BONUS Producer Cuts - Ben Mendelsohn, Thurston Moore and Mucho Marc Monologuing
Guest:Hey, Full Marin folks, it's Brendan, the producer of WTF, and I'm here with this month's round of producer cuts from March.
Guest:And this is a first in a lot of ways.
Guest:There was a lot from the month of March.
Guest:I had to cut stuff out of every episode in March, stuff that I think it's good for you to hear on these producer cuts episodes, but...
Guest:I don't think I've had to do that yet since we first started doing these producer episodes.
Guest:I don't think there's ever been a month where I have stuff from every episode that month that can be aired here on the full Marin.
Guest:And there was just so much in March that I'm not even including it all in this episode.
Guest:I'm going to float some of it over to next month.
Guest:I'll get into that in a minute.
Guest:But I did kind of want to point out that
Guest:It seems to be connected to the fact that there was a lot going on in Mark's head during the month of March.
Guest:He was going back out on tour.
Guest:He's trying to put his hour together.
Guest:He had broken his foot and other health concerns and just generally the things that make him anxious.
Guest:So I think that's very indicative of
Guest:of why I looked at my folder where I store all the cut material that I think, hey, that might be good for a full Marin bonus content.
Guest:I looked at it and it was just very full in the month of March.
Guest:And I think that there's a reason for that.
Guest:It's generally where Mark was mentally and emotionally during that time.
Guest:And one of the reasons I'm going to split this up and put the
Guest:For one, so that this episode isn't too long.
Guest:And the second reason is because April doesn't have as much.
Guest:And I think, you know, particularly with the monologues, that has a lot to do with Mark's mindset changing.
Guest:Like he started going out on the road.
Guest:He started feeling better about how the material was going.
Guest:And so his anxiety and his stress dissipated and he was less prickly, less prone to just kind of stream of consciousness rants during these monologues.
Guest:And it made for material that I frankly didn't have to cut up as much.
Guest:And so let's get into these March monologues.
Guest:And like I said, it's every episode from March.
Guest:So going back to episode 1518 with Ben Mendelsohn, you'll hear Mark in this monologue say, am I coming on too strong here?
Guest:And he's
Guest:Usually when he says that, that's a pretty good indication that the material is just way too aggressive for something that's supposed to be a kind of pleasant listen for people on their Monday or Thursday mornings.
Guest:And you'll also notice that this was just way too long.
Guest:If you go back and listen to the Ben Mendelsohn episode, you'll see a normal sized monologue there, 15 minutes, 17 minutes, something like that.
Guest:So when you think about the fact that there's this much more material, plus anything else that I just cut and leave on the floor, that was a lot.
Guest:And it was mostly just kind of Mark unburdening himself during his time behind the mic.
Guest:That happens.
Guest:And most of the time I cut out the excess.
Guest:And in the past, no one ever got to hear it.
Guest:But now you get to hear it because you subscribe to the full Marin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Everybody all right?
Marc:I am nervous.
Marc:This morning, I'm going into today.
Marc:I'm going in to see the progress on my foot.
Marc:And I'm kind of obsessed and I'm kind of tired of the boot.
Marc:I don't feel any pain.
Marc:But since the doctor told me the risks of my particular type of fracture, I've convinced myself that I've fucked it up.
Marc:And I've also convinced myself that because I've been doing these nicotine pouches, I had no idea that there was some sort of controversy or right-wing momentum around the Zin pouches.
Marc:I had no idea that perhaps I could be somehow on the wrong side of history by doing Zin pouches better than the nicotine lozenges.
Marc:It keeps me controlled.
Marc:And just also, they're better.
Marc:And I'm not plugging them.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:The lozenges are screwed up my stomach.
Marc:But I don't know if it's the calcium, magnesium, or what that's made my stomach better.
Marc:A lot of things are better.
Marc:But I didn't realize that Tucker Carlson and other people in the right-wing world were just all about slinging those zins, man.
Marc:Just getting all hopped up on caffeine zins.
Marc:creatine, meat, and just blasting your brain out, you know, for the big win.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:If you get all those neurotransmitters cranking, no need for conscience, no need for critical thought.
Marc:Just go for it, man.
Marc:Lift those weights, kill those people, whatever it is it's driving you to do.
Marc:Obviously I'm not supporting it, but, uh,
Marc:You know, the Nazis used amphetamines and the crank is just too much at risk with that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So just mix it up, man.
Marc:Just mix it up.
Marc:Get a get a get a combination going.
Marc:Get a nice get a nice hum going nicotine, caffeine, creatine, meat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Blast away.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:That's what I see.
Marc:That's what I see the future as.
Marc:For me, it just, it's calming and it doesn't really help me.
Marc:But you know, somebody like Tucker Carlson, who's like, I put one Zinn in my, what did he say?
Marc:I put a Zinn in my mouth and I feel like God is like, this is clearly a guy that's never done blow.
Marc:This little dork.
Marc:This little... What was that kid like?
Marc:Just a sullen little preppy boy cunt.
Marc:Afraid of everything.
Marc:And nicotine pouches have blown his mind.
Marc:What a fucking lightweight.
Marc:These nerd fascists.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:Am I going too heavy out of the gate?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Am I...
Marc:Well, anyway, so I'm concerned that between, you know, recent showering without my boot on and the nicotine pouches that I'm going to require surgery.
Marc:God, I don't want it.
Marc:I don't want to wear this thing anymore.
Marc:Damn.
Marc:I want to be done with this healing.
Marc:That's not just relative to my foot.
Marc:Be good for all around, man.
Marc:I've been battling.
Marc:Battling with the...
Marc:anxiety and slight depression, a lot of things going on, a lot of things shifting in my head.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:But, and it's not even based on reflection per se.
Marc:I guess there's just a lot going on.
Marc:You know, there's a lot going on in my life and all of it's regular stuff.
Marc:A lot of it is heavy stuff.
Marc:Some of it is tragic stuff and,
Marc:Some of it is good stuff.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I've spoken to you about it.
Marc:I just don't.
Marc:Everything comes in pretty hot for me.
Marc:Everything.
Marc:You know, whether it's, you know, fucking up my breakfast or making my coffee too weak or my father's dementia or the impending doom that I sense around the world.
Marc:You know, all of it comes in at roughly the same frequency.
Marc:Joy and fear and pain.
Marc:It's all just happening.
Marc:It's compartmentalizing.
Marc:Not my specialty.
Marc:Boundaries hard to maintain.
Marc:So I'm just this reactive ball of sparks and fire.
Marc:Just barely contained in a skin suit.
Marc:Hence the nicotine.
Marc:Let's fucking take it down a notch.
Marc:Let's take it down a notch.
Marc:Can we?
Marc:Look, I'm not complaining.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:It's just I can feel the plane landing.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:I can feel that we're in a descent.
Marc:Could be anywhere from a year to 30.
Marc:But I can see the ground.
Marc:Do you know what I'm saying?
Marc:Do you?
Marc:You know, I said something on...
Marc:on Instagram live a while back that my TikTok guy put on the TikTok about recovery.
Marc:And look, you know, it was just an idea.
Marc:Anytime you talk about recovery,
Marc:Look, you can quit drinking, quit doing drugs.
Marc:Do whatever you got to do.
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:You know, I just it in the sense and I don't why I've I've taken this defensive tone.
Marc:I know there's plenty of other options.
Marc:I talk about the program.
Marc:I talk about powerlessness.
Marc:And a lot of people have a real hard time with that word powerlessness and God.
Marc:Now, look.
Marc:You know, if you know me, I ain't no God guy, but that's OK.
Marc:You know, I can you know, I can acknowledge that there are things bigger than me.
Marc:Almost everything doesn't mean it's running the world and running my life.
Marc:But, you know, it's out there working and it's bigger than me and I have no control over it.
Marc:Good God problem settled.
Marc:Powerlessness.
Marc:Weird word for people.
Marc:And I'm only speaking in program banter.
Marc:I'm not speaking about the program, but the idea of getting sober by engaging powerlessness.
Marc:It's very simple.
Marc:It doesn't mean your entire life you have no power over everything.
Marc:Though if you really think deeply about it, you kind of don't.
Marc:Very little, very little is in your control.
Marc:I mean, the impulse to just pick up this mug right now, you know, the will, will and power and control.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, those are philosophical ideas, you know, based on, you know, moment to moment perception, however you want to integrate those.
Marc:But the idea of powerlessness is just acknowledging and knowing that for some fucking reason, because you're you're you're a diseased maniac.
Marc:You can't stop drinking.
Marc:You can't stop doing drugs.
Marc:You can't stop eating.
Marc:You can't stop gambling.
Marc:You can't stop fucking whatever the fuck it is.
Marc:Nothing within your mental resources or will.
Marc:has afforded you the ability to stop or control it.
Marc:So what does that mean?
Marc:I can't stop it.
Marc:I've tried and I tried and I tried.
Marc:I can't stop.
Marc:I'm still doing things that hurt me.
Marc:What's the matter with me?
Marc:Oh, well, you don't have any control, i.e.
Marc:you're powerless over those things.
Marc:So you have to figure out another thing to put in the gap there.
Marc:To make you acknowledge that and realize that you got to let that go, baby, on a day to day basis.
Marc:It's not that hard and it's not that shameful.
Marc:And it doesn't mean you're some sort of like worm or or or weak person.
Marc:It's just an equation of understanding.
Marc:Lack of control.
Marc:no matter what you do, even though it's hurting you.
Marc:Powerless.
Marc:All right, I'm powerless.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:So just put that in your head.
Marc:Nope, I can't do that because if I do, I lose complete control of my life in a matter of weeks.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:You don't have to throw God into the equation there.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then in that same episode, I had some stuff that I cut out of the Ben Mendelsohn episode.
Guest:One is something, if you know these producer cuts, you're used to this, that it's kind of like the pregame before the interview actually starts.
Guest:There's some stuff that usually gets recorded.
Guest:And I try to start it wherever I find a nice, easy entry point.
Guest:And so sometimes you get stuff like this where it's fun, but it's not fun enough for me to say, let's start the episode there.
Guest:Then later in that talk,
Guest:Mark kind of repeats a story he's told many times, and I just felt like what it yielded here wasn't enough for me to keep in a very repetitive story, which is about Ethan Hawke.
Guest:And so you'll hear that coming up in this section with Ben Mendelsohn.
Guest:Let's see if I can make this happen.
Guest:Hopefully the fucking power won't go out and we'll be good.
Marc:Has it been a drama with all this shit?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I just got back from San Francisco yesterday, so I kind of missed the bulk of the nightmare or whatever it was.
Marc:The way they present any weather now, it's... Calamity.
Marc:Yeah, but it is apocalyptic, but I don't need to... I don't know.
Marc:I never heard of an atmospheric river before in my life.
Marc:An atmosphere.
Marc:An atmospheric river.
Marc:That's what they're saying.
Marc:Some combination of atmospheric rivers...
Marc:are joining above us.
Marc:And when I was driving down, when I got the news in San Francisco, I'm like, what the fuck does that even mean?
Marc:Because you see enough pictures of what's going on in the world and you're like, is there going to be a highway?
Guest:It's kind of like Ghostbusters, isn't it?
Guest:It's as though the big green guys are going to pop out of the sky.
Guest:Well, yeah, you want to wear cans?
Guest:Yeah, sure, why don't you?
Guest:I mean, maybe, yeah.
Marc:And you can pull that mic in a bit.
Marc:Why don't you do that?
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:And how on, are you fully on mic?
Marc:Well, yeah, you know how to talk.
Marc:I like to be on mic.
Marc:I think it sounds better.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How does that sound to you in your head?
Guest:It's, yeah.
Marc:It's okay?
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's OK.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let me let me.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So I yeah.
Marc:I mean, the weird thing about this, the weather and about about what's going on in the world is there are certain things that we obviously have no control over.
Marc:And I was just in San Francisco and, you know, you see some of these cities that are having tremendous problems even here.
Marc:is that there's really nothing anybody can do in a way but adapt.
Marc:So, you know, people are just walking by.
Marc:You just hope that it doesn't wash your house away.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, you know, up where I am, I'm over, you know, I'm a few suburbs away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, if it comes down fast enough, that's it.
Guest:Bam.
Guest:Straight through.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Straight through.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:So when you, like, how, like, in terms of learning on the job or doing these roles and taking something from everything you do, I mean, do you feel, like, one time... I wouldn't say I take something from everything I do.
Guest:I think sometimes you just, you know, you're just doing a job.
Guest:You're turning up for a cricket match, you know?
Marc:But something I always remember is I talked to Ethan Hawke once.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And before, he can do it.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Can he do it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can he do it?
Marc:And he was talking about leading up to doing Training Day with Denzel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he was watching Denzel movies like they were game tapes.
Marc:So he could study how Denzel owned the scene so he didn't get eaten alive.
Guest:No, because he manages to grab a spot.
Guest:And that's really smart because the way he's able to hold his counterpoint and sort of be in a very different vibe and have his own very alive concern going on.
Guest:while Denzel's leading him through this path of, you know, we're stitching you up, you're either in or you're out.
Guest:But he holds his space really well because he sort of like disengages from him a lot.
Guest:Then he engages again, disengages.
Guest:So you're very alive to what's going on with him.
Guest:And in fact, he does kind of, he does.
Guest:I mean, it's a powerhouse movie.
Guest:God, it's an enjoyable movie.
Guest:I've watched it all the time.
Guest:I mean, it's just, you know.
Guest:And those two guys together, Anton, I don't know how to pronounce the director's last name.
Guest:Fuqua.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuqua and Denzel Washington.
Guest:But just Denzel unbridled.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:It's joyous.
Guest:It's joyous.
Guest:You want to know what else?
Guest:Kurt Russell in Death Proof, when he's in the car and getting smashed up, and he...
Guest:It's the most joyous, over-performed, just having fun, schlock moment.
Guest:That's one of the great moments in cinema in the last 30 years for me is once he gets crashed up and smashed up and he's bashing around everywhere.
Guest:And you can just tell how much he's loving.
Guest:They're just taking the piss.
Guest:And it's fucking awesome.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Similar to that Ethan Hawke story.
Guest:This was from episode 1519 in the monologue.
Guest:This is the episode with Rory Scovel.
Guest:But in the monologue, Mark reiterates a story he's told many times before, and it's about a sprint commercial he did back in 2004.
Guest:I like this story.
Guest:I think it's a great story for people who haven't heard it, but he has told it a lot.
Guest:And so even though there are definitely people listening that didn't know this story, I
Guest:I didn't think it was worth keeping in the monologue proper.
Guest:But now here it is.
Guest:And if you've never heard this, this is Mark talking about how he got cast in a Sprint commercial.
Marc:So, you know, back off.
Marc:So little we have control over.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's the same with, you know, vitamins.
Marc:Some guy, we did Solgar commercials.
Marc:And he's like, you know, you're a vitamin guy.
Marc:Like, I take him.
Marc:I take him.
Marc:This all goes back to the Sprint commercial.
Marc:In terms of honesty around advertising.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:All the ads that we do here, you know, I have engaged with.
Marc:And it all comes... It was that, like, back in the day when I didn't have a pot to piss in and I was working in the front room at the goddamn Cap City Comedy Club.
Marc:Couldn't even draw fucking 15 people.
Marc:Just by coincidence, they were shooting a Sprint commercial there.
Marc:Told this story.
Marc:And...
Marc:What is that director's name?
Marc:Barbara Coppola.
Marc:Famous documentary director.
Marc:I've interviewed her.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Told her about this.
Marc:She comes up to me.
Marc:She goes, you do commercials?
Marc:I'm like, not generally.
Marc:She goes, we're shooting one in town.
Marc:I could use you for a day of work.
Marc:I'm like, what's it for?
Marc:She said, Sprint.
Marc:I'm like, I use Sprint.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:I still use it.
Marc:Don't I?
Marc:No.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:T-Mobile now on my phone.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Is Sprint T-Mobile now?
Marc:Did Sprint shift?
No.
Marc:Doesn't fucking matter.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:I take vitamins.
Marc:I like the calorie counting.
Marc:It's who I am, people.
Marc:It is who I am.
Marc:I am preparing for the vanity to break down, though.
Marc:I know that I've had all this, like, because I discussed it in my last special.
Marc:Whatever I think I look like, I don't look like that.
Marc:I know I'm aging.
Marc:I'm trying to, you know, I've got it in my head.
Marc:This is how my brain works.
Marc:I kind of put it in there, and then eventually it will come to pass.
Marc:If I'm really, you know, if I need to do it, it will eventually happen.
Marc:And I'm starting to just realize, like, look, dude, you can't, you know, you're not going to be able to maintain that six-pack ab situation you've got going on.
Marc:The eight-pack ab situation you've got going on forever.
Marc:You know, you're not going to be yoked and ripped for your whole life.
Marc:I'm not.
Marc:But I got to let some things go, man.
Marc:And I think that if anything, this foot injury has slowed me down a bit, but not much, but has made me more deliberate, more conscious and sort of more appreciative of like, look, dude, nothing wrong with a recumbent bike.
Marc:You don't got to fucking run up that goddamn mountain.
Marc:You got nothing to prove.
Marc:You know, I'm going to be terrified of that mountain running down like me and Dan used to.
Marc:I can't I don't want to break anything else.
Marc:I guess the big decision is going to be around those toes, right?
Marc:It's always the toes, isn't it?
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But I'll let it go.
Marc:I'm going to ease into it, man.
Marc:I'm just going to let it droop, folks.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Let it droop.
Marc:Let it sag.
Marc:Let it slump.
Marc:Let it slump over.
Marc:It's all right.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:Jesus loves me.
Marc:The Bible told me so.
Marc:Sorry, a little bit of American movie came out of me.
Marc:Look, Rory Scovel.
Marc:Shit, where's my copy?
Guest:All right, the episode with Thurston Moore, episode 1520, was going to be a very big, packed episode.
Guest:So I was definitely looking for spaces to cut in the monologue.
Guest:And as I've told you, this month of March, Mark was doing a lot of soul searching and a lot of kind of...
Guest:hammering through his emotional state at the time.
Guest:Right here, you'll hear him talk about the stress of going back out on the road.
Guest:He's back out on the road for the tour that was commencing this spring, and he's at the early stages of it.
Guest:So I don't think he was feeling quite so confident.
Guest:And so this was kind of the result of it.
Guest:And so in a spot where I'm looking to cut things, keep this Thurston Moore episode down to a reasonable length, this was the stuff that had to go.
Marc:What I put myself through before I go on the road, it's just crazy.
Marc:You start putting together these big sets.
Marc:I don't know what your job is, but I'm sure that if it's taxing and engaged, that prep and thinking about the job is half your life.
Marc:and doing these longer sets when i do them in la as workshops at largo or the elysian or something you know i don't have any real sense of what they are going to unfold as in the real environment in the environment of you know 800 to 2 000 people so there's a nervousness that comes i don't know if the shit is solid in the way that it should be for crowds that big or where my head is at in terms of
Marc:how I'm going to perform them.
Marc:So I'm pretty stressed out.
Marc:I get very kind of like, I'm too old for this shit, man.
Marc:I'm going to be driving around in a rental car all along the eastern seaboard to do these gigs.
Marc:And I'm like, man, I'm just tired.
Marc:But it's kind of amazing how these patterns repeat themselves.
Marc:And I assume that many people...
Marc:have a similar situation where you're sort of like, I do the same shit in my head every year in relation to this particular part of the work where I just think I'm done.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:And then this weird thing happens.
Marc:I flew out of LAX into DC and then from DC to Portland, Maine, and then grabbed a rental car.
Marc:hung out, scrambled to go eat at a vegan restaurant.
Marc:That's become a whole other, that's a new addition.
Marc:Scrambling to find the vegan joint or somebody who can accommodate my ideological eating disorder at this point in my life.
Marc:And when I get into a hotel room, and it was a nice hotel.
Marc:Where'd we stay at in Portland?
Marc:The Press, it's a new hotel.
Marc:Sadly, it was, I think, the newspaper building.
Marc:And now it's just a boutique hotel, which they were still working on.
Marc:Maybe if you're a hotel, tell the people, hey, you know, we're happy you're staying at our hotel, but we will be hammering starting at 8 a.m., probably right above you in the room right above you.
Marc:And it's going to be.
Marc:Yeah, we're we're actually it's not a renovation.
Marc:It is kind of because it wasn't a hotel before, but we're building the hotel.
Marc:So I hope you don't mind that when you stay here.
Marc:But other than that, it was pretty nice.
Marc:Good people took care of me.
Marc:And I wasn't a diva, but I had my moments.
Marc:You know, you check into a room.
Marc:These older buildings that aren't built as hotels sometimes have thin walls.
Marc:And I checked into a room, and right as I was settling down, I don't know what was happening.
Marc:in the room next door to me, but it was several women laughing, talking.
Marc:I don't know how long it was going to go for, but instead of being a fucking baby and call the front desk and go, could you tell that people to quiet down?
Marc:Like an old man, I instead said, I need another room.
Marc:So that's, you know, that's nice.
Marc:But then you're that guy.
Marc:That's the guy.
Marc:That's the guy who's here to do a show who needed another room because apparently women having a good time in the room next to him was just too much.
Marc:He just couldn't handle it.
Marc:Not true.
Marc:I just wanted to sleep and focus, which is the other interesting thing about being on the road.
Marc:And that I forget as a grown person when I was younger, I would go on the road and be like, where am I?
Marc:What am I doing?
Marc:This is weird.
Marc:How come I'm walking around this?
Marc:It wasn't usually they'd put you up in a hotel on the outskirts of town usually.
Marc:And you're just walking around in a city where people drove.
Marc:But now it's different.
Marc:And I get to a hotel room and I'm like, holy shit.
Yeah.
Marc:This is nice.
Marc:I can think.
Marc:I didn't really realize that.
Marc:And I should remember it or you should remind me that when I go on the road, like I all my at home responsibilities, my life, everything else just recedes.
Marc:And I can kind of put things together.
Marc:I can kind of write.
Marc:I can read.
Marc:I can make decisions about the work in terms of performing it that night.
Marc:And it's quite nice.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's what I'm telling you.
Marc:So what was I talking about?
Marc:Oh, Empire Guitars.
Marc:You know, you get to a certain point in your life as a guitar player, and I know I'm not great, but I can play the way I play.
Marc:But eventually you work up the confidence, right?
Marc:But some guys don't give a shit.
Marc:But eventually you do enter a guitar store with confidence that you can maybe try a guitar.
Marc:You know, sit down with an electric guitar plugged into an amplifier and noodle around with a certain amount of confidence in a guitar shop.
Marc:Now...
Marc:I know there's always going to be guys that are better than me and there's always going to be guys playing guitars in a guitar shop.
Marc:But I was feeling pretty confident about trying out this guitar.
Marc:I don't remember what I played.
Marc:What was I playing?
Marc:Oh, yeah, it was an SG Junior from the 60s.
Marc:And I just wanted to try it out.
Marc:I'm glad I didn't buy it.
Marc:It was close.
Marc:I was on the edge of that.
Marc:I find the same experience with hotel gyms because right now with my foot in recovery, I can only do a recumbent bike.
Marc:And a couple of times when I went to the hotel gym, I was relieved they didn't have one because you know what?
Marc:I didn't want to fucking do it.
Marc:But there I was, not buying guitar, not buying a guitar, but playing one loudly in a guitar store.
Marc:And I felt pretty good.
Marc:I wasn't trying to entertain anybody, but I got into a groove.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, man, I can do this.
Marc:And if people hear it, they're going to be like, well, that guy can do a thing.
Marc:Yeah, he's got a thing he does, that amateur guitar player.
Marc:But I did spot, as I was playing, I spotted one of those guys.
Marc:Two guys came in.
Marc:Big guy who I kind of read pretty quickly was not an amazing guitar player.
Marc:But then there was a little lanky fucker with the long hair and the mousy face.
Marc:Just one of those guys who looks like one of the guys that you always knew in high school where that he's going to pick up guitar and play Van Halen's Eruption.
Marc:He may not be...
Marc:you know, in an amazing band or anything, but there are just these dudes and there's a lot more of them now where you're just sort of like, okay, that guy, that guy's going to do something soon.
Marc:And, you know, to his credit, he took his time while I was playing in the back room and he was looking at an electric sitar or something, not really plugging anything in.
Marc:And,
Marc:Then I put the guitar I was playing on the rack and felt pretty good about myself and was kind of looking around.
Marc:And I noticed that the lanky guy had made his way back to where the amp was and he had a guitar.
Marc:And then, yeah, then it started happening.
Marc:I heard him playing all of my five licks.
Marc:that he had absorbed into his mind and just adding these flourishes and fills and runs and just basically doing a quietly doing a little concert in the back room for all of us guys it's just you know the swagger the the subtle kind of uh quiet swinging of the dick in the back of the guitar store
Marc:And he was just going at it.
Marc:And, you know, it's just part of a guitar store, the guitar store thing.
Marc:But I heard what he was doing.
Marc:I knew what was going on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:OK, that's that's sort of the riff I was doing.
Marc:OK, yeah, you added all that.
Marc:Yes, that's amazing.
Marc:I could never play that.
Marc:And OK, yeah.
Marc:And then this might be just me.
Marc:There's part of me in my head.
Marc:It's like I'm right here, man.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Yes, you can play faster and more stuff than me.
Marc:You seem to know a lot more stuff than me.
Marc:And I just had to kind of rest in my heart that like knowing, I had to know for myself that, but I got real feel, man.
Marc:I'm playing with real soul.
Marc:Those of us simple players that can only do a few things, we got to put all we got into those few things.
Marc:And I can hear you thinking, man.
Marc:I can hear you thinking.
Marc:Guitar stores.
Guest:Okay, look.
Guest:But I don't want the episode to be alienating to non-Sonic Youth people, people who are just trying to keep up with a narrative here.
Guest:If you heard Chris and I talking about this on the Friday show a few weeks ago, you know, Chris was one of those people who had no idea about Sonic Youth, and he was piecing together a lot of this history.
Guest:He went and made a huge playlist of the music they talked about.
Guest:When you listen to these 13 minutes, you realize it's just overloading.
Guest:in the episode proper but i do feel it's like interesting stuff especially if you're into the time frame and the music and the content that they're talking about this to me really feels like a documentary extra footage like if you watched a doc and then you go to the special features and there's like
Guest:another 10 minutes of a section where they talked about something and it gives it a little more detail.
Guest:But when you realize it wasn't exactly necessary for the film, that's what I have here in this section with Mark talking to Thurston Moore about all sorts of musical acts.
Marc:But, but those were the, like, it seems like daydream nation goo and dirt.
Marc:Now, which one was the one on SST?
Marc:How many did you do on SST?
Marc:Oh, uh, like, uh, we, three, maybe.
Guest:I mean, evil sister and evil sister.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:No, not the Wadi album.
Guest:That's Paul Smith coming over from England and trying to set up his label Blast First in the U.S.
Guest:So when you did SST, did you meet like, you know, Mascus and Watt and all those people there?
Guest:Mascus is Dinosaur Jr.
Guest:We're already like tight with the dinosaur and then they become Dinosaur Jr.
Guest:because the Frank Zappa musicians who start Dinosaur, the dinosaurs or whatever, tried to sue them.
Guest:And so Jay brilliantly came up with a
Guest:like Will B. Dinosaur Jr.
Marc:I never really understood until just like today or yesterday because I've interviewed Jay twice.
Marc:But like, you know, he's directly musically indebted to you guys in a way.
Guest:Well, we knew about them when they were a hardcore band called Deep Wound and Jay was the drummer.
Guest:And then Jay started
Guest:He became a songwriter playing guitar fabulously and called his thing Dinosaur.
Guest:And Gerard Cosley, who was a friend of ours who had put out Bad Moon Rising on his label, Homestead, at the time before there was any Matador.
Right.
Guest:He played us that first Dinosaur record.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:The first Dinosaur record is just called Dinosaur.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it starts off with that song, Forget the Swan.
Guest:Forget the Swan.
Guest:It's just such a beautiful, beautiful song.
Guest:And I remember hearing that record and thinking like, who are these guys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is as good as it gets as far as that kind of songwriting.
Guest:And playing in that world of Who's Your Do and Minutemen, et cetera.
Guest:All of a sudden, there's this band coming out of Massachusetts called Dinosaur.
Guest:And we went to see them at Folk City, which was doing this weekly Wednesday series of underground music.
Guest:And nobody knew who they were.
Guest:And they were just utterly amazing.
Guest:Really just like...
Guest:playing really this long quiet thing with jay just kind of intoning you know with his cracked voice and then he would just like reach over with his foot and just just hit whatever he hit on the on his pedals and it would just be this it was like motorhead times 10 you know yeah yeah then he would like shred you know this lead that was just like hair raising yeah and i was like wait lead guitar who plays lead nobody plays lead guitar anymore this guy's playing lead guitar in a way that was just like phenomenal um
Guest:I remember seeing Dinosaur in London at All Tomorrow's Parties Festival.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Viv Albertine, the guitarist and founder of the Slits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like day one punk rock legends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was there.
Guest:And I know she's a friend.
Guest:And we were hanging out.
Guest:I said, oh, you got to see this band Dinosaur.
Guest:They're amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're really good.
Guest:They're like one of the best bands from the USA.
Guest:You got to see them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She goes, OK.
Guest:And we go and we stand by the monitor board.
Guest:And they come out.
Guest:They play.
Guest:And they're great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Jay is ripping just the sickest lead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Viv Albertine tiptoes up to my ear and starts yelling, like, this is terrible.
Guest:I thought we got rid of all this a long time ago.
Guest:Like, what's he doing?
Guest:Like, why is he playing like that?
Guest:I was like, oh.
Guest:Some people still haven't really, like—
Guest:You know, they're not ready for that change.
Guest:It was kind of like a change back to pre-punk.
Marc:Yeah, but he's so informed by you and by Neil Young and by Sonic fucking weirdness.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, he's somebody who... But at the same time, he's so...
Guest:He's so singular that he's the – I've seen so many bands come out of the dinosaur sound.
Guest:I don't know if Sonic Youth was really that influential or important to Mascus and Dinosaur.
Guest:I think maybe the fact that we facilitated –
Guest:a lot of their progression.
Guest:We got SST to sign them.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah, because they were already on Homestead with us.
Guest:That was Gerard's finding.
Guest:And Gerard adored that band.
Guest:He was like, that was his favorite band.
Guest:The fact that we were able to convince Greg Ginn at SST to sign Dinosaur, who were our besties, and we were touring around in vans together,
Guest:And he did.
Guest:And Jay was only too excited to be on the same label with Black Flag and the Minutemen.
Guest:Who wouldn't be?
Guest:You know, like at that time, like 1988.
Guest:Gerard wasn't too happy about it.
Guest:I mean, he accepted it.
Guest:I remember Jay having to call him.
Guest:and gerard's response is like oh great yeah like i just lost my favorite band to like the powers of yeah ssd but of course he would start matador later and like become like one of the the vanguard homestead did they do the feelies too or i can't remember no i think i have other homestead salem 66 i remember i worked with all them emily kaplan beth kaplan oh yeah yeah they were great
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Salem 66 were cool.
Marc:I worked at a restaurant with them and Tanya Donnelly.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:In Boston.
Marc:Tanya Donnelly from Belly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And from the Throwing Muses, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So, like, it was weird.
Marc:I was in Boston at that time, you know, finishing college in the early 80s, and there was a restaurant, and they were all coming through there.
Marc:So, were you a Boston crew kid?
Marc:Were you going to see SSD and—
Marc:No, I wasn't.
Marc:I was working on comedy, so my entire music vocabulary becomes muted because I'm sitting in comedy clubs watching mostly men talk in front of brick walls.
Marc:But I did see some... I saw Albini at the Rat.
Marc:I remember there was some offshoot of... David Robinson from the Cars and the Modern Lovers had some band.
Marc:I remember seeing them.
Marc:I remember seeing...
Marc:Well, I used to see Till Tuesday.
Marc:I used to see her, Amy Mann, going to do her laundry.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I liked Buffalo Tom.
Guest:You know, I liked that band.
Guest:They were Western Mass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a band from Cambridge called Vitamin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They were good.
Marc:The Cave Dogs were friends of mine.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:The Cave Dogs were good.
Marc:They were a great pop band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really sort of like the Boston history.
Guest:The Plasmatics were around.
Marc:Well, Plasmatics, they were in New York.
Marc:Scruffy the Cat.
Marc:Not Plasmatics.
Marc:I mean Dogmatics.
Guest:With the twins.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Scruffy the Cat was around.
Marc:The Liars were always around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With the turbines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was cool.
Guest:It was definitely cool.
Guest:And then the Western Mass scene was its own thing, and that's where Dinosaur came about.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's where we connected.
Guest:I mean, we eventually lived there for 10 years.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah, and Northampton.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So, yeah, that's how that progressed.
Marc:And later in the runs, what difference did Jim O'Rourke make?
Marc:Because he's kind of a wizard.
Wow.
Guest:when I had I had heard about Jim O'Rourke through like the experimental music underground world and I always thought he was like some kind of doddering old man like playing sort of electronic music and I was and so I was booked to play this this traveling experimental music festival called Table of the Elements and we started out in Atlanta and it was like you know AMM from London was playing and they were like this old school trio of just like prepared guitar and keyboards and electronics and
Guest:And percussion and, you know, there was the famous Krautrock band.
Guest:Can?
Guest:No, it was Faust.
Guest:Faust.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Faust, yeah.
Guest:And then Jim O'Rourke was playing and a few other things.
Guest:And, yeah, this kind of young kid in a suit coat that was like three sizes too big for him kind of shuffled over to me.
Guest:He's like, hello, Thurston Moore.
Guest:And he started talking to me about...
Guest:our records and I was like yeah yeah and I was just like how did this kid get backstage you know and then I said what's your name he was like oh Jim O'Rourke and I was like oh you're Jim O'Rourke I thought you were like some old man with patches on your elbows like you know working in a sound lab or something and then he played like a prepared guitar and tapes and implements and stuff on a tabletop piece really austere just like yeah
Guest:You know, like for like 45 minutes.
Guest:I was like, okay, this is kind of cool.
Guest:And we just sort of kind of stayed in touch.
Guest:He was a Chicago kid and he sort of came to New York and we invited them to the studio and I introduced him to everybody.
Guest:And I said, we're working on...
Guest:this and that, and would you want to record with us?
Guest:You know, we did a session with him.
Guest:And we had already started this kind of label called SYR, Sonic Youth Recordings, for putting out music that Geffen had no interest in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and we didn't really... Anything Geffen wanted to put out, they had to campaign it and do, like, advertising.
Guest:And we're like, they...
Guest:We're like, well, we want to – there's some music we want to put out that doesn't really necessitate that at all.
Guest:I mean, it doesn't make sense because it's really these long instrumental stuff.
Guest:But we definitely want to put it out.
Guest:So they let us start our own label.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:And we just put it out.
Guest:So Jim O'Rourke got involved with us at that juncture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He started –
Guest:And then we had him mix some session with us.
Guest:And at that point, Kim had stopped playing the bass guitar and started just playing electric six string.
Guest:So it was three electric guitars and drums.
Guest:And all the low end was sort of propagated by Steve's bass drum, his kick drum, for a couple of years there.
Guest:And we were only playing the music from those albums, Washing Machine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and audiences were like, can you please play Teenage Riot or Cool Thing or these old... We're like, no, we don't have time.
Guest:We only want to play this new music.
Guest:Don't give the audience what they want.
Guest:We did not.
Guest:But my whole thing was like, when you would go see a band when you were young, you didn't...
Guest:Sometimes you didn't know anything about them, and they were great, and you were just hearing it all new for the first time.
Guest:And you'd go home and be like, wow, that was amazing.
Guest:And I wanted that to be the experience.
Guest:For the newbies?
Guest:I wanted to be a new band every time we came to town.
Guest:But the reality of that is there was always this kind of pre-consideration of who you are.
Guest:Yeah, because you're a known thing.
Guest:Yeah, so we refuted that.
Guest:But he did a few records with you, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did a few records.
Guest:He was mixing one of the records, and he said, do you mind if I put some bass guitar in this?
Guest:Because it could really use it.
Guest:And I was just like, whoa, OK.
Guest:People have been saying that to us for the last two years.
Guest:It's like, bring back the bass.
Guest:I said, well, do you know how to play?
Guest:And he was like, it's my main instrument, you know, bass guitar.
Guest:And he went in and played this really beautiful, you know, kind of complex bass line.
Guest:I was like, whoa.
Guest:I said, well, how are we going to play that live?
Guest:You know, like none of us could play that.
Guest:He's like, you're just going to have to get in the tour van with us.
Guest:And one thing led to the other.
Guest:And all of a sudden he was in the group and he was kind of helping us compose the next couple albums.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:But then he left.
Guest:He kind of got burnt out on...
Guest:On that kind of just constant tour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I've had some of his cell records.
Guest:Interesting guy.
Guest:Super interesting guy.
Guest:Then he moved to Japan.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Good for him.
Guest:And he was fascinated by Japanese culture.
Guest:I guess he still is.
Guest:He's still there.
Marc:And when you say open tunings, like you're not talking about open chord tunings, right?
Marc:I don't know what I'm talking about.
Guest:Open tunings, I think...
Guest:Or alternative tunings.
Guest:Let's say alternative.
Guest:Alternative.
Guest:Open tunings are more of like a blues construct where you're kind of— Yeah, like Keith Richards will have open tunings.
Marc:Five strings, open G. Well, what's an alternate tuning?
Guest:I would—at first, it was just basically getting a guitar.
Guest:The first guitars we had were just so, like—
Guest:cheap jack that they didn't sound good in traditional tuning.
Guest:And so – but by – I would just close my eyes and turn the tuning pegs and open strum and kept doing it until like some kind of six-string kind of like unfretted open like chord just sounded cool.
Guest:And then I would –
Guest:I would make it more, I would bring it right into like a strict notation of it.
Guest:So it would be like a C, G, D, G, C, D. And I was like, oh, that sounds good.
Guest:And then I would start like doing different like fingerings on it.
Guest:And like different things would happen that would never happen in a traditional tuning.
Guest:And you could create like sounds, chordal soundings, voicings, whatever you want to call it.
Guest:that could never be accomplished in a traditional tour.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:So I was like, that was really, to me, it was more surprising and more interesting.
Guest:And it automatically set us apart from any kind of sense of traditional guitar cording sounds.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Which I have nothing against at all.
Guest:But I like that you were just winging it.
Guest:We were kind of winging it, for sure.
Guest:Yeah, we were definitely kind of winging it.
Guest:So Mark says something in this monologue from episode 1521 with Todd Glass.
Guest:He says, look, I don't want to bum anyone out.
Guest:And again, that's usually a cue for me that this monologue is getting a little down.
Guest:And look, we're not trying to hide who Mark is.
Guest:I don't think that's possible, quite frankly.
Guest:But sometimes I do keep an ear out for the things that might just be horrible.
Guest:hard listens, right?
Guest:And to be perfectly honest with you, what he's talking about in this section has already taken on a better, more shapely form in his act.
Guest:So, you know, if you're going to see Mark doing comedy right now, you're going to hear him do something similar to this, but it's much more thought out.
Guest:It's shaped.
Guest:It actually feels like a comedy piece, not just like a guy kind of working through his thoughts on something.
Guest:So,
Guest:That's what was cut out of this episode with Todd Glass.
Guest:But here it is now for you to listen to.
Marc:It's been an odd few days.
Marc:I'm having one of those moments where I don't know how to explain it.
Marc:But look, I'm going on the road quite a bit.
Marc:And I know that these tour dates get to be a bit much.
Marc:But I was starting to feel...
Marc:I was talking about this on stage.
Marc:It's not particularly funny.
Marc:A lot of times my audience, certainly in places like where it becomes very apparent in a place like Providence where we're in this weird sort of theater that's set up in a peculiar way.
Marc:And I feel like my audience is huddled there.
Marc:in a storm.
Marc:It was a storm, but there's a storm in general.
Marc:And I just started to think about, look, there's things on the horizon that are going to cause a lot of chaos and terrible things in America, possibly.
Marc:But we all kind of integrate that.
Marc:You kind of take that in every day.
Marc:And it's a very odd time to be alive and to be a grown-up in a lot of ways because so many things are changing.
Marc:So many things are happening that are out of our wheelhouse or new technologies that we have to sort of adapt to or reckon with.
Marc:And that just can be as simple as social media platforms to the reality of AI.
Marc:And as I get older, I find myself slowly pulling away from
Marc:But then I started to think on stage, it's a very weird thing that's happening.
Marc:And I've noticed it here where I live.
Marc:I don't know where you live.
Marc:But once, you know, culturally or politically, certainly with the Trump presidency, once norms start to get shattered or revealed for what they are, just...
Marc:They're in place because people are relatively decent and try to follow the rules for the safety of others and themselves.
Marc:And certain things, you know, are just understood to sort of move through things.
Marc:civilization in a practical and reasonable way.
Marc:But at the rate that the Trump administration was destroying them, the repercussions obviously were going to be many.
Marc:And there's a lot of issues that are nuanced and political specifically.
Marc:But what I've noticed is people just don't give a fuck about things like stop signs and red lights or being rude in a store.
Marc:You know, everybody is like shamelessly a dick.
Marc:Because it's just it's been unleashed.
Marc:And I don't know how you can put that back into the bottle.
Marc:I don't know that when people who were fundamentally a little bit fucked up, rude, mean, intolerant, feel empowered to be that way.
Marc:And there's no real pushback other than stunned faces or the occasional do-gooder or not.
Marc:or a local hero that steps in to take care of stuff.
Marc:I mean, I never understood why are people losing it on airplanes?
Marc:I don't understand that.
Marc:I imagine on some level, it's the same as other animals freaking out, the same as orcas beating up boats at the same as, uh, as certain other wildlife, uh, freaking out in their environment or shifting.
Marc:Like I, there's a, there's a frequency of chaos that,
Marc:that is encouraged and nourished by certain people within our politics and our culture to sort of maintain control or assume power.
Marc:It creates not a power vacuum, but it's certainly a insanity situation where people can sort of step in and quietly subvert or take control.
Marc:But this whole thing about...
Marc:you know, just running red lights or just not giving a fuck about other people, it seems sort of rampant and kind of disturbing.
Marc:And I just started to follow that thought through.
Marc:Look, I don't want to bum anybody out, but the feeling I'm getting and the feeling that I'm sensing in my audiences in terms of what they, you know, what they want to hear and what it is that's going on, you know, internally with them and the sort of
Marc:Number crushing, the sort of numbers I've been crushing based on based on environmental factors and human behavior is and and listen to me on this, but try not to get too upset.
Marc:But there's no one coming to help us.
Marc:We're all kind of on our own.
Marc:You know, hopefully you have a few decent people around that when some sort of shit goes down, if it's not too terrible or dangerous or deadly, that somebody will step in or maybe you'll rise to the occasion.
Marc:But I've definitely got the feeling, just moving through the world, that, you know...
Marc:Help is not on the way.
Marc:And that's sort of hard to deal with when you you live in a civilized place, supposedly.
Marc:And there's a lot of reasons why these systems are breaking down.
Marc:But help is not on the way.
Marc:I don't I don't know how many times I got to say it before I call my next special that.
Marc:But but look, I mean, I know some of you I'm trying to find cold comfort in being practical about the future of this world in this country.
Marc:You know, I mean, I think a lot of people, myself included, say, well, I'm getting out.
Marc:Yeah, are you?
Marc:Where are you going to go?
Marc:And then sometimes I think like, well, you know, maybe there's another way to look at this.
Marc:We've just gotten lucky for the past couple of hundred years.
Marc:And most countries in this world are under authoritarian governments.
Marc:And maybe you've got to think in terms of like.
Marc:Hey, are there people that have your job in Hungary?
Marc:Are there people that have your same occupation in Russia?
Marc:You think they're doing okay plugging along?
Marc:It's a cold comfort, and I don't even know if it's a comfort or if it's a rationalization, but...
Marc:There's part of my brain that's starting to have to adjust to the worst possible scenario without necessarily panicking or freaking out or being dramatic or saying like, I'm out of here or whatever.
Marc:I mean, I think most people, it's not that they suck it up, but yeah, it kind of is.
Marc:I mean, you adapt.
Marc:I mean, we adapt.
Marc:And obviously, I'm not I'm not I'm not hoping for the worst.
Marc:I hope the worst doesn't happen.
Marc:It is going to take me a bit of time to get over the fact that or the the the existential anxiety of the reality that like, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know if help is on the way.
Marc:So if you want a bit of relief from that, in a way, without disregarding entirely, you can come see me do comedy.
Guest:I want you to listen to this part from the monologue in episode 1522 with Dave Attell.
Guest:And you'll notice Mark's thought process is kind of scattered.
Guest:He's trying to tie together this idea of animal kindness, some concept he had about the animals.
Guest:And I mean, just the fact that I'm having a hard time explaining it to you tells you it's a little loose.
Guest:And so that's why this came out.
Guest:But maybe you can make something of it because, you know, I know a lot of you share Mark's affinity for animals, particularly cats.
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:As a species.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:You know, it's weird, this animal stuff.
Marc:I don't really know.
Marc:I don't really know if because I've been vegan for over a year now.
Marc:I've not gone to Fish King in over a year, a year and a few months.
Marc:And my sensitivity to animals has increased.
Marc:It was always pretty high, but Jesus Christ.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:It's not true.
Marc:I was always pretty weird about animals in a good way.
Marc:I remember when I was going through a divorce.
Marc:with uh with my second wife with mishnah and i was going broke and i was living in that old house and the money was just hemorrhaging and i i thought well fuck it man just get an apartment and i had an outdoor cat then boomer the famous boomer had been uh living outside and
Marc:And I didn't know.
Marc:I thought, well, even if I go broke, I don't know how I can sell this house because I don't know where Boomer would live.
Marc:What would I do with Boomer?
Marc:I've got to keep this house no matter how tapped I get because I don't want Boomer to be uncomfortable out there by himself.
Marc:Or what would I do with Boomer?
Marc:That's a little crazy.
Marc:But I think about that a lot.
Marc:And I've got to resolve some of that in my head.
Marc:Let's talk about that more in a few minutes, shall we?
Marc:This problem I have, I don't know what's keeping me tethered to reality.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:Do you?
Marc:What are you holding on to?
Marc:My God, no one's coming to help us.
Marc:Oh, God damn it.
Marc:Look, so this animal thing that I mentioned earlier, I've got to figure out how to detach in general.
Marc:Like I will my brain with the anxiety and the insanity.
Marc:Also, my foot.
Marc:The doc told me two weeks ago to take the boot off, and it's still a little achy.
Marc:Is that normal with the broken bone?
Marc:I'm assuming it is.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm going in today to get, I hope, the last set of x-rays and the good news.
Marc:I mean, it holds weight, but it doesn't feel quite right.
Marc:I don't know what I'm expecting.
Marc:I'm 60.
Marc:This is not where everything picks up.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:This is the best part.
Marc:I don't think so.
Marc:But I get very... It's not that I necessarily miss the cats, but I know they miss me.
Marc:And I will build my life around that.
Marc:I will not do things sometimes because I don't want to be too far away from the cats for too long.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:People with wives, kids...
Marc:Different types of animals go away for months.
Marc:They figure it out.
Marc:What the fuck is, why do I hold on to these?
Marc:I imagine it's just the nature of my emotional dysfunction and that I have to, you know, this is my world.
Marc:I've got to kind of hold on tight to the few things that I have control over.
Marc:Cats aren't really one of them, but I don't know.
Marc:I worry about them, but it's crazy.
Marc:When I had the original crew, I used to leave them for weeks, but I had someone at the house.
Marc:Someone stays at the house now, but like,
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:Am I just going to move into that part of my life where I'm just like the old man with the cats doesn't go out as much as he used to?
Marc:Just sits around with his cats and reads books, watches a movie or two, make some food for himself.
Marc:Oddly, I think that's probably a best case scenario.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Marc:So what else is happening?
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:Everything's okay.
Marc:I'll let you know.
Marc:I'll let you know what happens with the foot.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And finally, this chunk that I took out of episode 1523 with Eddie Pepitone, I had put in my saved folder and I just labeled it hot, open, and more foot stuff.
Guest:Hot, open, and more foot stuff, meaning like this is coming out of the gate really hot and
Guest:Probably not the most pleasant way to turn the show on.
Guest:And then just more stuff about Mark's broken foot, which I think, you know, a little of it goes a long way.
Guest:And we don't need every minuscule update up to the minute in every episode.
Guest:So that's why I took care of that here and now presenting it to you on the full Marin.
Marc:You know, every day is different, right?
Marc:Isn't it?
Marc:God damn.
God damn.
Marc:I just cannot hold steady in terms of the mental disposition.
Marc:Every day is still like a week to me, but maybe that's because I live a different life.
Marc:I get up at 6.30, 7 o'clock, force myself to go to the gym or workout, and then onward into the day.
Marc:I
Marc:I don't know what's going on, but a lot of times I work at night as well, and then I come home, I'm jacked, I stay up until 1230, sleep five and a half hours again, and do it all again.
Marc:I'm getting two days into every one day.
Marc:I'm tired, man.
Marc:I'm all right.
Marc:How are you doing?
Marc:Is everything all right with that thing?
Marc:Did you get it taken care of?
Marc:I had to get shit taken care of.
Marc:I went back to the dock.
Marc:My house, the AC guy had to replace this 35-year-old unit in the attic.
Marc:That was an adventure.
Marc:God, homeownership, not complaining, but going to need a new roof soon.
Marc:Going to need a new roof soon.
Marc:That should be exciting.
Marc:There's a guy out there sanding something right now.
Marc:He's taking a break.
Marc:He's sanding.
Marc:And this is just maintenance.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I think I'm just going to, you know, the small shack thing is starting to sound appealing.
Marc:The fantasy of the simple shack.
Marc:With maybe a rug, a fireplace, limited access to technology.
Marc:I still have that part of me.
Marc:The fantasy about New York has gone away.
Marc:But the small shack fantasy is very much intact.
Marc:Just the quiet shack where no one can find me.
Marc:And then I become, yeah, I'll write a manifesto.
Marc:I'll go into town, go to a coffee shop, publish a manifesto, go back to the shack.
Marc:I don't think it'll be violent, the manifesto.
Marc:I don't know if it'll solve all the problems because I think I'm slowly becoming more and more out of the loop of not the solution, but the problems.
Marc:They've gotten to such a level where I can't keep up
Marc:with the fucking disaster which is not bad i'm having a hard time staying on the pulse of the fucking disaster oh my god so i went back
Marc:I went back to the doc to get x-rays of the foot.
Marc:And, you know, I'm not great at reading x-rays.
Marc:Why would I be?
Marc:But there is that moment where you get the x-rays and then the tech comes in, puts them up on the screen.
Marc:And I'm like, that fucking thing is still broken.
Marc:There's no way that's not broken still.
Marc:What the fuck is happening?
Marc:And the doctor comes in and he says, look, I know what you're thinking, but it's filling in.
Marc:But there is that there is the issue that, you know, it's not all the way filled in yet.
Marc:And I'm like, well, what should I be doing?
Marc:There's been a little pain.
Marc:There's been a little discomfort occasionally.
Marc:He's like, keep doing it.
Marc:And I'm like, well, can I should I should I run?
Marc:He's like, why not try it?
Marc:And I'm like, because I don't want to fuck my foot up.
Marc:Would be the primary reason?
Marc:He's like, no, just, I mean, it's on, he didn't say it's on me, but it's up to you.
Marc:See how it feels.
Marc:But this is a guy that, you know, is about kind of taking the boot off sooner than later to get stress on that foot.
Marc:And then like now I'm going to the gym without the boot.
Marc:So I guess now I'm like a trainer came up to me.
Marc:He said, so you're out of the boot, huh?
Marc:So has your ankle atrophied?
Marc:And I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:I think it's okay.
Marc:It's like I've broken both of my metatarsals and ankles start to atrophy in like two to four weeks.
Marc:And I'm like, okay.
Marc:He's like, are they doing physical therapy for you?
Marc:And I'm like, no one mentioned that.
Marc:He just said to use it.
Marc:He's like, well, you want to set up an appointment to work on the ankle to make sure some stabilization stuff?
Marc:I'm like, okay.
Marc:And then, you know, there's that moment where you're like, is this out of the goodness of his heart and concern or is this his job?
Marc:Either way, it's fine.
Marc:We'll see if it happens.
Marc:But now I'm concerned about ankle atrophy.
Marc:I think I'm all right.
Marc:Oh, yeah, and the arthritis on the toes.
Marc:Is this old man talk?
Marc:Have I hit the limit of discussing my problems?
Marc:All I know is I'm out.
Marc:Of the boots still.
Marc:The doc says to keep pushing on.
Marc:Keep doing it.
Marc:Come back in three weeks.
Guest:We'll see what happens.
Guest:All right.
Guest:That's going to do it for this episode.
Guest:Once these things push an hour, I feel like I've given you plenty.
Guest:But I will put the remainder of March...
Guest:producer's cuts into the April episode.
Guest:So that'll be next month.
Guest:You'll still hear stuff that happened in March with Tig Notaro and David Krumholtz, as well as some more Mark monologues.
Guest:Like I said, every episode in March had some producer cuts.
Guest:And so that's going to go into the April producer cuts episode, which airs next month here on the full Marin.
Guest:Another incentive for you to stick with us.
Guest:And I hope you're enjoying what you get every month here.
Guest:Thanks for being with us.
Guest:We'll talk to you again soon.