BONUS Producer Cuts - Nick Thune and Marc's Monologues
Hey, Full Marin listeners, it's Brendan here for Producer Cuts this month.
And you know what we do here.
We bring you this stuff that I had to cut out of WTF episodes.
And this month, we've got a lot of Mark's monologues.
But first, I wanted to put something in here from his episode with Nick Thune.
This happened right as the microphones went on.
And I thought it was kind of funny what was going on here.
But without context, you really wouldn't have known.
Mark had an issue with his mixing board that day.
It kind of broke down and he wasn't able to use it.
So he actually recorded the whole episode on his Zoom recorder.
That's the thing he travels with, brings with him on the road.
But what you hear right now was Mark basically getting himself settled after freaking out about the mixer not working and him and Nick kind of sort of trying to troubleshoot it before ultimately giving up.
And I wanted to include this.
It's pretty short, but I still thought you'd get a kick out of it.
Okay.
We will do it this way.
I've done it this way before.
Sorry about all the aggravation.
But it's not me.
It's okay?
Yeah.
You're okay if it's not you?
I do feel for the people around me, though.
Because when I have it, it feels like everybody should be involved.
Yeah, well, I mean, what was how did you feel about that?
I was kind of spiraling out.
And I saw somebody spiral worse than that this week.
So I am well, this was minor.
Yeah, this was nothing.
I mean, what was the worst one?
A similar situation.
A sound situation?
No, it was a boss to an employee.
And it was just, you know, passive, aggressive.
Nightmare.
Yeah.
So the boss was mistreating.
Yeah, and for you, you're just mistreating your equipment.
And myself.
You are taking it out on yourself.
I'm looking at this box that is essential in my simplistic recording situation.
Just bought a new mixer.
That seems to be okay because we're looking pretty good here on the Zoom.
I mean, and that mixer isn't even working hard.
It's got two microphones going in it.
Yeah, nothing's going on.
It's this fucker.
And I had to get a new mixer.
Eventually, these things...
Crap out.
And I don't know.
I don't know really what to do about it.
And I'm still kind of obsessed with it.
I feel like there's a light here that doesn't quite look right.
But that's the extent of my knowledge.
Yeah.
You start wondering, has that light always been there?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's got to be that light.
Is that the color of that light normally?
Yeah.
Something is not going correct with the interface situation.
That's with internet, like with a modem and you restart it and it's like blinking and you're like, did it always blink like that?
Yeah.
All you can do is restart three or four times and then sit here for an hour and try to figure out what the fuck went wrong.
Like there's a, oh my God.
Like, I'm even, I really, there's part of me that wants to try this other thing.
Hold on.
I mean, you just pressed something that sounded like it did something.
Didn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
No, it's not giving me what I usually have here.
Which is a feed into the computer.
Well, no, I have it, but usually there's two channels.
There's two mics.
It's separated.
You know, there's a track for each mic, even though it's the same track, basically.
But I'm not getting any of that.
Maybe we should try some step work.
Okay, and now the rest of what we've got here, you know the score.
Mark does his monologues on the show.
He sends them to me, and sometimes I cut stuff out.
Often I'm just looking to cut stuff because of time, and then sometimes it's tone or content, and these are from six monologues, and I'm just going to let them play out
This was Mark in his head while he's out touring.
He's kind of wrestling with the current political situation.
He's also, you know, fine tuning his set before his HBO special.
And so I think a lot of what I'm trying to do here is let Mark's essence exist in these intros, in these monologues, but not have it be overwhelming or redundant or confusing.
Too much.
And you'll notice a bunch of times in this, Mark kind of asks the audience or himself, is this too heavy?
Am I getting too heavy or too depressing on a Monday morning?
And sometimes the answer is yes.
And so I cut that out.
Why not give it to you?
This is the full Marin, and I will tell you, you are going to get the full Marc Maron right now.
This is completely uninhibited, Marc, and I'm just going to let these monologue chunks play out.
These are from episodes 1630, 1632, 1634, 1635, 1636, and
And 1638.
So six monologues in a row from over the past month.
I took this stuff out of the episodes, but you're hearing it now on the full Marin.
I went down there to Skokie the other night.
That was an amazing show.
What a great theater.
And then the next night in Joliet.
And you know, that didn't, there's one theater in Joliet.
that can handle large crowds.
And we sold, I don't know, 800 and change, you know, 800 plus tickets, which is about good for me.
And that's a nice theater crowd for me.
It's actually the perfect size.
But this theater, like on paper, I didn't know anything about the theater, you know, probably seated around, you know, 1800 and change.
That's a big theater.
So I was a little like, well, it's going to be what it is.
But all these theaters are
No matter how many people are in them, it's a theater, but 800 isn't nothing.
But I didn't know what to expect.
I didn't know what Joliet was.
I knew it from the Blues Brothers.
I knew there was a prison there.
I don't think that prison's in operation anymore.
But we were driving down there and, you know, it just seemed a little bleak.
But that's not unusual to feel when you're driving to some of these rural cities.
that were once a thing and may not be a thing anymore.
And they, they kind of get a, a, a darkness to it and I'm not judging it, but I can feel it.
And sometimes I project it, but you know, we're driving into Joliet and there's not much of a town there, but this theater, the Rialto theater has these, a beautiful sign in big lights, shining old timey 19, early 1900s vibe, uh,
With the lit sign out front.
And it is the brightest thing in this city of Joliet, which I wouldn't call a city.
It's more of a town.
But everything else seemed very dark and weighty.
And maybe it was the cloudiness.
Maybe it was just the type of businesses around.
But there's a lot of these shells of cities around.
in this country that have sort of a zombie vibe in a way, just something, a heaviness, a darkness.
And again, sometimes I project it, but I definitely felt it.
And I'm already a little sketched out about this show because I don't know who lives in Joliet or where they're coming from.
And I assume everybody knows that if they're coming to see me, they're coming to see me and they know what they're going to get.
And that's usually the case.
for uh for theater crowds they're not just driving by and but we get there and there's a couple of guys that work at the theater and i get out of the car and the security guy out back by the door is there with a cop and i'm like how you doing fellas they're like good how you doing i'm walking in and one guy goes didn't i see you on fox news last week were you on fox news and
And I said, not that I know of, not on purpose.
I certainly would have heard.
He's like, oh, you sure?
I'm like, yeah, I'm sure.
But that didn't plant a seed of excitement in my head.
I didn't.
I wasn't like, oh, what are we doing?
What are we getting into?
Yeah.
But I will say this.
And there was like two restaurants in town and out of nowhere, literally two.
There was a Greek place that was lively.
And I guess every every show that people go to this, but they go to these restaurants and we met some of the people that are going to the show and they were great.
We had snacks and.
But the theater was just a, you know, it is truly one of the most beautiful theaters I have ever seen.
The Rialto Theater in Joliet.
Apparently they have like the sixth or seventh largest chandelier in the lobby.
And the place, it was just stunning.
It was built in the 20s.
And I can't even explain the grandeur of it.
And it is probably the nicest structure within a 50-mile radius of this place.
And it's completely kept up.
And it's not just an oasis of some other period of time of entertainment.
It's almost like a ghost ship.
I mean, I couldn't believe it.
And just being in it, you feel the elevation of it.
You feel the same sort of kind of elevation that you feel in cathedrals in Italy, that these things were built, you know, in such a grand way to celebrate what the entertainment of the time, the theater.
I can't even... It was just mind-blowing.
And then Kit told me that Al Capone used to... He loved the Rialto Theater.
I'm like, that gives it another...
kind of a dark weight to it.
I didn't know that till after the show.
I'm sure I would have tried to communicate with those ghosts of that time if I had known, but I don't know the history of the place or of Joliet or how it died or any of that.
I just, I just know that,
During this show, not unlike the other shows that I've been having, that the people that come to see me are specific, most of them.
Some of them know me from other things, but most of them know where I'm at.
They know what I'm talking about, at least for a little while.
I have been putting a premium on being entertaining at this time.
do a little politics and then just be entertaining.
Let's get a reprieve from this.
But again, there was 800 people in this grand palace of entertainment, like-minded people who maybe don't socialize with like-minded people that much because they might be hard to come by in their lives.
And we have an event.
We have a real sort of community show.
And I just feel that.
But I also feel...
the pain or the reality that once the show is over, you walk back into the darkness.
And I have to feel satisfied with providing this service.
And again, maybe I'm overthinking everything.
But these shows have been great.
And the people have been grateful.
And I wish I could...
offer them a more sustained relief or hope.
I don't know if I'd do that, but I can get us all on the same page, and we can sort of have the catharsis of acknowledgement and get some laughs.
It's a weird time, man.
It's a weird time, and it just becomes more and more apparent that
that what's happening, you know, that when you have this president who used to only give a shit about polls, seemingly not giving his shit about polls, and you have all these possibilities, this gutting of the federal government, the possibility that, you know, all medical research is being shelved, you know, vaccines are being poo-pooed, you know, sort of community and national health is being shifted into something that,
and huckstery and ineffective.
The pushback on science and medicine is only going to make sick people sicker.
It's not gonna protect the healthy or the vulnerable.
The idea that some of these programs, Medicaid, Medicare,
Social Security are going to be gutted.
It just really becomes apparent that on not so abstract a level that they don't give a fuck about anybody and they want to kind of clear the deck.
So all those boomers who are counting on Social Security and now it's going to be harder to get those checks might not be able to get to where they need to be or get what they need.
They might just die off and there's some...
And this is just me being cynical and being scared that if you don't give a fuck about human beings in light of honoring your bottom line or honoring your ideology and you're willing to make it difficult for the most vulnerable of the country to get medicine or to live their life in a free way just to sort of push them towards the grave
So that will solve some problems.
And again, this is cynical, but I think that's where we're at.
Collective death through intentional negligence to honor the bottom line and make rich people richer is fucking heinous.
Again, this is a pretty heavy Monday morning, and I apologize.
But I do want to thank...
The people that came out in Skokie and Joliet, I thought Joliet was very special in a very haunted way.
And I won't forget it.
How's that?
Yes.
Is that the definition of insanity?
Yeah.
If you keep doing something and expecting different results, that's not what's happening here.
It's always kind of different.
I don't know if you've noticed that, but with each individual that I talk to,
We have a different thing.
Common threads.
I think I'm a common thread.
Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting.
I am a common thread to this.
I'm still I'm thinking about titles to my special.
And a couple of them have gone to the wayside.
One was evacuate.
because I do a big piece in there about evacuating for the fire.
But I think it's too easy for critics to use that title as a double entendre, I think.
Is that the word I want?
Because evacuate could easily mean shitting.
So I think that one's out.
I think Marc Maron, anxious.
That's okay for the kind of one word thing, which I've never been good at.
Some guys are just good at nailing that one word thing.
I don't know if I've liked the titles of my specials.
Thinkie Payne I liked.
Too Real.
More Later.
Right?
Wasn't that one?
More Later.
End Times Fun.
Yeah, those are okay.
I don't know what to go with.
I kind of like Taking It Easy.
but I don't know.
I think that would bring people in.
And then people who knew me would know it's ironic.
It's, I mean, it's in the running and it's interesting taking it easy and anxious.
That's I, you know, those anxious is pretty good.
Is there a special called anxious anyway?
Yeah.
You know, the level of paranoia that everybody once felt, you know, turns out that a lot of it is true.
I guess there's something to being paranoid in the sense of catastrophic thinking.
I was always a little paranoid, but I you know, you wrestle with this every day now and there's no it's relentless.
the amount of hammering on your mind and spirit that is going on on a daily basis, if you try to stay in the loop of what is really happening,
is pretty daunting.
And in finding space, it might get too heavy right out of the gate.
It's a little heavy up here, you know.
But people came into the shows.
Some people drove down from Canada.
I was talking to them about, you know, in terms of crossing over, was it difficult?
What's the border situation when you're trying to come into this country at this point in time?
And they didn't seem to have any problems.
A lot of people traveled from Detroit to
I don't know.
It's just the nature of how I tour.
I don't do the little places too often.
I kind of spread it out so people come in and come to see me.
They travel from miles around.
I guess the shows went pretty well.
There are other comics here.
I did not realize it last night when I was...
Doing the shows that I guess a couple of people that thought differently than me in the first 10 minutes where I kind of lay that stuff out.
And then before I get into the lighter, more entertaining things, I got upset and left.
I never really understood that.
I never understood it either way.
I mean, I understand, you know, getting angry or...
Not enjoying something because of a point of view, but usually I sit it out.
Usually I have a certain amount of faith and trust in the guy who's talking to kind of level it off, bring it in, make it for everybody, which I do.
I'm just trying to, you know, if you don't talk now,
If you don't talk now in whatever situation you're in, if you don't express your feelings about what's going on and concern, even to people that might not think the same way that you do, I mean, you're going to get lost in your own head.
You're going to put a system in place where the fear is going to take over.
Believe me.
I battle with it every day, every waking moment.
Sorry about the sound.
There's actually cars driving by and there's a little bounce in here.
But look, you know, as I've said before, my brain kind of works on two levels.
Is that...
What's going on in the world is so overwhelming in the macro that I kind of try to keep my anxiety in the micro and kind of elevate that as a counter to seemingly and honestly powerless feeling that I get from...
the world at large, and I could talk about it in detail, but I feel like I've been talking about this stuff for years, and it's all sort of coming to pass.
I mean, the idea that Trump and his minions flew the plane, Air Force One, down to Miami to sort of make an appearance at a UFC fight.
I mean, it's just like it's all...
It's all falling into place in the entirely most frightening and horrible way.
And the fear is real.
So how do you get relief from it?
Well, I don't know.
I'm looking at Lake Michigan.
Is that enough for a few minutes?
Yeah.
Is a cup of coffee enough for a few minutes?
Sure.
Is reading a book or going to a movie or talking to like-minded people or helping somebody out?
Yeah.
But at some point, we're going to have to get out there and get real with this and take some real risks around fighting for what we believe in so we don't live in this world where
those who speak up are disappeared and those who don't are just kind of shut down and keep their head down and keep their mouth shut and just focus on that phone.
Focus on those reels.
Focus on those cats.
Focus on those drainage pipes emptying themselves.
Focus on those horse hooves.
Focus on those influencers with all their
fake confidence focus on those crowd work comics who seemingly just interface with social media platforms and the corporate overlords that run those things seamlessly uh you know with no with no problem at all is that uh is is that you know is that where we're at you know i'd buy that for a dollar
I hope you're doing all right.
I talked to stay in touch with my family.
I've been doing that a little more.
Talked to my dad or what's left of him.
And there's still enough left to connect with.
My mom's doing okay.
My brother's all right.
Everybody's got their lives to live.
My friends are okay.
Went out to dinner with Jerry Stahl and his wife Zoe and, you know, trying to live the life and do the work.
What am I going to cook?
Bought a bunch of vegetables.
I decided because, oh yeah, I'm plant-based.
Not going to throw around that word vegan anymore.
Because it gets vegans very upset.
But I believe that coming up on two years of not eating any animal products is probably one of the more proactive things I do.
So if you're vegan and I'm not good enough for you and you got a big problem with my boots, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm doing my part.
Whether that's true in your eyes or not, I don't care.
That's my big statement, man.
Yeah, man.
Come on, isn't anything enough?
I think ultimately a lot of progressive sort of arguments or positions in light of more mundane elements of life in terms of being unified to push back
A lot of these smaller ones, I think the most they accomplish is make you not enjoy the things you enjoy anymore.
And, you know, that's phase one.
And the longer you sit in that, if you can't transcend it, if I can't transcend my rationalization for wearing boots, then I'll just be unhappy with my boots till one day I buckle and I only wear, I don't know, cloth shoes.
But I am not going to surrender to the unhappiness about my boots.
I like them.
And they're a bigger fish to fry than my boots.
Are you, I don't know, where are you at?
I'm going to, look, I'm going to try.
I'm going to try to keep it mundane.
I'm going to try to focus on the micro, the present, the now, what's in front of me, man.
Focus on what's in front of you.
Well, I took a week off comedy, very specifically took a week off comedy.
I've been out there on the road a lot.
I took a week.
I don't know why that's such a big deal.
I didn't do comedy for like two or three years during COVID, and I was okay with it.
But once you're in the grind and you're working it out and you're doing the sets and you're putting it together, you got to stay engaged.
And I just decided, yeah, I think I'm going to be okay for a week.
Why don't you see what your life looks like off the road?
Why don't you just see what it's like to sit around for a couple hours?
like a person with a job on vacation.
Why don't you try that at your house?
Look, I know, I know I've been a bit dire lately.
I know dire times.
And I've talked about it.
It's hard for me to compartmentalize like almost anything.
And once it's in my mind, I can sometimes sort it out.
But my perception, it's like the full range of my perception is like this funnel of stuff just coming in.
I don't think it happens vertically, but you know what I mean, the funnel analogy.
And then I guess I am the shoot.
So it's the sorting out that you're hearing.
It's the sorting out.
And I do believe that it's helpful to me and maybe it'll be helpful to you.
And I understand.
It's been a little dire.
I try to mix it up.
But, you know, what can I tell you?
What can I tell you?
I've been hung up on the reality of what is happening politically and culturally and the fear it causes in me and the seeming powerlessness at the core of that fear.
I just innately, I don't know.
The thing is, maybe I don't share it with you enough because I don't want to be that person.
that believes that there's hope.
But I do innately want to believe that there is a surprise shift possible.
I'm not saying we don't have to work for it, but in my mind, it's like a drastic paradigm shift that can happen instantly because of an event.
That is the hope, though it is magical thinking, no doubt.
Until it isn't.
See, I do hang on to the hope a little bit.
So maybe I don't share that enough.
I'm not saying that it's going to be a mystical event, but that would be all right.
But I'm not talking Jesus.
You know what I mean?
And I also talk about the power of art constantly or thinking about it as being this potential explosive catalyst.
But I think it's all just it's it's it's just doing it.
There's no I just have to I have to I have to kind of trim it down or reel it in.
There's some part of my brain that would like to believe there's like one image like moving or still one line of poetry, one drastic act acted out that will just save us.
It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Because, you know, everything has to be cumulative, collaborative, coincidental and serendipitous for anything to sort of work.
There's all these forces that have to kind of build and some you don't have any control over.
And it also has to have enough traction to stick for more than a few days and not get lost in the churn, the churn that fills the funnel, right?
What can you do, right?
What can we do?
You chip away.
You chip away against something that has been calculated and executed on all fronts for decades.
The great mind-fucking initiated and beaten into the collective unconscious by calculating totalitarian thinkers and the money behind them.
So be it.
And they got their serendipitous...
Magic monster to kind of pound it through.
So anyway.
I guess I've just been consumed.
And look, all we can do is what we can do.
I can do what I do.
It lands here and there.
Shifts thinking and perception a little bit one way or the other.
You know, in some people, fine.
I have to try to let go of being consumed by it all meaning something all the time.
My time, my talking, anything that comes up in my mind has to imply something real or mostly fictional, speculative.
But it's all in my mind.
Oh my God, every day is like a week.
I just started to realize lately, because I had this feeling that, um...
Something happened during COVID that displaced time somehow that I just remember during it and after it, that sort of sense of not knowing what day it was because nothing was hanging on a pattern of events.
Everything just kind of bled into the next thing and smeared into the other thing.
And just everything became one long day, hour, week, month, year.
Yeah.
And I felt like it stuck with me.
And after the pandemic, you know, I thought I was losing my mind because I still couldn't really put together what day it was or what week it was or, you know, how much time had passed.
And it never really quite cleared up.
I wouldn't it's not a long COVID thing, but it is some sort of.
to the trauma of it all and also just the complete shift in how we occupied our time, you know, untethered from responsibility other than, you know, trying to maintain sanity.
And lately, it's an odd thing.
I don't know if other people experience this in terms of perhaps the age I'm at, which is 61, right?
But I don't really register getting older.
Despite COVID, before that, I'm not great at planning ahead.
And things that I have on the schedule always seem to surprise me, including when I have to leave town, when I get back, what I have to do.
Although they're on the calendar, the day before or two days before, I'm like, holy fuck, I'm going away for a month or whatever.
I've always been like that.
But lately with this age thing, and I believe this has something to do with me, you know, not having a family, that I don't feel time passing the same way.
Like, I don't think life goes by quickly.
I don't think life, you know, it just—I don't get this feeling that, wow, that just—
It just blew by.
I don't feel that.
When I'm in life, it feels like it's plodding by every day because of the nature of my work, being an independent contractor and kind of dictating your own schedule, which always seems to be work.
Yeah.
It always seems to be just kind of plodding by.
That life just seems to be like, it's not going by too fast.
It's not going by quickly.
But I realized I still feel that way, that it didn't go by quickly.
But all of a sudden, you're just older.
You're just old.
And then you have that day.
It's like, holy fuck.
And I guess you can see that as going by quickly.
But I just see it as like, well, this must be the week I got old.
Or older or whatever.
I don't know.
And now I'm starting to think that because of COVID, I'm 61, but I should be like 58.
I think that has something to do with it.
I just lost a few years because of the trauma of COVID and the trauma of loss.
And I do feel like I got cheated out.
of a few years and and i should i should i shouldn't even be 60 yet but that's just what's going on in my head right now okay that'll do it this month and we do this every month or whenever we have stuff that gets cut out of the shows and i can bring it to you here on the full marin so thanks for subscribing we really appreciate having you here