BONUS Producer Cuts - Dwight Yoakam and Marc's monologues from December
Guest:Hey, Full Marin listeners, welcome to 2025 and producer cuts for this month.
Guest:Right now we're going to take a listen to some of the stuff I had to cut out of last month's shows.
Guest:These are all things that happened in December, and I'll give you a little background as to why I thought of cutting this stuff out, and then I'll let you hear them.
Guest:The first thing, we're going to go back to episode 1597, and that was the Dwight Yoakam show, which I really had to cut a lot for length in this
Guest:uh, Mark and Dwight talked for about two hours.
Guest:If you listen to the Friday show, uh, when this episode came out, I spoke about how I wished I had more time to edit this episode just because I thought I could maybe, uh, refine it even more than I already did.
Guest:And, and that just happens by doing several editing passes, which I just ran out of time with this episode.
Guest:But when Mark delivered me the monologue, uh,
Guest:I had to cut some stuff for length and this stuff, which he identifies in this section as a stoner talk, I thought was expendable to the overall program.
Marc:It's a very odd thing when you build your life around talking.
Marc:There are some days where I feel like I cannot talk anymore.
Marc:It is certainly the era and age of yammering.
Marc:And some days I wonder, how responsible am I
Marc:for this thing that has been unleashed on the world called podcasting.
Marc:How responsible did I do it?
Marc:Am I?
Marc:And look, granted, I'm a bit self-centered, can be a bit narcissistic at times, maybe a bit grandiose, but that's just my nature.
Marc:It's tempered by self-awareness.
Marc:I know I am those things sometimes, but because I know it, I'm not those things all the time.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:There's some psychological advice for you.
Marc:If you have all those propensities or those character traits, self-centeredness, a little grandiose, a little narcissistic,
Marc:Figure it out if you have them and then try the best you can to get out from under them or at least mix it up a little bit.
Marc:Look, I'm not taking credit for anything, but the more I get out in the world, there are certain businesses.
Marc:certainly journalism, and now I find out the world of literature has sort of been pummeled a bit by podcast intake in the way that I guess there was a time where people would sit and read a book, and I think people still do sit and read books, not as much as they used to,
Marc:It's just a book doesn't give you the same juice as your phone.
Marc:What does?
Marc:What is this totally anchored and tethered to technology business?
Marc:I guess I'm old enough barely to remember when we didn't have all this shit.
Marc:But I guess whatever your reality is, whatever you're sitting with right where you are, obviously your phone because you're listening to me or your computer.
Marc:But look around the room.
Marc:Look outside.
Marc:Think about your day, getting in your car, getting on the bus, getting on the train, getting on your bike, going to the place to do the thing.
Marc:Isn't that reality still?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:These are things I know I've been a little heady lately and I'm trying to crunch some data in my brain about what my perception is of what we are living through so I can sort of inform my stand up with it.
Marc:But I've been doing some reading, some research and some sitting in just real time.
Marc:No phone time, no TV time.
Marc:Are TVs even a thing?
Marc:No computer time, just time.
Marc:Like, is this reality as I sit here in a hotel room in New York City?
Marc:Is this reality enough?
Marc:Is this still reality?
Marc:Look, I am sorry about the kind of stoner sort of mental trajectories I'm going on, but I'm trying to figure some shit out.
Marc:Anyway, I am in New York.
Marc:It was also nice just to hang out with people that take what they do seriously and it's not driven by...
Marc:necessarily money, necessarily attendance, necessarily social media.
Marc:It's just sort of old school, man.
Marc:It's analog.
Marc:It's, you know, these are writers who write for real and it's the serious work of writing and it needs to survive, folks.
Marc:Do you hear me?
Marc:The written word needs to survive.
Marc:Go out.
Marc:Go out and buy Mark Lehner's new collection.
Marc:Do us all a favor, will you?
Marc:Get some laughs and
Marc:Engage with something you can kind of roll around in your brain a little bit.
Marc:Provocative.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:All right, that's my pitch for writing.
Marc:That's my pitch for books.
Marc:It's also good to see Lehner.
Marc:It's a very odd thing with me and people I talk to, even that long ago, even before WTF.
Marc:I genuinely feel if I make a connection with a person...
Marc:it stays with me, you know, it really stays with me.
Marc:And, you know, out of the almost 1600 or however many interviews I've done, so many of them feel so personal to me, but I don't know if that goes both ways, you know, you know, like I see people that I've done WTFs with years ago.
Marc:And when I see them, it's like, Oh my God, it's my old buddy.
Marc:But I don't know if they walk away thinking that or even registering it as anything other than another interview.
Marc:But for me, it was like a deep fucking experience.
Marc:And I see them and I'm like, hey, man.
Marc:And then there's that moment where I'm like, oh, yeah, Marc Maron.
Marc:Yeah, that happened with Joe Walsh.
Marc:But I don't know if I can necessarily expect Joe Walsh to remember.
Marc:I don't know how his brain is.
Marc:But I do recall there are certain people I saw at a party recently, like Jeff Goldblum.
Marc:He was like, yes, yes, we do know each other.
Marc:Johnny Knoxville's another one, Brolin.
Marc:And there's a lot of guests that I have that experience with because these conversations have a tremendous personal impact on me.
Marc:And I guess maybe because I don't maintain that many kind of very close friendships that, you know, when I spend an hour, an hour and a half talking to somebody about real shit and really engaging, you know, it resonates through the rest of my life.
Marc:These are my friends.
Marc:But I do also realize that perhaps they don't quite see it the same way or not out of any spite, but just that, you know, I was just a blip on their radar.
Marc:And to me, they were a major event, sort of like my second marriage.
Marc:Just a blip on her radar, but to me, a major event.
Marc:But that is life, people.
Guest:And so now on to the Dwight Yoakam interview itself.
Guest:There's a lot I cut out.
Guest:I think maybe he cut down about a half hour worth of content, but it really, most of it wasn't stuff that could be salvaged.
Guest:It was kind of like,
Guest:tangents that didn't go anywhere or weird digressions that didn't make a ton of sense.
Guest:It was a really kind of tricky interview to cut together.
Guest:But I did salvage two sections here that I think if people really like that episode and want to hear more detail about some of the things I took out, this is Dwight talking about the origin of his Sirius XM radio show.
Guest:And then also another section, which I'll crossfade into here, where he talks about John Prine and Billy Bob Thornton.
Guest:You know, I think it's generally better.
Guest:Yeah, we hear kind of—I do it on my thing on Sirius.
Guest:What are you doing on Sirius?
Guest:Well, I have a channel 24-7.
Guest:It's called the Bakersfield Beat.
Guest:I started about—I think we launched it early 2018.
Guest:24-7 Dwight Yoakam?
Guest:Yeah, no, well, it's, you know, all of—
Guest:From the Dust Bowl to the Hollywood Bowl.
Guest:What's the angle?
Guest:Is it your idea?
Guest:California country music.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the basis of it was my being at Sirius XM in New York at one point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just there for an afternoon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Running around, I was with an act that I produced called King Leg, and they were doing some radio spots on different formats.
Guest:And I was there, and so I ran over to, I don't know if you listen to Sirius XM at all, but their 60s channel has Cousin Brucie.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:who's, you know, an old line, you know, 60s DJ.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Interviewed the Beatles and everybody else.
Guest:And I was a fan of his and just, you know, the music.
Guest:Oh, he's over there in the hallway somewhere?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:He's got a little booth?
Guest:Yeah, he's got a booth.
Guest:And so I ran down and jumped on the air with him.
Guest:And then I did like a Beatles Fab Four kind of thing.
Guest:uh, you pick your songs and we got to talk about that.
Guest:And Stephen Blatter, who's one of the senior VPs of the series came by and said, Hey, why don't we do a show?
Guest:And I said, well, and Scott Greenstein, who I know, uh, I don't know what Scott's official title of the chairman or whatever series.
Guest:He was with serious before they merged with XM.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:I know him going back to Miramax and the Sling Blade days with Billy Bob and I. Yeah.
Guest:And he and I started kicking the tires on an idea for a channel rather than just a show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The Legacy of California Country Music.
Guest:Are you from California?
No.
Guest:And I did mention his brother, a fellow named Hillman Hall, loaned my mother because he knew her son liked guitar.
Guest:They were Kentuckians that shared in common.
Guest:I'm back to the punchline, the brunt of a joke that was told in Ohio about Kentuckys.
Guest:Well, they said, this guy at church said, you know what they say about us from Kentucky, Dwight?
Guest:I said, what?
Guest:He said, well, they say up here in Ohio that they teach the three R's in Kentucky schools, reading, writing, and Route 23 North.
Guest:And he shook his head and he said, you know, that's what they think of us.
Guest:So I turned that around in my adult life.
Guest:And John Prime was an inspiration for that, the way he wrote about his family and their experiences in Kentucky.
Guest:Sweet guy.
Guest:I talked to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, really good guy.
Guest:Did you ever see the movie he did with Billy Bob Thornton?
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Daddy and Them.
Guest:If you ever get a chance, watch it.
Guest:It's hilarious.
Guest:His character is hilarious.
Guest:You still talk to Billy Bob?
Guest:Oh, yeah, we're really good friends.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:Hopefully.
Guest:Yeah, he's just back off.
Guest:He had his band out, The Boxmasters.
Guest:He should come and interview with you.
Guest:I've had him.
Guest:Oh, you have?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, a while back.
Guest:Well, he's got The Boxmasters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were out this summer, and he and I are trying to launch a series that I wrote
Guest:a period Western thing that takes place out in Kansas, 1870s, and he would direct the pilot and EP it with me if we ever get it off the ground.
Guest:Cowboy stuff?
Guest:Sort of, yeah.
Guest:It is, it is, it is, yeah.
Guest:Alright, the rest of this stuff all comes from Mark's monologues throughout the month of December.
Guest:And going back to episode 1599 with Andy Blitz, this was a section where Mark was talking about his prospective ADHD diagnosis and the zins that he takes and his problems with constantly using his phone.
Guest:And if you've been following Mark's narrative over the last year or so, you know this stuff.
Guest:And I think it's worth you getting the update.
Guest:But it maybe doesn't play for the audience at large.
Marc:I don't even know who do I go to to get evaluated for ADHD.
Marc:Do I reach out to my insurance company and say I want to do that?
Marc:What kind of therapist is it?
Marc:Is it a psychiatrist?
Marc:Is it a psychologist?
Marc:Look, I'm not asking you to answer all these questions.
Marc:These are all rhetorical.
Marc:This is me actively and verbally prolonging this period, this process.
Marc:The more I talk about it, the further away it gets.
Marc:Maybe I should just get clean and swipe.
Marc:That's how I did the vegan thing.
Marc:That's how I did the sober thing.
Marc:Get off those inns, get off the coffee, get off all that shit.
Marc:Check in with the baseline.
Marc:But, you know, in my recollection, the baseline.
Marc:Why did I start doing shit again?
Marc:Why do I always start doing shit again?
Marc:Because there's a it's it's not really a boredom.
Marc:Maybe it's a boredom, but it's more of a, is this it?
Marc:This is it?
Marc:This is how everyone goes through life without the stuff?
Marc:And now there's like the phone too.
Marc:The phone is like a dopamine delivery system.
Marc:It's like a machine for dopamine delivery.
Marc:It's a brain fuck machine that gets you jammed on dopamine if you just lock in.
Marc:Very sad about the animals.
Marc:Every day, my heart just explodes because my algorithm is mostly rescuing animals or animal things that make me sad.
Marc:My cats are fine.
Marc:Thank you for asking.
Marc:Everybody's good.
Marc:Buster, Sammy, Charles, all fine.
Marc:Sammy's still stupid.
Marc:Buster's very smart, sweet.
Marc:Charlie's an asshole.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So that brings us all up to speed.
Marc:I'm going to do it.
Marc:I'm going to get evaluated.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Now we all know.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:There's two things from episode 1600 with Bobby Althoff that I took out.
Guest:I'll crossfade these together, but just play them in one segment here.
Guest:The first is Mark kind of talking about this ADHD idea without a diagnosis.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:I get a little uncomfortable with this.
Guest:I know people with ADHD and I know what it takes to get a diagnosis for it.
Guest:And I'm a little wary of people identifying symptoms about this or any disorder and staking a claim to it without it being an actual medical diagnosis.
Guest:So I did remove this section, particularly with Mark talking about how it relates to mental illness.
Guest:I just felt inappropriate to me.
Guest:And the separate section is of Mark dooming out about Inauguration Day.
Guest:And this you're going to notice over the next couple of monologue things I cut out.
Guest:I figured we would get to this soon enough.
Guest:And I was right, especially if you listen to yesterday's show.
Guest:I know that Mark is going to talk about this stuff.
Guest:So I figured as far out as we were in December, it was probably going to be repetitive by the time we got to January 20th if I left all this in.
Guest:And I think I was right.
Marc:It's weird because I've been talking about...
Marc:the possibilities of ADHD or whatever.
Marc:I'm not big on the context.
Marc:I'm not big on the umbrella of diagnosis necessarily for mental issues.
Marc:It's not that I'm not big on it, but you read things and everybody's got a little bit of everything.
Marc:How do you zero in on what's up and what do you do about it?
Marc:But I've been thinking about it.
Marc:I did a show at Largo last night with the band.
Marc:Went well.
Marc:Thanks for asking.
Marc:Played okay.
Marc:You know, I'm very hard on myself and it's stupid.
Marc:You know, there's some part of me that thinks I've been playing so long and I've kind of leveled off.
Marc:And it's not like I'm practicing.
Marc:It's not like I play with the band often.
Marc:But I do practice.
Marc:I sit around and I play, but I don't know if I really do the work of a of a musician because I'm not fundamentally a musician.
Marc:But when I play with the band, I judge myself as a musician.
Marc:I can't just accept that, you know, I play OK and, you know, I'm earnest about it.
Marc:Can't accept that.
Marc:I always just assume like, you know, why am I not playing at the level of I don't know, let's say the Allman Brothers band.
Marc:I don't even know why I said that.
Marc:I don't even listen to them that much.
Marc:I judge myself against a level that I am not capable of.
Marc:And then you start to realize, and I've said this before, to the point where I'm tired of it.
Marc:Maybe you just do that to beat the shit out of yourself.
Marc:Hey, I'm feeling all right.
Marc:Let me build a bat.
Marc:But it went good.
Marc:And, you know, I didn't spiral out.
Marc:And then I did some comedy.
Marc:I had Fahim Anwar on the show and Lara Bites, two of my favorites.
Marc:And I did some meandering kind of, you know, trying to find things, man, trying to find things.
Marc:But I was talking about this ADHD thing.
Marc:And I think the thing is, when you start to look at that as a possible framework,
Marc:For your behavior, it's kind of hard for me not to think that my entire life's work of creative output may be just symptomatic.
Marc:It's just symptoms.
Marc:Everything you're talking about is resolvable.
Marc:I can hear it.
Marc:Can't you hear it?
Marc:You have no way to know.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, that's probably true.
Marc:Symptomatic of underlying issues, some funnier than others.
Marc:I guess I guess I always knew that, but I'm not sure that's different than any other creative output.
Marc:I mean, yeah, there's always people who are detached, but I'm not detached and, you know, I'm engaged with it and I'm kind of tapped out.
Marc:Maybe if I just treated my particular mental illness.
Marc:I'd find a whole new portal where everything was lighter and funnier and less menacing or cringy or provocative and a bit uncomfortable just by nature of watching me wrestle with it.
Marc:But isn't that the show?
Marc:Aren't I just a professional wrestler, a solo professional wrestler who wrestles with himself publicly?
Marc:That's not a bad show.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's tough being the heel in the face simultaneously, but it is my life because, uh, the, you know, the, the big buffoon grifter, uh, who is going to be the leader of the free world is, uh, I don't know.
Marc:I guess he's, uh, being told to keep it cool.
Marc:Cause you know, maybe, maybe he wants to make a splash on inauguration day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's going to be a horrendous splash, uh,
Marc:That seems like, I would think, an almost psychic nuclear cloud.
Marc:I'm anticipating an oppressive display of ham-fisted garishness, followed by flurries of days and weeks of theatrical signings of executive orders ringing in the new year with fear and desperation for millions and just loving it.
Marc:Just loving every minute of it.
Marc:I mean, I don't know what to do with it.
Marc:The new cultural norm of thriving on the thrill that the the the electoral winners seem to get from seeing people defeated, hopeless, in pain and ostracized for any number of reasons.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:what that's about or why.
Marc:I mean, yeah, I can make a lot of assumptions, but it is what it is.
Marc:And look, I've got a bit of bully in me, but I do not feel good about causing pain in others.
Marc:And their entire platform seems to really enjoy it.
Marc:And then you've got this new entertainment complex around them.
Marc:They're bootlicking clown puppets, buffering them with hack anti-woke jokes that they believe
Marc:You know, racist, sexist, whatever.
Marc:They believe it implies inclusivity.
Marc:But that is clearly only as long as their terms are accepted.
Marc:And those terms are that they have cultural dominance.
Marc:It just seems like all this yammering on about free speech, the idea of free speech, it seems to be to from that side to revel in.
Marc:Shut the fuck up, you fucking babies.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:We don't have to listen to your sad stories or your needs anymore.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:Go fuck yourself.
Guest:Enjoy the camps, you pussies.
Marc:So we'll see.
Marc:I can't say I'm optimistic.
Marc:And I think that was, you know, I was going I was going kind of, you know, easy.
Marc:I mean, that was a fairly diplomatic vision of the near future.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Huh?
Guest:Going back to episode 1601 with Justin Kerzel, this was when Mark was in New York filming Deliver Us From Nowhere, the Bruce Springsteen movie that he was in.
Guest:And, you know, he spoke about that on the show.
Guest:We left a lot of that in.
Guest:This was a section, though, where he was telling some stories about conversations he had with Bruce.
Guest:And a lot of times when he does this, I will check in with him and say, hey, was this OK for you to be talking about?
Guest:And he said, I think so.
Guest:But in a lot of cases, we can have him like ask a person, hey, was it all right to talk about this thing that happened on the set or in production?
Guest:And in this case, it was like, well, we have to talk to Bruce about that.
Guest:And in the moment, we didn't have the time to reach out and check that.
Guest:So I took this out of the episode.
Guest:But we have since cleared that this was totally OK.
Guest:This is just kind of a casualty of not having a clearance to tell this story at the time, which we do now.
Marc:I told him he had given me a pick when I was at his house.
Marc:And somehow or another, I've lost that pick.
Marc:And it's a very specific pick that Bruce uses that I picked up a little more information on.
Marc:And I don't think I'm talking out of school here.
Marc:He uses a large triangle pick like I do.
Marc:And they're pretty thick.
Marc:But he customizes each one with a bit of grip tape.
Marc:uh at the top so he doesn't it doesn't slip out of his hands and i just i really kind of um cherished that pick and i don't know what the fuck happened to it and it's annoying to me so i told him i said you know you gave me a pick and i i don't know where it is i've looked all over my house at least twice three times can't find the pick and he said yeah well yeah maybe we'll be able to you know you work that out and
Marc:And I'm like, all right, great.
Marc:But now I'm in this weird position where I'm like, did you bring the pick?
Marc:I'm not going to say that.
Marc:But he told me that the grip tape he puts on is like sandpaper and he has to sand it down a little more so he doesn't scratch his skin.
Marc:It's a little unknown bit of Bruce trivia.
Marc:And my character has maybe said one thing, but I've been here for two days, but that's okay.
Marc:Because I was able to say a lot of things to Bruce.
Marc:Talk.
Marc:And John Landau as well.
Marc:And obviously Jeremy Strong, who, despite what anybody says about his acting process, he's a great actor, a sweet guy.
Marc:And he's not...
Marc:He's in character, but he's half in character.
Marc:He can talk like you can talk to him as Jeremy, but he's probably going to talk to you as John Landau.
Marc:And that's fine.
Marc:And we're having some laughs and some nice conversations.
Marc:It's just been I didn't know what to expect because I my ego got involved and I was like, I don't have that many lines, but everybody's been great.
Marc:Just a very warm set.
Marc:And I think it's going to be a great movie.
Marc:And I just met Jeremy Allen White for the first time.
Marc:Seems like a sweet guy.
Marc:He's deep in this role.
Marc:So you just respect people's boundaries and you hang out and you focus and you be the thing and the place and the time that you're depicting.
Marc:And I'm getting better at that.
Guest:In episode 1602 with Bruce Valanche, Mark, again, going on to like some inauguration stuff that I figured could be taken out.
Guest:But I did want to leave this in initially.
Guest:Was Mark recommending the books that he was reading at the time?
Guest:And what wound up happening was he kind of like got some of the authors wrong.
Guest:For one, Masha Gessen goes by M. Gessen now and is non-binary, and he didn't know that.
Guest:And he also mispronounced Olivier Roy, which is a French name, and he called him Oliver Roy, which is basically what it is in English.
Guest:But I told him these things, and he said, you know what, I'm not going to redo it.
Guest:Just take them out.
Guest:So this was something Mark actually said.
Guest:Well, I don't need to redo that.
Guest:You don't need to include it.
Guest:But I figure, why don't you hear the things Mark had to say about those books?
Marc:I'm a little displaced, a little disoriented, and I'm trying to think about how to get my brain...
Marc:into gear for these dates doing comedy.
Marc:Look, I had an hour going and there's still a lot of good stuff in there, but you know, things are going to change dramatically.
Marc:I believe on January 20th, I talked to people that are like, what, you know, he can't, what's, you know, he's still got to deal with Congress and this and that.
Marc:It's not, there's nothing normal about what's happening or what's about to happen.
Marc:Maybe I'm being, uh, apocalyptic or, or cynical.
Marc:I'm definitely being cynical, but I think I'm being realistic, but nonetheless, uh,
Marc:I know that things will change, especially for my audience after January 20th.
Marc:And I've been chipping away.
Marc:I don't know how to do it.
Marc:I think I'm more... Honestly, I believe from people I've talked to that when it comes to doing comedy and writing comedy...
Marc:I think I'm more like a songwriter, to be honest with you.
Marc:I can't make it happen.
Marc:It has to happen.
Marc:It has to come out of me.
Marc:Sometimes I'm flurries.
Marc:I don't know where it comes from or if it will come, but I do have to feed my head.
Marc:And I've just been trying to do that now that I've kind of contextualized and sort of put into perspective that I've spent a lot of this year acting and I kind of put comedy or generating comedy on hold a bit.
Marc:except in fits and starts.
Marc:And now it's like, it's time.
Marc:It's the pedal to the metal.
Marc:The, the, what is it?
Marc:The face to the grindstone or the, what is it?
Marc:The stone to that?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:The something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's time to peel out.
Marc:It's, it's time to, to fucking slam it into neutral, rev it up and then fucking slam it into first or dry.
Marc:It's time to peel out.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:And then land somewhere.
Marc:And I'm trying to really wrap my brain around the point of time we're in because I need that to reflect through my thoughts and through my being to try to really understand how what happened happened, what is happening.
Marc:and get it some somehow in perspective or, or at least informed in a real way in my brain.
Marc:So I can get it into kind of some, some intellectual perspective on it.
Marc:And that's not easy.
Marc:You know, I have impulses around ideas and I have, you know, impulses that are usually pretty solid when it comes to jokes and insights and,
Marc:But I needed to go deeper.
Marc:And it's interesting, the books that I've landed upon to try to do that.
Marc:And I think they're doing it.
Marc:I think it's happening.
Marc:I think I'm putting it into context in my body.
Marc:What am I reading?
Marc:You want a little holiday reading list to
Marc:to help you get things into perspective in the way that I'm doing it?
Marc:Is that something you want to put your brain through?
Marc:Is that something you want to put your heart through?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:It's layered, the approach I'm taking to fill my head.
Marc:You know, as that philosopher teacher told me a long time ago when I went to his class stoned,
Marc:And and I was a smart ass.
Marc:And this is as an adult.
Marc:I took this at the new school.
Marc:And he said he were in the elevator and he said, are you what do you why are you in this class?
Marc:I said, I want to learn about philosophy.
Marc:And he goes, are you?
Marc:And I said, well, my head feels pretty full when I leave.
Marc:Thought I was being clever.
Marc:And he said, well, you can fill your head two ways.
Marc:Either you can put new stuff in it or you can heat up what's already in there so it expands.
Marc:Now, I think the heating up part is good.
Marc:And I think he was taking a dig at me because I wasn't really applying myself to learning.
Marc:But I do dump or at least put new stuff in my head to sort of help me understand
Marc:kind of put my ideas in context, I'm using context a lot, or to at least fill in some of my poetic impulses around what I'm thinking.
Marc:So this is the reading list for the holidays.
Marc:Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen.
Marc:This was written during, I think it was during Trump's first term and after it.
Marc:And she is a brilliant intellectual from Russia originally and seems to know her shit.
Marc:I haven't really dived into that.
Marc:I've been reading something called The Crisis of Culture by Oliver Roy.
Marc:which explains the sort of evolution of cancel culture.
Marc:But more importantly, he's a, I would say, political philosopher or a cultural critic of sorts.
Marc:And he's really talking about the arc of history that's delivered us to where we are culturally.
Marc:And sadly, we land at anti-culture or no-culture or deculturized evolution.
Marc:And it's a very interesting framing of a lot of stuff that has been bouncing around my head and adding new things.
Marc:And I'm also chipping away for a long time now at Gabber Mate's In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
Marc:deal with sort of reading.
Marc:So what I'm getting is a historical overview of the collapse of culture, the intuition from a psychological point of view about the foundation of trauma being at the core of almost all of our problems and surviving autocracy just to
Marc:kind of get some pointers or to know the signs and signifiers of what we're about to enter.
Marc:Now I can't recommend this.
Marc:I'm also watching a lot of television right now and watching movies and,
Marc:I watched that.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:It stops with us.
Marc:Not because I thought it would be a good movie, but it seems to be in the news.
Marc:And Blake Lively is suing the guy who directed it and also starred in it.
Marc:And so I don't know.
Marc:I was curious.
Marc:I don't really know her.
Marc:And the movie seems gnarly.
Marc:But it's oddly...
Marc:And muted because of the construction of that story.
Marc:And also, like, how was there's no way that guy who's in that movie.
Marc:I mean, just maybe I judge, but there's no way that guy wasn't a toxic fuck.
Marc:I mean, there's just anyway.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:I've been watching that new one with somehow I ended up binge watching that the Jewish one, the Kristen Bell one.
Marc:What is that called?
Marc:Nobody Wants This, which I couldn't stop watching because I'm a Jew and it was cute and it was relatively well written and smart.
Marc:And, you know, it takes an approach to Judaism through the eyes of a relationship between a rabbi and a non-Jewish woman.
Marc:And I thought that was pretty entertaining.
Marc:Yeah, I just couldn't stop doing it.
Marc:But I'm also in my phone and watching reels.
Marc:And I know, you know, clinically or pathologically, this is just me trying to manage whatever anxiety, stress, depression, fear, any number of things.
Marc:There's no better dopamine fucking...
Marc:distributor.
Marc:There's no better dopamine triggering device than that thing you hold in your hand.
Marc:And I'm glad that I'm also engaging in narrative business just to make sure that my brain still functions on that level.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All that to say.
Marc:Merry Christmas to you, right?
Marc:Do it.
Marc:Do the Christmas thing.
Marc:And, like, I can't recommend this.
Marc:I am telling you what I'm reading, but the crisis of culture is hard.
Marc:And the realm of Hungry Ghost is very mind-blowing.
Marc:And surviving autocracy feels very practical to me.
Marc:Or maybe don't read anything.
Marc:Maybe just surrender yourself to your phone and...
Marc:And do whatever you have to do.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Do whatever you have to do.
Marc:But I think we should try to stay awake, folks.
Marc:I know it's going to be hard.
Marc:And I know it's hard to know when you're sleeping.
Marc:And you know what I mean.
Marc:Metaphorically.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And as we rounded out December and 2024, this was the last show of the year, episode 1604 with Ron Livingston.
Guest:And I don't know, I just thought maybe you wanted to end the year on a more upbeat note.
Guest:And this was Mark feeling very down on himself.
Guest:Uh, I don't like to hide these things.
Guest:I think we left enough in that you could get from Mark, his melancholy and his general feelings of, um, perhaps disenchantment with the comedy landscape and it's changing nature.
Guest:But, uh,
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:This felt a little heavy and a little down, especially at a time of year when people need a little uplift.
Guest:And so I wound up trimming this out.
Guest:But here it is for you guys.
Guest:I think it works for you here on the full Marin.
Guest:Doesn't necessarily work for everyone else.
Guest:What's going on out there?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's just kind of one minor hit.
Marc:After another, haven't been doing enough stand up.
Marc:Went and did that last night.
Marc:I'm just coming out of this acting tunnel and I got to get the hour back in shape.
Marc:And I trying to work on some new stuff, some kind of heavy hitting stuff.
Marc:Had a little like a moment last night where I realized it doesn't matter how heavy hitting anything is.
Marc:What difference?
Marc:It's futile.
Marc:Everything is so fragmented.
Marc:Everything is so divided.
Marc:Who are you playing to?
Marc:What difference does it make?
Marc:Who are you if you're not trying to do crowd work videos?
Marc:And I'm not complaining.
Marc:Look, man, I am not begrudging any comic, really.
Marc:I mean, I think what I think.
Marc:It's old school stuff that, you know, crowd work is a tool one uses to manage a situation.
Marc:Something you should have in the quiver.
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Marc:In the toolbox.
Marc:So you can deal.
Marc:But it shouldn't be your whole point of view.
Marc:Shouldn't be your whole style.
Marc:But who am I to say?
Marc:Shouldn't should.
Marc:For me, it's not.
Marc:Got into an argument with some guy over this.
Marc:It's just the kind of, hey, man, everyone's people, level playing field argument.
Marc:It's just another form.
Marc:But, you know, there has to be criterion through which we judge things.
Marc:And maybe I'm an idiot for thinking that stand-up isn't necessarily always about laughs.
Marc:God knows it's kept me sort of locked in as this weird boutique comic, I have my lane.
Marc:You know, but it's not a lane that's backed up because of arena traffic.
Marc:But whatever.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:I just can't.
Marc:I mean, the way I look at crowd work comedy specifically, especially in the marketplace we're in, it's just sort of like personal stuff.
Marc:one-on-one customer engagement to maximize your job performance in hopes that you can be employee of the hour on the internet and then get up and do it again.
Marc:Who wants to be employee of the hour?
Marc:And it is that that's your job.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Again, maybe I'm being a bitter old man, but I don't think it's bitterness.
Marc:I just think that after a certain point.
Marc:If there's no criterion through which to be critical and everybody takes everything personally and everybody rallies behind their particular performers as if they're fucking sports teams and there's winning and losing, I don't know what we're dealing with.
Marc:Are we dealing with the craft or an art or is it just a numbers racket, you know, driven by...
Marc:People by sort of rabid fandom and divisive politics.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Happy, happy holidays.
Marc:Maybe I'm just tired and fried and burnt and scared and despairing and a bit hopeless about the future.
Marc:Maybe I am, I am old and maybe I, you know, should pull out of the game.
Marc:All these questions happen.
Marc:Then I have a good set and it's okay.
Marc:But I was doing that new joke I told you guys about.
Marc:It's a, I don't know if it's a joke.
Marc:It's a bit, you know, making an analogy.
Marc:Um,
Marc:to the situation in Israel with the genocide of the Native Americans to sort of raise awareness of the genocidal massacre that's going on there.
Marc:And it's a good bit.
Marc:It's not like a big laugher, but it makes the point and it elevates awareness of what's happening in ongoing slaughter of civilians.
Yeah.
Marc:And somehow or another, I managed to offend a Palestinian couple who I don't think they really got the drift of what I was saying, but maybe they did.
Marc:And then it was like, well, I thought that it should be talked about and it should be seen.
Marc:In that way, I was definitely it was definitely exploring or just confronting the idea of genocide.
Marc:And it was misunderstood.
Marc:And I had this moment where I'm like, well, if I who's what's the audience for this?
Marc:But then what the hell do I know?
Marc:You know, it's ongoing.
Marc:It's close.
Marc:They are of that place.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:What is my joke going to make them feel better?
Marc:Is my bit of raising awareness in a live situation going to make them feel better?
Marc:I mean, come on.
Marc:Who the fuck do I think I am?
Marc:But also, this Christmas break has been just too much fun.
Marc:Too much.
Guest:And when you're ending the monologue shitting on the holiday season, that is not necessarily the tone we want to strike.
Guest:So that is a good indicator of why that got taken out.
Guest:But as you can tell, all this stuff is, if you know Mark, very in character with him and nothing that needs to be hidden from the world, especially you here on the full Marin who pay to subscribe and hear the extra stuff that everybody else doesn't get to hear.
Guest:So thanks for doing that.
Guest:Thanks for sticking with us month to month here.
Guest:and we will bring you more producer cuts as the months go on.
Guest:Thanks again for listening.