BONUS Ask Marc Anything #18
Okay, folks, here we go.
This is Ask Mark Anything number 18.
What is a misconception people have about the comedy industry that only insiders would understand?
Well, I think a lot of times one of the misconceptions is that you'll be seeing a professional comic when you go to see comedy.
Another misconception seems to be that people seem to think that a lot of comics are making up stuff on the spot, and that's a rare few.
I guess, oddly, now there's a lot of crowd work comics.
Another misconception is that even the most known comic is necessarily earning a living.
I'm not sure what some of the other misconceptions would be,
And also that we're all necessarily crazy.
We're not all crazy.
I mean, I may be crazy, but not all of us.
What was your first joke that worked that made you go, yep, I can do this?
I don't know.
I think the one joke that I seem to remember doing a lot early on, I don't know if it was my first set of jokes, but one that I was proud of was the Walkman joke that I think I did probably on the evening at the improv show.
1989, you know, only a year or two after I started.
It was a joke where in New York, people on the streets, they'll sell anything.
A guy came up beside me, you know, holding a Walkman.
And he's like, you want to buy this Walkman?
Six bucks.
And then I used to do this physical thing where and there was a guy behind him.
And I'd show a guy with his fingers in his ears like he was still hooked up to the Walkman kind of stumbling behind the other guy.
It was a nice turn, and it felt like a real joke, and that was sort of a... I was always excited to do that joke.
That joke could probably work now.
Not really.
There are no Walkmen, and I don't know, headphone situations are different, but...
Generally, what is your mood or frame of mind immediately following a standup show?
Like when the show is done and you come back out to interact with the people.
Well, I'm pretty jacked up.
If it was a good show, I kind of get I'm pretty amped from the show, but I come down to earth pretty quickly afterwards.
And I'm always excited to not do a meet and greet so much, but I'll wander out into the room to see the diehards if they hung out to say hi.
I'm usually pretty, I'm relieved and excited if something new and interesting happened on stage, but generally it takes me a couple hours to kind of relax after a show.
Okay.
Well, look, you know, you go to a lot of towns, you go, you do a lot of shows.
I mean, for me, even people that don't see me at a show, if they come up to me and they're like, you know, we had this long conversation.
I'm like, well, you got to give me a year or a range of years.
You got to give me a city.
You got to give me a situation.
I mean, you can't remember everything.
And I'm certainly not great remembering people's names, but usually if someone makes an impact, I'll remember their face.
But as I get older, that changes.
I'm just, you try to be gracious and you can lie a little bit.
Do it like, oh yeah, I think I remember that.
That's not even a lie.
But yeah, I just try to be nice.
And sometimes when they tell me about the interaction, I'm like, really?
Really?
How, like, that's crazy.
Sometimes it can be a little embarrassing, but I tend to think that being gracious, it goes a long way.
Which guest beside Ben Kingsley has made you the most uncomfortable?
Well, you know, there are moments in a lot of interviews in the beginning and through the first 15 or 20 minutes can be a little tricky because I'm navigating who they are.
But I'd say uncomfortable, not in probably the way you're thinking, was usually very old guests who
that I either had to go to their homes or they would come over would always make me just a little nervous because I didn't know if they would hold the mic and sometimes we'd bring a mic stand.
It was more practical than anything else.
Also, how was their conversation skills?
It was mostly concern and just a little uncomfortable feeling around being with someone who's in their 70s or 80s.
But in terms of guests, I mean, there's many that start out uncomfortable, but they usually level off.
Did you ever consider having Harris on your show to counter-program Trump on Rogan?
No.
We really stay out of politics in terms of guests unless it's a sitting president.
And we weren't asked to put her on the show.
I don't know what we would have done.
We don't really get involved guest-wise with campaigning or political talkers or politicians in general.
We made an exception for a sitting president.
Do you record your intros and outros back to back at the same time?
You make the outro sound like you just listened to the episode with us, but I know you don't actually go back and listen.
Well, yeah, I guess that's a little trick of the trade.
I do do them, the sort of wraparounds and the intros all in one recording session.
And yeah, I try to do that tag like I just listened because I do remember the conversation, but I didn't just listen to it again.
You know, there is a little bit of show business involved here.
Is there someone you wouldn't interview due to the anxiety of not meeting expectations?
No, not really.
I think I've gotten over that.
I don't think I ever had that issue where I was apprehensive to talk to somebody because I was afraid that they wouldn't be the person I thought they were or that I wouldn't be the person they were expecting.
I mean, I have my moments of insecurity, and sometimes after an interview, I feel like I could have done something differently.
But generally, nobody is ever like I expect them to be.
So I don't really...
make that part of my judging whether or not we should have a guest or not.
Has there ever been a situation where you had two guests run into each other at the house and
I believe there were situations like that.
I try not to book them that close.
But worse, there was a couple, well, maybe one, two, funnier kind of moments is where I didn't have, I didn't know the interview was scheduled.
Like, I didn't have it on the books.
I remember back at the old house, Lisa Lampanelli was on my porch all of a sudden.
I'm like, what is happening?
And then I realized, like, oh, shit, we're going to do a talk.
Then there was that other time Kevin MacDonald, the director, came over, and I thought he was Kevin MacDonald, the guy from Kids in the Hall, and that was a scramble.
That was embarrassing for me, certainly.
Oh, my God.
That was, yeah.
But have people kind of run into each other in passing?
I try to put a bit of time in.
in between the arrival of guests.
What do you use to clean vinyl records?
I have a VPI record cleaner, which is fancy.
It's got a brush.
It's got liquid.
It's got a vacuum.
It's kind of pricey.
But I usually, you know, if I buy used records, I can run it through that once.
And I have a brush at home.
I'm not exactly sure which kind it is, but that's the major record cleaner.
Look, if you're collecting vinyl or you're doing a lot of vinyl and you're buying a lot of used records, the VPI is a good machine to have because it goes deep in the grooves.
You put liquid on it, you brush it out, and then it'll vacuum the grooves out.
But it's pricey and probably stupid.
If you had a Marc Maron signature guitar, what would it be and what color?
I don't know, man.
You know, I used to have a Telecaster that I customized when I was very young, and I had it shot like a beautiful maroon color with a gold pick guard.
But I don't know.
I've gotten kind of used to these Les Paul Juniors, and I think I'd like to have a Les Paul Junior.
And I wouldn't mind doing a kind of...
maroon les paul jr with maybe a black pick guard and some nice p90s on it uh but i'm still not adverse to a telecaster either do you practice guitar with a metronome no is that a hint
Is this passive aggressive?
What's going on?
Where are you coming from with that?
I've been told I should use a metronome because my timing is not great.
I've tried to do it with a metronome and the results were not great.
Maybe it helps, but the answer is no.
And the other part of that answer is I probably should.
You've become a much better actor since you started.
What would you attribute that to?
Have you been training formally?
No, I haven't really taken acting classes since I lived in San Francisco and since college.
But over the years, you know, I've done a bit of acting and I knew...
like when I did my show Marin, that there would be a learning curve because I didn't know how to be on a set.
I didn't know how to be part of a group and be in that world.
And it was.
I would say the first couple seasons, if not all of them, are a little...
rough around the edges acting wise, but I did put together a skillset of how to be in that environment on a, a TV set or a movie set.
Um, over time I've done more acting, but most of my training has been from my guests.
Um,
I've gotten tidbits from, you know, Martin Landau, Paul Dano, George Clooney, Ethan Hawke.
Al Pacino was important to me in learning some things.
And, you know, I definitely poke around and try to learn how they approach it and try to apply those things.
And then as time went on, because I didn't know if I really loved acting because I didn't find it satisfying, I just started to take more chances and, you know, think about, you know, character and think about,
listening, but all the stuff I've learned was either from just doing it, but also from many of my guests.
Have there been any film directors that regularly dodge invites to the pod?
They seem difficult to get in general.
I don't know if they're dodging invites to the pod other than they're just not doing a lot or they're not doing my show or they're not around.
We've gone out to a lot of directors and I don't think it's personal or that they're dodging.
I do know that David Fincher did an interview that was like two hours long, and he wouldn't let us release it.
I do know that.
I'm thinking about going vegan, and I suspect my path there will wind up looking like yours.
Were there books or websites or other resources that helped you make the shift that gave good practical advice with minimal bullshit?
Yeah.
Well, my model was actually Angelica Kitchen in New York City.
It was a restaurant.
It was one of the first kind of high-end-y macro restaurants back in the day.
It wasn't fancy.
It was pretty...
It was pretty hearty, but it was a nice restaurant that did a lot of interesting recipes with almost, well, not almost, all vegan stuff.
But she, the woman who ran Angelica Kitchen, had this concept of the bowl, and I feel like she might have been the first one, and I'm not sure where it came from, but the basic understanding of...
of eating vegan for me comes out of her concept of this, of like a macro bowl.
Like there has to be a grain, a bean, a protein, if you'd like a vegetable.
And she would put sea vegetables too, and also pickled stuff.
So I kind of move in that world.
It's hard to find that cookbook because it's out of print and the restaurant is no longer there, but that was, that was the one that I still kind of modeled my thinking.
around veganism is her kind of macro approach.
Some of the recipes are tricky and a little complicated, but basically that's what I abide by.
I haven't really read much else on veganism, and I usually just search for recipes that I can picture and I feel will be not too complicated and tasty and easy to make.
But I do get hung up on getting enough protein.
Chickpeas are a big part of it and tempeh,
But it's really most of my thinking around it came from Angelica's and the Angelica Kitchen cookbook.
I've been a vegetarian for 15 years and I've had a desire to give up dairy and eggs for some time, but dairy in particular seems to be an addiction for me.
How did you manage to make that transition?
Deal with the cheese cravings.
Any tips for coping with a food-related addiction like this?
I was never a huge cheese guy.
I certainly like cheese.
I've never been a big milk guy.
Ice cream was hard to let go of.
Eggs, there's definitely good egg replacements.
There's that just egg stuff that I think is made with mung beans, and you can also scramble tofu, which I don't love, but that mung bean one.
And the cheeses, they've come a long way with vegan cheeses.
They're not going to be as satisfying, but...
They're kind of texturally on the money.
There's a lot of good cream cheeses around, cashew-based cream cheeses.
Some companies are making cheddars.
Some are doing blue cheeses.
I mean, there's a lot of kind of high-end-y cheese replacements that you can –
Again, not going to be as satisfying, but it might be enough for you to make the transition if you want.
I don't think eggs are that bad, but I don't think cheese is that great.
But what do I know?
How do you find vegan food on the road?
Well, some cities are really, really good about having a plant-based restaurant.
There's a lot of vegan junk food is very popular, the fake burgers and stuff.
And you can usually go to Asian restaurants or Indian restaurants that they both have vegan options.
You just have to think about what you need and which cuisines have it.
But a lot of the smaller to mid-sized cities have...
Pretty good vegan restaurants, but Indian is always good in a pinch, as is Asian food of different sorts.
Now that you're vegan, do you ever use your Traeger grill?
I do not.
Maybe I'll try smoking some tofu or something.
I don't know.
It just sits out there as a reminder to the massive amounts of meat that I used to put into my body.
How do you cook tempeh?
I love to air fry tempeh.
What I do is I have a basket air fryer and I cut it into like one inch cubes and I coat it with avocado oil and salt and then I put them one piece at a time in a little grid inside of the basket and I cook that at like 375 for like 16 minutes and they get really nice and crispy and then I just throw them back in the bowl with the remaining avocado oil
to kind of recoat them.
And you can eat those as a side.
You can mix those in with other vegetable stir fries.
You can just eat them as a snack.
I do that a lot.
Where did the name La Fonda come from?
Yeah, this comes up occasionally.
My old amazing crazy cat La Fonda, who has passed away.
That was really my ex-wife Mishnah's decision.
I don't think it came from Napoleon Dynamite.
I don't know what the source of her deciding that was the name, but I remember her coming up with it.
And it sort of sticks.
You know, she became Fonda, but she is La Fonda.
She was.
But the source was my ex-wife.
Where she sourced it, I don't know.
Who takes care of the cats when you're away?
I have a person that stays with the cats and deals with the cats, Ivy.
She's an animal lover.
She works with animals professionally.
And she loves my guys.
And she's always sending me pictures of them.
Are you able to have more fun now?
Trying.
I'm trying.
You know, I don't know always how to identify fun or whether I'm having it, but I feel like, yes, I'm having more fun.
I still enjoy to watch certain comics.
I like to play guitar.
I like to cook.
I like to hang out and talk to friends.
Yeah.
I'm working on it.
I think I'm having a little more fun than I used to because you have to sort of make it a priority.
I've spent my life working my fucking ass off and fun didn't just factor in that much.
And a lot of times when I was out supposed to be having fun, it wasn't really fun.
It was just anxious relief.
But I think that I am having a bit more fun.
Thank you for asking.
We know you prepped for this upcoming administration of chaos by planning an escape route to Canada.
Could you share your latest thoughts on this?
Is moving to Canada still a consideration for you?
Look, you know, it's been pointed out to me.
I applied for permanent residency in Canada.
Like I think after the first, when did I do it?
You know, it was a few years ago.
It was after the first Trump administration, but I considered it.
I feel like it was towards the end of the first Trump administration, but I, or maybe during early Biden.
I don't know, but it was really, I wanted to put something in process to give me some relief.
Like I took action, you know, in thinking of,
People who have been in authoritarian or fascist countries that have gone fascist who became victims because they didn't think anything could happen that bad and then got stuck there and the escape routes became tricky.
I don't know.
It's hard to really consider all this stuff, but it's sort of wired into my brain.
So I applied for PR in Canada.
a few years back, you know, just so I knew that it was in process.
And the guy who I worked with, the immigration consultant, told me it would take, you know, three years to just get through the bureaucracy.
And I was like, that's fine.
I just need to know that I did something.
And I wasn't just talking out my ass.
So that's still being processed, but it seems to be, you know, on the desk of whoever's doing it.
And I've recently jumped through some hoops to get that processed.
So I don't know where it's going to land or if I'll get it or not.
But basically, that is a type of visa where if you're up there two out of five years, you can use the health care and work and you have, you know, you have a resident visa.
So that's still in action.
God knows I don't want to have to use it.
And then some people are like, well, it's going to happen in Canada too.
And I'm like, okay, but no one lives in Canada.
There's not that many people up there.
And also there's no guns.
And the social safety net, whether it's effective or not, look, people in Canada have issues too.
But for me, it was for peace of mind.
So if it comes through,
I don't want to have to use it, but if I have to, I will.
So that's where that stands now.
And I don't think they're coming for me, but there is a quality of life thing, both psychologically and physically that, you know, you get to a certain age and you'd like to have some quality of life psychologically and physically in your person.
And I know that that's an inside job to a certain degree, but, you know, it...
There's a difference.
It's different other places.
And at the age I'm approaching, as I get older, I'd like to have some comfort or peace of mind around that.
Did you make a living in San Francisco strictly from comedy earnings or did you have to work other jobs to make ends meet?
I haven't worked another job since I was in college.
I've scraped by one way or the other with comedy and with show business one way or the other for years.
So when I was in San Francisco,
I did not have another job.
I was working, you know, gigs around San Francisco.
I was going on the road occasionally.
I was, you know, I probably had a deal in place at that point, too.
When I was living in San Francisco, I got the gig on short attention span theater on Comedy Central.
So one way or the other through comedy or through show business, you know, I've I've been able to eke out a living for a good part of it.
I didn't really start making money till mid-2000s when I took the radio gig at Air America with any consistency.
And things have turned around, obviously.
But no, I wasn't living large, but I was making money from comedy.
Are you still going to secret society meetings?
When I have to, which, oh, that's not true.
I'll go occasionally just to kind of re-groove the reality of being an addict alcoholic.
I talk to an alcoholic,
People in recovery frequently.
One of my best friends is in the program, and I occasionally engage with my sponsor.
I don't go to as many meetings as I used to, but I always get something out of them when I go, and I'm not adverse to them.
I think my issues are more...
around other things now than alcohol or drugs, you know, codependency.
And, you know, there is some adult children of alcoholic issues that I could probably use some help from those meetings, not having an alcoholic father or mother, but my mother had chronic eating disorders.
My dad was bipolar.
So, you know, results are the same.
Do you believe that if you were to have a drink or smoke weed that you would spiral out of control?
No, not necessarily, but I do know that it would be a fairly quick, once you give up your sobriety, your ability to rationalize drinking or using drugs just increases a hundredfold.
It's not so much getting out of control, but I have no doubt that
if I drank or did weed that I would find a way to make it part of my life, either like quote unquote, occasionally until it's daily.
Uh, I believe I would become a daily user, uh, within a month or two.
I don't know whether I'd spiral out of control, but, but I, I know that I would become addicted again and, and use probably daily.
Um,
So, yeah, it's just that the vigilance of keeping sober and working a program kind of protects you from, you know, you would hope from swipping.
But once you give up your sobriety, you know, why not fucking do it?
my dad, after losing my mom to cancer, started dating a woman that he got along with very well.
They dated for the last few years until she relapsed from alcohol.
He feels betrayed by her and ultimately decided he didn't want to continue the relationship.
What would you say to him, given your experience both with addiction and grief in different ways?
Well, if he's a sober person, it's a very hard thing to manage.
And you got to love somebody an awful lot.
to sort of detach enough, you've got to get into some codependency zone where you have to be vigilant about that, about enabling and about not feeling you're with the person you want to be with because they're using again.
It's a tough road to hoe, and it's a personal decision.
If his sobriety was at stake,
or that was his concern, uh, then you have to take care of yourself and you have to take care of yourself in general.
I've been in relationships with people who used for way too long and you just, you know, if you're a codependent person as well as an alcoholic, you'd be amazed at how much you can just sort of adjust and think, you know, maybe they'll change and, you know, that can go on a long time.
But ultimately, uh,
If it's making you unhappy or it's putting your sanity or sobriety at risk, you've got to make the call.
How often do you get recognized in public?
I would imagine it happens almost any time you go out, shopping at Whole Foods and other routine outings.
Is this something you have to mentally think about before you go out, or is it just routine at this point?
I'm fortunate in that most of my fans are very decent people.
They're good people.
Many of them see me and they don't feel the need to talk to me, and others come up and just they're nice.
It's not all the time.
I'm still a very kind of...
I'm not a huge star.
I'm still sort of an acquired taste, and there are people that know me.
But most of the time, I'm not mobbed or anything.
And as I said, most of my fans are polite people.
But they say hi, and I'm okay with it.
I like it.
I'll have a conversation.
They ask me personal things because if you listen to my podcast, you know me pretty personal.
And I don't mind it at all.
It's pretty routine, but it's not unmanageable.
You continue a pretty heavy schedule these days.
As Neil Young asked, is it better to burn out or to fade away?
Well, I don't know.
I think you're probably going to fade away no matter what.
And I'd like to get out before I fade away.
You don't want to be sort of still plugging away and
be totally irrelevant.
But I like doing the work, and I do experience burnout, and I don't stop.
But we'll see.
I do feel the need to slow down in some ways, and I have shifted my...
and what I think is important.
So I'm aware of all this.
I don't think it's better to burn out and fading away is inevitable, but you don't want to fade away while you're still working your ass off.
With the benefit of hindsight, are you content with the level of success you have achieved at this point in your life?
Yes, I've achieved a type of success that I never anticipated.
And I landed on my feet, and I'm okay.
Sometimes my brain, either for ego reasons or just for competitive reasons, thinks like, why am I not more popular?
But the counter to that is that, well, I'm not really cut out to be the most popular guy.
I never was.
You know, I speak a certain way.
I think a certain way.
I do what I do a certain way.
And it's for the people that connect to it.
And, you know, that is certainly not everybody.
But occasionally I get plagued with the idea of like, why am I not for everybody?
Well, I never was.
And it's probably better off.
And I don't know how to do it any differently.
So I am content, certainly with the level of financial success.
And occasionally I
I do wish that my comedy spoke to more people, but I'm okay with me, and I'm okay with the people that get me, and I have a great audience and a good following, and I'll show up for them all I can.
Sometimes I do think I got to lighten the fuck up a little bit.
And, and lately in material, I've been thinking like, well, how do I do just, you know, some of the more, just the easy stuff.
Why can't I just do some easy stuff, some relatable, easy stuff.
So that's on my mind.
And that might, that might be happening.
Okay.
Thanks for your questions.
Thank you.