Episode 608 - Kurt Metzger
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fuck abilities what's happening i am mark maron this is wtf i am broadcasting from my mobile studio
Marc:At the Bowery Hotel.
Marc:It's a beautiful day.
Marc:You know, it was like two or three days of rainy shit.
Marc:Just depressing fucking rain.
Marc:And then it opened up.
Marc:I got one good day.
Marc:I was starting to take it personally.
Marc:I got one good day.
Marc:Somehow or another, I think I strained my neck sleeping.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:That I hurt my neck while I was sleeping.
Marc:It must have been a rough dream.
Marc:I must have been active.
Marc:Things must have been going on.
Marc:I threw my neck out in a dream, and now I'm having a hard time moving it, and I got a special to tape on Saturday.
Marc:So am I going to do my special in Chicago?
Marc:You should all come to see me at the Vic Theater in Chicago.
Marc:It would be nice.
Marc:I think we're doing all right.
Marc:I think we're going to have enough people there.
Marc:The hockey situation did not.
Marc:I was undaunted.
Marc:I was not going to be bullied.
Marc:By hockey.
Marc:Well, apparently it's not even in Chicago, but people watch TV.
Marc:I think both shows are looking peopled enough to do a special.
Marc:I think the stage is going to look beautiful.
Marc:I'm excited to do it.
Marc:Now I'm just a little concerned that my neck.
Marc:My neck that like I'm going to have that weird, you know, when I'm performing, I'm going to have that weird kind of like instead of turning my neck, I turn my entire upper body.
Marc:Do that thing on my special for posterity that I will have this compromised movement.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Today on the show, Kurt Metzger, brace yourself.
Marc:Kurt Metzger, the comedian.
Marc:He also writes for the Amy Schumer show.
Marc:You know, he's an outspoken dude.
Marc:He's an envelope pusher.
Marc:He's one of the funniest guys I know, one of the best joke writers I know.
Marc:I think I gave him one of his first writing jobs a million years ago in a doomed, thank God, a doomed project, a remake of an English game comedy show called Nevermind the Buzzcocks.
Marc:Shot 13 of those when I was broke after my first divorce.
Marc:Pulled Kurt Metzger in to write for me and a couple other people.
Marc:And it was one of the sticking points in my second divorce, actually.
Marc:That my my second wife, who was also a comedian and writer, was by the time she left me was still furious that I had hired Kurt Metzger and not her to write her.
Marc:Never mind the buzz guys carried that resentment all the way through.
Marc:And it was just a practical thing.
Marc:It wasn't personal.
Marc:Can you write with your wife?
Marc:Can you write with your girlfriend?
Marc:Can you have them on a staff?
Marc:Is that a healthy work environment?
Marc:Had nothing to do with her talent.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:It's not the topic.
Marc:Kurt Metzger is going to blow your mind a little bit.
Marc:I barely got a word in.
Marc:He had several axes to grind.
Marc:He is one of the champions of free speech and button pushing.
Marc:So enjoy.
Marc:I did.
Marc:I enjoyed talking to him.
Marc:What else can I tell you?
Marc:Oh, tomorrow night I'll be in Cleveland at the Playhouse Theater, Playhouse Square.
Marc:Come to that.
Marc:I think there's a few tickets left.
Marc:Chicago, as I said, the Vic, two shows at the Vic.
Marc:Very excited about that.
Marc:We're going to be taping the special and I will be moving in an interesting way.
Marc:It's not a dance.
Marc:There's nothing conceptual art about it.
Marc:I have a bad neck right now.
Marc:Maybe it'll be better.
Marc:This is Thursday.
Marc:Should be better.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sunday night, Minneapolis at the Pantages.
Marc:That's a, that'll be great.
Marc:I love Minneapolis.
Marc:And that's, you know, that's a, that's the schedule.
Marc:That's where we're at right now.
Marc:That's the immediate schedule.
Marc:I can push a, I can push out some other dates if you want.
Marc:There are some other shows coming up that I could use some attention.
Marc:There's a run out here on the East coast on Friday, June 26.
Marc:I'll be at the Bam Howard opera house, big room, big room.
Marc:Tickets are selling well, though.
Marc:There's already well over 1,000 tickets sold, so you might want to get on that, Brooklyn.
Marc:That's in Brooklyn.
Marc:Saturday, June 27th, the Paramount Theater, Huntington, New York.
Marc:Huntington, out on the island.
Marc:Let's get those people there.
Marc:The working people of Long Island, please.
Marc:Please.
Marc:June 27th, Paramount Theater.
Marc:June 28th, the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Come on out.
Marc:Good times.
Marc:Let's go, Jersey.
Marc:It's where I'm from.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:All right?
Marc:So I wanted to get over to the new Whitney today.
Marc:This is the big deal, man.
Marc:The new Whitney is the shit.
Marc:Everyone's talking about it.
Marc:They moved from wherever the hell it was, up in the 80s, I think, or the 70s.
Marc:The thing is, is that...
Marc:I have a relationship with art, and I'm in a relationship with an artist, but I have a relationship with art.
Marc:My mother was a painter, and some of you know that, and she used to fly us back.
Marc:I grew up in New Mexico, originally from Jersey.
Marc:My roots are in Jersey, all right?
Marc:The big tomatoes in July, remember?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Remember Jersey tomatoes when tomatoes were tomatoes?
Marc:Anyways.
Marc:Even when I was growing up in New Mexico, my mother, we would fly back as a family and sometimes we'd build our trips around retrospectives or openings at museums.
Marc:Also, I had my communist aunt and uncle, great aunt and uncle who lived over in Fort Lee.
Marc:She was a sculptor and my cousin Jane was a painter and sometimes we'd stay over there and we'd come to the museums.
Marc:But I remember when as a child, I saw the Alexander Calder retrospective at the Whitney and Calder's circus.
Marc:Calder does the mobiles and he also does little kind of wire things, little wire people and animals and very simple sort of primitive, almost childlike art.
Marc:But it was a functioning circus.
Marc:And I remember seeing that when I was a child at the Whitney.
Marc:And also I saw the Cezanne retrospective with my mother at the Whitney when I was a child.
Marc:And I frequently visited the Whitney at different points in my life.
Marc:I would go there and there was Calder's Circus, right?
Marc:When he walked into the old Whitney in a glass case, you could look at the circus and there was a film there that showed the circus in action with little old Alexander Calder playing with all the toys that he made.
Marc:But it's a childhood memory of mine, that building.
Marc:I know that building.
Marc:I've been to that building.
Marc:I've visited that artwork frequently throughout my childhood.
Marc:And you do build a relationship with pieces of art.
Marc:If you frequent museums, especially the same museum, if you come to New York, you go to MoMA, you go to the Whitney, you go to the Guggenheim, whatever.
Marc:Guggenheim doesn't have as much of the permanent collection on display in a regular way, like MoMA or the Whitney, where there's always some pieces there, especially MoMA, that are always out.
Marc:You know, I can always go see the Rothkos that I enjoy over there or the Pollocks or the, you know, the de Koonings, whatever it is, I can go visit them and they'll always be there for me.
Marc:Timeless, hanging timeless on the wall.
Marc:Anyway, so I went to the New Whitney.
Marc:It was the architectural masterpiece.
Marc:It's stunning and they've organized, they have this exhibit there now, which I thought was genius.
Marc:It was just genius.
Marc:It's their first exhibit.
Marc:It needs to make an impact.
Marc:America is hard to see all from the permanent collection.
Marc:And each floor has got a different time period and they're organized in sort of different thematic ways around style or around political action or social action or maybe just time.
Marc:But it was also pretty fucking amazing.
Marc:It was just amazing how it was put together and curated and which pieces they chose.
Marc:And I saw some pieces that I saw Calder Circus there in a glass case.
Marc:But it's in a completely new environment.
Marc:It's in a completely modern environment.
Marc:The old Whitney was the old Whitney.
Marc:This thing is just stunning.
Marc:There's all these terraces and you can go outside.
Marc:And there's the High Line, which was the old elevated train, which they've made gardens and a walk throughout the entire kind of...
Marc:west side over there it's uh you know by the meatpacking districts become very beautiful but the museum was spectacular and i felt elevated and excited to be there
Marc:I got no comedy about it.
Marc:I'm just telling you, I guess in my own fucked up way that art is important, that acknowledging a new structure for architectural genius is important.
Marc:There's got to be some things that we still register as important and not passive.
Marc:We've got to be engaged people.
Marc:We've got to be engaged in the painting.
Marc:Reckon with the painting.
Marc:Someone wrenched it from their guts and their mind and their vision.
Marc:Reckon with it.
Marc:Reckon with the structure.
Marc:God, it's got to continue meaning something.
Marc:It's got to continue meaning something.
Marc:The stand in front of a Mark Rothko painting or a Picasso painting or a Georgia O'Keeffe.
Marc:They had some beautiful old ones.
Marc:All of them.
Marc:They were ripped from the chest of people.
Marc:Look at the texture.
Marc:It's got to remain important.
Marc:We can't lose touch with the art.
Marc:We can't lose it.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:It's beautiful out.
Marc:It's beautiful out here in New York.
Marc:I get a little melancholy here.
Marc:I don't know why there's a type of loneliness.
Marc:There's a loneliness and a connectivity that I feel simultaneous.
Marc:Like a lot of me has lived here and I've been here at different points in my life and I feel connected to this city and I like looking at the old buildings and I like that there's so many people and so much going on, but so much of that has nothing to do with me.
Marc:So that's the lonely part.
Marc:Seems to be a lot going on and none of it has anything to do with me.
Marc:Oh, I'm lonely, but I appreciate the busyness.
Marc:oh my god yeah getting old i'm getting old it's okay let's talk to kurt metzger
Guest:Huge source of comfort to me.
Guest:That what?
Guest:I'm still... The same mark that I know from like... Oh.
Guest:I think I met you, you were like 38 or something.
Guest:Was I?
Marc:You were my age now when I met you.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:You had the hair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Had all the hair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:I had like Wolverine hair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And we were... And I hired you to write on that show.
Marc:That's my first writing job.
Marc:First writing job, which was also a tremendous source of aggravation and ongoing resentment by my ex-wife.
Ha!
Marc:Like, you know, like one of the... You got her on the show.
Marc:I don't know why she... One of the things she said to me, you know, after she stopped loving me was like, you hired Kurt Metzger to write for you and you didn't have your own wife.
Marc:How could you hire Kurt Metzger?
Guest:But why single me out as the outrage of... Don't know.
Guest:I've since gone on to have pretty good credits.
Guest:Yeah, I know, but I mean, I don't think she's the first to single you out for outrage.
Guest:No, in fact, now is very satisfying, dude, because you're the target.
Guest:I'm a feminist icon of a writer now, but I guess the people that don't like me aren't aware of that.
Guest:But all this shit on Schumer's show.
Marc:So wait, so you're writing for Amy.
Marc:What exactly happened with all that shit?
Guest:Walk me through.
Marc:Oh, the initial thing?
Marc:The initial controversy.
Guest:It's still popping up now.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So initially it had nothing to do with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was during the great rape joke wars of 2011, if you recall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When we had to decide if things can be joked about again.
Guest:We have to do that every three years.
Guest:What's okay?
Marc:It was 9-11 and then it was rape jokes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way,
Guest:Any rape joke I ever had conforms to the fucking whatever made up rules these dippy bloggers.
Guest:I already made my jokes according.
Guest:But don't tell me how the fuck to do my job.
Guest:It's not a sexist thing either.
Marc:You followed the rape joke rules.
Guest:Just on my own, whatever their rule is.
Marc:Inherently, you had enough of a conscience.
Guest:I have no conscience about jokes.
Guest:Jokes, to me, there's no moral component whatsoever.
Guest:It's merely funny.
Guest:And that's its own force.
Guest:Because I know for a fact that sometimes something that's absolutely not funny and, in fact, terribly wrong can be the most hysterical thing in the world in the right context.
Guest:I mean, that's just a fact.
Guest:So people that don't get funny...
Guest:There's a lot of people that feel like punching up and punching down comedy and all that shit.
Guest:And it's a very telling thing to say.
Guest:You hear that punching down comedy.
Guest:That's the most elitist fucking.
Guest:That's saying there's a caste system and I'm on top of it.
Guest:And I will not deign to punch downward at the people lower than me.
Guest:You think people are lower than you and you think that makes you more moral than me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So they have no problem with condescending apparently.
Marc:Right.
Guest:No problem with condescension.
Guest:I thought we were all equal, so I'm punching straight ahead, but it turns out that I'm supposed to buy into that I'm on top of someone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So anyway, this had nothing to do with me.
Guest:It was Sam Murrell.
Guest:You know, Sam?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He has similar eyebrows to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he had this joke that it was how he's having sex with a black woman, and it made him very uncomfortable because she kept saying the N-word over and over again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He goes, you know, no.
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Very simple.
Guest:The joke is the misdirect of it.
Guest:It's not a moral.
Guest:They don't all have morals to them.
Guest:So fucking.
Guest:But okay.
Guest:This girl whose name I won't mention.
Guest:She wrote a whole fucking thing against Sam.
Guest:Writes this whole thing about how outrageous it was.
Guest:He told this dumb fucking joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I got like jealous that he was getting this kind of attention.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which Jim Norton pointed out to me later.
Guest:Like why would that make you jealous?
Guest:Like are you stupid?
Guest:You were jealous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, well, I'm offensive.
Guest:Where's my fucking blog about me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I contacted Sam and we cooked up this thing to say that this girl is not a real person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We made her up to make a point about free speech.
Marc:Oh, the woman who blogged.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The jig is up.
Guest:We just did this to make a point about speech.
Marc:So you were going to erase her?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got a few people to go, oh, my God, Kurt and Sam Morrow pulled it off.
Guest:And it spread pretty quick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And shockingly quick, I would say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then all these other people started making fake profiles of this girl and all this other shit.
Guest:And so she was outraged.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So she goes on my Facebook.
Guest:By the way, I think that's a very Jonathan Swift-esque thing to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Just for the record.
Marc:The satirical intent was there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Satire punches up at things I don't like.
Guest:So fucking... She goes through my whole Facebook to find objectionable material to get me.
Guest:Of which there's probably a lot.
Guest:Don't go on my Facebook.
Guest:I would tell people, there's no reason to go on it.
Guest:I don't need you.
Guest:I need three people on it to thumbs up my premises that I'm too lazy to finish on my own without validation.
Guest:The rest of you are three pounds of shit and a two pound sack.
Guest:Unfriend me.
Guest:So...
Guest:She goes through and makes a collage of everything I've ever said out of context in a thing.
Guest:Like one time I said nigger faggot quoting Donald Glover from this sketch I liked that he did.
Guest:So she put, he says the N word for kicks.
Guest:Like me and my greaser friends around the street corner.
Guest:Yeah, so then she's trying to get me fired off Amy show and she brought up a thing about I had spoken not my girlfriend that you know now, but the girl I was with before her right remember her the girl that was older than me by like 10 years.
Marc:I think so maybe met her once
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I had talked about, I don't remember how we got into it, but, oh, so one time I pinned her, and I openly admitted to this, I got in a fight with her where she had broken all my shit with a hammer, and I pinned her to the wall by her throat, which is illegal.
Guest:I mean, you go to jail for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:It's not a choke.
Guest:I termed it as choking, but it wasn't like I...
Guest:was throttling her.
Guest:She was kind of fucked up and if I would come home late, it was like right when I first passed the cellar.
Guest:So she had this thing of I can't sleep if you're not home.
Guest:Which my job is to be out late.
Guest:So she would do these crazy fucking things to me if I came home late.
Guest:So one night I'd come home and she had taken all my things and just bashed them up with a hammer and laid them all on the table and laid the hammer next to the stuff and went to sleep like an angel.
Guest:So it wasn't like I flipped out.
Guest:I was like, I'm just going to go to bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then what happened was I woke up and I'm looking at all my shit, dude.
Guest:And I fucking, she was in the shower and I pinned her against the wall like that.
Marc:It's not good.
Guest:I could go to jail for that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the point of me telling the story was that that's not justified.
Guest:What should have happened was I should have been a man and got the fuck out of the relationship a good two or three years before we got to that point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:because it wasn't overnight that she's breaking my stuff.
Guest:It was clear I should have been out of there, but she was paying the rent, right?
Guest:And honest to God, this was my thought process, staying in it was, it was so hard getting cable installed in this loft that I was like, I just don't think I could go through that again.
Guest:I swear to God I thought that and stayed in a fucking crazy relationship of physical assaults.
Guest:If we're keeping score, there were way more on me than that one.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:A lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Listen, we're good.
Guest:Me and her.
Guest:We're all forgiven.
Guest:This is why I don't understand these people that are mad about what happens when they read it, what she read.
Guest:So she goes, he admits to a DV, which I thought meant double vaginal.
Guest:But no, it means domestic violence.
Guest:So she goes, and admitted domestic violence, what is Schumer going to do?
Guest:She's tweeting this.
Marc:Oh, to get Schumer to react?
Guest:To get me fired.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Because when I was 24, I pinned this girl to a wall to tell a story that I'm, hey guys, don't do this thing I did.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I'm telling the story to tell people not to get into a thing like this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So what happened?
Marc:Did Schumer respond?
Guest:She would never find me with that.
Guest:But I had to go Comedy Central.
Guest:Okay, so the Daily Dot.
Guest:There's an article that's called The Disturbing Online Trail of Kurt Metzger.
Marc:So now there's a momentum against you.
Guest:Right, but I'm not famous.
Guest:So where these twits made a mistake is, nobody knows who the fuck I am, so it didn't go anywhere.
Guest:And also, Amy wasn't going to fire me.
Guest:But I did.
Guest:I was surprised that... Did you talk to Amy about it?
Guest:I told her, if you're going to fire me, fire me.
Guest:It's not your fault.
Guest:I mean, I never dreamed that that would happen, where the show is brought into my nonsense.
Guest:And what'd she say?
Guest:She wasn't going to fire me.
Guest:I mean, she just wouldn't.
Guest:She doesn't give a shit about this.
Guest:But Comedy Central... So the Daily Dot writes this fucking...
Guest:i mean it's like a smear but when if you read it when i read i'm like yeah i'm kind of funny like it's even doing their best it's still you're still good the jokes still hold yeah the jokes still hold so fucking uh but i had to have so the girl that wrote the article then writes to me an email that says i'd like to get your side of the story
Guest:Would you now that you've printed this other thing now you want my side so comedy central?
Guest:I answered all her questions.
Guest:Yeah, send them to her I had to send them to Comedy Central Yeah, and they were very satisfied with all my responses and then they said don't respond and I think that's the SNL all these shows are like just don't respond to these people and don't bring the show into it all that oh
Guest:But it'll still pop up here and there, man, with this fucking one article.
Guest:So I'm wondering when my Trevor Noah moment will be.
Marc:When you get the big job?
Guest:Yeah, when the big job's coming.
Marc:Like, are you aware of his history?
Marc:But fortunate for you, it'll all be out there.
Marc:There's not going to be any mystery at this point.
Guest:Yeah, listen, I'm pretty open.
Guest:What this is, is the people who...
Guest:Promote the fucking like slam on me.
Guest:They don't know me.
Guest:They don't know my fucking work.
Guest:They don't fucking It's kind of amazing how quick they all glom on with not knowing any facts about anything I mean like if if somebody wants to hear the story in greater detail on my podcast race wars, it's a flimsy facts with Tom Rhodes the episode yeah, and it's Thomas great by the way and I'm telling that the story much greater detail on that and
Guest:And I've explained it a million times.
Guest:So, you know, I don't know what else to tell you.
Guest:If you give a shit, you can listen to that.
Guest:If not, I don't care.
Guest:It's a thing that's literally nobody's fucking business that I talked about.
Guest:I was honest enough about to bring up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now it's like it's amazing to see some stranger talking about it like they know any like I'm Chris Brown now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And like you don't know shit about me or the relationship or what went on.
Marc:So like this is your this is your current writing job.
Marc:Amy Schumer.
Marc:And I gave you your first writing job in 19... That was one for Nevermind the Buzzcocks, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was... After 9-11.
Guest:So it was 2001?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know it was after 9-11.
Marc:It was?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like right after?
Guest:pretty soon after yeah right and and like it was like i was hosting a game show primarily to make money because i was bankrupt i remember from the first divorce yeah and i was dating mishnah i was with you when you had to drop off that letter to like your last payment to your ex-wife i remember yeah we went you you dropped it off then we got fucking tasty delight or something after
Marc:tasty delight or whatever tragic whatever let's really celebrate with my yeah well my ends my obligation to her eating the empty fucking experience of tasty delight do those things even exist anymore that was like it was all the rage for a while it's like there's no calories it was just sugar and was somehow foamed into a soft serve
Guest:It was like a real sad adult.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:A pleasure.
Marc:There's a sad adult moment for you.
Marc:There's a warning for you.
Marc:Seeing Maren, me, be this guy.
Marc:I never want to become that.
Guest:Well, it's not that.
Guest:It was like I see what's inevitable to become because I remember we were driving somewhere and you were complaining about somebody not booking you at a state of New York.
Marc:I remember being in a car.
Guest:And I was like, oh, wow, this never gets better.
Guest:Because I was like, oh, wow, this guy's got a show.
Guest:He's got a car.
Guest:I'm like, you know, I saw him on Dr. Katz.
Guest:I'm like, oh, it's not good for him.
Guest:It just dawned on me like, oh, it's like that.
Guest:It never goes away.
Guest:And you had moved here from where?
Guest:From Philly.
Guest:So my only experience so far was watching Kevin Hart just shoot to the top.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The first time.
Marc:Yeah, I guess that's how it works.
Marc:And then disappear.
Marc:And then he shot to the top again, remember?
Marc:He went away around Soul Plane for a minute.
Marc:Is that what you're talking about?
Marc:Like he got the deal to do the TV show and then it never happened.
Marc:Yes, yes, yes.
Marc:And then he had to go back to the drawing board because I talked to him about that.
Guest:Well, Kev, I'll tell you what, man.
Guest:I got to give it to him because he really was on top of every business.
Guest:The whole reason I got into this business was to not do any of the shit you're supposed to do in life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and he's a fucking businessman obviously yeah and so i think that's half of his appeal is just sort of like i work hard he's a winner yes what's that quote from uh christ he always says everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to do the work is that jesus that jesus christ the nazarene said yeah everybody want to be famous nobody want to do the work
Guest:Kev's a winner, and I'm intrinsically a loser.
Guest:Do you understand?
Guest:Which is how I do my comedy.
Guest:I was raised Christian.
Marc:I don't think you're a loser.
Marc:I think you're a guy that- My soul is.
Guest:It is.
Marc:Your soul is a loser?
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:Now you're bringing your soul into this?
Guest:I know exactly.
Guest:For me being so Christian growing up, you don't understand.
Guest:Real Christianity is a religion for losers.
Guest:It's not for winners.
Marc:Wait, so you grew up in Philly.
Guest:No, I grew up in New Jersey mostly.
Guest:In Ohio and also in North Carolina a little bit.
Marc:So your mother and your father are married?
Guest:My dad's dead.
Guest:They got divorced when I was an adult, but we were Jehovah's Witnesses.
Guest:When did he die?
Guest:Just before I started dating Karen, so seven or eight years ago.
Marc:Oh, not that long ago.
Guest:Yeah, not that long ago.
Marc:Did you have a relationship with him?
Guest:I was the last one talking to him with my family.
Guest:He just drank himself to death in a fucking trailer at the end.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, he really got sad alcoholic at the end, man.
Guest:Like what?
Marc:Wet brain and everything or what?
Marc:Or just like distended belly?
Guest:He wanted to die.
Guest:I didn't see him when he was like, you know, yellow or however the fuck they found him.
Guest:But I was still talking to him.
Guest:He had gotten so dark with my brother and sister that they stopped talking to him.
Marc:There's hysteria?
Guest:Yeah, and I remember telling my brother like you really should call him because I don't know what's going on with him But if he drops dead you're gonna feel bad that you did this thing where you're like I'm not speaking to you and He fucking and my brother my brother weeping like when he died I was like I felt really bad being make it right
Guest:what do you mean make it right did he heed your advice and call him never he never did so i was the last one to talk to him and uh but the other thing is my old man who was always my buddy growing up yeah for the most part more than my mom he uh felt bad for himself too much he really did he was in this dumb religion that he felt like he gave up making money in life and all this other because he was into this religion and my mom just ate him from the inside out like wasp larva basically so
Guest:You know he could have just He got trained to be like you get married you never get divorced.
Guest:You're supposed to have kids You're not supposed to fuck until you're married all the shit that I'm sure he didn't want to do I'm sure he never even wanted kids, you know really but the rules were the rules.
Marc:What did he do?
Guest:He was a salesman Mostly, but he initially is an electrician and he started getting better and better jobs and he was a salesman for a while Well, how did they come to this religion?
Marc:That's not one year that you're born into that's when you get roped into right?
Guest:I'm born into it.
Guest:My dad's dad was a World War two airplane engineer.
Guest:Yeah, and when my dad was 12 My my grandpa his dad converted and then my mom converted at 18 because she was a disillusioned Catholic My grandmother killed herself my mom's mom in a pretty fucked up way Really kind of fucked up way and uh what way she cut her own throat and
Guest:This is the story I heard.
Guest:And by the way, getting the full story of this, I had to piece it together because my mom and my aunts will never tell me this shit.
Guest:They'll just be like, but apparently, so my mom's like 12, my grandmother cut her own throat in the kitchen.
Guest:So my mom comes home from school.
Guest:Her mom's gone.
Guest:There's just a pool of blood in the kitchen, which she and her sister had to clean up.
Guest:And then I think my grandfather just married this other woman and felt like a good guy because he got the kids a new mom or some shit.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, some miserable fucking 50, 60 shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And fucking like, so she was a Catholic and it didn't help her through that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so she found Jehovah's Witnesses, which I think really kind of satisfied whatever need she had.
Marc:What needs are those?
Marc:How did they just hold?
Marc:I don't understand what they do.
Marc:Like in terms of Catholicism, was Catholicism too abstract or too vague or too complicated?
Marc:Probably all that.
Marc:Probably all that.
Marc:She wasn't finding the relief from going into the booth.
Marc:I'd probably all that.
Marc:That's probably a good way to put it.
Marc:The guy behind the screen is not helping me.
Guest:The wizard is not helping me.
Guest:This glory hole forgiveness is not helping me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think she wanted the more personalized Protestant God over the ethnic pagan fucking thing that she was doing.
Marc:But isn't the Jehovah's Witnesses like the no dancing troupe?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:That's Footloose, you're thinking of.
Guest:i believe that's the footloose church that you know joe's witnesses is uh like it's an it's actually used to be no holidays uh well not not most of them right the ones that are considered pagan which would be like christmas okay but you can you can dance yes you can dance as long as it's modest and not sexual might straight
Guest:Sorry, yeah It's like, you know, it's just like a Bible.
Guest:Yeah, but you know they have their own peculiarity like we didn't believe in an immortal soul for example They believe we believed in a resurrection Okay, like at the end times or whatever if people will be rate brought back to life and you'll live in the in the Garden of Eden again They have a show that depicts that now.
Marc:What is it walking dead?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, yeah, I guess Christ wasn't really a zombie till his 30s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So fucking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So she's in this religion.
Guest:That was a great source of comfort.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me, it wasn't.
Guest:I mean, I growing up in it.
Guest:I did believe it.
Guest:And they met in the religion somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad was an elder in the church.
Guest:Oh, there's a there's rankings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, because I was a minister.
Guest:Everyone's a minister who gets baptized, which I believe is to keep you out of the military.
Guest:Because we don't get involved in politics, which I agree with.
Guest:I think every fucking church should do that.
Guest:And couldn't join the military.
Guest:Which also, if you're a Christian, you can't be in the fucking military.
Guest:I don't know why people think that.
Guest:You cannot fight for a country.
Guest:You serve God or you serve a country.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there's no circumstance where you can go, like in Iraq, let's say, there's Christians in Iraq that probably got blown up while we're killing the other people.
Guest:There's no way you're going to go to God and go, hey, God, I had to bomb a couple of Christians, but it was for America's liberty.
Guest:Well, you think God's going to be cool with that?
Guest:Apparently people do.
Guest:But that's not what it says.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:Those things I wholeheartedly agree with.
Marc:But so you're a minister.
Marc:When do you become a minister?
Marc:When are you told?
Marc:Like at 14 or 12?
Guest:Officially when I got baptized.
Guest:But maybe before that because I had a draft card, like a deferral, a minister deferral.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's primarily that was their plan is that this was a way to get all our members to avoid military service.
Guest:You can't be in the military, which I'm glad.
Guest:Although I would go do USO in a heartbeat and I fucking... Yeah, you want to help the guys out.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:But the idea is also, I guess, they make everyone a minister specifically to give you a little more incentive when you're out there saving people.
Guest:Well, it's not just yes, but it's not just that it's it's because the ranking, you know, you're not supposed to give a shit about that.
Guest:You're a Christian.
Guest:It's supposed to be humble.
Guest:So that's not supposed to get off on that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What it is is everyone gets educated as opposed to Catholicism where there's a clergy and a lady.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of a medieval setup.
Guest:There's more of the Protestant thing where we all read the Bible.
Guest:so everybody you know i read the bible a lot like probably about 20 times over the because over the course of the year so you were in yeah yeah very much i didn't do anything until i was like 21 of like fucking or getting high or any of that really yeah so like from the from the get-go like you were active in the church you socialized at the church most of your friends yeah do you have any of those friends anymore
Guest:You know, my best friend growing up just recently got back in touch with me, who's still in.
Guest:And I haven't called him on the phone yet.
Guest:I'll see what happens.
Marc:But did it feel like a cult?
Guest:No, not at all.
Marc:Just like a religion.
Guest:But see, here's the thing.
Guest:They talk about it in Scientology, the disconnection.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's called disfellowshipping in Jehovah's Witnesses.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So all my best friends growing up that stayed in, I don't speak to them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm an apostate, I think.
Marc:Or maybe you just moved on.
Guest:Well, I it turned out pretty fucking easy to move on, but a lot of people are very damaged by it Anything where you're in like a group with that and all these groups do this they keep they make it your whole life This is your whole life.
Guest:Yeah, if you ever leave what are you gonna have?
Guest:You know and there's there's certain degrees that are less sinister than others
Guest:But Jehovah's Witnesses at least did that declawing thing to me a little bit, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where like now I got to be out in the world and how the fuck do I survive?
Guest:Well, I find a whorey girlfriend who makes more money than me and she takes care of me until I figure out how to be an adult.
Guest:And that's how I did it.
Guest:I mean, seriously, that's what I did.
Guest:I dated like a whore with a heart of gold type.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who liked my foster kid energy.
Guest:You know, like working girl, I would always get girls that had prostituted
Guest:would fuck me but i'd be like the guy they like to you know like we're both runaways yeah you know like that kind of feeling right i always had that coming off me yeah which i've i've considerably lost as grime and accumulates on me but at the time i was a you know like that was attractive to a certain type you know
Guest:And now I'm a fucking filthed up old fucking pig.
Guest:But yeah, like, you know, I didn't consider it culty, but it did its damage, you know?
Marc:Right.
Marc:But so but when when you so in your memory, your father was always drinking, your parents were always unhappy or what?
Guest:My parents always unhappy.
Guest:I don't remember my father being that much of an alcoholic.
Guest:I remember my mother accusing him of that.
Guest:And I remember him being a big martyr and kind of like, well, I guess I'm an alcoholic then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and it getting more, and really they should have got a fucking divorce.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And they thought they were staying together for the kids.
Guest:So if anybody out there is doing that, just fucking don't.
Marc:Well, you stayed together for cable.
Ha ha!
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Listen, I didn't say I was smarter.
Guest:I sure as shit didn't say that.
Guest:Not only did I stay with that girl for cable, I got her pregnant, okay?
Guest:And I begged her to have the baby.
Guest:I got on my knees and begged her to have the baby.
Guest:Why?
Guest:because i'm a fucking idiot and god bless her she fucking aborted god bless her you know people say like i can't imagine if i'd had an abort i can't imagine if we didn't have that abortion yeah what my fucking life would be why what what in your mind wanted the baby do you remember uh i talked to my dad on the phone yeah about he's the only one i told about it until my mom
Guest:I would like to tell her now, because my mom was always big on me settling down with whoever I was with, so it would be more moral.
Marc:Is she around now or not?
Guest:Yeah, my mom I'm very close with now.
Guest:But my old man, he talked to me about it.
Guest:And then Jay I was talking to about it.
Marc:Oh, Kirsten.
Guest:God bless his white trash soul.
Guest:Big Jay.
Guest:He's uncut Colombian white trash, do you know what it's called?
Guest:And Jay's like, yeah, if you have the baby, you'd fucking deal with it.
Guest:It's a real Homer Simpson.
Guest:Their babies happen.
Guest:That's what happened.
Guest:and they and they babies happen yeah they convinced me and uh so she luckily had some sense in her head and didn't have a baby because i mean we would have murdered each other if we stayed together oh it would have been a disaster we're very cool now but together we were not cool it was just like you guys are all right you laugh about the throating throat throttling in the shower and stuff i have a fucking turn on now to be honest with you uh that's why it's like people mad about it i'm like you don't fucking know us so
Guest:So don't get upset.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that's it.
Marc:But that's also the interesting point about punching up and punching down and people projecting or pathologizing other people's relationships or psychoanalyzing, assuming that that person's a victim and had no play in it or that maybe if she doesn't see her victimness, that maybe she needs help as opposed to sort of like, you know, mind your own business.
Guest:Dude, we got in a fight at Schumer about Woody Allen and Soon Yee.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:This is one of the biggest fights.
Guest:Because by the way, the writers are killer writers.
Guest:Like they're all.
Marc:Obviously.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who's on the show?
Marc:Who's on staff?
Guest:It was me, Jesse Klein, Amy, her sister, Kyle Dunnigan, Christine Nangle, Tammy Sager, Hallie.
Guest:I don't remember Hallie's last name.
Guest:Grace.
Guest:Fucking what's Grace's last name?
Guest:Dan Powell.
Guest:I'm missing.
Guest:Oh, John Glazer wrote on this season.
Marc:This season?
Marc:This is the current crew?
Guest:Yeah, and Amy's smart, man.
Guest:She gets... Well, really, I'm the male presence of the room.
Guest:That's my entire purpose.
Marc:The worst possible male presence.
Guest:Well, just a male presence, because guess what?
Guest:And I'm not the only guy in the room, yet I'm the only male presence.
Guest:I promise you that.
Guest:The rest of them are just like, okay, whatever you say.
Guest:Whatever dingy thing.
Marc:You're like the dark dick presence.
Marc:What would the worst dick do in the world?
Guest:Well, it's not even that.
Guest:It's like they're so gentle.
Guest:I mean, just a comic, just as a stand-up comic, when you're around like UCB people or people who I don't, they're very talented.
Guest:I'm not like, oh, UCB.
Guest:But let's face it, are probably not the best examples of male energy, right?
Yeah.
Guest:a lot of m'lady kind of well m'lady i got neil casey who was a great writer yeah oh jeremy byler was the other writer yeah neil casey uh wrote this great sketch m'lady about these clingy guys yeah that you've never like you know never indicated you're gonna fuck but they get mad at you like when are you gonna fuck me like yeah and he's that's from experience of knowing those fucking guys you know yeah
Guest:and uh so anyway it's the same feeling whatever a woman would feel working with all men i totally get it i totally get how you would feel as a woman i because it's like it's not that something bad's happening to you it's like you feel like should i say something i don't want to be the uncool one do i i totally get if you're going through that as a woman i that's what i went through right right so it's kind of good for me i feel like to go through that you know yeah to have a perspective on it
Marc:But, uh, what was the Sunni?
Guest:So they were in a fight because we had to decide who's a fucking officially, you know, a rapist for, I can't remember what we were working on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the thing with Woody Allen is, here's my simple position that infuriates everyone.
Guest:Sunni's fucking 40 now.
Guest:So if he really had brainwashed and kidnapped her, I'm sure by now she could figure out what she wants to do since she's a 40 year old woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you talk about projecting like she's a victim and blah, she's 40.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's a middle eight.
Guest:They're still together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They must have a beautiful relationship.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:But there is the argument that what's different between that and the Jehovah's Witnesses or Stockholm Syndrome or whatever.
Marc:Even Patty Hearst had got over it by now.
Guest:Even Patty fucking Hearst realizes that Ronald DeFreeze raped her by this point, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she didn't want to rob those banks.
Guest:Like she figured 40.
Guest:And they were like yelling at me like, well, when you were in a thing like that, they put, I'm like, yeah, at 20, I go, I'm out of here.
Guest:And now I'm almost 40.
Guest:I can't even fathom being somewhere I don't want to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But so anyway, that was like an impassioned fight.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's good that you have those active debates.
Guest:uh it is good man and that's what i really appreciate about her because it's it's like she wants your voice you know she wants my voice and she wants their voices and if we clash whatever it's cool but that's also the way a democratic environment is supposed to she really i give it to her man because especially this season where we're getting a lot of like heat for like various like messagey sketches yeah
Guest:The reason those are fine with me is because I think a lot of them are funny, you know?
Guest:And so, like, we had this one football.
Guest:What kind of heat?
Guest:Oh, all the same blogs that want me fired quote my fucking lines to talk about how feminist amazing the show is.
Guest:That's me writing that, guys.
Guest:So now that we know you're a fan of me, maybe you can shut the fuck up, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Since you're my biggest fans.
Guest:Anyway, so there's one called Football Town Nights, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is a Christine Nangle sketch, which is a really funny sketch to me.
Guest:And like I said, I just don't want to be preached at.
Guest:I'm a feminist.
Guest:That's fine as long as it's not just preaching.
Guest:Make a joke.
Guest:And guys will eat it up and women.
Guest:We get an even male-female viewership.
Guest:Because of that.
Guest:So I remember calling Amy because I was like, listen, at the end of the sketch, it was about how Josh Charles is the new coach in town, like Friday Night Lights, and he does things a little different than they're used to.
Guest:He goes, he's going to have a no-huddle offense and no raping.
Guest:And they're all mad, like, what do you mean no raping?
Guest:It throws the town in an uproar, which I thought was a funny sketch.
Guest:But that has the potential to be very hammy, ham-fisted.
Guest:It has the potential.
Guest:So at the end, there was going to be this fucking statistic.
Guest:And then they went on where college, where only one in three rapes has ever processed.
Guest:I go, just cut that statistic, please.
Guest:I called her.
Guest:I'm like, listen, just we don't have to.
Guest:Somebody wrote this stupid article about how Amy is like the mom who bakes carrots into the brownies for the kids.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like she's making feminist brownies.
Guest:Like, listen, just make brownies.
Guest:Moms who put carrots in the brownies are cunts.
Guest:Don't do that.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:That sucks.
Guest:Don't listen to these dumb fuck bloggers.
Guest:They don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Guest:You're funny.
Guest:Be funny because the point is already coming across strong through the joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I...
Guest:And then I thought I was going to go back in.
Guest:And then, you know what?
Guest:She fucking listened to me.
Guest:She took it the fuck out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's good she did because even the ones I like, there's a couple things where even my girlfriend's like, oh, that's really like.
Marc:Hitting the nail.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Ringing the bell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And luckily, the jokes are very, to me, are good where it makes up for that.
Marc:And Jesse Klein's real smart.
Marc:I mean, you got a lot of smart people of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jesse fixes a lot of my sketches, which we're with Todd Berry.
Guest:We went to Opie's.
Guest:I said, Jesse fixes my shit.
Guest:And he goes, by hell, throwing it out.
Guest:I hand him in, she tears him in half.
Guest:But like this boy band song, that hit kind of big, Girl, You Don't Need Makeup, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I pitched this song called Girl, You Don't Need Makeup.
Guest:My original pitch was, because it was one of my Facebook posts, which was just the talky part of the song where it's like, hey, girl, I don't care.
Guest:I don't care about your tits, basically.
Guest:I didn't even know you had a head until fairly recently.
Guest:I just looked up.
Guest:I was like, damn, girl, that's a face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I pitched that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they're all laughing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Jesse pitches.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, what if it's just you don't need makeup?
Guest:She takes her makeup off.
Guest:Then they start walking it back immediately when they see her with no makeup.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So then that's the version we did.
Guest:Because as Dan put it, my version was insane.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which I don't think it is.
Guest:But in their world, that's insane what I would say.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So then we wrote it like that.
Guest:And it's like a viral fucking...
Guest:Yeah, like it sounds like a boy band song dude Kyle Dunnigan arranged the music and his buddy something Roach Can't remember his name.
Marc:He's great that we sang the song Well now you're hitting all this success your stand-ups good and like I've always thought you're a great joke writer and you know and obviously you know that that is what you do for a living
Marc:But when you were in Philly, you know, in the middle of this Jehovah's Witness nightmare, reading the Bible every day, you know, and believing it, and that was your life.
Guest:That wasn't in Philly.
Guest:Philly's when I broke out.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:You were in... When I left the group, the communal reinforcement, that's when I broke out.
Guest:And by the way, the shit that bugs me about a lot of, like, especially the blogger shit, is how much... Like, I'm obsessed with being forced into organized religion, like group thought, because I had it on me for a while, okay?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I had this thing on me, especially in Christianity or in our brand of it.
Guest:If you had a problem with something, you could never be a stumbling block to your brother to their salvation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So let's say you go, well, that doesn't sound quite right.
Marc:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, let's say they tell you dinosaurs are on Noah's Ark.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you go, I think that's probably crap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if you said that out loud, you might stumble your less smart brother.
Guest:It might shake his faith.
Guest:So you got to keep your mouth shut because that would be a same logic out of it.
Guest:absolutely why bring logic into it right okay so we've got this beach ball we got to keep in the air no matter what and that's your fucking duty yeah that's how I took it right and I got a real resentment of that and then what I notice is the same because I think I'm a liberal dude you seem kind of lefty kind of people have the exact same fucking like don't stumble anyone out of being progressive potentially that's the politics are most the most important thing I make a decision to laugh I don't just laugh
Guest:Maybe in heaven I'll laugh one day.
Guest:I filter it through my gender studies class.
Guest:But to me, a lot of this shit is not a gender argument.
Guest:It's you're fucking 20 and you just got out of college.
Guest:Bitch, you got to get past my ageism before we even get to my sexism.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You haven't even earned the right for me to be sexist against you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because you're fucking 20.
Guest:You don't know shit.
Guest:So just to have the people who use the word mansplain, right?
Guest:Oh, here's a man mansplaining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then to have that same person have the balls to then mansplain to me, a professional, how to do my job.
Guest:I mean, they don't see the irony in that at all.
Guest:If you've ever used the term problematic ever, I know you're not funny.
Guest:There's not a single funny human being who understands funny who has ever wrote, here's why this is problematic.
Guest:Because a funny person would seek out problematic.
Guest:Because that's very funny when something's problematic.
Marc:Well, in my mind, what you have is you have those people that judge and fight what they think is a good fight to drain the humor out of everything and make everybody overly polite and self-censoring.
Guest:I wish I could laugh at that.
Marc:Yeah, but on the other side, it's like recently I had this realization where you have people that are like, I'm gonna say the word dranny no matter what, no matter what.
Marc:And in my mind, it's like, that's the fight.
Marc:Words go out of style for whatever reason.
Guest:and so if you want to fight that hard if that is really infringing on your freedom no one's telling you can't say that but you're just going to hang out with guys who say that and then you okay so that's fine so somewhere in the middle of that you're right you're right that's where the world lives well you know what's funny man i have no problem see my gripe is not the fucking sensitivity and shit because to me i think that makes me better that i have to now take what i want to say and figure out how to get it across to people who are like well now we don't
Marc:Like this who are snap judging and I like the church.
Guest:Yeah, my whole my entire sense of humor is to get you to laugh at something that, you know, you shouldn't be laughing at.
Guest:So whatever.
Guest:Make it hard for me.
Guest:That makes me better.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:I have no problem with that.
Guest:What I don't get is why the consequences.
Guest:See, you're going you're going to have to hang out with guys who say tranny.
Guest:That's a fair consequence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The unfair consequence is he should be fired.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Remember a long time ago when, in fact, I think you and me were talking about censorship when W was in, maybe when the Dixie Chicks thing happened.
Guest:And I was like, well, that's just a business decision.
Guest:And you told me like, no, that's the way they censor now.
Guest:They go, it's a business decision.
Guest:You kind of turned me around on that.
Guest:And you're fucking right.
Guest:It's the way to get around you having freedom.
Guest:We find little shitty ways.
Marc:Grassroots.
Marc:action yeah when the dixie chicks got fucked with i thought that was pretty shitty i didn't think that they should have be run out of town because they dared criticize bush on foreign soil right right right so why is it cool to do that to other people now i don't i don't get it what's that guy john ronson just wrote that book about public shaming and how easy it is to destroy someone's life over something that could easily that may have been misunderstood and i think you're right i think provoking and pushing buttons i mean we can't be that
Marc:You know, I understand it's hard being a minority.
Marc:It's hard to have a voice when you're a woman.
Marc:There are issues that exist, but there still has to be the human interaction and negotiation and ability to sort of like, all right, maybe we're taking ourselves too
Guest:well here's one thing they could stop doing is because i hear this as a complaint especially in the white privilege bullshit list uh i'm not as a white privilege i'm not asked to speak for my entire race all the time right that's the complaint in the same breath i go on fucking salon and someone is speaking for their entire race or their entire gender i am offended my entire race and this is my view and we all feel i hate fucking self-appointing
Guest:Yeah, and you don't speak for all the brown people and all the women.
Guest:So that's my only gripe is if you don't like some shit, first of all, tell me I suck.
Guest:You probably have a fair point or whatever.
Guest:Don't tell me that it's all women are behind you.
Marc:It's you.
Marc:But see, because in my mind, that's generalizing just like a fucking racist or a sex
Guest:of course but when it suits when it suits you if you're listen it's a religion like any other being far left and so so i watch the same little hypocrisies that were in my dumb church and it drives me up a fucking wall like like if oh this last thing that just happened and i like larry wilmore too he's had me on a lot he's a good guy yeah but uh the last night they're talking about in texas that stupid uh draw muhammad thing where that oh yeah some guys showed up to shoot and they got shot down yeah
Guest:Larry Willmore said something about, oh yeah, because you want to make a bullshit point about free speech.
Guest:Well, I agree it should be a bullshit point, but the fact that two guys show up to shoot it up means it's not a bullshit point.
Guest:It means it's a real point.
Guest:It's very stupid.
Guest:We're going to draw Muhammad just to be mean.
Guest:Oh, that sucks.
Guest:Someone's going to shoot you for that?
Guest:Well, keep doing it because obviously there's a fucking problem.
Marc:And that's weird because you're right, because the fear manifests itself in a strange way is that it's tricky because what you say is like, yeah, we have free speech, but you know, why push it?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Look, I'll be the one who controls.
Guest:I do think like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think about every fucking thing.
Guest:In fact, on my Facebook, by the way,
Guest:I don't put anything I don't think I can defend.
Guest:That's my whole thing.
Guest:In case I'm called upon at the tribunal, I won't say anything.
Guest:I'm like, can I defend this before I put it up?
Guest:So that's the main thing I do.
Marc:So that's the way you gauge.
Marc:That's how I gauge it.
Marc:That is a practical self-censoring mode of operation.
Guest:I don't even call it censorship.
Marc:It's not censorship because when it comes right down to it, you don't want to be put in the position where your only recourse is to snivel and apologize.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Because like that when people make these arguments about like, you know, what do you think about these kind of jokes?
Marc:I'm like, look, anyone can say whatever they want to.
Marc:They're just going to have to answer to it.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:And so that that Muslim thing, that argument about the free speech, they're not looking at it in the terms of what's fair is fair.
Guest:All they're looking at it is as, well, Islam's a brown thing and therefore hands off.
Guest:Which is, by the way, the most racist thing.
Guest:It's a religion.
Guest:It's not a race.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Charlie Hebdo, racist.
Guest:How is it racist?
Guest:That's a religion that anyone can be a member of.
Guest:Cat Stevens is not brown.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, they drew Muhammad.
Guest:They didn't draw.
Marc:They didn't go, this is what a hook nose looks like.
Marc:Maybe you should print those shirts up.
Marc:Cat Stevens is not brown.
Yeah.
Guest:So, to label it racist is very telling because in their head... But I think that, you know, you possess sensitivity.
Marc:You claim to not have a conscience, but you weigh this shit out.
Marc:No, I do.
Guest:What I'm saying is funny doesn't have a conscience.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I think that that's an important element of this is that there is a sensitivity to the issues.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:First of all, comedians are very sensitive.
Marc:They are.
Guest:That's why we joke that way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:This is what people who aren't funny don't get.
Guest:To make a joke about rape or any horrible thing.
Marc:But you know when it hurts somebody's feelings.
Guest:I would never fucking say a thing.
Guest:By the way, if somebody came to me.
Marc:That's what I meant to say.
Marc:There has to be an element of decency.
Marc:I mean, like with the word tranny is a good example because I don't say it anymore because it can't be fucking easy.
Marc:Can't be easy for people who are transitioning.
Marc:And for that minority and those people that are making these bold choices, no matter whatever you think about it, what do I got to hurt that person for?
Marc:Fine, I lose that word.
Guest:I'll be nice about it.
Guest:If I say something that hurts someone's feelings, they go, hey, Kurt, that really hurt my feelings.
Guest:I got no problem apologizing.
Guest:Please tell me if I did that.
Guest:However, that's not what they do.
Guest:They're not hurt.
Guest:They go, on behalf of these people I'm imagining, I am offended.
Guest:Go fuck yourself.
Guest:It's not genuine.
Guest:You're trying to make political hay to be a little barnacle on my ship.
Guest:That wasn't famous in the fucking first place.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So let's go back to what was the moment where... Now, your brother and sister, are they in the church anymore?
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Just my mom's in it.
Marc:Still?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:She can't let it go.
Guest:I don't want her to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I would hate for her to let it go.
Guest:For one thing...
Guest:That's gonna mean a lot more hangout time for me and her if they the church is picking up a lot of that slack right now Of being herb of listening to her stories, you know, yeah right now it's once a week She calls me with her orders of nonsense business
Guest:How is the soup?
Guest:I'm going to bring you some $2 bills.
Guest:You know, like just mom nonsense.
Guest:And they pick up at least 75% of that slack.
Marc:So it does have the benefit.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But what was the moment where you're like, I'm out?
Marc:Pussy.
Marc:Flat out.
Marc:Well, what was the policy on pussy?
Marc:You got to be married.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:No sex.
Marc:You know, the Christian policy.
Marc:But did it build from that point where... Well, hold on.
Marc:You know what?
Guest:I'm over some play.
Guest:It started with... I was working...
Marc:With the thing where it's like you can't tell the guy that dinosaurs aren't on the art.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that always bugged me a little bit because I'm arrogant.
Guest:The thing that saved me from all this shit and just carries me through life are no good quality I have.
Guest:Only my worst quality.
Guest:So any arrogance that saved me from a cult.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My laziness, my selfishness saved me from being in a bad marriage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All my bad qualities saved me.
Guest:So what happened was I already had that quality of arrogance, okay?
Guest:And then I started reading Skeptic Magazine because I was working at The Wiz and there was a Barnes & Noble and on my lunch break I would look for magazines.
Marc:And this is what city we in now?
Guest:This is in Jersey in Tom's River.
Guest:So I had picked up this book about UFOs.
Guest:At the time, I kind of believed in that shit.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I didn't realize the book.
Marc:Well, you were believing in dinosaurs on the ark kind of.
Guest:And by the way, believers believe everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They believe a little bit in everything.
Guest:That's the fucking really telling thing.
Guest:They also probably believe in UFOs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Ask them to square it.
Guest:They won't.
Guest:But it's funny.
Guest:You know those Nigerian internet scams?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:who falls for that when you go who the fuck falls for this christians that's why they go god bless and hello i am mr god bless you jesus loves us uh jones can you you know and they go oh a christian yeah that's who gets suckered yeah yeah so because you're taught to do that so you're reading skeptic magazine on your lunch break well i'm reading this ufo thing and it was like it was like real obvious shit like you know remember like roswell the the material of the ufo couldn't be broken by any physical means yeah
Guest:And it was real simple, like, well, then how did it break into a million pieces just because lightning hit it?
Guest:Oh, okay, I didn't think of that, right?
Guest:And it got my mind in that way.
Guest:And then I started picking up these magazines that were like skeptic shit.
Guest:And it was like James Randi kind of shit.
Guest:And I got really into it.
Marc:When I met you, you were like in it.
Guest:Right, and that really started to chip away at my entire... And I realized that fucking thing of like, it's not what you think, it's how you think.
Guest:I started to become a big believer in that.
Guest:So that's what it is.
Guest:And then the final straw is like pussy.
Marc:Did you ever publicly thank Skeptic Magazine?
Marc:No.
Guest:I thanked Pussy.
Guest:I fucking openly thank that.
Guest:I think I met Penn and Teller a couple times and told them that.
Guest:I never met James Randi.
Guest:Michael Shermer, I believe, was the publisher.
Guest:He wrote that good book, Why People Believe Weird Things, which is pretty great.
Guest:It's about just how your brain believes this fucking horse shit that it believes.
Marc:But I don't think I could get suckered.
Marc:I think you gave me some skeptic magazines.
Guest:I might have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because I'm watching Scientology.
Guest:I got obsessed with Scientology when that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Document.
Guest:I keep going to Scientology hole, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just fascinated.
Guest:Or even this Jim Jones thing I was watching the other day where they're interviewing a former member of Jones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they always make it seem like it could happen to anybody.
Guest:No, it can't.
Guest:Don't act like we all could fall for that shit.
Guest:As soon as you said he's a commie and a Christian, I'm out.
Guest:So I wouldn't have got suckered by that.
Guest:You had a fucking weakness.
Guest:I was born into it, so that's my excuse.
Guest:But these people that go into it, I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Guest:But whether it's Hitler or that, you come to someone in their weakest moment, right?
Marc:And give them their...
Marc:Well, people are also vulnerable if they've been, you know, it's fortunate, I guess, in America that, you know, people are kind of compelled and sold on the idea that they're not whole or complete.
Marc:And capitalism is just sort of like, well, you need to buy some burgers and some perfume.
Guest:We're not just that.
Guest:You can reinvent yourself in capitalism and you can break away from your family.
Marc:But it is a system built on mining people's weakness and desires.
Guest:right and then you're supposed to like amway you're supposed to learn how to do it yourself to make some money yourself like maybe now you can learn how to find people's desires and shit but but the fucking uh like the way i judge the all the religious shit now all religions i go one how much does it cost that's my number when people go this is a cult well how much it cost okay two
Guest:Does God do his own killing or do I have to do it?
Guest:And then three, am I obligated to stay in this religion more for my mom or my dad?
Guest:If it's for your mom, you probably won't be murdered when you leave.
Guest:If it's for your dad's honor, that's a little primitive.
Guest:You gotta catch up to the other religions.
Guest:because this shit about the it was a provocation against some yeah so what piss christ was kind of a provocation right the guy's still alive yeah he he gets death threats you know get send a nice death threat you don't have to actually follow through do the american way yeah just send the threat via twitter and sit on your fat ass and that and that's can you just bargain you down to that yeah can we just do it the free speech way of action yeah yeah yeah so when did you start doing comedy
Guest:in college you know at our Institute in Philly I was always doing art Institute yeah I would have been like oh okay so you're in fucking New Jersey and you're like all right I'm gonna fuck and I'm gonna no no not till I got to college but you but you were out when you went to college you know I was still in when I went and I went with with I
Guest:a couple of other friends who were also in the same religion so it was like okay because we're all going together right and uh we're gonna watch out for each other to stay in the faith and then uh one by one we all got out yeah just sniffed out puss and fucking so this girl basically like fucking i guess by today's standards would be considered a rape but that was pretty awesome over to do that you know like a coercion into what you do
Guest:just jumped on me and made me do stuff like but i was like a fucking like a virgin yeah nervous religious guy she's gonna take the christ right out of your penis crushing guilt that i felt afterwards bad oh it was unbelievable really i'm thinking of the lies i'm gonna have to tell by the way kind of why i believed mike tyson in that in that remember the mike tyson thing jesus christy how many bombs are you gonna drop that i gotta answer to
Guest:You're going to have to answer big for this one.
Guest:What?
Guest:But I'll just tell you, there's nothing with gender.
Guest:It's a religious thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That girl was a preacher's kid who is a model, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And let me tell you something.
Guest:There's no bigger liar on the face of the planet than a sexy preacher's kid.
Guest:Like a religious hot kid, those are the biggest liars because they fuck early and their social standing depends on them being moral.
Guest:So when I was in church, all like the hot kids and rich kids, they were all doing all this shit they weren't supposed to.
Guest:And they gave off the appearance of... So making up a lie, because I think people don't, and I certainly don't believe most rape victims are liars or some nonsense like that.
Guest:But if you are going to be a liar, chances are it's because you're religious and you've got to protect your religious honor.
Guest:And when people think it doesn't happen, it's because their brain works correctly and they can't fathom why someone would tell a lie like that.
Guest:Well, the reason is because you have this entire... Yeah.
Guest:And the thing with shame, man, because you hear that a lot now about shaming, like fat shaming and slut shaming, all that fucking shaming.
Guest:If you don't already feel shame, no one can shame you.
Guest:So like, hey, Kurt, you're a piece of shit.
Guest:So?
Guest:I mean, shame ended.
Guest:See how simple that is?
Guest:that's all you got to do fatso you don't have you're not saying wait maybe she lied and your argument is that you know it makes sense to you psychologically why yeah why she would have lied absolutely all right so you felt guilty oh my god i was thinking about my lies of how i'm going to get out of this they're going to know but god's going to know no matter what did you still believe in god yeah oh he did know but you don't believe in god now
Guest:I don't know what I believe.
Guest:Maybe I do.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe there's God.
Guest:I don't fucking know.
Guest:I just don't believe the book of Genesis.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I don't believe the Bible, I guess, is history as I did.
Marc:So what you were reacting to was really just the structure of the church and what was required of you.
Marc:So the shame was not like, God is never going to forgive me, but how the fuck am I going to be part of this organization?
Guest:I didn't want to go through the hassle.
Guest:And I ended up having to do a fake repentance thing, because Delfino, Jessica, who you knew when I first met you, so she was going to convert to make my mom happy.
Guest:And I was like, no, don't do that.
Guest:I'll just leave and never talk to my mom again.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:That was my joke about if you're gay, come out of the closet, because my whole family's going to stop talking to me like I was gay.
Guest:Fornicating heterosexually is as bad as being gay in the Bible.
Guest:Christians make it out like gay is worse.
Guest:it's the fornicating out of marriage yeah it's the same level of sin hetero or gay yeah right so my family was going to stop speaking to me like how you hear about gay teens right yeah and i gotta say it wasn't that hard because if you're into it pussy is so much better than your family yeah it's not a difficult choice you know oh that's all i gotta do to not speak to you assholes again is fuck okay
Guest:that's your punishment not mine stupid so so like you know people like i don't understand why people don't there's no like teaching people to come from a position of strength at all anymore it's just like this fucking i'm responsible for your suicide which by the and i had a lot of that in my family so i have a very dim view
Guest:of that suicide shit my old man would threaten suicide that that shitty little hostage taking where you're gonna kill yourself because you're upset is the shittiest thing to do to your fucking family my dad did it all the time too and and it's mental illness a big part of it you know yeah so i mean it's not like it's necessarily their fault but it enrages me having someone do that to me because i just had to deal with so much of it you know
Guest:this thing like we saw that don't say tranny of course don't say tranny but the idea that like Unless I say you were never a man.
Guest:It's your life like your life is in my hands Yeah, so your suicides on you pal.
Guest:That's not on me.
Guest:Yeah, that's why it's called suicide not homicide because that's the one thing that's what's so great about suicide you control it like that's the appeal I Decide you know yeah, so so that's this little shitty thing now where it's like the threat of
Guest:It's like Blazing Saddles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's like a gay teen with a, please, somebody help that poor man.
Guest:I'll kill him.
Guest:I'll kill this homo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they do.
Guest:And like, I'm not playing that fucking game.
Guest:But I've actually, I had to talk to this gay kid out of suicide on my Facebook.
Guest:Some fan of mine.
Guest:who fucking uh it wasn't anything about him being gay but he said something stupid to me on my like my fans are the worst and so he sent some comment on my facebook that i that i was like flippant about yeah and then i noticed on his page he put my favorite comedian hates me and it's just i don't think it's worth going through anything
Guest:Something like, so I'm like, dude, what does that mean?
Guest:Like, what are you getting at with that?
Guest:Like, and he goes, no, no, nothing, man.
Guest:I was just depressed.
Guest:It's nothing.
Guest:Then the next day he writes how he was about to kill himself.
Guest:And because then I talked to him, he felt better.
Guest:And then we talked it out and it turned out he had come out of the closet to his family.
Guest:His father told him that they're getting a divorce because he's gay.
Guest:And then like took his dog away because faggots can't have dogs or something.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:abusive shit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I go, look, man, like, you really think, like, if your father did it to you, fuck him.
Guest:Like, fuck them.
Guest:What do you, like, if your dad's like that and they won't speak to you, he just did you a favor leaving your life.
Guest:Like, don't put the power in his hands like that.
Guest:Like, it's in your fucking hands.
Guest:Like, you're worth, whatever, your life's worth more than some, you live in America.
Guest:The whole point of America is you don't have to give a fuck what your parents think.
Guest:That's the beauty of this compared to the East, you know?
Marc:All right, so you got your first pussy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you felt bad about it.
Guest:It was a good beater, though.
Marc:And you worked through it?
Guest:Yeah, the girl just kind of broke my heart, which was good, and I ended up with something else.
Marc:But how'd you deal with the shame?
Guest:I squashed it down and just felt it.
Guest:Horribly and then I would imagine the terrible consequent once I once I squished that down then I have to think about the aids I'm surely going to get right as punishment right because they tell you stories in church They go this person didn't do what they were supposed to and then there's all these sad stories of how I didn't follow the way and then all this awful shit Befell me, you know like a chain-letter story of people who broke out but like how did you leave the church?
Guest:I just fucking stopped going.
Guest:Didn't tell them anything.
Guest:My mother wanted me to write them a letter.
Guest:I'm like, I don't owe them an explanation.
Marc:And did your mother ever cut you out?
Guest:For a couple months, but she can't leave her kids.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And your dad just sort of drifted away?
Marc:My dad got this fellowship for being a drunk at some point.
Marc:And when did their marriage fall apart?
Guest:Once I was out, I was in college, and then he finally kind of fell apart.
Marc:And then he just went where?
Marc:He just went away?
Guest:He moved to Florida.
Marc:Oh, that's always a bad sign.
Guest:Yep, yep.
Guest:So I visited him a little.
Guest:I mean, look, I got to see him before he went, and I was still cool.
Guest:I just wish that he didn't do what he wanted in life, and as a result, he killed himself.
Guest:and the lesson i got in life was because my old man would be like listen you gotta fucking get a job that you don't basically told me i gotta get a job i don't like so i can get married to a woman because i'm gonna want to have sex yeah gotta be married for that yeah and he goes then she's gonna want kids yeah so you're gonna have to have be able to support him and he basically without knowing it was like get out son it's too late for me go like that's the message he delivered to me right and so i appreciate it because i got out when'd you become a comic
Guest:When I was in college doing poetry readings, I would be a real fruitball fucking alternative comic if not for starting out in black comedy rooms, which just beat the bullshit out of me.
Guest:God bless them.
Guest:God bless black people for just beating the fucking nonsense out of me.
Guest:I'd be a guy you'd be yelling at.
Guest:where the guys you used to yell at.
Guest:I remember you screaming at, well, I like Dimitri, but you were screaming at him a long time ago.
Guest:It was the funniest thing I ever saw because he had his long skateboard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't know if he had like a fucking kaleidoscope he was looking through or something.
Guest:But he walked up and he goes, why don't you be a man?
Guest:I don't even know what provoked it other than his appearance.
Guest:It was making me laugh.
Guest:And I remember he was like, you couldn't be cute if you tried, could you?
Yeah.
Guest:Like, I can't be.
Guest:I was really trying to.
Marc:It won't work for me.
Marc:So you and Jay were running around with Kevin Hart?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You and Jay Oakley?
Guest:But I was like Jay's unfunny friend, really, when we started.
Guest:They didn't really get me so much.
Guest:Actually, you know what?
Guest:The black comics who were funny...
Guest:that would come through, they all were immediately cool to me.
Guest:It was all the entrenched hacks that would be a dick to me.
Marc:For some reason, you just found yourself working black rooms.
Guest:Because in Philly, that's the only club there was.
Guest:If you wanted an audience, if you wanted to do jokes for some bitter old local comics, you could do the open mic at Comedy Cabaret.
Marc:What did you learn by doing those rooms?
Guest:How to not be precious.
Guest:In art school, I had a good illustration teacher who taught me how to not be precious.
Marc:What were you studying in art school?
Guest:Uh, animation.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I was an illustrator.
Guest:I was in, like, you know, comic books and shit.
Marc:And you wrote poetry.
Guest:But they were, like, funny, you know?
Marc:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:So I would be doing, like... Right.
Guest:I guess what Jeff Ross used to do to some degree, but I was a little more elaborate.
Marc:Right.
Marc:A little more spoken wordy?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of spoken wordy.
Marc:So it looked like you were a sweet, sensitive, arty guy at one time.
Guest:Yeah, and so, you know, so when I went to do these black rooms, it was like, they don't want to hear your fucking white bullshit like that, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which, I mean, really just snapped me out of, oh, I didn't realize like how much, like whatever bougie kind of attitude I had.
Guest:Like irony really is like a,
Guest:Like, I'm a big fan of Tim Heidecker, right?
Guest:But the guy, like, I met him one time, and I knew if I told him I like his work, he was going to look at me like a bug, okay?
Guest:I can already see he's that guy.
Guest:But I did whatever.
Guest:I like his shit, so I'll say what I feel.
Guest:Of course, he looks at me like, mm, all right, dude.
Guest:But that fucking little attitude where it's like, I love their shit, those guys, but half of it I find, like, great.
Guest:The other half is just shit jokes, and let's not pretend that it's more genius of a shit joke than
Guest:That's the most amazing thing is the alternative reinventing a thing that's already been there.
Guest:Like you pointed out to me how much these guys were just doing old Steve Martin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Would I even realize like there's no sense of any of this has been done before and they trot out
Marc:The shit that works the best has been done before.
Marc:The stuff that really hasn't been done, it's still difficult for people to understand.
Marc:You watch Maria Bamford, who's a fucking genius.
Marc:Yeah, she's great.
Guest:And by the way, I didn't realize until I met her that that's her, that fucking voice.
Guest:She's not doing a character.
Guest:No.
Marc:i met her she's like right but some people still like because she's truly unique and people are like i don't know what to do with her and she's got people that love her but the stuff that works best in the alternative has been done over and over again right no i like her shit i always liked eddie pepitone he always said something that and i was another one he's a real original yeah i like i would sit through the shit of his i didn't like just to hear the one or two things that i love you know what i mean because it's original it's that moment where he yells and cries at the same time almost where he's like ah
Guest:It's worth it to me like I'll let him build up whatever bullshit just to get to the part that I think it's like really like creative ingenious, you know So there's a few people like the real deal and then there's all those knockoffs Yeah, and that's how and that's the main thing I learned from the black room That's not really measurably different from the white room other than white people are more afraid of it and
Guest:But also you've got to work and you've got to deliver and you can't fuck around There's no one got indulging this that's right like half-baked garbage that you you can't be a bataya comic as Jay calls them, which is this but I I So he goes a bataya comedy.
Guest:How much of that do you see dude?
Guest:so I
Guest:single now uh so uh something therapist but you gotta tell the joke i've never met by the way outside the writer's room of schumer this is how i know i'm like the lowest class member of the yeah i'm the only one who doesn't have a therapy story yeah i've never seen so many people be in therapy who haven't been to live combat in all my life like
Guest:What did you see?
Guest:Kyle Dunning told a story about his therapist has to hold a pen because he falls asleep while Kyle's talking and the pen, like, he picks it up to wake him up.
Guest:I'm like, if your therapist is falling asleep, I got great news.
Guest:You're done.
Guest:Well, what are you paying for?
Guest:Your therapist can't stay awake.
Guest:You got no reason to pay this money.
Guest:Well, here's what I got to tell you because I got to wrap up.
Guest:I think you got a lot accomplished today.
Ha ha ha!
Guest:I swear to God, I miss you saying shit like that to me all the time.
Guest:That's my favorite shit, dude, is that.
Guest:It's all going to work out.
Guest:It's like this fucking...
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:Oh, dude, this is my favorite thing of all time you said to me.
Guest:What?
Guest:It was around when Kurt and Courtney, that documentary was out.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Because you know that new one's on?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was talking to her that.
Guest:I'm like, do you think she had him killed?
Guest:And you're like, women don't have to kill men.
Marc:That's such a great point.
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:It's going to happen anyways.
Marc:Well, no, it's just like, oh, I remember what I wanted to say.
Marc:First of all, your soul is not a loser.
Marc:It seems like your soul is actually fighting the good fight and engaging in what is righteous.
Guest:That's what a loser does.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it's called what a loser does, not a winner.
Guest:No, but what is a winner?
Guest:I'm cool with it.
Guest:I like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm not, like, I know in my head, like, Kevin's a winner.
Guest:And I don't say that in any bitterness.
Guest:Like, I give it to Kev every single thing he did.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He did every fucking decision he should do right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:He fucking was the one that got his ass out of Philly before any of us.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He has a set that people can mass appeal.
Guest:I could never be that guy.
Marc:You're not a leader of men, Kurt.
Guest:I'm going to be a niche market.
Marc:You're not a leader of men.
Marc:I'm a boutique operator.
Marc:You're the worst case scenario.
Guest:Yeah, I shouldn't host.
Guest:Let's put it that way.
Guest:I should not be the first thing you see.
Guest:Someone needs to bridge me.
Marc:I think you're a genius.
Marc:It's good to see you, man.
Guest:Yeah, it's good to see you too, man.
Marc:All right, folks, that's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:That guy was funny, right?
Marc:Provocative, smart, quick.
Marc:Love Kurt Metzger.
Marc:It's nice to talk to him.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:I'll email you every Sunday.
Marc:Personal stuff.
Marc:Go to WTFPod slash calendar.
Marc:See all the new tour dates.
Marc:Portland, Colorado, New York area.
Marc:This week, Chicago.
Marc:Cleveland, Minneapolis, it's all there.
Marc:No guitar today because I'm in a hotel room.
Marc:I can sing something.
Guest:Hold on, play some fake trumpet for you.
Marc:I improvised that.
Guest:Boomer lives!