Ask Marc Anything #19
All right.
How you doing?
Have a happy new year.
What day is it?
Where are we at?
I, you know, these are questions that only you can answer because it's relative to when you're listening to this, but I can answer some questions and this is ask Mark anything.
Number 19.
Sorry about my voice.
Got a little cold.
Just the way it is today.
Didn't want it.
Never want it.
No one wants it.
I always think that I can somehow fortify myself to not get them, but they come.
So here we go.
Ask Mark anything.
When you interview someone you've never met before, how or when do you know that you made a connection so you can breathe out and just let the conversation flow smoothly and naturally?
Well, to be honest with you, I'd like that to happen on the way to the garage.
I'd like that to happen when I greet them at the gate or at the door or I'm waiting on my porch and I say hello.
See where they've been, what they've been doing.
Get a sense of how they engage immediately, especially if I don't know them.
What's their vibe?
I mean, I like knowing that and I usually do know it before we even sit down in here.
Other than that, sometimes it takes a few minutes if people are kind of taking it in or don't know exactly what they're in for, what they're up to, or have no sense of me other than having listened to a couple of episodes in preparation.
But I'd really like to get that or feel that connection, at least from my side, upon sitting down or before.
Yeah.
And sometimes it just takes a few minutes up front to kind of like, you know, get a sense of sort of like, what's that you got going on with the what are you drinking there?
Where were you just now?
Did you have something good for breakfast?
So or just some question that is, you know, not personal, but of the moment.
to kind of like get into the connection.
So I'd really like it to happen at most within the first five minutes.
Sometimes it's difficult, and sometimes it never quite gives way, but that's very rare.
And you sort of just have to accept what you get.
Like at some point I know, all right, this is as...
Deep as this guy or this woman is going to go with this stuff or this is the tone or the disposition they are going to be operating at, whether it's genuine or not.
I don't know sometimes, but, you know, some people are pretty good at faking it and some people it's pretty clear that that's what I'm dealing with.
Have you ever had to end an interview early for any reason?
Not for reasons other than time or somebody came late or I have to be somewhere.
Sometimes I've ended them because they've gone on a long time and I don't really know how to get out.
Sometimes they go on for a while and I feel like, well, we kind of did it, but it keeps going.
Sometimes, like I feel like with Darren Aronofsky, it was a rough night.
It was nighttime, and my kitten, Buster, who was a kitten at the time, had gotten out.
And I was very preoccupied with the kitten.
And I don't know if we ended early, but I know that the kitten...
revealed himself somewhere well into the interview.
But, you know, I was very excited that the kitten came back.
But that was a little distracted.
But I don't think it ended early.
I think there was other problems there.
I had not gotten through the movie he was there to talk about.
And he was very proud of it.
And I felt bad about it.
But I did run into him recently.
And I said, we have to do it again.
Because, you know, my cat was missing.
I was distracted.
And I didn't watch the movie that you thought was your masterpiece.
And I apologize for that.
But I can't really recall ending them early for any reason other than they got to go or I got to go.
Of course, there's two.
Well, one fairly famous podcast that I had to end the interview with.
That was with Gallagher because he walked out.
He thought I was, you know, cornering him or something.
He got all worked up and split.
And then I guess the other one was Jerry Lewis, who I was supposed to have an hour with, but at like a half hour or 40 minutes was like, that's it.
It was a shame because I was just getting into it.
I was getting somewhere with him.
And he, you know, he just, there was no choice.
He said, I'm done.
I was like, really?
So those two were decisively ended by
by the guest.
When I was young, it seemed like David Brenner was always on some talk show or other.
I remember he was pretty funny, and all your discussions about comedy passed.
I can't recall his name ever coming up.
Does he have a place in your history?
Brenner was good.
You're right.
He was very omnipresent.
He guest hosted The Tonight Show a lot.
He was a funny guy.
I never saw his stand-up act.
I do remember him.
There was nothing not funny about Brenner.
He was funny.
He was efficient.
He was quick.
He had a thing he did.
It was very New York.
I liked him.
It's a good question, but he doesn't come up much as a source or as somebody that people revere in any way, but he was definitely one of the great comics.
It's an interesting question why he doesn't factor in.
As much.
Well, there was something a little bit about his personality that might have been kind of annoying.
I hate to say that disrespectful.
He's not with us anymore.
But but it's a good question.
But he was a great comic.
Do you try to mirror the expression of your guest in the photos you take?
No, I'm just trying to get a good selfie.
And I don't think I've managed to get one almost ever.
I always, my hair's always fucked up.
I don't, I don't know how to smile without a beard and with a beard, I'm barely smiling.
Sometimes I, it's never, I'm just trying to maybe get one good selfie.
You once said Anthony Bourdain was mad at you before he died.
Why was he mad at you?
He was mad at me and he told me so.
I think you can hear it on that second interview I did with him.
We had an interview that was very kind of early on and it was kind of great.
It was at a weird hotel in Brooklyn that was Hasidic owned.
And I was staying there because it was near the bell house and he came over and it was a small room, but we had a great talk.
And I think it was years later, he was promoting something else and he came over, he wanted to come on the show again.
And it was at night, and he drove up in a, like he rented one of those GTOs, like one of those new muscle cars.
He drove up and he came in, and he was furious that we had had Laura Albert on with that director, Jeff Fierzig.
So he'd done a doc on her, and the scam that she sort of perpetrated with the JT Leroy character was,
which was very controversial.
You know, she had pretended to be this other person and wrote books under that person's name and then went out on tour with a fake JT Leroy, who many people, when JT Leroy first came on the scene, didn't know it was Laura Albert, and it was not a performance art piece.
It seemed to be more of a scam, but in retrospect, takes the...
The kind of it could be seen as a performance art piece.
But JT Leroy became the confidant of a lot of famous people and really, you know, took a lot of help and sympathy and fascinated a lot of very famous people.
One of them being Asia Argento, Dario's daughter, and
And Anthony was with her.
And I think that Asia Argento was taken for a ride by Laura Albert and the character she created, JT Leroy, and the person she had portraying that character had a relationship with Asia.
And I think there was a lot of resentment.
And I think Anthony might have known JT Leroy and thought that
He was a person, and it wasn't... A lot of people got kind of emotionally scammed by Laura Albert.
Now, it's a very interesting tale, but we had had, as I said, Laura Albert and Fierzig, who did the doc on her, on, and Bourdain was furious, and he wanted to let me know specifically that that person does not deserve a second chance.
And he needed to tell me that.
And it was uncomfortable.
And I don't know that we got over it in the conversation.
You'd have to listen to it.
But that was why.
Have any comics declined to appear on WTF because of your comments about Rogan over the years and your recent criticism of comics who carry water for fascists?
Not that I know of.
I mean, before Joe became what he is now, a facilitator of a lifestyle and ideological choice,
You know, he was just a guy.
And I talked to him.
I don't think I had Henchcliffe on.
And I don't know who else is in his orbit.
There's only one that I felt was definitely knew where his bread was buttered and was not going to come on my podcast, either for personal reasons or because of his loyalty to Joe.
And that was Theo Vaughn.
But outside of that, not that I know of.
I mean, you'd have to name some names.
Who are the guys?
Like Andrew Schultz, I never really invited on.
I don't know him.
Hinchcliffe, I knew before he was whatever he is now.
I don't know.
I don't know if he would come on.
But it doesn't matter.
I don't really need them to come on or want them to come on.
So I don't think there are any.
And certainly since I called them out as fascist apologists,
Yeah, I don't know who that would be.
I've had most of the comics on.
But I don't know.
Bert asked me to be on his podcast.
But there's just a few that are really, I think, beholden or in debt to Joe for the careers.
And I don't know that Joe has put out a fatwa on me or said, no, don't go on that guy's show.
He said something to Bert that turned out to be wrong about...
I don't really know that I'm on Joe's radar in any major way, but Theo Vaughn would be the only one that I suspect didn't come on because of his alliance with Joe.
What was your experience visiting the Criterion Closet?
Did they reach out to you?
What is the conversation before you go in there?
Could you back up a truck and just say, load it up?
No, I mean, they asked me to come on and I think it was connected to some sort of premiere or something, but I went over there to criteria and yeah, they invited me.
No, you, you know, they show you the closet.
It's just one person with a camera and they suggest that maybe you pull some stuff before, you know, get a sense of what's in there and, and decide, you know, kind of what you want before you pull it.
or else you're going to get overwhelmed and not know what to pull.
I imagine you could back up a truck, but I don't know what your life is like, but I've got more shit than I know what to deal with.
I've got boxes of DVDs that I don't even watch anymore.
I don't have an organized library.
I don't generally need more shit.
So the stuff I got, you know, I was curious about or I wanted to own, but I didn't want to overdo it, but they don't really put a limit on you.
So I guess you could pull a truck up.
What are your thoughts on the treasure of Sierra Madre?
Badges?
We don't need no stinking badges.
It's one of the great movies.
Just to watch that gold dust blow away after all of that that that guy went through and just blows into the fucking wind.
Yeah, it's a great movie.
It's right up there with the end of The Killing, the Kubrick movie with Sterling Hayden when the little doggie knocks that piece of luggage off of that cart and then all that money just goes flying away.
And the cops are coming and the woman says something like, should we get out of here?
And he says, what difference does it make?
What difference does it make?
Great movie.
I got to watch it again.
Thanks for bringing it up.
I love hearing you talk about working on movies, but I wondered about the extent to which you talk about the scenes and plot.
I feel like most actors have a vow of silence, but you are so open about the process.
Are producers okay with that?
Not really.
I don't think they're okay with it, but I usually pull back.
I usually don't give away the story of the movie.
Sometimes we'll talk about scenes I'm in with people in a vague way.
Maybe you think you're hearing more than I'm really telling, but it's usually about my experience in scenes and without sort of connecting them to the overarching story of the movie per se.
But I haven't been in that many movies, and I haven't had issues with that.
They don't want you to tell the ending or anything, but some of the stuff I've done, you kind of know the ending already, like the Bruce Springsteen movie or that movie I just did, In Memoriam, To Leslie.
It's hard to give that movie away.
But you can talk about it specifically without giving away the movie.
Do you sit around at home and play acoustic guitar?
If so, have you ever thought about recording those and putting them in the episodes?
I generally sit around playing electric guitar.
I have an amp in my den.
If I'm watching TV, I'll noodle around.
I've got an acoustic in there that I pick up sometimes, but probably not enough.
I generally, when I'm sitting around noodling, it's on an electric plugged in or not plugged in.
Do you play right-handed or left-hand guitars?
I'm right handed.
I play a right handed guitar.
It's my contention that digital tech is a form of electronic cancer.
It splits and metastasizes from individuals to corporations and governments the same way that cancer does in the human body.
It also seems to be harming us in similar manners in the way we operate in the world and amongst each other.
What do you think?
Sure, that's one way to look at it.
It definitely mediates all of our interactions to the point where we are isolated, yet think we're still connected.
It also diminishes our ability to pay attention.
It does minimize the attention span to...
The output that you are dealing with electronically, which I think is some sort of, you know, dopamine jacker.
I think that the phone is one of the greatest drug delivery systems I've ever seen in my life.
But yeah, I think it has hijacked reality.
Metastasizing is one way to look at it, but I think we're beyond that.
I think it is now the struggle is not with a cancer problem.
The struggle with it is with how we perceive reality and what reality is.
So in that way, that it's disrupted our ability to know the difference between a mediated experience and reality, that's a problem.
And I don't know how one...
handles that and what one does to maintain a sense of mental hygiene to keep your brain your own and keep it together.
To speak to your point, though, I have thought recently that the singularity has probably already happened.
But I think the thing that's left out of that sort of assessment of
Computers taking over is that they're still run by humans and those humans run corporations or are propagandists for ideological means.
So on that way.
Yeah, but with your analogy, I think it is fully metastasized, but it is is not deadly.
In the same way cancer is, it's just it's killed our sense of reality and on some levels our sense of morality and on another level our sense of ability to communicate in real time in the flesh with humans.
In our capitalist world, it has become very clear that human fear and anger is a wellspring of profit and political gain.
There are more clicks and views to be had out of outrage than out of wonder and curiosity.
With a news entertainment and political ecosystem that is preying on the adrenaline of their viewers and voters, I fear nihilism.
I do not see how unfettered capitalism and democracy can coexist.
How are you, as a sensitive being, overcoming this dilemma and not turning nihilistic?
Or are we fucked?
Well, those are two separate questions.
And nihilism is happening.
And yes, we are fucked.
But for me, on a day-to-day basis, I'm just trying to find my center and where I come from as a human and what part of that human wants to express themselves and how.
I think you're correct in all this stuff that you're saying.
Right.
I'm not sure that that the clicks views to be had out of outrage are more than wonder and curiosity.
Certainly that's what drives.
this new global capitalism with the sacrifice of the individual to become just a series of ticks and habits and markers of a particular point of view in the name of generating content for themselves or others.
Yeah, I mean, that's a problem, but there is still wonder and curiosity.
And nihilism is happening because of what I answered in the last question, because...
Reality has been detached, and there is no real working barometer or precedence of truth that bind us.
And because of that, personal morality drifts, communal morality drifts.
People are no longer recognizing people as people, but as numbers and screen names.
So, yeah, nihilism is definitely at a peak.
We are fucked, but I do think there is wonder and curiosity.
I do think there is a way to save your own self.
A guy once had a t-shirt, Don Rock, out of Austin, Texas.
And it always appealed to me, and I wasn't ever sure why, because it seemed wrong-minded.
But on the shirt it said, fuck the world, save yourself.
And now I'm starting to understand that.
And I always liked it, but now I believe it.
I keep pondering how the new fascism will play out in our time.
Bad times are here.
But are you hopeful for an end that will be better for us after it plays through?
What does the best case scenario look like for you?
I don't think that way.
I don't think in terms of I don't use that arc of optimism like, well, you know, this is just a period and we'll come out of it this or that.
I can't see that far ahead.
I can barely handle next week.
So I'm not hopeful.
I'm not entirely hopeless because of some of the things I said in the last two answers.
The best case scenario, I really don't know what it is.
I don't I don't you know, outside of coincidences that alter the trajectory of where we're going.
I don't know what the best case scenario is.
Maybe that it fails or that there's enough infighting within the new power structure that they just overreach and it collapses.
But I don't know how we accommodate and live in.
the, the pain and fear and isolation and, and self-censorship that's going to be, you know, part of what we're entering.
So sorry, there's no best case scenario, uh, in terms of the big picture, maybe in the little picture, I can, uh, learn how to enjoy the life I have.
Um,
People keep saying that there needs to be a Joe Rogan for the left.
Will you take up the mantle?
No.
I don't know that that's possible.
I was involved with the progressive project of Air America Radio.
The Big Ten to the left is different than the Big Ten to the right.
The Big Ten to the right goes from...
psycho-libertarianism all the way to, you know, unrepentant Nazis.
But, you know, in terms of the talking points there, they all seem to mesh and flow together into a fairly narrow and kind of myopic agenda.
Whereas the left, you know, the left always fights with themselves.
Somehow or another, the extreme left is never willing to compromise at all.
And maybe that's the correct disposition.
But because of that, there is no unifying agenda.
There's a lot of boutique agendas.
There's a lot of infighting.
And there's really nobody to get everybody kind of working towards the same thing, which the right seems to be able to do.
But I don't think that it's possible to have a liberal demagogue or tribal leader because of the nature of the progressive movement.
ideology and the spectrum that that encompasses.
What's your take on the Jordan Petersons or the Andrew Tates of the world misleading their young male audiences?
Well,
Look, I don't listen to either of those guys.
I have enough of a sense of them to know that they're grifters feeding on a type of frustration that I don't know how it gets resolved.
It's obviously awful because of what it implants in these guys in terms of what relationships are supposed to look like, but mostly because of the implicit misogyny.
of the disposition required of men and delivered to these men by these guys.
I think they've got a good racket going and they're creating little monsters.
I feel bad that it's not easier for young men or that they're not self-reflective enough or confident enough or grounded enough to establish a
you know, somewhat vulnerable relationships with women.
But I think it all comes out of anger and frustration and just an inability to kind of, you know, take the hits in the great world of relationships.
So I find them to be awful and creating a
a type of army of, of men that are utterly insensitive and completely controlling and angry and essentially misogynistic and incapable of true relationship.
But I guess they're, they're just kind of hoping that the women will come around.
And I guess,
Some are, which is a whole other disturbing question.
I don't know what this trad wife business is or what these post-feminist subservient women are thinking, but the whole jig is up.
How should we handle the mildly sociopathic, purely self-serving people in our lives?
Besides the one who won the election, everybody personally knows at least one of those types of people.
And it seems they tend to get away with their despicable behavior a lot of the time, especially the ones who make sure they don't totally cross the line.
Well, as a mildly sociopathic, relatively self-serving person who had enough self-awareness to adjust his disposition in relation to other people and sort of try to nourish or make myself available for some empathy and respect and to detoxify myself behaviorally, I
I don't know.
It's one of those things.
I think it's almost like drinking.
Someone's got to want to get out of it.
And other than that, in terms of handling them, if you love them, either you have to figure out how to detach from their behavior and save yourself, or you have to cut off communication with them if you find that it's diminishing your sense of self.
Right.
And I'm no psychiatrist and I'm no psychologist.
This is just basic codependent stuff.
But I don't know that there's any teaching them a lesson.
I'm not even sure when their sense of selves become compromised and all of a sudden a vulnerability comes out that showing up for them then is even going to solve the problem.
So it's tough.
It's tough.
But if somebody doesn't want help or don't see that they need help, it's hard to help them.
I don't know how much of the area you'll have time to see, but do you have any apprehension about playing a show in Asheville, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene?
No, I love Asheville, and I've always had a good time with the people there.
I feel awful about what they went through.
It seems tragic and terrible.
I'm curious to see what's left and how the rebuilding is going, but I'm happy to go, and I hope I can bring them a little bit of entertainment.
What is the Achilles heel of humanity?
I don't know.
Isn't there a whole list of them?
Aren't there seven?
I think they're probably all in there.
Pick your deadly sin and apply it in terms of the ratio you see to which one is the actual singular Achilles heel.
But I don't think you get a better list than that.
What is your current wallet situation?
For example, bifold, trifold, minimalist, how many cards do you carry around?
Well, you know, I've been very committed to a black trifold leather wallet for most of my life.
I like the trifold.
The one I have was sent to me by a leather company.
I wish I could remember the name because it wouldn't be bad to plug them.
I don't even know if they're in business anymore.
But, yeah, I'm a trifold guy, and they didn't put a label of any kind or a stamp on the wallet.
Okay.
which is sad because it's a good wallet.
I like a very solid kind of leather that you have to break in and have to mold it.
I carry around a debit card, a few credit cards, AAA stuff.
I got a lot of stuff in here.
I generally like a window for my driver's license.
I do generally carry my cash in a money clip.
I'm weird.
I guess it's because of my grandfather always had a little bit of a wad on him.
But I do like to have a little cash on me.
But it's definitely a black leather trifold situation of very thick leather.
I really get the sense that you love 60s and 70s culture.
You're on the cusp between Boomer and Gen X. Do you lean a little on the Gen X side, or are you fully 100% Boomer leaning?
I actually am ashamed of my Boomer status, and I tend to gravitate more towards Gen X. I don't know if I love 60s culture.
I do like some 70s culture, late 60s and 70s culture in terms of
Music, comic art, art in general, film.
I think the 70s were like just a free for all.
And I think a lot of the boundaries pushed during that time are what are being pushed back on now by the right.
Everything that was explored, examined, expressed and lived in the late 60s and early 70s is what, you know, freaked me.
the religious freaks and the righties out.
And for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, they've just been trying to get that fucking genie back in a bottle.
And I don't know, we might be on the brink of it, seems to be happening.
But yeah, I don't, I lived through the 80s as a grownup.
I don't remember identifying with it much.
It just seems that a lot of the imprinting of my sense of art and culture was done in the 70s, and some of that was based in the 60s, and some of that was based even earlier.
But I do consider myself more Gen X.
I live in Ireland and you've mentioned your trips to our country a few times without blowing smoke up our collective wazoo's.
What was your warts and all opinion of us?
I have always found like I feel so open and comfortable in Ireland to people there.
I don't know exactly why, but there's something about the history of Ireland and the sort of persistence of the Irish people.
And this sort of, you know, darkness of what they've had to deal with and how they sort of interpret that through the way they live, through their poetry, through their art and just the kind of their groundedness.
I had nothing but a great time there.
And it was a relief because I've talked about it before, but I spent a lot of time in Boston.
And the Boston Irish were very frightening to me for many years of my life.
And when I got to Ireland for the first time, a lot of the people looked a lot like the Boston Irish, but they were the opposite in demeanor.
I just find them to be a lovely people.
And I kind of wish I drank in some ways because pub culture is a real thing.
But I got around.
I just always feel a lot of warmth and acceptance.
But also there's that weight there.
of the heavy heart that, you know, I have.
And I think it kind of locks in with that Irish disposition.
We know of your love for Ireland, but what are your thoughts on Scotland?
You've spoken at length before about how miserable a time you had at the Edinburgh Fringe years ago during a low point in your life.
Has this stopped you coming back to Scotland to perform or even visit as a tourist?
Well,
I did go to maybe the first Glasgow Comedy Festival.
The experience in The Fringe was terrible, but the people in Scotland were nice, and it was certainly a beautiful country, but it was a bad experience.
The experience I had in Glasgow was okay, but I'd never seen so much vomiting in the street in my life, and I didn't really get a sense again.
I haven't spent enough time there as somebody of my age and my experience now outside of that experience that I had there.
But my feelings about the people and about the country, they were beautiful.
And I'll go back there.
I'll come play there.
Sure.
Can we get an update on your ice situation?
Have you ever talked to the repairman since the switch to a new refrigerator?
I feel like you should check in with him.
You know, I should.
The Ukrainian guy?
I get the feeling he was very disappointed with me.
He really wanted me to stick with that old machine because he was very upset about the new machines having too many computers.
But the battle he had with my old refrigerator was never ending.
And it just began to be too much.
And then I no longer realized why I was still fighting it.
Because I didn't buy that refrigerator.
It came with the house.
It was old.
It was time for an upgrade.
But I got so invested in my journey...
with this Ukrainian guy to fix this thing, several Ukrainian guys, that I just kind of was, you know, I tend to stay in things a lot longer than I should, relationships of any kind.
And that one had just played itself out.
And when I told him I got a new fridge, he ghosted me and I just figured, let it go, Mark, let it go.
Are you a bird lover, bird watcher, or curious about birds?
I'm wondering if you have bird feeders in your yard that can be seen from the kitchen window or the patio and or porch.
Got a hummingbird feeder that I just filled up today.
I happen to live in a very, like a lot of birds around here.
And I do sit on the porch and watch them.
And I do have an app where I can identify their noise.
And I have a little book that someone sent me out there.
And I tried to identify them.
But there's a lot of crows around.
And we've got the Pasadena parrots that come through here.
And years ago, there was a hawk that started a family in the tree next door.
There's some mourning doves around.
There's a lot of birds around here that I can identify.
But I don't know that I would say I'm a bird lover, but I'll watch the birds.
I'm a bit curious about birds.
I notice the birds and I do feed the hummingbirds.
How much fan mail do you receive nowadays?
What's the ratio of stuff that is like, oh, wow, this is really cool versus what the hell am I going to do with this?
Well, it's mixed.
I don't get as much as I used to, but I think it's because people can just like get at me some other way.
There's a lot of ways to try to get at me through DMs or this or that.
A lot of them I don't engage with, but I do get some fan mail and people still send me stuff.
And I definitely, it ends up in my house.
And again, unlike I said before about relationships, it takes me a long time to get rid of stuff because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, even if they don't even know what I did with it.
I don't know if they're expecting anything when they send me stuff, but I do know one time I was sent a piece of artwork.
It ended up at a goodwill and it ended up the guy who did the piece of artwork,
Got a heads up about it and that made me feel bad.
I can't get rid of signed books.
But I only have so much room, man.
Have you ever considered getting a vasectomy?
Yes, I have.
And I'm not even sure why I haven't.
I guess there's just something about that.
It's just probably a dumb male ego thing.
But why the fuck?
I should.
You know?
While I'm still fucking...
What are your thoughts on Trader Joe's?
Do you ever shop there and do you have any favorites?
I stopped shopping at Trader Joe's many years ago.
I think most people like it for prepared foods.
Um, occasionally I'll go get nuts there and occasionally I'll get some canned beans there.
They do have a good olive oil selection.
Occasionally I'll do that, but I don't go there regularly ever.
Um,
It seems to be one of the few places I can get Brazil nuts.
And sometimes when I go in, I'll be like, well, this produce looks okay, but it's never enough to get me shopping there again.
I don't know why.
Sometimes I'll go in and I used to grind my coffee there that I'd get from just coffee.
But generally, I don't I don't go there except for basics, nuts, oils, some canned beans.
Yeah.
I don't know why I turned off to Trader Joe's.
You struggle with the God thing.
So do I, if you could wake up tomorrow and just accept and believe in God, would you do it?
Or is the struggle the thing?
I don't know that I struggle.
Um, I think about it.
I'm willing to recognize and acknowledge that there's an order to things, um,
I talk to God occasionally.
You know, I do think I try to see things from a vague God's point of view, but I don't actively seek belief or struggle with the existence of God.
I tend to have, I don't know, I don't really have a spiritual life.
But I am open to mystical bullshit and poetry of different kinds.
But I don't get carried away with it.
I still have wonder.
And I don't know what God would do for that.
But I don't wonder about God.
If you had to give up stand-up, acting, the podcast, or playing guitar, which is the first one you would give up and which is the last one to let go of?
Well, I don't know.
You know, standup is so directly connected to my existence, you know, like food, that that one would be hard to let go of.
Though I think about it all the time in terms of, is it futile?
But it is my method of expressing myself.
So that would be the last to go.
Um...
Playing guitar is more of a hobby, and it is integrated again into my life.
I don't play every day, but I like having it to blow off steam.
So that would be the second to the last to go.
Well, maybe no.
The podcast is also totally integrated into my life.
So I guess it would go, the first one to go would be acting because I only just started doing it.
And I'm neither here nor there with it, really.
The second one to go, I guess, would be
um, the podcast.
Cause we've done that a long time now and it becomes, I love doing it and it's part of my life, but you know, you don't, you don't, you don't want to disappear before you're gone.
Playing guitar would be the second to the last and comedy would be the last.
And I hope I don't have to let go of any of these, um, really on purpose.
Um,
I don't want to let go of, well, what are you going to do?
My bigger fear is to be compromised somehow to where I can't do them.
All right.
There you go.
Enjoy.
Head into the new year.
We'll do what we can.