:I think we did all right.
Marc:That was Nick Toshis.
Marc:Hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get that app if you want to hear those interviews with Laura Dern or Michael Keaton or Richard Winklader or Paul Thomas Anderson.
Marc:Many others.
Marc:Many others.
Marc:More coming.
Marc:What are we going to do?
Marc:Slightly out of tune, Jazzmaster.
Marc:Boomer lives!