BONUS Comedy Album - This Has To Be Funny (2011)
All right, let's do an honest sound check.
Test, test, one, two, I disappointed my parents, two, two.
Testing, one, two, bad career choice, one, two, one, two.
Anyone have a couch I can sleep on, two, two, one, two.
Dreams fading, test, test, one, two.
Okay, I think we're good.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Maron.
Woo!
Thank you!
Thank you for coming out.
Pleasure to see you.
I'd like to open by saying that I am not happy or well, so rest reassured things will continue to be panicky and awkward.
Oh my fucking God, I cannot handle the fact that things are going well.
Look, all you guys came out and I cannot fucking handle it.
The last CDs I did were in the worst comedy club in the country for half a house.
Because I wanted it that way.
Things are okay and I can't handle it.
When things are going well with me, there is a voice inside my head saying, you're gonna fuck it up.
You're gonna fuck it up over and over again.
And I just wish that voice was louder than the voice saying, let's fuck it up.
Come on, you pussy, fuck it up.
You pussy.
Burn some bridges, alienate your friends, ruin your career, start drinking again.
Sit on your couch drunk and crying with nothing left to lose.
Have you forgotten what freedom feels like, you fucking pussy?
Doing well.
Fuck you.
So that's happening right now in my head.
Welcome to it.
It's a thrill to be in New York.
I always like being in New York.
I'm emotionally frazzled.
I might explain that to you.
Why I emotionally frazzled in a little while.
But, like, I'm frazzled to the point where things are a little tweaky.
I didn't get much sleep.
I'd flown in yesterday.
And I had this very weird, genuine New York moment.
I was on an elevator in a building in Manhattan.
There was a guy on the elevator with me.
Looked exactly like Spaulding Gray.
Yeah.
And my first thought was not, you know, he committed suicide years ago.
It's not Spaulding Gray.
My first thought was like, you pulled it off.
My lips are sealed, bro.
Looking forward to the show.
I've been here for a couple days, and you guys, I'm just, I'm happy that, you know, adults come to see me.
I'm happy y'all seem pretty good.
Not too many annoying hipsters.
I know that...
Well, I can't judge.
I mean, look at me.
I've got a facial hair configuration of some sort that doesn't happen completely organically.
I'm doing something.
But I don't see myself as a hipster.
I sort of rationalize it being like, you know, I'm a middle-aged man who's made a facial hair decision.
I literally get angry at a handlebar mustache.
Angry.
I get angry if I see the handlebar mustache.
Or a fedora.
Fuck, I can't handle it.
But why should I be angry at that?
I saw a guy with a handlebar mustache and a fedora wearing joppers.
And I was like, fuck you.
Fuck you.
Commit to something.
What is going on?
It looked like he was interrupted during a shave in the mid-1850s and had to dress quickly as he ran through a time tunnel.
LAUGHTER
I mean, what are you saying with that?
All you're saying is, I'm working on me.
I'm trying to put something together for myself.
What else do you have going on?
This is it.
Not effort into making something work.
I have my notebook.
I have my small spiral notebook.
These are cheap.
They're like, you can get them like five for $1.99 at Costco.
I just, this is what I use.
This is the way I work.
You know, I cannot, I will not buy a moleskin notebook ever again.
I can't handle the pressure.
Have you ever bought a moleskin notebook?
I mean, you know, they've got the leather bound and there's a strap around them.
I bought one once and the second I scratched a word out in the moleskin notebook, I was like, I fucked it up.
Gotta throw it away.
God forbid you ever rip a page out of a moleskin, you really have to battle with the desire to quit writing altogether.
I've disappointed the moleskin book.
I did not live up to its expectations with its fine, leather-bound, strapped-together self.
So I write these little ones, and if I write, you know, I can't read my writing really, and if I write, and I can read it, and it makes it over to the yellow pad, if I can read it there, maybe it'll get out of my mouth.
But I write things in these impulsively, and I have to have them at all times.
I hear something I wrote apparently on a plane.
There was a baby on the plane that was crying.
It's such an irritating pitch.
If I met her as an adult, I would still resent her.
LAUGHTER
Thank you.
You gotta make sure you write that stuff down.
You know, I battle with things.
Many of you know that.
I think I'm a good person.
I say that to myself frequently.
Do you ever say that to yourself in your mind?
Like, I think I'm a good person.
That never just happens spontaneously.
Yeah, it's always followed by the thought of, you know, what did you do?
What did you do?
Why is there a woman crying again?
But we all think we're good people, even though I don't do much.
I spend a lot of time in my head.
I don't know if I'm doing things that are good, necessarily.
But there's... Because I clearly have a life where my behavior is not always tremendous, but I guess that's no different than anybody else.
But I think I'm a good person.
It's almost like saying, well, in my head, I got a 24-hour round-the-clock soup kitchen.
It's open.
Right now, it's open.
Hold on, I got to wheel Dennis over to his table.
He's a vet.
He's a vet.
Okay, I'll get you another roll.
I'll get you.
Don't fucking yell at me.
I'm your friend.
I get it, the gulf.
I get it.
I'll get you a roll, Dennis.
I'm not doing this every day.
Let me get it out of my head.
Spend a lot of fucking time in my head.
I was recently, you know, walking in my house.
I have a very small house, the two-bedroom house with the garage out back.
Small house, no one's in the house but me.
I'm walking down the hallway from my dining room to my bedroom.
Small house alone, short hallway, out loud in the hallway.
I said, you're fucking ridiculous.
No one in the house.
Two seconds later I said, but you're no dummy.
No one, no one there.
I stopped short of fist bumping the air because that would just be crazy.
I have long conversations with my cats.
I ask them questions they couldn't possibly answer.
They can't answer any questions or cats.
It doesn't stop me from engaging them.
Literally, I've had moments with Monkey who's sitting in his place on the table and I've looked him in the eye and said, I don't know what to do.
Should I break up with her?
I don't know what to do.
And Monkey just sits there like a cat.
And I say, what does that even mean?
Laughter
And wait.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been on my stomach.
LaFonda has been
It really sounded like, like I thought you were making an animal noise in response to the cat, which was not the appropriate animal noise.
And I struggled in that moment, which distracted me from the joke to understand the meaning of the vague animal-like noise you were making, because I thought perhaps there was something to mine there.
And then when I put my hand over the light, you were just laughing in your gloves.
There's no time for shame, man.
Fonda on my stomach.
Making muffins.
Doing that cat thing.
It's cute, right?
It's cute.
It's what you want cats to do.
In that moment, I said, are you saying I'm fucking fat?
And threw the cat off of me.
Jesus.
Now, I worry about my cats, which is really more embarrassing than having cats as a man.
Actively worrying about your cat.
Like, the monkey goes in and outside.
He goes outside and inside.
He's an indoor-outdoor cat.
I love the cat, but, you know, look, honestly, folks, I don't know if I've expressed this before clearly.
I'm not a cat guy, okay?
I'm a my cat guy.
I don't give a fuck about your cats.
Okay?
If I go to your house, I'll pretend to out of politeness.
I'll be like, aww.
But secretly I'll be thinking, what a sad, fat, ugly, dumb cat you have.
Lazy, it's not even moving.
Oh my God.
That cat is days away from hanging itself from its scratching post.
Look at it, just a pathetic hostage to your pain and needs.
Trapped in an apartment.
My cat's an indoor-outdoor cat.
It's a vital, wild animal.
Your cat can't even muster up the gumption to play with what's left of that fake mouse you got in.
It's pathetic.
You should put that cat down out of sympathy.
Your cat is days away of dying from ennui.
My cats are amazing.
But I worry about him.
You know, monkey goes inside and outside.
He could get eaten by coyotes.
He could.
I have to live with that.
Because I don't want to deny him that essential wild nature that he has in his heart.
But I worry.
I think, like, what if he gets eaten by coyotes?
And then I rationalize.
I say things to myself like, that's a pretty noble way to go out.
As an animal in a primal bloody struggle for survival with another beast.
But I love monkey.
So that doesn't work.
One time I was worrying about monkey and I actually said, Mark, there are parents that have children fighting in Afghanistan.
And I thought, that would be horrible to have a cat in Afghanistan.
In a poorly armored carrying case with...
No kiddie flak jacket in an unending war with an unclear agenda.
That would be horrible.
I'd much rather he be eaten by coyotes than the god that doesn't exist intended.
My parents are still alive, which is on some days great.
I've started to look at my parents as some sort of emotional terrorist organization.
And whether or not they know it, they've wired me to emotionally explode and detonate when anyone gets close to me.
But for some reason as they get older, and I don't know if this is a common experience, they divulge information that I don't want or need to know.
No.
about me, and about them.
I don't know if it's a burden they're carrying or they've got this stuck in their soul and they need to get it out.
But literally, where they're at now, they say things where I have this response sometimes where I'm like, I would have rather have struggled in the darkness for the rest of my life than be given this information.
There's a reason.
There's no statute of limitations on that kind of shit.
You're a parent.
Don't fucking tell me.
The thing my mother said was that thing.
The thing my father said was okay.
I was in Arizona for my niece's bat mitzvah.
It was my job to, as it usually is, to buffer my father from every other human.
That's why I'm a comedian.
My father is a manic depressive.
My first gigs were introed by my mother saying to me, Mark, could you just go upstairs and make him laugh?
You're the only one that can.
Okay.
I'm on.
I'm on.
So I go to Arizona, and I go to pick up my father, and I thought we were going to my brother's house to hang out with his kids.
I go to his hotel room, and I say, okay, you ready?
We're going over to see the kids, right?
And he goes, what for?
And I said, because they're your grandchildren.
And he says, eh, some people get something out of that.
I don't get anything out of that.
And I said, let me get my notebook.
And I said, then what are we gonna do?
He goes, well, I've been looking for mustard slacks for 16 years.
And then he said something like, you remember mustard slacks?
And I said, sure, dad.
The other one was at Thanksgiving.
My mother, who has an aversion to food of all kinds.
She's frightened of it.
It represents nothing nourishing or good to her.
Just resents the... I said it twice.
Resents.
Yes, I do resent her.
My mother just is, you know, she's got this eating problem.
She's been 119 pounds my entire life.
And because of that, I am also frightened of food.
And I've tried to figure out why, but the only thing I could come up with is that the horror to her of having a child that might be overweight was so profound.
Her fear was, you know, just displaced onto me.
Like, I really think that for about the first 12 years of my life, my mother just saw me as her fat.
That she, I think...
Some part of her thought that if she just ate less, perhaps I would disappear and she would not have to worry about the fat that was on me that was somehow connected directly to her.
No.
This has to be funny.
There...
And if you're doing that to this, I mean, what she said to me is heavy, but I processed it.
Though I wish she hadn't said it.
But I was grateful for it.
And that's the thing, is that you have to learn how to be grateful for these disclosures, even no matter how fucked up they are.
So I'm preparing something with butter in it, and she's, you know, asking me why.
And...
And she just says to me, you know, I think I should tell you something.
And I tolerate her, and we get along okay.
So I said, okay.
I'm ready.
And she says, you know, when you were a baby, I don't think I knew how to love you.
I said, I think I can remember that one.
I'm gonna have to write that one down.
The benefit of these poetic tidbits
is that now I can go back to my therapist and just walk in and go, I think we're done.
I think I've got the missing pieces.
This vague emotional void is now my mom and dad, and they're just all filled in right there.
No.
I do need to get it out of my head, though.
I've always been called heady.
And for some reason, when people tell you that, when they say that you're heady, they think that they're being nice.
It's really a horrendous insult.
You're very heady.
I get it.
So, like, I don't live in the real world.
I'm just working through things in my mind and making stuff up.
And, you know, I'm intelligent, but I can't activate it in a way that has any real impact on anything.
LAUGHTER
I'm just spinning plates up there.
And you're just watching me spin plates saying, oh, look at the heady man.
And they say, exactly, exactly.
That was a good illustration of being heady.
So I've now been told that I should get out of my head.
So now I'm on a train, a subway here in New York, worrying about being in my head, just sitting there sweating.
It's summer.
I'm rappelling down the pit of self, you know, looking for something helpful.
I might have scrawled on the wall on another trip down there, some artifacts, stone tools, an old baby toy.
And a woman walks onto the train with a box and in the box is an ice cream maker.
I know because it's on the box.
And immediately, like that, I go, fuck, I love ice cream.
I need an ice cream maker.
I've got to get an ice cream maker.
How do you even make ice cream?
How do you make chocolate ice cream?
Could I make ice cream as good as the ice cream you get in the store?
Because that would be fucking amazing.
I read on the label of Haagen-Dazs that there's eggs in it.
Do you freeze eggs and the germs go away?
Is it okay to put eggs in ice cream?
Is eggs in all ice cream?
How do you make vanilla ice cream?
I fucking love ice cream.
I don't think I could have an ice cream maker because that'd be like living with a drug dealer.
I mean, how would I handle that?
But I would love to make good chocolate ice cream.
And then I just, I literally had to say, dude, get out of your head.
And then I had to stop myself from yelling out loud at the woman, I guess you can handle it.
I want to yell at people in public.
Because I'm a good person.
I think I'm a good person.
Feeding people.
I'm Darfur.
Right now.
Hold on.
I've got to throw a couple bags of rice off the truck.
Okay, they're good here.
Let's move on.
I almost killed two people.
They were in the street
I was driving down my street, minding my own business, texting.
And all of a sudden I look up and there are two people like literally about to be killed by my car.
The surprising thing about that moment is in that moment I was not terrified that I was going to hit them.
I was angry that they were there because I was texting.
I literally thought, what are you doing in the street?
I'm holding my phone, thinking that I am the valid one.
And then it was at that moment that I realized that texting and driving is really more dangerous than drinking and driving, because at least when you're drunk driving, someone is driving the car.
When you're texting and driving, no one's driving the car.
Nobody.
When you look, do you even realize what you're risking your life to say?
When you're sitting there going, fuck you, soy milk is like, oh, what the fuck?
What the fuck?
And you're wondering how long your car has been an unanchored hurling piece of metal and plastic with no one in charge of the wheel.
Soy milk is what?
Worth dying for.
Soy milk's supposed to be better for you.
And I can't stop doing it.
I don't know if it's because I don't do drugs anymore, I don't drink anymore, there's very few things I can do that will get me the rush.
There's something completely addicting about slamming on your brakes.
It's an adrenaline high.
You know, there are a lot of sports that people can do that they have some control over that would give them that, that there is a predictability to it.
I'm going to jump out of this plane.
I'm going to fall.
It's going to be thrilling.
You know, I'm going to rappel up this mountain or down the mountain or whatever.
Mountain, whatever it is, extreme sports, who cares?
But none of those have the spontaneity of almost killing somebody, maybe, or something.
And you don't know when it's going to happen.
But that moment when you slam on your brakes and go, and you don't hit what you're about to hit is fucking divine.
It's like being born.
And if you're hung up on having last words, if you die in an accident, texting and driving, you will have last words.
They will be documented.
They will be there frozen.
And I guarantee you they will be fragmented and stupid.
I picture I die in an accident.
Texting.
It's my funeral.
Few comics show up.
Not a lot.
Few.
I get it.
I know that day.
You go in the mirror and sing?
What, the funeral?
And...
I kind of knew him.
Did his podcast once, good guy.
But I picture there are two comics talking, I'm not going to name names, I don't know who I can count on.
And one of them says to the other, so did Marin have any last words or anything?
And the other guy goes, dude, he didn't hear it.
He died texting and he was driving and texting.
He had last words, they were there.
And the other guy's like, what were they?
And the other guy goes, I think they were, fuck that, L-O.
Which I would not be ashamed to have on my tombstone.
I think it's a very fitting epitaph for me.
Rest in peace, Marc Maron.
Quote, fuck that, L-O, dot, dot, dot.
And then in parentheses, sometimes the laughter wasn't out loud.
Unquote.
I'm a good person.
Hold on, in the middle of the Habitats for Humanity project.
No, no, it's your house.
No, no, no, we built it for you.
Yes.
Yeah, it's free.
Oh, just to see the looks on their faces.
So, I'm not a religious person.
You know, I'm a Jew.
I was raised to be selfish by Jewish parents.
And I was recently in Cincinnati, and I chose to go to the Creation Nest Museum.
Yeah, some of you are familiar.
Yeah.
It's like the Creation Nest Museum.
And it was about 30 miles away in Kentucky, and I did a little research, and it was, I needed to go.
I needed to go.
For the wrong reasons.
Obviously.
But I needed to witness.
I needed to go to this tabernacle of ignorance.
And I went there thinking, I'm going to go there.
I'm going to be horrified, angry, smug, condescending, righteous, pompous even.
And just judging these fucking idiots that are going there for what they see as the right reason.
I knew I was going for the wrong reason.
And I got there and right away I walked in and I was like, this is pretty crazy.
A lot of money went into making this.
They're really selling.
This is just a tabernacle of Christian creationist propaganda.
And people flock to it.
And the only thing they're trying to establish in that museum, the only thing, it's not about Jesus.
There's literally hardly any Jesus.
The only thing they're trying to establish is that at one point in time, human beings and dinosaurs could hang out.
That's the only thing.
That's the entire agenda.
LAUGHTER
that at some point in time, a person could go, come here, boy, come here, boy, to a fucking dinosaur and say, you want a carrot?
Here's a carrot.
Watch, he eats carrots.
They believe the world is about 6,000 years old.
Now, human beings as we know them, or roughly, they probably really kind of came about about 250,000 years ago.
Dinosaurs that they're talking about, probably about, what, 300 million years ago.
All right, so the gap they're trying to close is a good 300 million year gap that they're just trying to close up with pseudoscience and interesting dioramas.
LAUGHTER
Now, I know in my heart there are people going there that are actually on the fence.
Like, I don't know about this.
And they walk out of that museum going, pretty clear to me.
That one diorama, I don't know how it could be more clear.
I actually didn't get really upset about the agenda of the museum.
What upset me more than anything was this one room where it was sort of a display room about the Old Testament and the New Testament.
And they had these audio-animatronic dolls that were lifelike.
Lifelike.
And you walk into this room, and on the left side of the room, you had Isaiah, the prophet.
You had Moses with his commandments.
You had Abraham, who was pensive and sitting for some reason, and had a harp-like instrument.
I don't know why.
And they couldn't have looked more Jew-y.
LAUGHTER
And it was offensive to me as a Jew that doesn't believe in any of this shit, but I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
I mean, it might as well have been Sid Caesar, Gabe Kaplan, and Richard Lewis sitting there.
And the blacks should have read, Jews from the past.
Literally, it looks as though Moses should have had both tablets in one hand and a bagel and schmear in the other, going, why not?
And Isaiah should have been saying, enough with the food already.
Always with the food.
Enough.
And Abraham should have just been sitting there going, please stop fighting again and again.
Oy, oy, oy, oy, oy, oy, oy.
It's offensive because I knew it was true because when you turn the corner and go to the New Testament side, they have the Apostle Paul, who was sitting patiently, solemn, thoughtful, looked like Ben Gazzara.
There was nothing about him that revealed any Semitic DNA whatsoever.
He had a flat nose, Mediterranean skin, a square jaw.
He was wearing a red sash and a white robe, and he had important papers.
LAUGHTER
And he was directly across from the history of the Borscht Belt.
And the expression on his face to me just read, Jews.
I found that offensive.
But then you make your way to the Garden of Eden.
This is the important room.
Because by this point, you should be pretty well mind-fucked.
The horrible thing is that you see parents with children encouraging them to take this shit in, and you think, where is Child Service's room?
But the Garden of Eden was pretty spectacular.
Garden of Eden was beautiful.
You walk in, there's animal noises.
It's big.
It's a garden.
It's beautiful.
Animals, just Adam.
It's the pre-Eve Eden, so it's idyllic.
No problems.
I'm not sexist.
It's in the Bible.
which is sexist.
But you walk in, and the first animal you see there in the back of the garden, he's a grizzly bear, it's a grizzly bear.
Why not?
God's weird with his choices.
It's a classic taxidermy grizzly bear up on its hind haunches, is that what you say, on its haunches?
With its hands like this, like you see in weird old places when you travel across country.
Curio shops.
So there's a grizzly bear, there's an antelope.
Over here is some deer.
In the middle sits Adam, alone holding a white lamb, which is either to foreshadow Christ or he's fucking it.
Either one possible.
in pre eve eden but here's what happens man here is where they start to see you move past adam and just to the left of adam a single white penguin doesn't matter that's not the right climate it's eden don't judge there's a penguin
And then I realized this was just a mental palate cleanser for what's about to happen.
Because he said, okay, penguin, you turn the corner, T-Rex, eating a pineapple.
And my only thought at that moment was like a pineapple.
That doesn't make sense.
And I'm like, oh no, they got me!
And really because I was so hooked into the narrative of the museum, I was like, hey, I hope they explain why that carnivorous ancient reptile would be enjoying some vegetable, some fruit.
They did.
The next room we go into, everything is explained.
Apparently, between the fall of man and the flood, those two events erased completely man's ability to reason and science's ability to be effective in humans.
Washed away.
The great blood washed away signs.
So in the room, the next room, there's some exhibits.
It's just really a domestic scene.
And there are little information cards explaining what life was like before the fall and what life was like after the fall.
What did we lose as people after the fall?
What changed?
Weird selection of things.
LAUGHTER
Like the first one was disease.
There was no disease before the fall.
But after the fall, viruses and bacteria were like, it's our time.
And there's only like six of these things.
The next one, odd things.
The next one was venom.
Venom.
Out of all the things, venom.
There was no venomous animals.
Snakes, all the things.
Bad, wizards.
Harmless.
After the fall, holy shit.
Look what our fangs can do.
They're playing to the kids with this thing.
Laughter
No meat eating before the fall.
That would explain the pineapple.
No carnivorous things.
That's an important detail.
That is why people could be like, let's ride the dinosaur.
No fear, as long as there's pineapple around.
After the fall, fuck it, we're gonna eat these fuckers.
Then there was one that made me understand the entire museum and who they were really gearing their momentum towards.
The next information plaque just said, weeds.
Weeds.
Before the fall of man, there were no weeds.
Who the fuck could that plaque be for?
A guy who looks at that and goes, no way.
Every year my yard is full of fucking no weeds.
Oh, that must have been beautiful.
I knew they were fucking evil.
But the Ark, you're inside the Ark.
They show you how it's constructed.
Cubits and they have men with animatronic things and people building moving things.
And Noah's there explaining it.
And he sounded like Count Chocula.
Like he...
I couldn't understand the accent, but I couldn't help but think that there was some anti-Semitic theme running.
They're like, well, we gotta have Noah, but he is a Jew, so let's make him scary.
The Ark was built.
And then they had these architectural models of the Ark, and this was the moment where it was just great to me.
The scale models, like the building ones the architects make with little people and little bushes and things, and they look great, and you have to lean in like, look at that detail.
So it's the Ark scale model, which apparently they're going to build down there.
They're building a full-scale Ark.
I just heard this, and it's true.
Because they're pushing it off as some sort of exhibit, but they're planning.
LAUGHTER
They're on the ramp on the ramp going up to the Archie's edge
There's two giraffes, two zebras, two lions, two brontosauruses.
But at that point, your mind doesn't stop there.
You're just onto the pigs.
Brontosaurus is on the ark.
I'm good with that.
And some of you are like, there are no brontosauruses.
That was not the proper name.
Like, I got an email about that.
That they're not called that.
And you know what?
I didn't even fucking make note of what they're really called because when I was a kid, it was a brontosaurus.
And I think we all know what I'm talking about.
I'm not here to do research.
My heart is in it and you get the idea.
I think that's what we're going for.
No species and genus.
Whatever.
So I guess what I mean to say is that after the full experience, I didn't take a picture.
They had a triceratops with a saddle on it that you could sit on and take pictures.
But I left not angry at them.
Not angry at the museum, not angry at the people who were there.
I was sort of elated.
I felt sort of gloriously embarrassed for our country.
But I felt deeply proud to be an American for a very weird reason.
I was proud to be an American because I realized that what I was standing in the parking lot of could only happen in America.
These are our fucking morons.
And they've done a beautiful thing down here.
And I think also there's that idea that even the worst Christians, if you meet them one-on-one, are probably pretty decent people.
They're just people.
And I believe that that's true if you talk to them one-on-one.
They're probably pretty decent people.
My fear has always been when they all come to get me, it's going to be a different interaction.
More along the lines of like, let me go!
Dude, we were just talking!
It's fucking me!
God damn it!
And that's what scares me.
And I've lost my ability to judge believers.
I used to judge them a lot.
But I don't believe in God.
But I'm not an atheist.
I just don't care.
I wasn't brought up with it.
I don't care.
And I've grown to understand that if you have to gather together some weird dogmatic or mystical system that works for you spiritually or somehow, good.
I hope you make it through.
Just don't drag me into it or push it on me and we're okay.
I understand.
I can't judge believers.
I know that belief is necessary to feel part of something bigger than you.
And because I don't have any real quest for God in my heart, I'm a very good consumer.
because I can't deny the whole exists.
But also, I've just lost my urgency to argue, and I find that Christians are not annoying people when you talk to them.
They're annoying, but they're a predictable kind of annoying, and they are pretty decent people.
There are more annoying people than Christians.
Arguably atheists, really angry atheists, much more annoying than talking to a Christian.
I could talk to a Christian for half an hour.
I could talk to an atheist for five minutes before I'm like, shut the fuck up.
I get it.
I know what you want.
You're right.
Yes, you're right.
Vegans are much more annoying than Christians.
Because it's the same conversation.
I get it.
I'm immoral.
I'm killing with my mouth.
I get it.
Atheist vegans, horrendous people.
And the difference between an atheist vegan or an atheist vegan and a Christian, if a Christian is a real Christian, at least they know they're flawed.
Okay.
So I've been traveling a lot.
I was in Ireland.
I'm okay with the Irish now.
Coming back from Ireland, I had an experience that...
It made me question everything I thought I was in terms of race.
I don't think it was an uncommon experience.
It was not something that people necessarily share, and I don't know that it's been as dramatic for anyone else.
I'd been up for about 18 hours, and I was flying back to Los Angeles from Ireland.
And we'd made it across the ocean.
We were in Chicago for the last leg of the trip from O'Hare to LAX.
And I had been awake a long time, and I was tweaky, frazzled, felt kind of post-trip-ish.
As in, who's anogenic trip-ish?
You know, you're a little sweaty, and things are a little jangly, and you're like, am I sweating chemicals?
You know?
And I'm on the plane.
I'm sitting in the last row facing the wall where the screen is or just around that wall is the flight attendant area.
This is where the flight attendants sit in their area.
And I'm sitting on the aisle.
And, you know, I'm shaky.
I'm drinking coffee because I'm like, why, sweetie, just hold out that thing.
See, sweetie, just get all the sweeping done in one shot.
Don't do it.
Your clock is all fucked up.
In my head.
And I get up to go to the bathroom, and I'm walking to the bathroom, and the bathroom is vacant, but standing right here next to the bathroom is a man who looks at me weird, and in that moment I decided, he's a dubious shade of brown.
Why is this man just standing by the bathroom looking at me strangely?
And in that moment, I decided in my vulnerable, sleepless state that he was clearly Palestinian or Egyptian.
And he had a plan.
There was a problem at hand here.
And I know about it.
He knows it.
I know.
I've got to handle this properly.
So he looks at me, and I look at him, and I sense that he knows that I'm onto him.
And he starts to walk down the aisle, and in some sort of weird, like, I thought I was being discreet.
I'm going to follow him on the plane.
There's no real way to discreetly follow somebody on a plane.
Your space is limited.
So he starts walking down the aisle.
I'm like, two, three, four, and I start walking.
LAUGHTER
And I'm following him, and I get to the flight attendant area just in front of my seat in the middle of the plane.
He keeps walking.
I watch him walk through business, through first, into the cockpit flight attendant area, and I am panicked and freaking the fuck out.
My eyes are bugging.
I'm completely focused on what I think is about to happen, and I hear a flight attendant right here to my right go, is everything okay, sir?
And I go, what?
Because I knew what was happening in my head, but I knew maybe that's not a great idea to share.
So...
She says, is everything all right, sir?
And all I could come up with in that moment was, well, there's a situation in my head.
And she said, sir, please sit down.
Please sit down.
And I'm like, I...
Okay.
I'll sit down.
Now this is the moment where I really wish that my imagination was fueled by something other than panic.
It really is fueled by panic.
It is not free.
I've not freed my imagination to make bunnies.
Okay.
I don't know how to do absurdist humor or understand how to sell it.
I don't understand it.
I can't be light and ridiculous.
My imagination doesn't do that.
I'm not that guy.
But if I'm fueled by panic, man, it goes to fucking town.
I'm sitting there.
I've been told to sit down, and I know what's happening in the cockpit.
This dubious brown man who's either Palestinian or Egyptian has specially treated...
rubber gloves on that are soaked in an ancient toxin that he's immune himself to by ingesting it over the past three months.
He's already touched the neck of the co-pilot and the pilot with the toxic rubber gloves.
They've gone into cardiac arrest.
A pink whitish foam is oozing out of both of their mouths as they make ghastly
noises, and he's about to push them aside, get into the cockpit seat, and fly us into something.
And at that moment, I look up, and I hear, sir, and I'm surrounded by the entire flight crew.
And I go, yeah, yeah.
What's up?
And they're like, well, we're concerned.
Are you okay?
And I'm noticing that the rest of the passengers are looking at me, and I'm like, I'm not the
But you can't say that because some part of you is holding on to hope that you would be wrong.
Though I was a little more fragile than I should have been, but I was holding on to that hope, so I said, yeah, I'm okay.
Everything's okay, knowing full well that we're moments away from plunging.
And they all walk away together, and at that moment where I'm about to really lose it, the dubious brown man who's either Palestinian or Egyptian comes walking back down the aisle, and I swear to you, looks at me with a look of like, yeah.
I knew you were one of them.
So nothing happened.
And I sat there ashamed, angry at myself that I'd surrendered to this profiling experiment out of fear, mad at myself.
I was embarrassed.
And I just sat there, festering in embarrassment for the rest of the flight, and we're about to land, and the flight attendant's seats were right in front of me, and the woman who initially told me, or asked me if everything was okay, was strapping herself into her seat.
And I'm just sitting there like, eh.
and we're starting to land, we're starting to approach, and she leans it to me, and she says, what happened?
And I felt like I was going to cry.
And all I could say was there was a situation in my head.
And she looked at me very maternally and she says, it happens to all of us.
I can't do that.
I'd been in Scotland for a month and my friend Don was staying at my house and I got home from being a month away.
And Don left, and I went out on my deck, my old deck, which was falling apart, and I hadn't been home for a month.
I said hi to my cats.
I stood out on my deck and looked over the cactus garden that my ex-wife planted that I maintain out of spite.
LAUGHTER
I used to get reacquainted with who I am.
And in the middle of the cactus garden was this bubbling goo coming out of the ground.
And I'm a fairly new homeowner, so my first thought was, well, fuck, someone's got to fix that.
And then, of course, you realize, I have to...
Fix it.
I don't know what it is, and I'm kind of baffled by it.
I'm wondering if it's geological.
What's happening?
My neighbor Adam's on his deck, and I go, Adam, dude, what's up with, what is that?
And Adam, without missing a beat, just goes, that's shit.
And my first thought is, I've got to shit well.
Did I learn about that at the Creation Museum?
Does the earth sometimes get angry and shit at us?
I'm foreshadowing for the next fall.
Is the earth shitting at me?
And then, of course, I went into some other thing where I'm like, it's a metaphor.
It's a sign.
It's a symbol.
It's a whole... I mean, she planted the garden of thorny plants, and beneath it is just shit.
And that was what our relationship was built on.
It was thorny, and it's built on shit.
And then I'm like, dude, you took one semester of film.
Snap out of it.
Not semiotic time.
Yeah.
I say, Adam, what do we do about that?
He goes, well, man, it looks like it's right on the storyline.
You just follow the pipe down and pop open the clean-out and see what comes out, and then we find out where the clog is.
And I'm like, oh, fuck, you lost me at all of it.
Can you help me?
Fucking neighbor says, absolutely.
Wow.
Would you do that?
So he comes over and we sort of huddle around this clean out, which is basically just a valve on the pipe that's designed to do this so you can get into the pipe at different places.
And there's a top on it and he looks at me and he's like, we don't know how much shit's going to come out of here.
when we pop the top off.
And certainly I'm familiar with that on an emotional level.
So he pulls it off and I'm ready to like, what?
And it just kind of goes.
It's a little disappointing.
So I say to Adam, I say, are we good?
Are we done?
It's all fixed.
Just cap it back up.
He's like, no, dude, you got to get a rooter.
I'm like, do you have a rooter?
He's like, I don't have a rooter.
You got to call a rooter guy.
What?
A rooter guy?
So I go Google rooter.
I find a rooter guy in my neighborhood, Earl's rooter.
I call Earl.
It's like Sunday.
It's Memorial Day weekend.
It's a bad weekend to be playing around with shit wells.
I call the number, and the guy just goes, yeah.
And I'm like, is this a business?
I'm not sure what I want to say what I got to say if this isn't who I think I need to be talking to.
Launch into a shit problem in your yard with a stranger.
He goes, is this Earl?
Is this Reuter?
He's like, yeah, this is Earl.
What's up?
I popped open a clean out.
A little bit of shit came out of it.
We need a Reuter out here.
And he's like, where are you?
I'm like, I'm right here in Highland Park.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I can do that.
I can't get my guy today.
Is there anywhere there to help?
And I'm like, well, Adam's here, but I might have depleted his neighborly.
He's done enough.
But I can help you, Earl.
He's like, all right, I'll be over.
It'll be $150.
I'm like, okay, good.
He comes over with the router machine, which is a large 100-foot steel coil with blades on it hooked to a motor.
And we had to lift this thing and move it into the garden.
And I'm taking hits.
I'm hitting cactuses.
I'm getting a little bloody.
Cats are on the deck wondering what's up.
A little surprised.
Is he becoming a dog guy?
Laughter
I reassure him, we're good, we're good.
I'm good.
What does that even mean?
And then Earl, now I got the play-by-play.
Earl turns the engine on, we're running the rooter into the hole.
And Earl's like, we gotta let her get down there about 20 feet or however 30 feet to where the clog is.
I'm like, sounds good, man, let's do it.
And he's running her in.
He's like, she's down there about 20 feet.
I'm like, what's going to happen?
He's like, well, the water's going to whoosh out here when we hit the clog.
She's probably down there about 35 feet.
And then all of a sudden the water goes whoosh.
And it just opens the pipe.
And Earl goes, yep, she got her.
What we got to do now, I'm just going to let her run all the way down to the end of the pipe, make sure it's all clean.
I'm like, okay, let her do that.
And she...
And he's like, and then like a few minutes go by and he's like, oh shit.
And he starts pulling at it.
Like, oh no, we're in trouble.
And I'm like, oh fuck, Earl, what's going on?
And Earl says, she's down there too deep.
The gravity in the water might suck her in.
And I'm like, I know how that feels, Earl.
Let's get her out of there.
So he starts going, oh, fuck me.
Oh, come on, girl.
Come on, baby.
And he gets hold of it, and he pulls her up.
And he's rolling it up.
And he says, oh, that was close.
I almost lost her.
And I'm depleted from my codependent position in this relationship with Earl.
Yeah.
And I took a minute and I thought to myself, what is the cutoff for referring to machinery as her?
I mean, if there's ever a situation where you should just man up and own that dick, it's this situation.
There's no feminine attributes at all to a rooter.
I felt like saying, Earl, get a hold of yourself.
You just fucked the shit out of that shit pipe with your 100-foot shit cock.
You'd be proud of that man.
Proud.
Okay.
All right.
Let's talk about the important stuff.
Matters of the heart.
I think I'm over my divorce, and...
It's been a long time.
What is that?
You don't feel like I'm over my divorce?
Honestly, I thought I was.
I really thought I'd done everything I could to process it, and it faded, and everything was okay.
After being consumed with revenge fantasies and spite and anger for years, I really thought they had dissipated.
Until not too long ago, I heard that my ex-wife had a baby.
And my first thought after hearing that was, no, that's your move?
No.
That's how you're going to play it?
I get it.
Spike baby.
Okay.
Had a baby at me.
You think you win?
I don't think so.
I think I'm a good person, but I can't tell you how many hours I spent hoping that baby was born without a face.
Now, I really just wanted her to spend nine months to push out this faceless freak, this blank head with a wet, whispering hole in the middle of it going, that she had to feed for the rest of that infant's life, rationalizing like parents do, saying things like, he's really smart, ha, ha, ha.
And we think he can feel colors, yeah.
The kid's okay.
I think I'm a good person.
What am I gonna do for that one?
I gotta help Dennis onto the toilet.
All right Dennis, we'll do this, but don't yell at me again, okay?
It's uncomfortable for me too.
So, let's move into the romance.
I've been dating aggressively for the last few years.
We're sexually acting out.
It's unclear to me.
Is there a difference?
Is there really a difference?
Look, I don't have any kids.
I know people have different agendas when they're dating.
I feel like I've been honest with women.
I have dated.
I have said things like, look, I'm bitter.
I'm brokenhearted.
I'm cynical.
I'm hurt.
I'm incapable of trust or intimacy.
I don't know if I ever will be again.
I would just like to fuck for a while.
Are you good with that?
It's amazing how many women hear that as, I love you.
Please move in with me.
He's a fixer-upper.
Because here's my experience.
What happens is I meet somebody who has sex as quickly as possible, as often as possible, until you get about a week into it and you hit that first wall where you're like, I don't even know you.
And she's like, I don't know you either.
And then you have to trauma bond for an hour or so.
Well, my dad's manic depressive and my mom has an eating disorder.
And she's like, oh my God, I have an eating disorder.
I'm like, of course you do.
Can we just keep fucking?
And then you fuck for a couple more weeks until you have to overcome the first minor obstacle together.
And it's usually something ridiculous.
Like, how can you not like tortilla chips?
Everyone fucking likes tortilla chips.
That's ridiculous.
I mean, were you abused by a Mexican?
Because that should have come out during the trauma bonding.
I don't think you're being forthright with me.
But I'm okay with it.
Let's just keep fucking.
After about a month of that, I'm usually like, happy anniversary.
And she's like, what are you talking about?
I'm like, today it seems like a year.
It's been an exciting few years.
I dated a stripper for a while, and I'm not a stripper guy.
It was a weird thing.
I don't mean anything against strippers or strip clubs.
I don't go primarily because I generally believe them.
And so I met her in a different context.
I met her at a party, and she said she was a writer.
And I said, well, what do you write about?
She said, well, I write about stripping, sex work, and being a dominatrix.
And I said, why do you write about that?
She said, well, that's what I do.
And I just held on to writer.
Dating a writer who's an active sex worker and stripper and dominatrix.
And don't get jealous.
I mean, she was an age-appropriate tripper, which, you know, is a little sad.
But I don't really know how I became that guy.
I mean, you know what a dominatrix's job is.
A dominatrix's job is basically to spank, hit, pee on, or stick things into sad men.
This is what she did for a living.
I mean, I was a pretty jealous guy when I was younger, and I still am if I'm engaged.
You know, I was the kind of guy if a woman I was dating would leave for two hours and she'd come back and I'd be like, you know, where the fuck were you?
Were you fucking around with somebody?
What the fuck were you doing?
You were fucking around with somebody.
And I don't know how I became the guy that, given the same situation, just says, how was work?
And it's the same question?
I didn't know if I was evolving or dead inside.
And I'm not a fetishistic person.
I like just normal, solo-meshing, slightly disturbing, but deeply moving sex that could lead to complete loss of identity and crying.
I'm normal, just straight up.
I like the kind of sex.
You ever have the kind of sex where it's so good that in the middle of it you're thinking, one of us is gonna die?
That kind of sex.
I don't need props and toys.
For me, there's just a very fine line between a dominatrix and a clown.
It really depends on the arena.
But we were getting too attached, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I said, all right, just give me the treatment.
Do the thing you do with the clients.
Let's do it.
I'm ready to try it.
I don't want anything in me, but you can tie me up.
And I know what would happen.
I'd be tied up, and I'd be like, I'm not good with this.
I'm not comfortable.
This isn't fun.
I knew I wouldn't get off on this.
Please untie me.
And she'd just be sitting there, smiling, looking at me, holding a ball gag, saying, the safe word is, marry me.
LAUGHTER
So now I've just been this guy that 20 to 35-year-old women try to work out their daddy issues on... Yeah, I don't... I seem to be okay with it.
But I know how it's gonna go.
If I were to create a visual metaphor for my sex wife over the last few years, it would be me sitting at home alone, talking to myself angrily, eating ice cream.
Out in the street, I hear a 23 to 35-year-old woman walking up the street, perhaps in the middle of the street, going, Daddy!
Daddy!
And I get up, and I walk to the door, and I open the door, and I see this woman going, Daddy!
I put my ice cream down, and I open the door and say, I can do that.
LAUGHTER
Come on in.
You take up some of that daddy slack.
And I know what happens.
You don't take up daddy slack.
You end up hanging from that rope a burning effigy of her father as she dances around saying, daddy's dead, daddy's dead, daddy's dead, and then moves on to a healthy relationship, rebuilds her relationship with her father, and I write new jokes.
So I'm involved with this woman.
This is how I met her.
It's a sweet story.
And then we'll all go feeling uplifted.
I get an email on my website, which anyone can email me through.
Hmm.
Subject line.
Hey, Marc Maron.
Hmm.
Hey, what?
I opened the email.
I met you the other night in San Francisco.
I don't know if you remember me.
I didn't really.
But I think you're hot.
I think you're sexy.
I want to fuck you.
I'm not going to have this 27-year-old body forever.
What do you say we have a fuck fest?
So, of course, I think, this sounds healthy.
So I write back, okay, let's have a fuckfest.
Where does the fuckfest take place?
And she writes back, well, I see you're going to be in Portland.
I live in San Francisco.
I'll meet you in Portland for the Portland Comedy Festival.
You fly up from L.A.
We'll hang out in the hotel.
We'll have a fuckfest.
I'm like, great.
So I show up in Portland.
I meet her.
She's cute.
She's adorable.
We have this fuckfest.
I learned, you know, honestly, I'm a little too old for fuckfest.
LAUGHTER
It was, you know, it was a one event a day festival.
But, you know, the production values were good, and they were, you know, good performances, good shows.
So I went into them, the crowd was happy.
So, of course, after Fuckfest 2010, being the cynical, broken-hearted douchebag that I am, I said, thanks, that was great, good meeting you, it worked out, huh?
Good times.
Good luck with everything, and I'll run into you again.
Okay.
I go back to LA.
She goes back to San Francisco.
A week later, I get a text on my phone.
Hey, remember me from Fuckfest?
I'm moving to LA.
It's got nothing to do with you.
I'm not a stalker.
Okay, if there were a multiple choice question on a test.
That was things a stalker would say.
Thinking all of the above.
So I text back, don't fucking move here.
You're creeping me out, stalker.
She texts back, fuck you.
It's not all about you.
I can live wherever I want.
I text back, no, fuck you.
You're going to fuck my life up.
I can feel it.
She texts back, no, fuck you.
You're not the boss of me.
Classic.
So then I call her and I go, what the fuck are you doing?
Don't do this, man.
It's not right.
You're going to fuck my life up.
Then she starts crying.
Then I realize, oh shit, we're courting.
Okay.
When I realized I had to hang up on her.
Then she proceeds to text me about 49 times in 30 minutes.
Yeah.
If you were to ask me, hey, Mark, what does crazy mean?
I could go, hold on, let me show you my phone.
If I were to take all those texts and run them one after the other as a free-form poem, and then...
deconstructed critically, maybe along the lines of Northrop Fry's Anatomy of Criticism, if I understood that.
I believe that the themes would be, fuck you, why don't you want to fuck me, when are we going to fuck again, you selfish asshole.
All classic literary themes.
And then something happens.
The 50th text had in it a photograph of her pussy.
And that changed everything.
I thought, I gotta rethink this.
That's thoughtful.
Because that took time.
It wasn't the first shot.
That took time.
She had to hold her phone up over here and go, No.
I'll move it down here.
And then maybe move it under and up into here.
Yeah.
Send.
Now, the weird thing about this story is two texts after the text of the vagina.
I get a text from the guy who's building me a bookshelf.
Of the finished bookshelf.
And I don't know if it's age or what, but I was more excited about the bookshelf.
I was like, oh my God, that's beautiful craftsmanship.
Look at the grain on that wood.
But I think on a deeper level, I thought, I don't have to be afraid to put things in that.
All my half-read books are not a threat to my mental well-being, because I know I won't finish them.
So needless to say, she's pretty much living with me, and she was a stalker.
She succeeded.
And we fight.
Because I fight.
I don't know why I fight.
But I fight with women.
No hitting.
Just hitting with my mouth.
I've been wrestling with this anger problem.
And this woman, of course, just brings it out of me.
And we fight.
So here's what happens.
Here's the romantic story.
We're having a fight.
I don't know about what.
I don't know how long it's been going on for.
None of those details matter, even when you're in a fight.
Windows are open.
Front door's open.
Screen is closed.
Let's enter the fight with her lines.
Would you just stop fucking talking?
Stop fucking talking.
Stop fucking talking.
Me at the door.
Get the fuck out of my house.
Just get the fuck out of my house.
Stop fucking talking.
Get the fuck out of my house.
I don't have to get out of your house.
I found that confusing.
threw me a little bit.
And as I'm at the door telling her to please get the fuck out of my house, I see a Latino man approaching my porch, approaching my front door with his hands up like this, looking upset.
He's interrupting the arc of my fight.
And I say to her, okay, baby, there's something, hold on a minute.
And I stick my head out the door and I say, what's up, man?
We all right?
What's up?
He's like, please, please stop fighting.
I'm like, are you cool, man?
He's like, no, please stop fighting.
And I realized why he had his hands up.
He was basically saying, civilian.
Not involved in the conflict.
I go, what's okay?
Are you okay, buddy?
He's like, just please stop fighting.
They're going to call the police up the street.
And I'm like, all right, okay, thank you.
He's like, please.
And then he starts crying.
I'm like, what's up, man?
He goes, I just lost my wife.
But in that moment, my first thought was like, she's not my fucking wife.
I didn't say that.
I said, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
He's like, okay, just please, please be kind.
I'm like, I get it.
You're some sort of weird angel.
Yeah.
And then he says, do you love her?
And I'm like, this is an awkward way for her to hear it the first time.
Yeah, baby, I love you.
Guy made me...
Just be kind.
I'm like, okay, man.
All right.
And he walks off the porch.
And this is, like, shocking and heavy.
And it just interrupted the whole sort of, you know, fight, cry, fuck arc.
I walk into the house, and she's sitting at the table with that look like, mm-hmm.
And I sit down.
And I don't know really what to say.
And she looks at me, and she says, I wish they'd call the fucking police.
I'm like, why?
And she says, so you just stopped fucking talking.
I'm like, okay.
And then we sat there for about a minute, just not saying anything.
I'm trying to pull together my feelings and say something.
And the only thing I could muster up in that moment was, you know, if we're gonna do this, we really should close the windows.
And she said, definitely.
And she said, definitely.
And then we had sex on a pile of clothes that had been taken out to pack.
Which is really the best sex you can have.
Because everything depends on it.
Thank you very much.
You're a great crowd.
I'm happy that you like me.
I hope that you still like me.
Good night.
Get to know him.