Episode 722 - John Caponera / Adam Devine
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucknicks?
Marc:What the fuckanistas?
Marc:What the fuckaricans?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my show, WTF.
Marc:It's a podcast.
Marc:I guess you know that if you're listening to it.
Marc:How's everybody doing?
Marc:Are you okay?
Marc:Y'all right?
Marc:Y'all good where you are?
Marc:You're running?
Marc:You're sweating?
Marc:You're sitting?
Marc:You're driving?
Marc:You're flying?
Marc:You're on a train?
Marc:You digging holes out in the desert looking for treasure.
Marc:All of you, welcome to the show.
Marc:Thank you for coming today on the show.
Marc:Good show.
Marc:Adam Devine, I'm going to talk to in a few minutes about a movie that we both are in.
Marc:Can I say we're both in this film?
Marc:He's got a slightly bigger part than me.
Marc:And then veteran comic John Caponera, who I used to watch when I was a doorman at the comedy store.
Marc:impressive stylist real deal comic uh just catching up with him he's got a a self-published book he'd like you to uh to check out if you would it's called the life in comedy you can get it on amazon what else do i need to plug look spokane i'll be there tonight apparently there's still some tickets for uh tonight tomorrow
Marc:And Saturday at the Spokane Comedy Club.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour to link up to that.
Marc:I got Wise Guys coming up in Salt Lake City, July 14, 15, and 16.
Marc:And I've got the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, July 28th, 29th, and 30th.
Marc:I'll be at Stand Up Live in Phoenix.
Marc:Look, that's a big room.
Marc:And if you guys don't start buying tickets, who knows what will happen?
Marc:Do you understand?
Marc:September 3rd at the Albuquerque Journal Theater, and I'll be, in September, I'll be at the Rochester, at the Comedy Club in Rochester, New York, the 9th and the 10th.
Marc:And that's about all for now.
Marc:Those things are happening.
Marc:I'll be with Dean Del Rey here in L.A.
Marc:at the El Rey Theater on...
Marc:July 19th, me and Anthony Jeselnik and Joey Diaz, Dean Del Rey and friends at the El Rey Theater.
Marc:Go do that if you want.
Marc:Also, I'd like to give a little love to my friend, to my dear friend, Dom Irera, who is going to be playing at the Denver Comedy Works, one of the best rooms in the world, September 7th, 8th and 9th.
Marc:Give a little love to the great Buddhas of the stand-up profession.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:How are we doing?
Marc:Everything all right?
Marc:Did I mention everything?
Marc:Hey, so you want to know what's going on with Buster Kitten?
Marc:Buster Kitten, the amazing slapstick cat.
Marc:Buster Kitten is now in the second bedroom, comfortably isolated, but not quarantined.
Marc:I just got to get him acclimated.
Marc:I got to introduce him to the other cats, but he's coming into his own.
Marc:He seems to be sleeping on a pillow tucked in the bottom cubicle of a Klax Ikea bed.
Marc:Record shelf.
Marc:Is that what it is?
Marc:Are those the ones?
Marc:Kallax shelving unit.
Marc:If you don't know, that is truly the best shelving unit for records.
Marc:But I got a little double Kallax and the records are on top and underneath.
Marc:I left open and I gave I stuck a pillow into one of the cubicle holes.
Marc:And Buster Kitten is sleeping in there.
Marc:I'm getting him the top-notch food.
Marc:I'll go sit in there.
Marc:He's purring.
Marc:He's meowing.
Marc:He's playing with a couple of mice.
Marc:He's shitting in a box.
Marc:He's doing all the things kittens do.
Marc:And he will jump on my lap.
Marc:That's the only trick that I know is happening right now is the jumping on the lap.
Marc:Adam Devine stopped by and sometimes I do these short interviews and he came by to promote the movie he's in.
Marc:So Mike and Dave need wedding dates.
Marc:I am in that movie.
Marc:I'm in it.
Marc:Remember, those of you who were around, they flew me to Hawaii for a day.
Marc:I spent a day
Marc:in uh honolulu they flew me down there i got there got some rest got up it was taken to set the hotel was pretty interesting there were dolphins at the hotel there were there were like pools tidal pools in back of the hotel and there were dolphins in it and i if i'm not mistaken turtles maybe a turtle
Marc:Big turtle.
Marc:Dolphins at the hotel.
Marc:That's fancy.
Marc:And I did a scene.
Marc:I played a bartender who was trying to stay sober.
Marc:Now, I don't know.
Marc:It was a very fun time.
Marc:It was a fun day.
Marc:I'm glad I did it.
Marc:Have no idea what they used.
Marc:Don't know how I did.
Marc:Let's just do it.
Marc:Let's just talk now to Adam Devine about that movie and about himself a little bit.
Marc:you read all these books i read some of these books yeah but a lot of them i've had for many years and you've never read right i'm thinking about buying more books and i don't want to read all the books you know
Guest:Yeah, just use them for decor.
Guest:I want people to come in and be like, Jesus Christ, this guy reads.
Marc:Well, I mean, I've read, there are books on here that I've taken a look at.
Marc:Then there are books that, you know, I was sent for free.
Marc:Like there's a lot of graphic novels that I've read, but there's some I haven't, but I don't want to get rid of them because I might look at them.
Marc:I'll peruse all of them.
Marc:We're not going to read all of them.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And like some of the bios, some of these are good reference books.
Marc:Some of these books I've been trying to read since I was in college and I don't understand them.
Guest:Some of them you want to just have so you know that it's a book.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now when people are like, that book, and you're like, yeah, I have that book.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah, I'm going to get to it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's that one about the thing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, I got that.
Marc:I read the back of the book so I know it's the thing.
Marc:Or how about this one?
Marc:I started it.
Marc:I started that book.
Marc:You know, I kind of got it.
Marc:I get it.
Guest:Then I got busy and moved on to a bigger, thicker book.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which I also started.
Marc:So they're both by my bed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're both in my garage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're there.
Marc:I got them.
Marc:I got all the books.
Marc:Adam divine.
Marc:Is that how you say it?
Marc:Is that your real name?
Marc:That's real.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What, how does that happen?
Um,
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Penny and Dennis Devine also have it.
Guest:My grandparents have it.
Guest:The Devines.
Guest:I don't know where it came from.
Guest:You don't know where it came from.
Guest:I know it's Irish.
Guest:Everyone thinks I'm Jewish, but- No, I thought it was Irish.
Guest:It's straight Irish.
Guest:You thought it was Irish?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I did think it was Irish.
Guest:Do you have a book of Irish names?
Guest:Yeah, I looked it up before you got it in the book of Irish names.
Guest:What is his lineage?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:It is Irish probably.
Marc:It definitely is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that's what they say.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think there's another actor.
Marc:Maybe I saw a character in a movie about Ireland that's name was Divine.
Marc:I might be.
Marc:Waking Ned Divine.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there you go.
Guest:So we got to the bottom of it.
Guest:You're sourced.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to do one of those, you see the commercials where they take a prick of your blood, and then you can be like, you are 65% Native American or whatever.
Guest:I just did that.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:You don't even need blood.
Marc:You need spit.
Marc:No shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm doing some TV show where they do that.
Marc:It's sort of this is your life genetic testing.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:So I had to do two separate labs.
Marc:So I just sent the other one.
Marc:I sent two in.
Guest:So you don't know what you are yet?
Marc:No, I'm pretty sure it's going to be Russian, Polish, German, Jewish mutt.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:That's the region.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Eastern European Jew area.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you probably go right all the way back to Ireland.
Marc:Do you ever go to Ireland?
Marc:I've never been.
Marc:I've never even been overseas.
Guest:what to promote the movie mike and dave need wedding dates uh i i was supposed to go to berlin and um in what london i think yeah uh but then uh i'm doing something i'm shooting something else so you've never been out of the country you're one of those uh like well you seem like kind of an american guy i'm super i'm super domestic i am i'm a bud light of a human domestic where do you grew up where
Guest:Iowa.
Guest:Iowa and Nebraska.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Iowa until I was 10, and then moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and then lived there until I was 18.
Marc:Were your parents in farming?
Guest:Moved out here.
Guest:No.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, my dad works for the railroad.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Marc:So that's a very Midwestern thing.
Marc:Is he a switcher or a conductor?
Guest:He was a conductor.
Guest:He was?
Guest:I think he did everything, but he's been a conductor for as far as I know, for as long as I know.
Marc:So he's on the train.
Okay.
Guest:I remember, like, this is the most Americana shit that anyone can have.
Guest:Like, come at me with something more Americana, Marc Maron listeners.
Guest:I used to, I remember being at a railroad crossing and seeing my dad hang out of the train and wave to us, like me and my mom.
Guest:There's dad.
Guest:Yeah, there he is.
Guest:And he's, like, honking the horn and waving at me and stuff.
Marc:And the train goes by?
Marc:Yeah, it was cool.
Guest:But he never took you in the engine?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did.
Guest:It was, like, wildly, like, illegal to take kids in there.
Guest:Well, like, I don't think, like, the federales are going to, you know.
Marc:No.
Guest:But train law.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think he snuck me on for, like, my fourth birthday.
Guest:I have, like, little kid photos.
Guest:I don't really remember it.
Marc:It's okay to bring you on if it's not moving, isn't it?
Marc:I don't think so.
Marc:Maybe it just didn't want you around.
Marc:Yeah, maybe.
Marc:Maybe that's what it is.
Marc:That's where he keeps all the hookers and blow on the engine.
Marc:In that front compartment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So walk me through what made you funny.
Marc:Like, what happened in childhood in terms of, like, I did some reading.
Marc:It sounds like you had some trouble.
Marc:Meth.
Marc:No.
Guest:No, I'm kidding.
Guest:All these teeth are fake, Mark.
Guest:I believe that.
Guest:They're too straight.
Guest:You don't strike me as a meth guy.
Guest:No, too chubby.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, I don't have that meth weight.
Guest:Were you a sports guy, though?
Guest:No, I wanted to be a professional baseball player when I was really young.
Guest:You know, everybody kind of did.
Guest:But I was hit by a cement truck when I was 11, 10?
Marc:You were really hit by a cement truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like level.
Guest:Like for real.
Guest:Hit by a truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It took me under the first, I think, two wheels.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it spit me out.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, I broke every bone in my legs.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's just fucking awful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That moment where something goes.
Guest:I'm glad I don't remember.
Guest:Obviously, I don't remember.
Guest:I went into shock right away.
Guest:But that poor guy that was driving.
Guest:He was as old as I am now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Driving a truck.
Guest:Just driving a truck.
Guest:And then he just crushes a little boy.
Guest:Like, that would be the worst.
Marc:Whose fault was it?
Marc:Did you run after a ball or something?
Marc:Yes, he was drunk.
Marc:He was?
Guest:No, I wish I would, like, own the company.
Guest:No.
Guest:I'd be Mr. Cement guy.
Guest:I'd be a Mr. Cement mix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Divine Cement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what it would be.
Guest:What a great alternate life that would have been.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Would it have been?
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Guest:You're about to be a movie star.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:But I could own a fleet of cement trucks.
Guest:No, it was like my one buddy was across the street, and I was on the other side.
Guest:And we were in the suburbs, so new houses were being built every day.
Guest:And we were going to the local convenience store.
Guest:We would rip pages out of Playboys and penthouses and stuff.
Guest:Sure, and steal gum.
Guest:See, this was pre-internet.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:Like I'm on that cusp of like, I was like the last generation to like have to have nudie magazines.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:So we were like trying to do that.
Guest:And like our other friend would like trick, not trick.
Guest:We were probably mad at it.
Guest:Distract.
Guest:Distract.
Guest:It would be like, hey, where's the razzmatazz?
Guest:Suckers or whatever.
Guest:And then we would do that.
Guest:But we were on our way to do that.
Guest:Did you cough?
Guest:I don't know why we just didn't take a whole magazine.
Marc:That's how dumb we were.
Marc:You thought that would be real stealing.
Marc:Yeah, that's real.
Marc:We're just taking a page or two.
Guest:We want to see an areola.
Guest:just one yeah and so we were on our way to do that and he yells come on as in like I'm excited to go do this and I took it as in come on the coast is clear and three symmetrics were going up the hill and two were coming down and so after the third one passed me going up the hill he yells come on I'm like okay and I walk behind and I couldn't see the other side oh god
Marc:Yeah, it was gnarly.
Marc:I couldn't walk for two years.
Marc:See what happens when you rip off titties?
Marc:When you rip off titty pages?
Marc:This is a karmic return.
Marc:God.
Guest:Literally rip off titties.
Guest:I bet that would be worse.
Marc:A lightning bolt would have just did it.
Marc:No, you would have died in that truck.
Marc:Yeah, I would have.
Marc:So for three years recovery?
Marc:Two.
Guest:It was a solid two before I could really get up and walk.
Guest:That's a big shot to the childhood.
Guest:Yeah, middle school was a weird time in my life.
Marc:Because they were wheeling you around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were in traction for a while?
Guest:I was in traction for a couple months.
Guest:Good orthopedic, I guess, put you together.
Guest:Yeah, they did a great job at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Marc:That's what my dad did.
Marc:He was in that business.
Marc:He was in the bone mending business.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, pins, things, traction.
Marc:Oh, that's awesome.
Marc:Putting hips, legs, knees together.
Guest:It's cool that there's so much money in that because...
Guest:athletes need to get healthy sure and so now like you like you want to fake me easy got you yeah but like no problem lymphoma cancer so like we have no idea what's happening but we can replace every joint in the body if you need to throw a ball or catch a run yeah if you're athletic or rich we got you when you start doing comedy stuff
Guest:I started pretty young.
Guest:I was like 13, and I would... Freshly recovered.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Learning to walk again.
Guest:Just learning to walk again.
Guest:And I couldn't play sports, so when all my friends were playing sports and that kind of... Was that heartbreaking, though?
Marc:Seriously?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:I really liked playing sports.
Marc:You seem like a sports guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I couldn't do that anymore, but I liked making people laugh.
Guest:So I would call into the local radio station, the local rock radio station, and would do different characters and voices, and I would write down sketches and call them.
Marc:Did they hire you, or were you just doing it on your own?
Guest:Well, I did it on my own for a few months and then it kind of became like a successful bit that they were doing.
Guest:You know, in my mind, it probably was like eight people listen, but I'm like, I heard like two people talk about me one time and then like Kmart and I'm like, I'm famous as fuck.
Marc:They knew you though at the station.
Marc:They're like, it's that kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they didn't know as a kid, they were like, Hey, come in.
Guest:What we want to get you.
Guest:We want to put you on staff and have you be like a recurring, like you do this every day.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, and you're like, Oh great.
Guest:And I show up with my mom because I'm 13 years old.
Guest:And they were like, Holy shit.
Guest:We had no idea you were a child.
Guest:Cause I would never talk to them in my like little boy voice.
Guest:I would always talk to them in character.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Cause I was afraid they would find out I'm a little boy and be like, get out of here, you child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did they give you the gig?
Guest:They couldn't pay me because I was, you know, because it's illegal to work that young.
Guest:But they were like, we'll give you all the free, like, we'll give you free CDs and all the free concert tickets you want, which is like better than money when you're 13 years old.
Guest:It was like any concert that I was so like, I saw Foo Fighters a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that was the band that was like peaking when i was at that age so yeah oh that's awesome so and so you went into the studio and did it yeah that's hilarious yeah how long that last uh it lasted a little over a year and uh and then i went to disney world with my family like on a family vacation by that time i was like 14 and yeah peak of
Guest:like horny, pervy 14 year old boy, like hard dick everywhere I go.
Guest:So it was the worst vacation I've ever had because it's just like, I don't wanna ride rides.
Guest:I want to try to talk to girls, but my parents are with me.
Guest:And also I'm bad at talking to girls and there's all these hot girls walking around with their family.
Guest:It was a nightmare for me.
Guest:And so I come back home.
Guest:I'm kind of bummed at the whole vacation.
Guest:Would rather just play like kicked it with my friends and come home.
Guest:And I turn on the radio station to, you know, call in and they're playing.
Guest:It's the end of the world as we know it over and over and over and over again.
Guest:And I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
Guest:And then I didn't have like anybody's personal number.
Guest:I just had the number for the station.
Guest:And finally I found out that they were changing formats.
Guest:They fired all the DJs and it is now a top 40 radio station.
Marc:Oh, you're out of a gig.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm out of the gig.
Marc:So that was their last big revolutionary move to spin that over and over again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They changed the world before Omaha stopped.
Yeah.
Marc:We'll show those fuckers.
Marc:We got one day to do this, man.
Marc:And then when did the sketch stuff start?
Marc:You went to college and that kind of shit?
Marc:I'm just trying to get up to speed.
Guest:Let's get up to speed, Mark.
Marc:I want to.
Marc:I'll truncate this.
Marc:Because I know that the movie, what's the whole name?
Marc:Who needs wedding dates?
Marc:Mike and Dave.
Marc:Yeah, Mike and Dave need wedding dates.
Marc:The best scene in the movie is probably that first scene.
Marc:That opening scene.
Marc:I think so.
Guest:That bartender brought something pretty special.
Marc:Did he?
Marc:Because I haven't seen it.
Marc:Now, I'm going to try to believe you.
Marc:Was it good?
Guest:it is it is really good i'm actually like it's the first time i've done a few movies but it's the first one that like i'm i'm proud of right oh really good it's for like me like i would go see it and actually enjoy it and really think and you uh this is like the this is a big role
Guest:Yeah, it's my first starring role in a movie.
Marc:Right, you and the Efron kid.
Marc:Yeah, that unknown.
Marc:It was very funny to do that, because they flew me down for a day, and we just did that thing.
Marc:And when you do a scene like that, I'm like, I don't think that's going to get it.
Marc:I don't know what that's going to do.
Marc:And I have not seen it.
Guest:I feel like a lot of times actors will just blow smoke, because they want...
Guest:It's to make money so they can make more movies.
Guest:But like, yeah, I definitely want it to make money so I can make more movies.
Guest:But like, I think people will actually leave the theater going like, holy shit, that was so funny.
Guest:It made me laugh as hard as like Wedding Crashers made me laugh.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's like, it's a good cast.
Marc:You got Steven Root in there and you got the girls, Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick and you and Zach.
Marc:And like, there were other people hanging around.
Marc:Who else is in it?
Guest:uh well like uh sam richardson from he's on v people yeah yeah yeah uh sugarland beard who like hasn't she hasn't been in much but she plays my sis or my sister who's getting married yeah and she's so fucking funny and uh like she trips ball like they get like the girls give her ecstasy yeah yeah the night before her wedding and she just loses her mind and uh
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Drug humor.
Marc:It's all there.
Marc:A lot of drug humor.
Marc:Sex, drugs.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:Hawaii.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sex, drugs in Hawaii.
Marc:It's set in Hawaii, right?
Marc:We didn't just go there to shoot it because it's some budgetary thing.
Guest:Yeah, budgetarily we had to shoot in Hawaii, but it's set in Atlanta.
Yeah.
Marc:They cut the best deal in Honolulu.
Guest:You gotta go down there.
Guest:Yeah, it's all set in Hawaii.
Guest:That's the sort of plot is that we take these girls to this Hawaiian vacation.
Marc:That hotel was wild, wasn't it?
Marc:They had the fish right in the hotel.
Guest:Yeah, the dolphins.
Marc:There were dolphins at the hotel.
Guest:it was funny and turtle i think a turtle or two maybe yeah it was funny how sad people got seeing those dolphins every day well you were there for how many weeks yeah i got i wasn't sad i didn't think to be sad until i saw like every like little girl walk past being like we gotta free the dolphins i'm like oh shit i guess you were just like yeah i'm like cool look at those dolphins should i uh throw this uh six pack ring in there what would that do
Guest:Oh, look, they're all playing with it.
Guest:What's going on?
Marc:It's a toy.
Marc:Yeah, that was a wild hotel.
Marc:But okay, so after, where'd you start with the sketch stuff that eventually evolved?
Marc:Because I didn't realize that you kind of were doing a lot of stuff before Workaholics.
Guest:Yeah, well, I did stand-up in college.
Guest:I went out to L.A.
Guest:right after.
Marc:Were you a stand-up?
Marc:Was that the thing?
Guest:It was solo?
Guest:Yeah, I did the New Faces Montreal, just for the last New Faces in 06.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And it was me and Hannibal Buress.
Guest:So you had an act?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were you featuring at clubs and stuff?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:No shit.
Marc:Were you playing the Midwest?
Guest:I remember seeing you back in the day in like 05.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, at the comedy store.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm like, Jesus, this guy's going to kill himself.
Guest:This guy, poor guy.
Marc:You and I are definitely opposite types.
Marc:There's no doubt about that.
Marc:Like, you remind me of my roommate in college, Lance, that was just sort of like, you know, kind of like, what's going on?
Marc:Yeah, you're like, this happy fucker.
Marc:Shut up.
Marc:This guy's okay.
Marc:Well-adjusted motherfucker.
Marc:Yeah, definitely different comedic types.
Marc:Yeah, I'd say so.
Marc:But were you featuring and stuff?
Marc:Were you working as a comic?
Guest:Yeah, I was trying to stay.
Guest:I got an offer, but the feature money is like, it wasn't paying.
Guest:$400 or $500 a week.
Guest:Yeah, so I was doing better.
Guest:just staying in town auditioning uh for like commercials and that bullshit and i started a book i booked a few national commercials and that sort of thing yeah and that was kind of paying the bills and while i was doing like all the clubs around town yeah uh especially the improv and i worked at the improv for a couple years from 04 to 06 working as a as a door guy and answering the phones oh you were one of those guys yeah so you paid your dues over there doing that uh-huh taking calls from comics going what time am i on
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wait, who's up?
Marc:No, I don't want to come.
Guest:All right.
Guest:What's the lineup?
Guest:Hey, how many comments do I get?
Guest:Honestly, as many as you want.
Guest:There's no one inside.
Guest:You're the headliner.
Marc:There's no one there.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So then how does Workaholics happen?
Marc:Were you doing Funny or Die videos and shit, too, or what?
Guest:Yeah, it was like kind of right before Funny or Die.
Guest:Like, 06 was like, it was like YouTube had just come out.
Guest:I started making YouTube videos with the guys from Workaholics that we were all roommates together.
Guest:We went to- Here in town?
Guest:Yeah, we went to college together for two years in Orange Coast Community College.
Guest:Did improv classes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, the one with the curly hair, Blake had like this cute little afro.
Guest:I was like, he's really fucking funny.
Guest:I should write with him.
Guest:And so we started writing together and writing a lot of sketches.
Guest:His best friend was Kyle, who is now our director.
Guest:He wanted to go to film school.
Guest:So I moved out to LA with him, met Durz at the Second City.
Guest:when I was taking classes in LA.
Guest:And then YouTube just came out in 06 and we were all roommates and we're like, let's make YouTube videos.
Guest:This is perfect for us.
Guest:And so we made like 80, 90 YouTube videos in the course of a couple years.
Guest:And then I did stand up for Comedy Central Live at Gotham.
Guest:And they were like, oh, what else are you doing?
Guest:I'm like, I have all these internet.
Guest:Please watch them.
Guest:No one's watching them.
Guest:And then they gave us a show.
Marc:And that was the birth of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's your creator of that thing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you guys write all of them still?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Yeah, I'm out of the writer's room talking to you right now.
Guest:They're pissed.
Marc:Are they really?
Marc:No.
Marc:So this is good.
Marc:So you did all right for yourself.
Marc:Yeah, so far, man.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it's been... The movie's premiering tonight.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:Hopefully people go see it.
Guest:How many seasons of Workaholics were there?
Guest:We're still doing it.
Guest:We're doing the last season right now.
Guest:It's season seven.
Guest:This is it, though?
Guest:Yeah, we've decided...
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's on you.
Marc:You're like, how many times?
Guest:They wanted us to do one more, but we were kind of, we're all kind of to the point that.
Marc:Are all the other guys doing as well as you though?
Marc:They got other things going?
Marc:Yeah, they're all doing stuff.
Guest:And we're doing a movie.
Guest:We're doing a movie with Seth Rogen's producing it with us and Scott Rubin.
Guest:Workaholics movie?
Guest:Yeah, it stars the three of us, but it's not workaholics.
Guest:It's like the three of us.
Guest:We're hotel maids, and our hotel gets taken over by terrorists, and we gotta die hard this situation.
Guest:We're three dumb John McLeans, basically.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Rudin's producing it?
Marc:Uh-huh, and Seth Rogen.
Marc:And who's gonna direct it?
Marc:Your guy?
Marc:Kyle, yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's exciting, man.
Guest:Yeah, so we're kind of, we love working together, but we don't want to do workaholics for so long that people are like, that fucking show's still on?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We just kind of, everything becomes way over the top.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, you guys are like traveling now and shit.
Guest:Yeah, we no longer like ride in our shitty car.
Guest:Somehow we won the lottery and we all ride those like...
Marc:those uh what can am spiders and those motorcycles with three wheels be a different show yeah well i saw you in the intern that was um yeah it was cool man it was working with deniro nice guy yeah cool like uh were you nervous
Guest:yeah you know i was like honestly i was it was uh he's he's robert de niro but he's he's cool i feel like if you aren't if you aren't like oh robert de niro around him yeah yeah and or just and you just have a conversation with him he's really cool yeah he's like kind of a quiet guy right yeah he's super quiet like he'll never he'll never be like hey how's it going yeah right like uh you have to be like
Guest:You know, you have to try to start.
Guest:We had a running bit where it was like, he doesn't laugh.
Guest:He just like, he like has a silent laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he like just sort of jiggles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the running bit that I had with some of the other actors was like, hey, time me.
Guest:See how long it takes for me to get De Niro jiggling.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he would laugh.
Guest:He would.
Guest:He wasn't stingy with it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But it was just a gentle jiggle.
Guest:And so it'd be like, hey, 45 seconds, pretty good.
Marc:So this movie, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm in it.
Marc:I just want to make that clear.
Marc:I'm in the opening scene.
Marc:I want to make that clear.
Guest:So buy a ticket.
Guest:Watch the opening scene.
Marc:And if you don't like it, you can split.
Marc:If you don't like it, you can split.
Guest:Give us your money.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, it looks like it's set up to be a pretty big summer movie and everyone's excited about it.
Marc:And now I'm trying to find out whether or not I was overlooked for the premiere because I don't recall getting an invitation.
Guest:You should be invited.
Guest:If you're not, I'm going to have some words, Mark.
Guest:With Jake?
Guest:I'm going to have a word or two.
Guest:It's Jake's name, right?
Guest:Yeah, Jake Szymanski, the director.
Guest:He actually texted me on the way over here to say, I hear you're doing Mark's podcast.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Marc:He's awesome.
Marc:What was the other movie he directed before this one?
Guest:He didn't, this is his first movie.
Marc:Feature.
Guest:So he was a Funny or Die guy?
Guest:Yeah, he was a Funny or, he was like employee number one at Funny or Die, which is pretty cool.
Guest:He was, it was like right, it was like day one of Funny or Die being a thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was making like YouTube videos much like I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was one of the first people to upload a video.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Adam McKay and Will Ferrell at that point were watching every video that was uploaded because it's a brand new site.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They just did it that day.
Guest:So they're like, well, watch all the things.
Guest:And they really liked him.
Guest:And they were like, well, we got to start hiring people.
Guest:What about this kid?
Guest:Brought him in.
Guest:And I think McKay kind of took him under his wing a little bit.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And shot him the ropes.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Guest:He's great, man.
Marc:He's a nice guy.
Guest:I would love to make 10 movies with him.
Guest:He's like the best.
Marc:I was working with Zach.
Marc:Is that all right?
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Guest:He's like, it kind of sucks because he's like, not only is he the handsomest guy in the world, like women just like fall over.
Guest:Just like gush.
Marc:I remember like, because I don't work in a lot of movies.
Marc:I do the TV thing a bit, but he's pretty effortless.
Marc:Like I forget that like some of these actors, because I mean, maybe you're like me.
Marc:There's part of you like when you're on camera, you're, hey, I'm this guy.
Marc:I'm talking at this level.
Marc:You know, we're talking like this.
Marc:And then you see guys like, I imagine De Niro or someone who's a straight actor.
Marc:Like, Zach, they're just, hey, what's going on?
Marc:And you're like, don't you speak up?
Guest:Oh, I mean, both Zach and De Niro as well.
Guest:But De Niro, especially during the intern, I was like, is he giving anything?
Guest:Like, he's acting like he's never been in a movie before.
Guest:Hey, you got to make more faces.
Yeah.
Marc:And then you watch it and you're like, holy fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He knew what he was doing.
Marc:Why doesn't he make a ton of funny faces like I try to do?
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's weird though, right?
Marc:And then you watch it and you're like, he makes a lot of faces.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:How did I not notice the faces?
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He makes faces at the perfect time.
Marc:Well, good luck with the movie.
Marc:I hope it does well.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Thanks a lot, Mark.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, that was fun.
Marc:Glad to talk to him.
Marc:But Jury's In was not invited, was not invited to the premiere.
Marc:I don't know if I was forgotten about or perhaps the guy who starts the movie out strong.
Marc:Doesn't get an invite to the premiere.
Marc:But I have heard that it's a funny movie.
Marc:I've seen it on the Twitter.
Marc:I've seen people mention that it's a funny movie.
Marc:I will see the movie.
Marc:Primarily because I'm in it.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now...
Marc:I want to share this conversation I had with John Caponera.
Marc:John Caponera, like, look, when I was a kid working at the comedy store, when I was just a kind of a long-haired, sweaty, drugged-up little Jewish kid, 22 years old, working the door at the comedy store, hanging out with devils and monsters and gypsies and pirates, doing the yay-yo, staying up all night talking about nothing...
Marc:He was one of these dudes that would come in.
Marc:I knew he was from Chicago, but he would come in, get up on stage, do a solid spot, tight material, physical, funny, high energy, you know, real pro.
Marc:And then he did this amazing thing.
Marc:He just left.
Marc:Didn't hang out with the freaks.
Marc:Didn't get involved with all the stuff.
Marc:The swigging and the snorting and the insanity.
Marc:And I kind of respected that.
Marc:I didn't understand it.
Marc:I was like, what do you mean?
Marc:He's not going to hang out?
Marc:Why doesn't that guy hang out?
Marc:That was always like this judgment.
Marc:What, that guy doesn't hang out?
Marc:Wow, what's up with that?
Marc:Well, maybe he has a life.
Marc:Maybe he wants to have a future.
Marc:Maybe he doesn't want to, you know, get involved with some stupid bullshit and stay up for three days yammering to dummies who think they're changing things.
Marc:But Caponera was always a great comic.
Marc:He's been out there doing it for like 30 years.
Marc:And I thought it would be good to talk to him.
Marc:I ran into him.
Marc:I thought, let's see what John's up to.
Marc:And he's written a book.
Marc:It's called A Life in Comedy.
Marc:You can get it on Amazon.
Marc:And he's a good guy.
Marc:And he's a real deal.
Marc:So this is me talking to John Caponera.
Marc:You know, it's weird.
Marc:I have interesting memories of you.
Marc:Interesting memories.
Marc:Here's the memory I have that was kind of hilarious.
Marc:I was at the comedy store.
Marc:I was a doorman.
Marc:And my job sometimes was to drive comics to Burbank Airport so they could go to the Dunes to do the comedy store at the Dunes.
Guest:And you had to drive Mitzi.
Marc:Sometimes.
Marc:I didn't drive Mitzi.
Marc:That was a Schubert job.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:I drove the Jeep, but I have to pick you guys up.
Marc:And one time, I'd been up all night with fucking dumb Sam Kennison.
Marc:I'm fucking still high on Coke and probably drunk.
Marc:And I got to drive you and Mendoza.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:To the fucking airport.
Marc:To this day, I hate you.
Marc:No, no, I would think you would hate me, but you probably don't remember it.
Marc:I was like literally sweating drugs, and there was no fucking gas, and I was late.
Marc:And you and Mendoza were like, what the fuck?
Marc:And I'm like, I got no gas.
Marc:I was barely keeping it together, awake.
Marc:And I just remember you guys, what is going on?
Marc:I'm like, yeah, yeah, sorry, man.
Marc:It was just, to me, it was really represented the two different types of comic.
Marc:Whatever the fuck I was doing up there with all the drugs and all the bullshit, there was definitely those two camps at the comedy store at that time.
Marc:And you were like this straight up kind of working class guy doing comedy.
Marc:And then we were a bunch of fucking lunatics.
Marc:Did you ever feel that there at that time?
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I lucked out at the comedy store.
Guest:I got to tell you why.
Guest:When I came out in 85 to do Star Search, I went down and did an audition down in Indianapolis.
Guest:So me and Larry Reed and a couple guys from Chicago, we drove down to Indianapolis, did the audition.
Guest:They called me a couple months later.
Guest:I'd forgotten about it.
Guest:They go, yeah, you want to do the show?
Marc:For Star Search?
Guest:For Star Search back in 85.
Guest:It was like its second year it was on.
Marc:Was that the year?
Marc:When was Lou Bell on?
Marc:When was that Lou Bell on?
Marc:The year after you or something?
Guest:He might have been on the year after me.
Guest:They put us up right next to the comedy store at the Hyatt.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's my first day in L.A.
Guest:I don't know anybody out there.
Guest:I know some comics, but really nobody.
Guest:So next...
Guest:I go in there that night, I go, hey, the comedy store's next door.
Guest:Maybe I could do my spot and work on it for tomorrow night's show.
Guest:So I go in there, and I say to the doorman, I say, listen, is there any way I can get up tonight?
Guest:I'm doing Star Search tomorrow night.
Guest:And he gives me the once-over, and he goes, and he says, I think we can get you up a little later.
Guest:So I'm hanging out.
Guest:I get up, I do 10 minutes, I have a nice set, and I come in the back of the room, and they say, Mincy wants to talk to you.
Guest:I'm like, who's Mincy?
Guest:Well, it's the owner, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she goes, John, are you out here for good?
Guest:Are you just here to do the show?
Guest:I said, no, Missy.
Guest:I moved out.
Guest:My little Corolla, I packed it up.
Guest:I'm going to give this a shot, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She said, call in Monday for spots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, everyone starts shaking my hand and pat me on the back.
Guest:And I'm thinking, what's the big deal?
Guest:And I think, well, there's guys working the door here for two years trying to become a paid regular.
Guest:And she just made you a paid regular.
Ha!
Guest:And, you know, I come to find out, you know, I became friends with Jimmy Stewart.
Guest:I would see him after the shows all the time.
Guest:We'd hang out and he picked my brain.
Guest:And I said, Jim, you know, I happened to lucked out, you know, that she made me a paid regular.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I've been doing this seven years.
Guest:I'm headlining all over the Midwest.
Guest:I go, you want to get on stage?
Guest:You want to start in L.A.?
Guest:I go, look who's on stage right now.
Guest:Robin Williams is on.
Guest:I go, you know who's on after him?
Guest:Eddie Murphy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And look at the list.
Guest:You know who's on after him?
Guest:Paul Rodriguez.
Guest:I go, you can't get stage time.
Guest:I go, you got to find a place you can go and be bad.
Guest:You got to find a place where you can cut your teeth and just hone your act and get up on stage.
Guest:It's all a trial and error.
Guest:It's all about stage time.
Guest:You're trying to start in LA where it's almost impossible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure enough, he moved to Florida.
Guest:He started working all the Florida circuit down there.
Guest:He come back two years later and he was kicking ass.
Marc:Is that what he did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He went to Florida.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:80 what?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:When you moved out here?
Guest:I moved out here in 85.
Guest:So I was talking to him this stuff like 85, 86.
Guest:He might have moved back in 87 or something.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Came back in like 90 or whatever.
Guest:So he listened to you.
Guest:It was kicking ass.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I goes, Jim, you always had it in you.
Guest:You just never had time to work it out.
Marc:And you get stuck in the politics of that weird dark hole.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:Because as soon as you got past, there was 20 guys going, who the fuck is John Campanera?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All the doormen are like, who the fuck is this guy?
Guest:And I felt a little resentment from them.
Guest:But at the same time, it's like, dude, I came out here with an act.
Guest:It wasn't like I just showed up and said, hey, give me a shot.
Marc:Who was on this schedule then in the mid-'80s, let's say, 85, 86, when you were at the store, when you first got there?
Marc:Who was coming around?
Guest:Well, Sam was there.
Marc:Carl LeBeau was there.
Marc:The dark forces.
Guest:You know, Louis Anderson was on all the time.
Guest:Remember those guys like Joey Kamen?
Guest:Joey Kamen, Harry Basil.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Steve Odenkirk before he became a big director.
Guest:Steve Odenkirk, yeah.
Marc:Damon Wayans.
Marc:Damon Wayans.
Marc:Dice, Karen Haber, Joan Hart.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know.
Guest:If you were working the door, you remember all of them.
Marc:But I got there in 80s.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So I got there in 87.
Marc:So it wasn't that long after you.
Guest:I lucked out because she took a liking to me and she started working me at the Dunes in Vegas.
Marc:Yeah, I drove you to the airport.
Guest:She started working me in San Diego.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was getting work from her.
Guest:Plus, I had work from the Midwest.
Marc:You were lucky because you were set.
Marc:You knew who you were up there.
Marc:You knew who you were in life.
Marc:She couldn't fuck with your head too much.
Marc:There was always guys around that were sort of impenetrable by that weirdness because that place is weird.
Marc:But for you walking, I'm like, how come he doesn't feel it?
Marc:How come he isn't going crazy?
Marc:Because all of us who were sitting around at the door and doing drugs, that place was this haunted shithole that had its own meaning.
Marc:We were talking about ghosts and about the history of the place, but you're like, it's a comedy club.
Guest:Well, I wasn't there long enough to get involved in the politics.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I wasn't there.
Guest:I was green.
Marc:But you also came and went, right?
Marc:You did your show and you left, right?
Marc:You didn't hang out too much, did you?
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:I hung around for comics I like to watch.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then if I saw the lineup and I saw that, you know, I didn't care for them, I'd split, you know.
Guest:But, you know, I got on every night there and, you know, and that was awesome.
Guest:It was like my home away from home.
Guest:Chicago is where I started.
Guest:It is.
Guest:That's where you grew up.
Guest:I grew up in Chicago.
Guest:I started doing comedy there in 79.
Marc:Like where?
Marc:What part of Chicago?
Marc:I've become sort of fascinated with Chicago.
Guest:It's a great town.
Marc:It's great.
Guest:It really is.
Marc:Like, I always knew it was its own thing, but now I taped a special there.
Guest:You probably have a huge following there, yeah.
Guest:They're comedy greats.
Marc:Great, great comedy town.
Guest:It is such a great comedy.
Guest:And that's where I cut my teeth because they're a good comedy town because they give you the benefit of the doubt.
Guest:They want you to do well, but they're very sharp.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And they get all the subtleties.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, they're smart, yeah.
Guest:It's a smart town as far as comedy.
Guest:Oh, they got Second City.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was three doors down from Zaney's, where I started.
Marc:Downtown.
Guest:Yeah, so I'd hook up with all the Second City people right down the street at the bars afterwards.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And we'd all hang out, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I knew Farley and all those guys.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, you know, I wasn't tight with him because I always hammered by the time I got to talk to him.
Guest:You know, he wasn't coherent by the time I got to the bar.
Guest:He was already hammered.
Marc:You were tight with him, but he didn't remember.
Yeah.
Marc:You guys had a long friendship and you talked a lot, but it was always in the blackout for him.
Guest:Yeah, but we'd all go to the blues bar down the street from Zaney's in Second City.
Guest:My sister was in Second City.
Guest:Cindy.
Guest:Cindy, you know Cindy?
Guest:She went through the whole thing.
Guest:So all her friends were...
Guest:You know, like Bill Murray's brother, Joel Murray.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Steve Carell.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And all these guys, Odenkirk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they were all in the same.
Guest:Yeah, they were all in the same group.
Guest:And they'd all go to the same bar.
Guest:And all the comics from Zanies would hang with these guys.
Guest:So it was a great hang, you know.
Guest:Is it just the two of you in the family?
Guest:No, I got four sisters and another brother.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, big Irish Catholic brothers.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, my dad's all Italian, my mom's Irish, but we had six kids and he was a fireman.
Guest:My dad was a fireman in Chicago.
Marc:So you were like real blue collar Chicago.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's what you grew up in.
Guest:I was the south side of Chicago.
Guest:I grew up in like six blocks from Comiskey Park.
Guest:We were 10 minutes from the loop, right off the Dan Ryan Chicago loop.
Guest:But it was all blue collar neighborhood, carpenters, plumbers, cops.
Guest:You know, my neighborhood was the stockyards.
Guest:Back in the day, the stockyards was right down the street from my house.
Guest:The meat stockyards?
Guest:The meat stockyards.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually in 72, it moved to Oklahoma or something.
Marc:But you remember it?
Guest:I was 12 years old.
Guest:It was right down the street from my house.
Guest:You could throw a rock.
Guest:And it was where all the pens were.
Guest:They kept all the cows and the pigs and the slaughterhouse.
Guest:Right there?
Guest:It was right there.
Guest:We'd be playing baseball.
Guest:And all of a sudden, a cow would run back.
Guest:That got loose from the pens.
Guest:It would run by our.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Our park.
Guest:We're like, cows by the park.
Guest:And eventually the stockyards left and they put it was it became a big industrial park.
Guest:But that was right down the street from my house.
Guest:Where you have those memories.
Guest:My whole neighborhood smelled like shit.
Guest:My whole life.
Guest:It smelled like cow shit.
Guest:You knew you got into our neighborhood when you smelled the cow shit.
Marc:How long did that stay around after they got rid of the cows?
Marc:It stays, doesn't it?
Guest:It probably lingered for a couple years.
Guest:But I could throw a rock.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And right in front of the International Amphitheater.
Guest:I was only a block away.
Guest:That's where they had the big riots in 68.
Marc:No shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the history, man.
Guest:It's the history.
Guest:There's a lot of history there in that neighborhood.
Marc:But your dad was a union guy, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:My dad was a fireman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all my cousins are electricians.
Guest:They're all big union guys back there.
Guest:They swear by it.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:It's a union town.
Guest:Yeah, it's a big union town.
Marc:And now as a kid of a fireman, was that exciting?
Marc:I mean, did you get to go on the truck and shit?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We'd go to the firehouse.
Marc:Was it one of those old kind with the pole and everything?
Guest:He actually, for 15 years, he was a captain over at the firehouse in Chinatown where they shot Backdraft.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:He was the captain of that firehouse.
Marc:Oh, was he on set and shit?
Guest:He got to see him filming stuff and everything.
Marc:Did he think they got it right?
Marc:Did he see the movie?
Guest:Well, he wasn't a consultant, but I'm sure they used consultants.
Marc:But did he watch the movie?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And did he think it was... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He liked it.
Guest:Oh, good, good.
Guest:Yeah, he liked it.
Guest:He liked it.
Guest:He's still living, my dad.
Guest:He's 82.
Guest:He retired a chief.
Guest:So I told you, I said, Dad, you're one of the few guys that are actually able to milk the system, you know, and get something out of you.
Guest:Usually, you know, you retire and you croak the next day and you never get that money you put into it.
Guest:Yeah, he got it though, huh?
Marc:He got his pension.
Guest:He's still spending it.
Guest:Still spending it.
Marc:Does he still live in the house he grew up in?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:In fact, when I go back there, I stay with my dad.
Guest:I stay in the same house we grew up in.
Guest:Oh my God, that's so sweet.
Guest:Since when I was two years old, yeah.
Guest:Same room?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Is your shit still in there?
Guest:Is it?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Actually, he remodeled a little bit.
Guest:But it's the same house.
Guest:And it's funny, you know, what's different about the neighborhoods back there is my house, I knew everybody on the block.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For one thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, I knew everybody in the neighborhood.
Guest:I could go down every block and tell you what kid lived there.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, you come out to LA, I don't even meet my neighbor until there's an earthquake and everyone's out in front.
Guest:And you go, oh, you're my neighbor.
Guest:How you doing?
Guest:It's a weird thing.
Marc:Isn't it weird?
Marc:Well, the thing I think that's different is that it's generations of people live in a place.
Marc:So a lot of times, like I bet in the neighborhood in Chicago, you knew their families, your parents knew their families, you knew when, what's their name, father died or when the kid graduated.
Marc:Like, there was a, like, you know, something.
Guest:Communities.
Marc:It was a village.
Marc:Right, and then sometimes you'd go over to the other kid's house when your parents were away or whatever, like everyone took care of each other, like my grandparents' neighbors.
Marc:Up here, I know my neighbors, but usually it's just this sort of like, could you keep an eye on the thing?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:My house next door, my sister lives next door.
Marc:Cindy was next to you where?
Guest:No, no, I'm sorry.
Guest:My house in Chicago.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:This is the difference.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In Chicago, my sister lived next door with her family.
Guest:Next door to my dad's place, my cousin lives, which is my dad's niece, across the street.
Guest:Three other nieces, my dad's, my uncle's daughters.
Marc:Wait, you're saying you lived in an entire neighborhood of Campaneras.
Guest:I'm telling you, the whole block, the whole block is inundated with Campaneras.
Guest:And my grandmother lived a block away.
Guest:My other grandmother lived two blocks away.
Guest:You know, so there was a real village.
Guest:So if you had to leave and go, hey, watch my kid.
Guest:I got to run to Home Depot.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Someone could watch it.
Guest:I don't have that out there.
Guest:I have three kids and we could never get a cinema.
Guest:My wife wouldn't trust anybody because we didn't have a village.
Guest:And it makes it so much harder to raise kids.
Marc:Well, that's why people don't leave.
Marc:That's why they don't leave their hometowns a lot of the times.
Marc:And like I know a kid, you know, Nate Bargetzi, he's a funny guy.
Marc:He's a comic from Nashville, and he's doing okay out here, but he moved to Nashville because her parents are down the street, his parents are down the street, and it makes life nice and easy, and the kids have a relationship with their grandparents.
Guest:Yeah, and you know what?
Guest:And that's one thing my kids didn't get, which I wish they could have had because I had that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had 35 cousins just from my mom.
Guest:My mom had seven brothers and sisters.
Guest:They all had five kids.
Guest:I had just 35 cousins on my mom's side.
Guest:That's not even my dad's side.
Guest:And they're all around.
Guest:They're all in the neighborhood.
Guest:So you grow up with so much community and family.
Guest:And it's one thing my kids didn't get out here.
Guest:Because you got to travel.
Guest:Every time we went back to Chicago, they got to see all their cousins.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they loved it.
Guest:But because I was out here and my wife's mother was out here and she didn't want to move back there and everything, we stayed.
Guest:But it's hard.
Guest:There's a thing in my book.
Guest:What's the name of the book?
Guest:It's called A Life in Comedy.
Guest:It's available on Amazon?
Guest:It's on Amazon.com.
Guest:Yeah, it's a download.
Guest:You can download it on any iPad or iPhone.
Guest:Now, when did you write it?
Guest:I wrote it while I was doing the cruise ships.
Guest:I had a lot of downtime doing ships.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So the last couple of years, I would just sit in my room and write whatever came to my mind.
Marc:What were you saying was in there?
Marc:Do you remember?
Guest:Well, I have a whole chapter on, it's called a stand-up comedy, a single man's game.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And it's really, our profession's really cut off for somebody who's single.
Marc:Yeah, or a bad married guy.
Guest:Yeah, or a bad married guy or a married guy with no kids whose wife doesn't work and can travel with you.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Just to babysit you for fuck's sake.
Guest:Yeah, because it's hard.
Guest:It's really hard.
Guest:Once you have that first kid, now you've got to juggle time in, time away.
Guest:She's bitching that you're gone too much.
Guest:You're bitching that if I don't work, we can't feed the family.
Guest:And it becomes a big juggling act.
Guest:And there's a lot of stress on both sides.
Guest:And the fact that we were able to hold it together for 25 years is a minor miracle.
Marc:Yeah, it really is.
Marc:No, not really.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:And plus the fact that, you know, I'm trying to mend relationships with my kids because I was gone a lot.
Guest:You know.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:There's a story in my book.
Guest:I talk about, you know, I miss so many Little League games and so many recitals and so much.
Guest:And it kills you.
Guest:And it's those things that you don't get back in life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can't get that back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Once they're gone, they're gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was one particular moment.
Guest:I just remember I'm in Bumfucko.
Guest:at a Red Row Finn.
Guest:And it's snowing outside.
Guest:It's March.
Guest:The closest theater or mall is two miles away.
Guest:I don't have a car.
Guest:So I'm sitting there watching it snow.
Guest:I'm on the phone with my wife.
Guest:And my two sons are in a Little League game in the Sherman Oaks Little League Championship game.
Guest:And she's giving me play-by-play on the phone telling me it's 3-2.
Guest:There's a man on third.
Guest:She's announcing.
Guest:She's announcing the game to me.
Guest:And I'm listening to...
Guest:And all I remember is hanging up the phone and crying myself to sleep because I wasn't there to see my two sons playing the championship game.
Marc:That's brutal, man.
Guest:And so a lot of the book talks about the loneliness of the job.
Guest:How old are they now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How old are they now?
Marc:They're 20 and 18.
Marc:No shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They both went to Locke's, the fine arts school out here.
Guest:It's like the fame of New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And what's their thing?
Guest:They were in the drama department.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:So my one kid, he's working a big five now trying to become an actor.
Guest:He's taking a year off from college.
Marc:Working at Sporting Goods Place?
Guest:Yeah, just to make a little money while he's trying to act.
Marc:Well, that's the thing about you, and I was excited to talk to you, is that you're a guy that you're a grounded dude.
Marc:You're a solid dude.
Marc:You've got a solid act.
Marc:You've had opportunities come and go, but you're still out there fucking doing it because you have to.
Guest:Yeah, you know, I always prided myself on being a provider.
Guest:And no matter what it took, you know, I knew that I had to make a certain nut every month to make ends meet and to pay my mortgage and everything else.
Guest:And, you know, at the same time, I missed acting and I missed being in town, but I didn't have the luxury when I was a single guy to just stay and audition.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And say, you know, fuck it, I'm just going to take the next couple months off and go on pilot season, go out.
Marc:You could do that then.
Guest:You know, I could do that.
Guest:But once the kids hit and you had to make a certain amount of money, whether it's on the road or in a cruise ship or whatever, corporate date, you got to make the bread, voiceover, whatever you had to do.
Guest:And I always, the last 30 years I've been fighting
Guest:the you know juggling the two because if you're gone they just go down the list oh get so call so and so in for to read for the part camp and air is not around right and then if i stay home and i don't get the part i don't feed my family that month right and i don't pay my mortgage right so that you know for 30 years trying to juggle that it's crazy it's crazy it really is and it's it's paid its toll it's paid its toll on my relationships with my family my wife yeah and everything else you know but
Guest:My dad was a real worker, my mom, so I always prided myself on being a provider.
Marc:Yeah, you got a working class ethic about it.
Guest:There's a working class ethic about it and I'll admit I wasn't the nurturing guy.
Guest:I left that to my wife and now I'm paying the price because I have these, I'm trying to rebuild my relationships with my kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How bad are they?
Marc:Are they real mad at you or just a little mad at you?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I have a really good relationship with my son.
Guest:My other son just got to rehab.
Guest:He's trying to rebuild his life again.
Guest:4.0 student.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I'm pulling for him.
Guest:And my daughter's acting out now in school because, you know, my wife and I are going through a tough time and she's ditching classes and this and that.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, so I have to be home more now to try and mend those things.
Guest:And as a life of a stand-up comic, when you're married with kids, it becomes really hard.
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:Well, let's go through.
Marc:So when you started, how old were you when you started?
Marc:I was 22, right out of college.
Marc:You just knew you wanted to do that?
Guest:Well, no, I wanted to be an actor.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And my senior year in college, we had a class called Advanced Public Speaking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for our final, all the kids had to do a comedy monologue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the teacher didn't care if you ripped off Pryor or Carlin, as long as you committed to the material.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I used to do impressions at the time as a goof off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, well, I'm going to do my own thing.
Guest:So I put a bunch of impressions.
Guest:What'd you do?
Guest:Into a game of baseball.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:It was like the Canyon Capers versus the Sullivan Shoes.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I just remember one bit at the end of it, Cagney's arguing with Ed Sullivan.
Guest:He goes, what do you mean he's already saved?
Guest:He's already saved.
Guest:He's got to be one of the other dogs.
Guest:And he goes, I don't know.
Guest:He slid, and he dragged the ball, and he picked the ball real quick, and everything's happened too fast, and what the hell's going on anymore?
Guest:Why, you silly son of a bitch, you're making these calls out of your ass.
Guest:So it was all these different impressions, and the kids in the class were laughing their ass off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I got a nice grade for it and everything.
Guest:And a day later, this kid from the class comes up to me and says, hey, John, he goes, man, that was really funny.
Guest:He goes, you know, they're doing a gong show down the street in Joliet.
Guest:And I goes, what are you telling me for?
Guest:He goes, why don't you do that thing you did in class?
Guest:I goes,
Guest:That was for a grade.
Guest:I'm not a stand-up.
Guest:He goes, but it was very funny.
Guest:So we go over there and I entered this gong show.
Guest:I won $500 in this stupid bar having a gong show.
Guest:And you're like 18?
Guest:I was 22.
Guest:Oh, so after, okay, yeah.
Guest:That was my senior year.
Guest:I was gonna graduate in a month.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So anyway, I graduate a month later.
Guest:I'm playing softball in a league in Chicago.
Guest:We go to the bar that sponsors us.
Guest:We're all sitting there in our uniforms drinking.
Guest:And they got a little gonk show going on at the bar that night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm sitting there in my uniform watching them going, you know what?
Guest:I think I'm better than half these people.
Guest:So I get up and I do the little bullshit thing I wrote for class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I won another $500.
Guest:So within a month, I won $1,000 doing a stupid thing I wrote for class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this kid comes up to me afterwards.
Guest:I never had $1,000 in my whole college career.
Guest:I was always broke.
Guest:He says, hey, man, there's a comedy club in Lyons just outside of Chicago.
Guest:It's 20 minutes from my house.
Guest:They have open mic night every Thursday.
Guest:They sprinkle in the open micers with the regulars, and you get to do five minutes.
Guest:You should check it out.
Guest:So I go to the comedy womb.
Guest:I get up.
Guest:They put me up in between Ted Holom and Arsenio Hall.
Guest:Who were locals then?
Guest:Who were locals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who were starting out.
Guest:I mean, they were like the pros at the time.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I do my little five minute bit that I wrote for class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was so bad because it was like, ladies and gentlemen, imagine if you will, a bunch of celebrities getting together for a game of baseball.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think it would go something like this.
Marc:I didn't know how to talk to the crowd.
Marc:I didn't know.
Marc:All I knew was- But you knew that that was a standard intro to a bunch of impersonations.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:You saw that on TV.
Guest:Well, I did five plays in college.
Guest:I was a theater.
Guest:I was a communications major that did a lot of theater.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I was used to being up in front of an audience.
Marc:Were you a comedy fan?
Guest:Yeah, I was a big Carlin and Pryor fan at the time, but I wasn't used to being up there by myself with the onus on me to be funny.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I would present it like, you know, and then I would hide behind the characters.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I didn't know how to set up rapport with the crowd.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Talk to them and riff.
Guest:You just did the act.
Guest:I just went in and I just hid behind these characters.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:And the guy says, hey, man, I like what you did.
Guest:Why don't you go back on the weekends?
Guest:And then he started giving me gas money.
Guest:And then eventually the older guys would take me on the road and let me open for him.
Guest:Like who first?
Guest:Like Ted Holom, Ed Fiala, you know, Emo Phillips.
Guest:you know, Judy Tenuta.
Guest:And eventually, I wanted to be an actor, but this kind of thing started snowballing for me.
Guest:And for a whole year, I did that bit.
Guest:That's all.
Guest:Finally, I said, fuck, I got to do something else.
Guest:If I can't prove I can be funny without doing an impression, I'm getting out of this.
Guest:So I just started writing my own monology stuff.
Guest:And I started living and dying with it.
Guest:And I died a thousand deaths.
Guest:But I didn't want to be known as just an impressionist.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I didn't even realize, because by the time I saw you at the comedy store, it was all about your life.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:I remember one bit where you're measuring something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was the setup on that?
Guest:Well, I used to work on the docks in Chicago, loading trucks.
Marc:Did you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you a union guy?
Guest:In college.
Guest:In college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In college.
Guest:Did you get in the union?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They ended up working me one day too late, and they had to put me in the union.
Guest:In college, because if you worked 30 days, you had to join the union.
Guest:And I don't know how they forgot it.
Guest:I snuck in.
Guest:Anyway, it was one of these jobs where you just loaded trucks.
Guest:But there were some real characters on the job.
Guest:And the one guy worked with, he was a measuring nut.
Guest:He had a tape measure in his back pocket.
Guest:It's like, Louie, what are you doing?
Guest:We're loading trucks.
Guest:We're not measuring shit.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:What's a measuring thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he's one of these guys that walks in the house and goes, what kind of trim did you use up there, John?
Guest:Is that three and three quarter, three and a half?
Guest:I'll be a son of a... He starts measuring shit, you know, his head's going back and forth.
Guest:That's three and seven eighths.
Guest:I'll be a son of a bitch.
Guest:You can't get that shit no more.
Guest:They quit making that in 68.
Guest:That's a custom job.
Guest:It's like, who cares this shit?
Guest:You know, and then there was another guy.
Guest:He was the direction nut.
Guest:You know, he would ask you where you went over the weekend.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just to tell you how you got there.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:What you do Saturday, John?
Guest:None of them had teeth.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:They had no teeth.
Guest:They're all smoking camels.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What you do Saturday, John?
Guest:I went golfing out at Glen Eagles.
Guest:Glen Eagles!
Guest:Wait a minute!
Guest:That's off 171, isn't it?
Guest:Hold on, wait a second.
Guest:That's Archer Avenue, right?
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:What'd you take, 94?
Guest:94 to 55 South, 55 South to Kingery, Kingery 171, 171 Archer, Archer over?
Guest:I've been there before.
Guest:Sure, Clan Eagle.
Guest:Takes about a half a six pack.
Guest:I'll be a son of a bitch.
Marc:But that one impression, like the Drew Carey, or not Drew Carey, the Harry Carey, you did for a long time, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, Harry Carey was a local celebrity in Chicago back in the 80s.
Guest:When I was growing up, he was the announcer for the White Sox.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He had just come over from St.
Guest:Louis because they kicked him out because he was banging Augie Bush's son's wife.
Guest:So he gets a job with the White Sox.
Guest:And at the time, he was only a local celebrity because he wasn't with the Cubs yet with WGN.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I would do him on my act.
Guest:Only in Chicago people knew him.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But then he got on GM with the Cubs and went nationwide.
Guest:So now I could do the impression anywhere I went.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But Harry was great because the game was incidental to the story he was telling.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He goes, you know, I was on Rush Street last night.
Guest:I closed the one bar, went across the street at a taco at that greasy spoon, and there's a throw to first.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:You know, I had too many jalapeno peppers.
Guest:That's a fastball off Grace's head.
Guest:Both benches empty.
Guest:And so I go back to my place.
Guest:I took a dump, and my asshole's killing me.
Guest:There's a play at the plate.
Guest:The nearest deal's home.
Guest:And I'm thinking, man, I should have had some ice cream.
Guest:Maybe if that came out first, my asshole wouldn't be bugging me.
Guest:I mean, I would just sprinkle it.
Guest:You could just go on for an hour.
Marc:I could go on for an hour with that.
Marc:Okay, so here you are.
Marc:You're running around Chicago.
Marc:Were you getting big in Chicago?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I started headlining all over Chicago.
Guest:I started to develop a following.
Guest:And you know what happened is I started working Zany's in the early 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when the club took off in the mid-80s, it got started real popular.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It started selling out every night.
Guest:And then I just started hitting road and headlining all over the Midwest.
Marc:Now, who were the guys?
Marc:See, the weird thing about that era...
Marc:That was the real comedy boom.
Marc:That was the club boom in the early 80s, right?
Marc:I mean, that was when everything started happening.
Marc:New clubs were happening everywhere.
Marc:And all the guys that we know now, some of the bigger guys, we're all starting out.
Marc:So they're all running around.
Marc:Johansson, Jenny, all those guys were touring the country around the same time you were, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it's funny, I would run into comics that I work with from New York.
Guest:And when I realized I wanted to move to New York or L.A., when I first started out, I didn't have the money to do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually, I built up a nice kitty from headlining and everything.
Guest:And I had to decide, do I want to go to New York or L.A.?
Guest:Then when it starts, I said, well, maybe this is an omen to move to L.A.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I realized all the comics that I worked with from New York,
Guest:we're out in LA I said well that just like who are your friends well I just ran you know like uh different guys that I worked with in New York like Rick Overton and stuff like that that ended up moving uh moving to LA right well if they're moving to LA and they're from New York I might as well just go you know cut out the middleman and go right out to LA
Marc:And you'd had all this road experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Mostly headlining, middling.
Marc:You did all of it, right?
Guest:Yeah, Indianapolis and Detroit.
Marc:So you worked for Chicken Patty over in Indy?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You remember Chick and Patty?
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And then I worked at Crackers and I worked, you know, Ridley's Place.
Guest:And I worked...
Guest:all over Indianapolis and Detroit and Ohio, all over Ohio.
Guest:Hilarities, Wiley's Comedy Club in Dayton.
Guest:And so I cut my teeth in a lot of places.
Guest:And you know what else is cool is when I first started out, my brother worked at Midway.
Guest:airlines so we had a buddy pass so i got to fly to a lot of places for free just to show my goods holy shit where you know i instead of driving seven hours i fly in in an hour go up that night just to showcase and fly home oh that's sweet deal i was able to come back and establish crowds around the midwest just because my brother worked for midway so that was another way i uh to get started wait how long did he work for them
Guest:Just a couple years.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But it was enough for me to establish my place, myself, in a lot of clubs.
Marc:Oh, that was nice.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Is Cindy the only one that ended up in show business other than you?
Guest:Cindy, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:Growing up...
Guest:My grandfather was a big singer.
Guest:He cut a couple albums back in the day, in the 50s, in the 40s.
Guest:Your father's father?
Guest:My mother's father.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Jumpin' Red Cassidy.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And all the get-togethers we had, he sang at everything.
Guest:And he's a real showman, a real vaudeville guy, a real jokester.
Guest:And I think every get-together we had, whether it was Easter, St.
Guest:Paddy's Day, Christmas, whatever, he performed.
Guest:And all of his kids sang.
Guest:So it was like 10 max amateur hour.
Guest:And I think growing up and seeing that, I couldn't sing, so I did impressions.
Guest:And to get the laughter from all the family members, it just encouraged you growing up.
Guest:And my sister played guitar, my brother sang, my other sister sang.
Guest:So we, I think, growing up, and that's a chapter in my book talking about how I think...
Guest:Showbuzz got in my blood early on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it wasn't until I was in college that a teacher asked me to audition for one of the plays he was directing, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, I went to college to play baseball.
Guest:And this guy pulls me aside and says, hey, man, I think you'd be great for this play.
Guest:McMurtry?
Guest:No, the Billy Bibbit.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, I never acted.
Guest:He goes, yeah, but I like what you're doing in my oral interpretation class.
Guest:And I think it'd be good for this part.
Guest:So I said, I'll give it a shot.
Guest:I was flattered, you know.
Guest:And I got the part of Billy Bibbit.
Guest:And the thing was a huge success on campus.
Guest:And I ended up getting the acting bug.
Guest:So I ended up doing five more plays in college.
Guest:And I wanted to be an actor when I came out of college.
Guest:And I didn't have the money to move to L.A., New York.
Guest:So I started doing the stand-up circus.
Marc:Isn't that something?
Marc:So you gave up on the baseball dream?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My coach my sophomore year, I needed classes and didn't know it, and I wasn't catching the ball coming off the bat until he was on top of me.
Guest:I made a few errors at short, and he stopped playing me.
Guest:And I'm like, fuck if I'm going to sit on the bench all this time and not play and swat flies and swat mosquitoes.
Guest:And at the same time, this teacher had approached me, and all of a sudden I went from playing baseball to be one of the theater guys.
Guest:yeah it's a that's wild you know you're the the one jock among the yeah yeah yeah they're all like you a theater fag now all of a sudden you're a he goes hey you get more pussy if you're not the gay guy in the theater then you know you know who gets more pussy on the cruise ship is the one dancer that's not gay yeah and he's banging all the other hot dancers like who's the fool now yeah right you and your judgments yeah
Marc:So you come out here for Star Search and where'd you come in on Star Search?
Guest:You know, I went up against Jenny Jones, right?
Guest:Oh, Jenny Jones.
Guest:So we're in the semifinals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we both do our bids and we're waiting for the judges to tally the votes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Ed McMahon turns to Jenny and says, now Jenny, remember Thursday bloopers?
Guest:She was going to be doing the bloopers and blunders show with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, what the fuck?
Guest:She's already in cahoots with this guy?
Guest:Fixes in.
Guest:I have a snowball's chance of winning this.
Guest:And no sooner did that thought come to mind, and the winner's Jenny Jones by audience decision.
Guest:Oh, yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, anyway.
Guest:So it's so funny.
Guest:A few months later,
Guest:It's ironic that I ended up working with her at a club in Tampa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's supposed to be headlining.
Guest:Can't follow you.
Guest:She can't follow me.
Guest:At all.
Guest:Because she has 20 minutes to her name.
Guest:And then she's doing the other 20 minutes of Q&A.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Because she can't fulfill the 45 minutes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Ronnie Bullard's opening the show, right?
Guest:And Ronnie's a funny guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So by the next night, I'm headlining, she's in the middle, and Ronnie's still opening.
Guest:Well, by the end of the week, Ronnie's in the middle, I'm headlining, and she's opening.
Guest:And I said, well, maybe this was prophetic because she ended up becoming a talk show host anyway.
Marc:Right.
Marc:She was never really a stand-up for the long haul.
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:She ended up doing what she was cut out for.
Guest:She got the show and-
Marc:Yeah, it's interesting you see that happen in stand-up, you know, who just ends up like, you know, because like, do you love doing comedy still or what?
Guest:You know, I love performing and I still like writing and I still like doing it, but I don't like to travel anymore.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'm burnt out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if you see the cover of my book, it's me with my rolly bag and a backpack looking up at the sign where the plane's going.
Guest:That's the picture of my book.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Because it's a life in comedy.
Guest:It's about being on the road.
Guest:It's about living out of a suitcase.
Guest:It's the loneliness of the job.
Marc:And like you were saying before, that's the one thing I always remember.
Marc:It's like every time you go to a road gig, it's like, did they have to find a hotel that was not near anything?
Marc:Is this like you're always in the industrial park or far away from anything?
Marc:And then you're like, well, maybe I'll just go get coffee.
Marc:And you're the one guy walking.
Marc:You know, for a mile.
Guest:Oh, I know.
Guest:That's the bumfuck Michigan gig I was talking about.
Marc:Right, and you're excited if the place is connected to a mall.
Marc:Like, if the mall's right there, you're like, oh, thank God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go to the movies.
Guest:At least I catch a movie.
Guest:I could get some food.
Guest:I could shop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like a depressed woman shop and buy shit to make yourself feel good about yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a lonely existence, man.
Guest:And it can really eat at you after a while.
Marc:Well, when you were here initially, like after, what was your sort of, how did a career unfold when you were here?
Marc:Because you worked a lot and then you got the series and you must have thought at that time we're like, oh, this is it.
Marc:When did that happen?
Marc:How'd that all happen?
Guest:Well, in 94, 93,
Guest:Rick Messina, who was a comedy manager, he handled Tim Allen.
Guest:Tim Allen had become a star already on Home Improvement.
Guest:And he was doing a theater in a round in Orange County.
Guest:And he said, John, you want to open up for Tim this week?
Guest:He's doing this gig out in Orange County.
Guest:I said, yeah, I'll open for him.
Guest:So I go out there and I do 20 minutes.
Guest:I had this really killer set.
Guest:And unbeknownst to me, some people from Disney,
Guest:Television, we're in the audience.
Guest:The same people that worked for Tim Allen, Dean Valentine.
Guest:He ran Disney TV.
Marc:Yeah, I remember that guy.
Guest:Anyway, he comes up to me afterwards and says, man, I really loved your stuff.
Guest:He goes, I think you could be the next Tim Allen.
Guest:He says, I want to get Warren Littlefield out to see you.
Guest:The head of NBC?
Guest:At the Comedy Store.
Guest:He was the head of NBC at the time.
Guest:And I said, this is awesome.
Guest:So...
Guest:We scheduled for the next week.
Guest:I call in all the friends I knew, every marker I could cause.
Guest:Just come out this one night, you know, laugh like De Niro in Cape Fear in the movie scene where he's just laughing his ass off.
Guest:Was it main room?
Guest:Main room or original room?
Guest:It was in the original room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I packed it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go up and I did my 10 or 15 minutes, 20 minutes or whatever.
Guest:I have a killer set the next day.
Guest:They offer me a pilot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we shoot the pilot.
Guest:It's called The Good Life.
Guest:They make it a mid-season replacement show.
Marc:Who's in it with you?
Guest:Eve Gordon was my wife.
Guest:Justin Barfield was one of my sons.
Guest:He was six years old.
Guest:He ended up working more than any of us after the show.
Guest:He never stopped working.
Guest:He went from that to Malcolm in the Middle.
Guest:He was like the third son.
Guest:The kid never stopped working.
Guest:He was six years old in my show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He worked more than anybody.
Guest:But it was a fun show.
Guest:Jeff Martin was the producer.
Guest:He just came off The Simpsons.
Guest:He was the head writer on The Simpsons.
Guest:Disney hired him to be a showrunner to produce sitcoms for them.
Guest:And it ended up being short-lived.
Guest:But I got to see how the other half lived.
Marc:But you did a whole season, right?
Yeah.
Guest:I did.
Guest:It was a mid-season replacement show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But the problem was it was NBC.
Marc:How many episodes?
Guest:And we did 13 episodes.
Guest:They all aired.
Guest:But after the first four airings, they took us off for the Winter Olympics.
Guest:So all the momentum we got, we lost.
Marc:Was it responded too well?
Marc:Did people react?
Guest:Well, the problem was we followed Saved by the Bell, the college years, which was the worst rated show on TV at the time.
Guest:So we had no leading.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the three shows that came out that night was Saved by the Bell, John Larroquette, and John Mendoza, and myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was no show to help kick off the other show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The only show that year was Seinfeld.
Guest:And the show that followed it was Frazier.
Guest:He was the only show that could help kick off someone.
Guest:Everybody else was thrown to the wolves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It died a slow death.
Guest:And that was my big shot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was a star of that show.
Guest:And it showed me how the other half lived.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It got me my house in Studio City.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was able to hold on to it for 21 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I told my wife when we bought it, I said, hon, this is a beautiful home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, but if this show doesn't go and I'll find out in a month.
Guest:We might have fucked up.
Guest:I said, you'll never see me again because I'll be on the road trying to pay for it.
Guest:And sure enough, the show goes under and I've been on the road for the last 21 years trying to pay for it.
Marc:What did she say at that moment though?
Marc:No, John, it's going to go.
Guest:She goes, this place is beautiful.
Guest:I guess we're above our means here.
Guest:But we ended up keeping it.
Guest:It was the only thing in my life.
Guest:i i ended up getting on the right side of the curve right right quadrupled on me sure because i was able to hold on to it right you know and you know it's my retirement yeah all my money's into it yeah yeah i want to cash in my chips i can retire because that's my 401k are you are you thinking about selling the house yeah yeah because i'm tired of the road and i want to downsize what you want to get a condo or something
Guest:Yeah, either a three or two bedroom condo or something.
Guest:Stay here though?
Guest:Trying to stay here because my kids are here and I don't want to bail on them.
Guest:It'd be nice to just move to Phoenix or Albuquerque and buy a four bedroom.
Marc:Yeah, I grew up in Albuquerque.
Marc:You think in Albuquerque?
Guest:Well, I have two sisters that live there.
Guest:No shit.
Marc:Where's Cindy?
Guest:Sydney's in LA.
Guest:She's in Sherman Oaks, but I got two sisters living in Albuquerque.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:I could buy a house for a song there and retire altogether.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's a nice city.
Guest:Yeah, it's a great city.
Guest:And I like it there.
Marc:Phoenix, not as good.
Marc:Albuquerque's nice.
Guest:I like it because it's a little cooler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like the whole snow.
Marc:And it doesn't all look the same.
Marc:You know, Phoenix kind of looks the same block to block.
Marc:Is that the mall we were just at?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I know.
Marc:Every fucking mall is the same color.
Marc:My brother lives there.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's that same.
Marc:It's bizarre.
Guest:It's flat.
Guest:It doesn't look.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:But, you know, it's an option.
Marc:But you did a lot.
Marc:You were doing a lot of acting here and there, right?
Guest:I, you know, after I did the good life, I got acting parts off the ass.
Guest:You know, I was doing episodics.
Guest:I, you know, I did the love and war.
Guest:I did, I did, uh, LA law.
Guest:I did, uh, I did ER.
Guest:I did, I got, I kept getting a lot of acting roles.
Guest:So I ended up getting a sad pension from it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's not a lot, but it's enough, you know, at least to pay my rent wherever I go.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:You know, so I ended up getting a lot of acting work out of that.
Guest:You know, stand-up has always been the bread and butter, you know, when it comes down to it.
Guest:If I ever have a slow month, I just hit the road and I start working again.
Marc:How's your draw out there?
Marc:You still pull?
Guest:Well, you know, I pull in cities where, you know, like St.
Guest:Louis, Chicago, the Midwest still.
Marc:And what's the turnover of material?
Marc:You work new shit?
Guest:I'm always working new material because it's the only thing that rejuvenates my act.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I can't wait to get to that new bit.
Guest:It puts a shot in your arm of your act because you got that new bit you can't wait to get to.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And if you don't have it, it's like, oh, here we go.
Marc:Isn't that wild, right?
Marc:You're doing the hour and you're tired of the hour.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you find one thing that fits in with the other two things or whatever and you get to that and all of a sudden everything's good again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:You'd be surprised what one good joke or one good bit would rejuvenate your whole acting.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because you can't wait to get to it and you're excited about everything else again.
Guest:And as a stand-up, because all these new kids start doing it every year, the field just keeps getting more and more tight.
Guest:And if you don't stay with the times and keep writing, you're going to get lost in the shuffle.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:So many guys got lost, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So many good guys, too, quit because they don't want to do the road anymore.
Guest:And you ask any good comic, why'd you stop?
Guest:Because I couldn't sleep in another hotel.
Guest:I couldn't do the road anymore.
Guest:I had to stop.
Guest:And that's where I'm at.
Guest:I'm at my career.
Marc:I'm at that juncture right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, it sounds like you got a couple of plans that might work out.
Guest:Yeah, I really do want to sell my place and really downsize and chill with the road.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I haven't talked to many people about when you mention corporate gigs or you mention ships.
Marc:I don't think I've talked to anybody really about that world of comedy.
Marc:So what do corporates usually look like?
Marc:How do they work?
Guest:Well, you do a corporate gig.
Guest:I'm doing one in a month.
Guest:It's for the St.
Guest:Louis Cardinals.
Guest:Every year they have a gig where they bring all the ballplayers together with the local businessmen.
Guest:It's called the Knights of the Cauliflower Era.
Guest:It started back in the 20s when the businessmen would have the ballplayers come and meet them so that the ballplayers could get jobs in the offseason because they weren't making that much money at the time.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:But even though the ballplayers can buy and sell these guys now because they make so much money, they kept the tradition up.
Guest:So Tony LaRusso would bring me in every other year to perform for these guys, and they kept it up, and they want me to come back and do it.
Guest:So that's just one particular thing.
Marc:Tony LaRusso, is he the guy that does the pet charity too?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's how I first met him.
Guest:I was doing his charity gig.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So then he became manager of the Cardinals and said, would you come in and perform?
Guest:do a couple gigs for me with for the team it's a good gig it's a great gig you know you meet all the ball players and businessmen and it's a fun gig but this is a corporate gig where you just shoot in for the night yeah do the gig for them and you're home the next day right now if i could do three of those a month and not at the travel it would be a perfect world but and you and your material you can you can do a clean hour
Guest:I could do a clean hour and I could do a dirty hour.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, like some of those gigs from what I understand, cause I'm never really sought after for those types of corporate gigs.
Marc:Like sometimes you have to adapt to, you know, whatever the company is.
Guest:I don't do that.
Marc:No, good.
Guest:I tell the guy, he goes, Hey, maybe you could fuck with Joe.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You'll fuck with Joe.
Guest:You know, well, Joe's the owner.
Guest:They don't tell me till afterwards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guy signing my check, you know, well, they never told me you own the place.
Guest:They just said you worked in accounting and now Joe's going to fuck you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You thought that joke was funny, huh?
Marc:I'm going to take another zero off your check.
Guest:Yeah, good luck cashing this.
Guest:And then you do Carnival or some of these cruise lines.
Guest:Carnival wants you to do a half hour clean, and then they want you to do a half hour blue as shit, you know?
Marc:Is that how it works now?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They want you to do one for the family and one for the R-rated.
Marc:Is there anything good about doing the ships?
No.
Guest:The only good thing is that you sometimes have another comic on there that you can pal around with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if you don't have that other comic or the other comic's a douchebag and you don't want to hang with them, it becomes a really long week.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And there's so much downtime.
Marc:And you keep running into the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you're alone with your thoughts a lot because you don't know anybody.
Guest:And you're on the water.
Guest:Then you try to make small talk with people just so you don't feel like a lonely guy.
Marc:Yeah, there's a sad guy.
Guest:And then you're on the water and you feel so disconnected because you're out at sea and you don't see land.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you feel like you're one of these Navy guys that are trying to get leave and just trying to get on land so you can go and get a hooker and just have some other life outside of.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm talking about the Navy guys, not myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm just saying that's how you feel though.
Guest:You feel like you're in the Navy and just want to get leave.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, when you're on a ship, do you have to do a show every night?
Guest:On Carnival, you do.
Guest:On Royal Caribbean, you don't.
Guest:But on Carnival, you have another comic to work with that you can pal around with.
Guest:On Royal Caribbean, you don't.
Marc:And how often do you do those?
Guest:I do maybe one a month or maybe one every two months.
Guest:I've really cut them back because they play with the loneliness gets to me after a while.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Do you get to see parts of the world or is that even diminished?
Guest:Oh, no, you do, but that's diminished for me because how many times can you go to Cozumeli?
Guest:You know, it's beautiful and they have great scuba diving and all that.
Guest:But when you've been there a hundred times, you can only buy so many sombreros and you can only buy, you know...
Guest:So much Kahlua.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, you can only do so much.
Guest:You get so many boner pills.
Guest:You know, you can only buy so much of that shit in Mexico.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And after a while, it's like, all right, been there, done that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:You never went up to Alaska or anything?
Guest:Yeah, I did the Alaska thing.
Guest:You know, you can only catch so many salmon.
Guest:You can only, you know, wave at so many bears.
Yeah.
Marc:There's the sad guy waving at the bears again.
Marc:The bears are feeling bad for you.
Guest:Is that guy back?
Guest:I just woke up.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I got to look at that guy, the sad comic.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Why doesn't he get a podcast and just stay home and try to get a following or something?
Guest:You know, right on a sitcom.
Guest:This guy's here every other month.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:Does he get tired of this?
Guest:I got three kids, man.
Guest:I got to feed the family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We understand.
Guest:We got cubs.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:Everybody sees the world of a stand-up.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:This guy works an hour a night.
Guest:He's banging all the waitresses.
Guest:He's getting coked up out of his mind.
Guest:He's living large.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, man.
Guest:It's like you get all this love and acceptance from this audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they're buying your CDs.
Guest:They're buying your drinks after the show.
Guest:They're buying your paraphernalia.
Guest:You're getting all this love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And an hour later, you're in your hotel room watching HBO eating a Domino's pizza jerking off.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And that's your life.
Guest:You are the loneliest guy in the world.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You win, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You win.
Guest:You want to put a bullet in your head.
Marc:I used to have like people, a lot of my fans were bringing me baked goods for a while because I used to talk about it.
Marc:So like I'd end up in the hotel room with like three or four trays of baked cookies and cakes just sitting there on my bed jerking off surrounded by fucking cake.
Marc:And I was like, what the fuck is this?
Marc:Is this the victory?
Marc:Am I living it?
Marc:You know?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Some life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a trip, too, when you, like, because I'm at that point right now where I've got to write sort of a new hour.
Marc:I've got to get a nice big piece going.
Marc:And, like, you know, you figure out where do you start that.
Marc:You know, what story is going to be this.
Marc:Like, usually the way it goes with me is, like, you get that one piece where, like, I can build around that.
Marc:Like, that's the main piece.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And let's see what comes in between and after and whatever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you forget that there's still this weird courage necessary to fucking take the hit when you're building this thing.
Guest:Oh, it's unbelievable courage.
Guest:You don't know where all the laughs are yet.
Guest:You don't want to try and memorize everything because no one can write 45 minutes and memorize it.
Guest:You want to go up there with the gist of it to give you the freedom to roam and discover stuff while you're on stage.
Guest:So, you know, you got to get up there with a recorder and just say, I'm going to fly.
Guest:And then when something hits, you go, oh, fuck.
Guest:God, what did I do there?
Guest:I got to remember, how did I do that?
Guest:And if you don't have that recorder there to play it back.
Guest:You're fucked.
Guest:You know, you're fucked.
Marc:A lot of times I record and I don't even listen to the recording.
Marc:I'll just keep doing it the way I think I should probably listen more.
Marc:Do you record everything?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, but there's something about knowing where that laugh hits that makes you remember that.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's just the nature of the job.
Guest:It's a built-in thing where you go, oh, all right, all right, that was funny.
Marc:You ever hit those ones where you get the laugh and you can never get it again?
Marc:Where you're like, what the fuck did I do that one night?
Guest:I know, that pisses you off so much because you didn't record it, and you're like, how did I phrase that?
Guest:Maybe it was the timing.
Guest:Maybe it was the delivery.
Guest:It was the wording.
Guest:Why did I record it?
Guest:I fucked myself.
Yeah.
Guest:Lost.
Guest:Lost.
Guest:One audience saw that genius bit.
Guest:Yeah, and you're improvising and shit's kicking ass and then you can't recreate it because you didn't record it.
Marc:Yeah, I got to remind myself.
Marc:I got to make sure I do that.
Marc:So what's your sister doing?
Marc:Is she writing on television now?
Guest:Right now, she's in between jobs.
Guest:I think it's the first time in her career where she hasn't been on a show.
Guest:She's really been lucky falling into... She got a family?
Guest:No.
Guest:She's got a husband, but she has no kids.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:She got a place in Sherman Oaks.
Guest:She's been at it.
Guest:She went from Second City to working on SNL, to working on Norm MacDonald, to My Boys, to Nurse Jackie, to...
Guest:She did a thing, Shameless.
Guest:She's been on a million things.
Marc:You guys close?
Guest:Yeah, she's four years younger than me, so we all grew up together.
Marc:That's fucking sweet.
Marc:I think it's sweet that you still got this relationship with your family.
Marc:I talk to a lot of people, and they're like, I don't know.
Marc:You know, I don't talk to my brother.
Marc:I don't see that guy.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I keep in touch with all of them.
Guest:And even though we're all parts of the country, I got a brother in San Francisco, two in Albuquerque, one in Chicago.
Guest:And, you know, we all keep in touch.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:And you go back every year to Chicago a couple of times.
Guest:I get back there four or five times a year to do the clubs or a wedding or funeral.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, because I have so much family back there.
Guest:You know, I didn't even leave till I was 30.
Guest:So I still have all the people I played ball with, you know, people I went to college with, people I went to high school with.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so many people back there.
Marc:And you don't see yourself living there again?
Marc:You don't want to?
Guest:You know, I could.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:I could live back there, you know, easily, you know, but I am used to the weather out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I've been out here 30 years now, so.
Marc:Your kids grew up here and your wife's, where's she from?
Marc:She's from here?
Guest:She's originally from New York, but then she grew up in Florida and came out here in the mid, she came out here in the 80s.
Guest:And I met her when she was a waitress at the Comedy Store.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, you know, it's great to talk to you, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great to see you.
Guest:I'm happy for you because I know you get on the ground floor when these podcasts first started.
Guest:Rare when that happens.
Guest:You're like the pioneer of this.
Guest:Once in my life.
Guest:I'm so happy for you that it actually took off for you.
Marc:Once in my life, the cosmic timing worked.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's like I had no expectation.
Marc:It's like you said about your house.
Marc:If you could get one of those in your life where you're like, I'm ahead of the curve on this.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And it was all by blind luck.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's like, you know, if you get one of those, you can't plan that shit, but if you get one of those in your life, good for you.
Guest:Whatever the fuck it is.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And I know.
Guest:It happened to be my house for me and your podcast for you.
Guest:But more power to you, man.
Guest:I'm happy for you.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thanks for talking, John.
All right.
Marc:That was me, John Cavanara.
Marc:His book, Life and Comedy, you can get it on Amazon.
Marc:And I'm sure you can see John if you look him up on the Internet.
Marc:So, as always, go to WTFPod.com, powered by Squarespace.
Marc:And check out the tour dates, the merch, the stuff, the things.
Marc:Get on the email list.
Marc:You know, that kind of thing.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:I'm going to get my Les Paul and plug it into that dirty old man amp.
Marc:Boomer lives!