BONUS WTF Origins - The Marc Maron Show
Guest:So I told you to tap into whatever trauma you had around this topic.
Guest:And the topic is the Marc Maron show.
Guest:Did you do any tapping?
Marc:Yeah, well, I'm doing it now.
Marc:I mean, I did it today.
Marc:You told me this morning, you know, to get in the zone and KTLK.
Marc:I remember KTLK.
Marc:I remember you moving out here, you know, and you just had a baby and you were living in those.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I didn't have the baby yet.
Guest:I had just gotten married.
Marc:Oh, that was it.
Guest:Just gotten married.
Guest:I literally just got married.
Marc:And you just bolt and you're living in these furnished apartments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those were kind of cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found that charming.
Guest:What were they called?
Guest:Were you in the Oakwoods?
Guest:No, it was just called like Burbank Community Living or something like that.
Guest:Burbank Long-Term Living.
Guest:It was like you would live there if you had like a three-month stint on a Disney show or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like those other ones.
Marc:I think they're called the Oakwoods that some people lived in.
Marc:But I just remember that, you know, coming out of the morning show, coming out of morning sedition, this weird panic on the executive level when the shakeup at Air America happened and we had some clandestine group of consultants and marginal characters from the brass who wanted to keep us in the fold as the new CEO failed.
Yeah.
Marc:And the idea was that Scott Elberg, I don't even remember his position, president.
Guest:He was a vice president.
Guest:There were like a couple of vice presidents.
Marc:And then Scott Krantz.
Guest:Gary Krantz.
Marc:Gary Krantz.
Marc:I know his brother.
Marc:They had some sort of finagled something out here in L.A.
Marc:because we got fired off the morning show and we wanted to keep in the game.
Marc:And they finagled something with Don Martin at KTLK, the station manager.
Marc:who ran... Stephanie Miller had the morning show there.
Marc:So that was part of the condition of us getting anything, was that I had to make nice with Stephanie Miller.
Guest:And so what do you remember about this coming to you at the end of Morning Sedition?
Guest:Anybody wants to go back and listen to the recounting we did over three episodes about Morning Sedition, that's here in the full Marin bonus feed.
Guest:Just go back and find the Good Morning Geniuses episodes.
Guest:But in terms of...
Guest:How that ended, Danny Goldberg was named the CEO earlier that year, 2005, and he decided not respective of like what audience trends were or our ratings.
Guest:He just thought programmatically he wanted to change the makeup of Air America on air.
Guest:He wanted it to sound more like NPR.
Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And we had spent a year, what, a year and a half?
Marc:How long we were doing that?
Guest:Yeah, a little more than a year and a half.
Marc:Building this fairly great hybrid of news and hardcore comedy morning show.
Marc:Some sort of elevated riff on the classic morning show.
Marc:But yet from the progressive point of view...
Marc:And we were picking up momentum.
Guest:At the very time they decided to cancel it was when we were actually showing good signs of growth.
Guest:That guy you mentioned, Scott Elberg, he was a career radio guy, and he was the one pointing to the numbers, being like, this is good.
Guest:This is good growth.
Marc:And Goldberg coming out of music and bleeding heart, douchebaggery liberalism was like, I don't give a fuck.
Guest:Yeah, I think it embarrassed him.
Guest:I think the show was embarrassing to him.
Marc:Yeah, whatever, man.
Marc:I mean, I get what you're saying, but I just remember having to go in there and try to plead our case to that sort of Prozac Frankenstein.
Guest:Well, I remember you wrote him an email that said...
Guest:You're making this decision right as Howard Stern is leaving terrestrial radio and about to turn over his legion of listeners who a lot of them fit the profile of what we're targeting.
Guest:They're young.
Guest:They, you know, have a certain mindset.
Guest:Yeah, they like comedy.
Guest:And in terms of politics, they don't know anything yet.
Guest:They just know they like boobs and hanging out and whatever, right?
Yeah.
Guest:And he, the guy, he was the guy who wrote a book called how the left lost teen spirit, because his big claim to fame was being a Nirvana A&R guy.
Guest:And that was, we like was not lost on us that it's like this guy, how the left lost teen spirit can't figure out how to get kids to listen to radio with what's on here right now.
Marc:He was one of the spectacular boars of, of people with opportunity.
Marc:I don't know why they chose him.
Marc:I don't remember.
Marc:Um,
Marc:I guess he had money from the music business, but he had zero personality.
Marc:And just talking about him now, even though we did fine, you and I, we did great, but fuck him, man.
Marc:I mean, I can still find it.
Marc:I feel it right now, just looking at his dumb fucking mug and realizing that the decision was not based on anything, but his whims.
Marc:Now, look, he picked a winner with Rachel.
Marc:I mean, you can't...
Guest:disregard that that he well hang on though i wanted i want to disregard him a little bit with that because he he decided to replace our show in the mornings with a hybrid show of mark riley who was your co-host for two hours doing the straight news
Guest:That's Mark Reilly's theme song that he had invented for himself.
Marc:That his wife did.
Guest:Mark Reilly.
Guest:It was pretty great.
Guest:But yeah, and then Rachel was doing two hours, which you don't do in morning drive.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they were 7 to 9 a.m.
Guest:That was not a good time.
Guest:He put her in a terrible slot, then eventually moved her to the evenings, 6 o'clock, where she did much better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But this idea that she should come in and do this two-hour morning show, that was just as bad an idea as everything else.
Marc:Yeah, he fucked it.
Marc:He fucked us.
Marc:I mean, God knows there was other problems, and we'd been through a lot with that place.
Marc:But the one thing we did have by that point were chops.
Guest:And fans.
Guest:And fans.
Guest:There was a devoted, hard... I mean, that, I think, is the reason why we wound up doing the show in L.A., because...
Guest:people like there was there were petitions back when that mattered you know and uh and and the uh the petitions you know kept coming into the air america offices keep mark and mark on the air blah blah morning sedition and that that meant something and that
Guest:what i guess my question is i'm wondering because i remember it all kind of going down but i was outside of it you being in it like what were you hearing were you hearing from those people who were doing those like back channel deals to try to get you on in la were they telling you stick around because danny's gonna implode basically i remember and i don't know where it came within the arc of things
Marc:But I remember, you know, I packed up, I went back to Los Angeles, and Elberg came out there and took me to Dantana's and said, look, this is just a placeholder.
Marc:You know, we're going to get you back on the air in the mornings.
Marc:But, you know, this will keep you in the mix to do this morning show or this whatever that show was.
Marc:I don't even know what you call that show we did.
Marc:A late night show?
Guest:I envisioned it as a late night talk show, variety show, a la what was on the networks, but just on the radio.
Guest:That was my goal for it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, that was encouraging.
Marc:But by this point, though, like, I don't know how you felt, but I'm like, there was enough fuck you and me to be like, I can just go back to my life here, whatever the fuck this is.
Guest:I do remember that.
Guest:I remember that it was weird that it was like, there was a moment.
Guest:No, no, dude, you know what I remember?
Guest:I remember that once you had moved everything back out there, they were like...
Guest:there's a chance to keep the morning show.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They were, they like suddenly were like, they realized the error of their ways.
Guest:Everyone had browbeat Danny Goldberg.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And was like, he'll change his mind now if you want him to.
Guest:And you were like, you already moved me back home.
Guest:Like I'm already out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There's a lot of fucking around going on.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, just sort of like, but it wasn't a guarantee.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I do remember that.
Marc:And I do remember saying that it didn't sound like a sure deal though.
Guest:Well, and why would you feel confident about anything they were doing at that time?
Marc:Yeah, because I didn't even understand what these different groups were.
Marc:There was trouble at the castle, whatever.
Marc:I mean, what were Elberg and Krantz doing?
Marc:What were all those suits doing?
Guest:I mean, I know I think all those guys thought they were going to finally... They were going to take... They were going to wrest Air America away from the progressive activism ecosphere and really just make it radio, right?
Guest:Which was what Scott Elberg's background was, Gary Krantz's background, where these were clear channel radio guys.
Guest:And they...
Guest:To Scott's credit, he saw you as a good person to bet on as a radio host, as opposed to all the other people who are on Air America that were there because of their liberal bona fides.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, and look, I got nothing bad to say about Elberg.
Marc:And and I don't really have anything bad to say about Krantz.
Marc:He was in a tough position brokering that that meeting with me and Don Martin.
Guest:I remember that I don't have anything bad to say about him personally.
Guest:But when we get to that meeting, I will say something about Gary Krantz because that was ridiculous.
Guest:But in any event, you wind up coming back to L.A.
Guest:We know that this thing is going to get set up.
Guest:You asked me directly, will you come out here and produce this for me?
Guest:Because, you know, I got to get this off the ground like morning sedition.
Guest:And I agreed that I would come out until the end of March, that if we could do it for like a ramp up of like three months, which winds up biting us because they, you know, the time got crunched.
Guest:But I said, yes, even though I just got married, I'm trying to start a life here in Brooklyn.
Guest:I will come out.
Guest:Well, for me, I wasn't going to do it without you.
Marc:I wasn't that kind of radio guy.
Marc:I didn't care enough about...
Marc:you know, working in radio to be set up with some producer I didn't trust or some lackey or some, uh, you know, uh, tired old timer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well that, that meant a lot to me.
Guest:Like that was a, that was a key motivator to, to doing it was you, you did exactly say that you said, I wouldn't, I won't do this if you don't want to come out and do it.
Guest:And I was like, well, this guy's known me for less than two years and
Guest:you know it's it you know we've we've worked together for whatever it's been 18 months or so and if he trusts me with this and you know i'm a i'm 26 at that point yeah like that i i felt like that was enough of a sign that i should go do this yeah and we did it yeah well then how did jim earl get looped into it because i don't remember that well he was here dude
Guest:Oh, he got fired from Air America before us.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a regular on the show and we thought like, you know, we, you know, and we thought this is perfect because we have con he can fill content all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, you know, he, he seemed like a good enough foil because like, I'm not a guy like with radio and also, you know, I did the same with Cedar, you know, like I like, I like having someone to play off of.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm not a, you know, until I did this show and even it's only part of the show is sitting alone, sit alone in the studio guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:So it's more fun for me, I think, and for everybody if I have someone to play off of.
Marc:Ultimately, Jim became very difficult in some ways and ended up being very angry at me because he didn't quite- Many years after the fact.
Marc:Many years.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:As he was with everybody he ever came in contact with.
Marc:But yeah, I think that was the deal.
Marc:Like, how do we get a foil?
Marc:How do we get a thing going?
Marc:How do we get some sort of brand going?
Marc:So that's why we reached out to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because I basically remember coming aboard and it was like, here's the deal.
Guest:You're going to go out there.
Guest:You're going to make this show with Maren.
Guest:You have Jim Earl to use as a writer.
Guest:And it wasn't the idea that Jim Earl was going to be a co-host.
Guest:It was like, he's going to come out and be your writer because we know you guys are going to do comedy and basically make it happen from there.
Guest:And so we just had to build this thing from scratch.
Guest:I came out there.
Marc:And it was a two-hour show, right?
Guest:It was supposed to be two hours, late nights, starting at 10 p.m.
Guest:on the West Coast.
Guest:So if you're trying to listen on a live stream on the East Coast, it was one in the morning.
Guest:And the promise was...
Guest:This is going to be syndicated.
Guest:So, you know, we would wind up doing it at, you know, so that people in New York could wind up listening to it maybe the next day or the next morning or whatever.
Guest:And... That was a lie.
Guest:Oh, well, that becomes the key lie that ends the whole thing ultimately.
Guest:But we went out there with this idea.
Guest:I remember going over to your house in Highland Park and just sitting at your kitchen table and...
Guest:basically going through everything we did on morning's edition to see what kind of thing would still work.
Guest:And I think this was where the idea of Jim being the cohost happened because my thought about it was, well, let's just do like what fucking Conan does.
Guest:We'll do Conan, but for radio, like, you know, you, you'd be the Conan and like, this is late night, but with, but on the radio with Mark and you know,
Guest:Jim will be the sidekick.
Guest:He also was like the band because he played the guitar on the air live.
Guest:And, you know, we then incorporated some of the characters.
Guest:That was the other thing.
Guest:The guys who used to be writing for us at Air America who still had their jobs at Air America, they now had no work.
Guest:They were like writing for Randy Rhodes, but it was like nothing, you know?
Guest:And so- Right, Bruce was.
Guest:Bruce Cherry, Mike Ferrucci, Barry Lank, Kent Jones.
Guest:He was writing for Rachel.
Guest:But so we were able to use these people to do our old bits.
Guest:And then I just kind of like, I thought of like what the sound of the show would be.
Guest:And I started, you know, going through all this old big band music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like thinking, again, like the idea of like, this should be like almost a joke on Carson.
Guest:Like if our last show was like a sly...
Guest:elbow to the ribs of morning radio this would be the same for like late night and you know we i thought we had a great theme song like i was very happy with what was the theme song that that's a band called real big fish and the song is called sell out and it just it's it's real like energy propulsive horns just works really well the best part of that show
Marc:Was using all the improv guys out here.
Guest:And that was your connection with people at the UCB theater at the time.
Guest:I think Seth Morris was the real door in to that.
Guest:We went and had, what was that place that's closed now?
Guest:But that diner, like right by the Hollywood sign, it's like in a hotel.
Guest:Oh yeah, yeah, the 101.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The 101 Diner, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember having lunch or something there, breakfast with Seth Morris.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was, you know, a big, you know, he was one of the teachers at UCB.
Marc:Yeah, I think he was, he might have been running the place.
Guest:I think he was.
Guest:I think he took over from Matt Walsh and Besser.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think they always had a manager or somebody who ran the theater.
Marc:And there was I think he might have been doing that for a while.
Guest:So he was like way into it when we had we met with him.
Guest:He got it right away that we just like feed us a pipeline of hungry improv people.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Like want to do this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And James Adomian was one of them.
Guest:Paul Rust, remember that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You actually interviewed him on the show and he reminded you, hey, I used to do a thing on your old radio show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do we use...
Marc:Well, he used Wyatt.
Marc:Wyatt was the big one.
Guest:Wyatt Sinek.
Guest:Wyatt Sinek was the big, like, he created a character that worked the most perfectly with you.
Guest:Because it was the one that, like, understood the dynamic of, you know, call in to a radio host with a regular recurring bit that you could easily refill.
Guest:He was an army guy, right?
Guest:He was a recruiter, right?
Guest:Lieutenant Ronnie Rudolph.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and it was, you know, he's recruiting for the surge because this is 2006.
Guest:So it's like the worst time public opinion has completely turned on the Iraq war.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his thing was like, he's, he's coming around to like places you're not used to recruiting.
Guest:So like liberal talk radio, he's going to make the pitch to recruit.
Guest:Oh, Reese Barr.
Guest:She was, she would come on as a Russian prostitute.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Svetlana, the movie reviewer.
Guest:Svetlana, yeah.
Guest:uh craig anton you used a couple of times just he was just your buddy yeah come in and do some some characters and then we did this was another thing i remember we went to the figaro the cat other cafe i remember all the locations that we wound up doing this these things at so we were we went to the figaro and met with kevin kataoka uh ray james and steve rosenfield and
Marc:That's right, to talk about writing?
Guest:Yeah, they wrote just monologue jokes for us every day.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:It was like this, I can't believe more people don't think to do this or didn't at the time, which is like, get a bunch of funny comedy writers and get them to send you jokes and we'd pay them $10 a joke and you'd have jokes every night.
Guest:But heads and tails of the show were like, you know, basically monologues.
Marc:Straight up monologue jokes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Doing them on the radio.
Marc:But it was fun.
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Guest:It was a lot of fun to just even just to pick them.
Guest:Like you get these daily lists of jokes from these guys and then just select the ones he thought were good.
Marc:I wonder what Kataoka's doing.
Marc:I haven't heard that name in a long time.
Guest:Yeah, he was a San Francisco-based guy, right?
Marc:Yeah, he was a stand-up and a writer.
Marc:I've not heard that name in forever.
Marc:I heard Ray James' name recently.
Marc:He wasn't great.
Guest:Well, he was a madman.
Guest:Ray James was a crazy man and funny as hell.
Guest:He wrote, back when we were on Morning Sedition, he was there in the early days.
Guest:And he, like, it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, that's the type of people we're around.
Guest:Like, this is the, like, I realized, like, what kind of comedy we can tap into.
Marc:He's out there, man.
Marc:I once saw him, like, you know, he always, as a stand-up, he did crazy shit.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:But I remember one time I did the San Francisco Comedy Competition.
Marc:And it was like, it might have been, it wasn't the finals, but it was definitely, like, the semifinals.
Marc:And he decided he was just going to lose that night.
Marc:And it was at a winery.
Marc:I can't remember which one, but it's outdoors.
Marc:There's got to be at least 2,000 people there.
Marc:And everyone's trying their hardest.
Marc:And Ray just comes out there with a piece of paper.
Marc:And he's like, all right, let's just see what works here.
Marc:And he basically does this open mic set.
Marc:And I thought it was amazing.
Marc:And he went long.
Marc:And he's just doing jokes off a piece of paper that don't really work.
Marc:It was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and that was, that was the great thing too, about these guys appreciated that we found them funny.
Guest:And so they were like, it wasn't just these guys on the Marc Maron show.
Guest:It was the same with working with the guys on Mornings Edition.
Guest:They were happy to work for us.
Marc:Like they were like, I remember Ferrucci.
Marc:I wonder if he's still around.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I don't know what's up with Mike, but Mike Ferrucci was a very funny guy.
Guest:He was not like... I'm sure he had a general liberalism to him, but he wasn't a liberal guy.
Guest:Nah.
Guest:And so that was also what worked.
Guest:He made jokes, and we could work with that.
Marc:Yeah, I remember we got it going, but it just became... I don't know how quickly...
Marc:It became just a fucking nightmare.
Guest:Well, it was as quickly as that meeting that we had to have, honestly.
Guest:Were we on the air yet?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We had to prove ourselves to get on the air.
Guest:So what winds up happening is I go out there with you.
Guest:We start building this show.
Guest:Gary Krantz comes out and says, we have to go have this meeting at Clear Channel.
Guest:which was a giant radio hub out there.
Guest:It wasn't just this one station.
Guest:It was this entire clear channel portfolio of stations.
Guest:This guy, Don Martin, was a sports guy from Texas, clearly a conservative dude.
Guest:You couldn't earmark a more classic Texas conservative than this guy.
Guest:Big, tall, like...
Guest:You would think he probably should have been coaching high school sports.
Guest:That was the demeanor of this guy.
Guest:His wife ran KFI, the conservative radio station in LA, and she was the superstar.
Guest:So they gave him this progressive station to program.
Marc:It was in the same building.
Marc:AFI was down the hall, right?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Marc:That's right, because they used to work next to Ziegler.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:John Ziegler.
Guest:Was that his name?
Marc:John Ziegler or was it Ron?
Marc:John or Ron Ziegler.
Guest:Whichever one isn't the Nixon press secretary.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was like real conservative firebrand.
Marc:Good radio guy.
Marc:I just remember that time I ran into him in the bathroom.
Marc:It was so funny.
Marc:Yeah, you were peeing next to him.
Marc:I was peeing next to him because we're both at night and he's down the hall yammering away.
Marc:But I remember just saying to him, it's like, yeah, you're real good on the mic there, man.
Marc:He's like, really?
Marc:I thought we were enemies.
Guest:Yeah, I think he literally said that.
Guest:I think he did too.
Guest:I thought you were from the other side.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm just talking about your skill set, pal.
Marc:Relax.
Marc:It's all show business.
Guest:Yeah, it's John Ziegler.
Guest:Ron Ziegler was the Nixon vice secretary.
Marc:John Ziegler.
Guest:yeah didn't seem like a happy guy but so we go in there to meet when we think like this is oh okay this is the thing where we have to apologize right for the for um shitting on stephanie as her lead-in yeah and this goes back to when we were on morning's edition you were always making a stink over us not being live in la and
Guest:No, it wasn't even that we were live.
Marc:We were live.
Marc:We were live 3 to 6 in the morning.
Marc:But then they run us again.
Marc:And they did that at the beginning.
Marc:But then they dropped Stephanie in as the live thing.
Marc:And they defended that.
Marc:Because why wouldn't you want to have live radio in the market that the radio station is in?
Marc:I mean, I got it, but it just irked me because then there was really no presence in L.A.
Marc:unless you were up at three in the morning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it just bothered me.
Marc:So knowing that Stephanie was in the studio about to start her show, I would sometimes end my show in a snide way about setting her up in L.A.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it must have just pissed her off and Don off to no end.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:They were, well, I mean, I don't even think pissed off is the right word.
Guest:They were like vengeful.
Guest:And we didn't, we didn't know it.
Guest:We thought it was, oh, they got slightly pissed off at that.
Guest:And it was, you know, it's like those things that Bobby Lee was talking to you about.
Guest:Like, you know, you bringing somebody on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And like, but you know, they, they hold a grudge about it.
Marc:Well, for some reason when I do it, it's very cutting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's not fun.
Marc:It's not coming from a good place.
Guest:It was with what John Oliver said when you get with the Q&A line where he was like, I didn't even mean that.
Guest:That was a tactical strike.
Marc:I guess it probably did come from that zone.
Marc:Yeah, I believe.
Guest:yeah uh but but yeah so we go in there and this dude and he's a big he's a big strapping a football player dude exactly he he's guys he's biting his lip comes over to his like stiff lip like reaches out shakes your hand how are you shakes your hand goes back and sits down and gary kranz i remember who is like tiny this tiny dude tiny little tiny bald dude yeah
Guest:he turned into a puddle of piss right in front of us.
Marc:One of the classic worms.
Guest:Oh, I remember like being like, oh no, we're alone.
Guest:Like this guy's gone.
Guest:Like the guy we thought was bringing us in there that he was like the executive in charge.
Guest:He is not in charge.
Guest:And this guy, this giant ham hock that we just met is the one in charge.
Guest:And we have to like figure this out within this moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember thinking like, you know, oh, Gary has no position.
Marc:No.
Marc:He's going there just to, you know, hopefully suck up enough.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:To land this thing for Albert.
Guest:It was all a hope.
Guest:It was all a hope.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There was no prep to it.
Guest:There was nothing.
Guest:There was no groundwork had been laid.
Marc:But we were presented that it was sort of a guarantee.
Guest:We're a shoe in.
Guest:i was why i was out there yeah i wouldn't have been out there if they said well we don't know if this is going to happen basically it comes down to can you un-piss off this giant texan which we wound up doing amazingly but at that moment like he he you know finally like after staring daggers at us he's like you know you offended me greatly and you know it was like it was like what you would do to like a drug dealer
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This ends now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Guns on the table.
Guest:And he made us go downstairs.
Guest:Like in, at that moment, Stephanie Miller was like coming off the air and like, and she like, when you had to go, you went and like met her and like apologized.
Guest:She treated it like you, you know, you cursed her family with cancer or something.
Guest:It was terrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't believe how awful the whole situation was and how minimally we were prepped for how bad it was.
Guest:That was the thing I couldn't believe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't remember what our feeling was.
Marc:How did it end up?
Marc:Because years later, I did Stephanie's podcast, and she seemed like she didn't even remember it.
Guest:No, I think, I think she, I think she, you know, felt like you did the right thing and you apologized and it was coming from a genuine place.
Guest:And you said the whole time you're like, I was, you're, this was, I think an honest reaction.
Guest:You weren't just making an excuse.
Guest:You were like, I was new to radio and I was told one of the best things you could do is create rivalries, create, like, make, make your audience think you're better than the others.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that was true.
Guest:That was like a lesson people had imparted to you.
Guest:Like, oh, John Manzo or some guy like that.
Guest:I was like, yeah, you got to get your, and Randy Rhodes, who was on Air America, would do that stuff all the time.
Guest:Pid herself against Franken, you know, like people on our air.
Guest:So, and you said that to her and I think she believed you, which was true.
Guest:You weren't lying.
Marc:I was also mad though.
Marc:I was, I mean, the reality of it is whether I thought that or not,
Marc:It was really about how we had no viable presence in Los Angeles.
Guest:Right, right, exactly.
Marc:And it wasn't even her fault.
Marc:But I, yeah, you know, look, man, I, you know, I was, my mouth gets me in trouble.
Guest:Well, that guy, Don Martin, basically said, you guys have to audition for this.
Guest:And he made us go do like until he until he said so.
Guest:We were just going to go do dummy shows.
Guest:He wanted to hear what we were going to do.
Guest:And and we had to deliver.
Guest:I think I wound up delivering like three or four shows to him over the course of a couple of weeks.
Guest:And this was, you know, in the first week or two weeks or so that I was out there, we went and booked a studio and we had guests come in.
Guest:Patton was one of them.
Guest:Maria Bamford was one of them.
Guest:And we just did the show around, you know, in a taped format, but as though we were doing it live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I remember I had to go meet with the guy a few times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just kind of do my, like, aw shucks thing.
Guest:Like, I'm just a kid, like, trying to figure out radio.
Guest:And this is what I've learned.
Guest:And I'd be happy to take your expertise on this.
Guest:And somewhere along the line, the guys back in New York, Krantz and Elberg and that, they emailed me and they were like, I don't know what you did, but that guy, Don Martin, he's way into what you guys are doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:he's he's a big fan of yours and like you guys got to go ahead you're gonna do and and that was it it was it was just us kind of delivering to him here's what i think like there were a couple of times he gave me some notes like well you should have less of this or less of that or more than oh yeah totally and you know i guess he thought that we delivered on that i do remember no i remember exactly what one note was yeah it was there's a guy on there he sounds to new york and it was eddie pepitone
Guest:to new york well that's for sure yeah yeah i saw him last night or night before last oh and he'll be on wtf in a couple weeks oh i love it i love him uh all right well so we get the show we're finally on we're finally building to get on the air we've got these comics in place we've got you know people doing bits for us we're lining up guests and
Guest:We're ready to launch on February 27th, 2006.
Guest:And then we find out we will not be launching on that day because there is a LA Clippers game.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that becomes the persistent story of the entire run of the Marc Maron show.
Marc:That's when we find out how Don Martin ultimately fucked us.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Is that they the station before it was a progressive station had a contract with the Clippers to run live game coverage.
Marc:And those games, I guess they probably started at eight or something.
Marc:And you were all we could do was hope that they'd be over because we had a 10 o'clock start time live.
Marc:And then during fucking basketball season.
Marc:It would go to 1020, 1030, 1045.
Marc:And we were just sitting there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Waiting to launch our, waiting to do our show.
Guest:And initially what we would do is, so we launched the next day, which was February 28th.
Guest:That was a Tuesday.
Guest:And then I think immediately the next day was another Clippers game, the Wednesday.
Guest:And we had, the reason they would be late is that like, if the Clippers were in L.A.,
Guest:or on the West coast, they would almost always preempt us because yeah, the games would start at seven or eight o'clock and, and then they'd even, they'd had to take a post game.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so if they were on the East coast or central or something, we'd get lucky.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or they had no game that night, we'd be fine.
Guest:But because, you know, an East coast game is starting at, you know, four o'clock LA time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they'd be in the clear by then.
Guest:But then after basketball season, they also had an arena football contract that we'd get preempted for and UCLA basketball as well.
Guest:So it was a major sports clusterfuck that we would, you know, rarely avoid.
Guest:And at first what they had us doing was start whenever the Clippers game ends and go for two hours.
Guest:And we, so that could have meant the Clippers game ends at 1115.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we would go till, you know, 115 in the morning or whatever it was.
Guest:We put our foot down on that.
Guest:We're like, we're not going to keep going that late.
Guest:Who was paying us?
Guest:Air America in New York.
Marc:That was good.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And so eventually they made us, we said, well, what we'll do is we're just going to start whenever the Clippers game ends and we end at 12.
Guest:But the problem with that became we'd lose guests.
Guest:We'd get crunched down to 45 minutes of a show.
Guest:It was just all a total mess right away.
Guest:And seething.
Guest:It was like a nightmare.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:And you were furious.
Marc:Sitting up there waiting.
Marc:Just waiting.
Yeah.
Marc:Who was that guy that was helping us out?
Marc:Remember that guy?
Marc:What was his name?
Guest:There were two.
Guest:There was a guy I remember that was, his name was Jason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was on the board, and the other guy's name was Paul.
Marc:Yeah, that guy.
Guest:Big burly guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, he's a nice guy.
Guest:Nice guy.
Marc:Oh, I can feel just the cortisol surging through me.
Marc:As that was happening, yeah.
Marc:I mean, even now, just the humiliation of it all.
Marc:You know, like ultimately, you know, being fired being like and not having any.
Marc:It was a real lesson.
Marc:You know, God knows I'd done comedy long enough, but just to not have any way to to protect your job or to have a say in your future in a way and just have to.
Marc:you know, play by these rules that were, I mean, Don knew that going in.
Marc:I mean, I'm not saying it was vengeful.
Marc:There was no other time slot they were going to give us.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:But it was just like, he didn't care.
Marc:Just, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Go put these guys on at this time.
Marc:No one cares.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And we were struggling.
Marc:That was the whole thing.
Marc:Struggle.
Marc:You know, we didn't know if anyone was listening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I will say I, there were a couple of nights I can remember.
Guest:Like, so now once we launched, you know, I only had about a month there until I was set to go back to New York.
Guest:And so we were really trying to make this work.
Guest:And I do remember like several shows, like at the end of that show, I, I remember I had the instant replay machine, like, which I wound up leaving out there with you and,
Guest:And I would take it in and out of the studio so that it didn't stay there and get stolen by anybody.
Guest:I still have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember walking to my car after the show one night and looking down at... Remember how you used to have a little overlay where you could write?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:what was there yeah and i'm just like walking with this thing and it's like fart dick cheney shit or whatever on each button and i was just like man this is fun like i know this is stressful and i know like we go through a lot to do this but like i like that this is my job i like that this is my life
Guest:And it was, yeah, it was like very typical for us that it would be like that next to like some soundbite of Bush, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:And so, you know, I was definitely committed, even though I was going back to New York, I was committed to like, I want this to work.
Guest:I want there to be an outlet where like I can be working in radio and it's funny.
Guest:We're doing comedy.
Marc:And you wanted to build it so it would stay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and then the idea was we would, we, so after all the Clippers nonsense and everything, we finally convinced them, why don't we tape this thing in the day and we'll tape it live to tape like a regular late night show.
Guest:And it would be like, you know, four o'clock LA time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that way you can syndicate it.
Yeah.
Guest:And East Coast can take this, you know, live or tape delay it and put it on whenever they want nighttime.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then L.A.
Guest:will take a tape delayed version of it at 10 o'clock.
Guest:But we will do it live at four or five whenever the start time was.
Guest:We'd have a live call in number and all of this.
Guest:And we went and found a voice recording studio in Burbank.
Marc:Mark Grau.
Marc:I was just there.
Guest:Yeah, I bet you were.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, yeah, Mark Rowe was this interesting, older, you know, hipster dude that had been in the game forever.
Marc:It's a very successful and popular voiceover studio for all kinds of stuff.
Marc:ADR, animation, all of it.
Marc:Music.
Marc:Music, yep.
Marc:And Grau was still in the game at that time.
Marc:I don't remember how much that cost, but I knew there were complaints about it.
Marc:But we were like, fuck you.
Marc:This is how this is going to go.
Marc:Because Air America had to foot the bill for those sessions.
Marc:And our engineer at Mark Grau was Andy.
Marc:Andy Welker.
Marc:Andy Welker, Laughing Andy.
Marc:And Andy Welker now owns it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You were just there and you saw him there, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:I've seen him a couple of times since then.
Marc:Back then we called him Laughing Andy because he was pretty high and he was kind of a chubby guy.
Marc:And he was our audience.
Marc:When you do comedy, you're bored up.
Marc:Or your producer, they've got it.
Marc:That's all you got to go on.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So when you're trying to deliver jokes or you're trying to get laughs, you're looking right through that glass at that board op or your producer or whoever's in there and seeing if it's landing.
Marc:And we would just try to make Andy laugh.
Marc:And that's how he became Laughing Andy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he was your only hope because the guy we got to replace me was this guy, Bill Kolar, who was, you know, we knew at the time that he was just going to kind of be a custodian, right?
Guest:Like we weren't, you weren't getting him to be a creative producer, but we thought, okay, we set the show up enough.
Marc:I don't know that we thought that.
Marc:I don't feel like we had much choice.
Marc:Because I didn't know Bill Kolar.
Marc:I used to see him around Air America.
Marc:He barely talked.
Marc:I didn't know what his deal was.
Marc:But he was the guy that was willing to do it.
Marc:I don't think there was some sort of...
Marc:you know, deep list of options.
Marc:I didn't feel like there were any options.
Guest:I think that was it.
Guest:It was like he could go, he was going to go sleep on a couch out in LA and, and wasn't his kid out here or something, something like that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But, but, you know, it's just like, I need a creative producer.
Marc:I need to engage.
Marc:And I just, you know, I resented his laconic, non contributing, non creative, like, you know, and I, it wasn't even that I bullied him.
Marc:I was just furious.
Guest:You know, that I could not get, it was like working with a tree.
Guest:Well, what's funny, I remember this was around the same time Mishnah was workshopping like a one person show.
Guest:Yeah, I'm down.
Guest:Yeah, being her book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she came and did it at the pit in New York.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I went to see it and, you know, I went up to her afterwards to congratulate her on the show.
Guest:And the first thing she said to me was, she's like, Brendan, you got to come back to LA.
Guest:Bill Kolar is not cutting it.
Guest:Poor Mishnah.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, I don't know what to tell you.
Marc:The fact that she even knew his name means that all I was talking about.
Marc:That just comes from a place where a woman is tired of hearing her husband yammering and yelling about Bill Kolar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, so I don't know what kind of conversations you were having with them after I left about, but the whole point was I was going to leave.
Guest:You guys were going to syndicate.
Guest:And my thought was back in New York, I was going to start managing this like Air America syndication hub.
Guest:That would be you and anyone else that they would be doing this with.
Guest:And I thought I was in a pretty good position to do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it never materialized on the New York end at all.
Guest:And I don't know what kind of conversations you were having with them.
Guest:I remember there was a date.
Guest:It was supposed to be April 17th was going to be the day it went syndicated.
Guest:Danny Goldberg resigned a week before.
Guest:So it all felt like it was all coming together.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Danny Goldberg's gone.
Guest:We're going to syndicate, whatever.
Guest:But then they used the Danny Goldberg resigning to say, this management shakeup's making us take a pause on everything.
Guest:So we're not going to syndicate next week, but it'll be in the future.
Marc:Who are you hearing that from?
Marc:Elberg?
Guest:I just remember it.
Guest:I remember it happening at the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't know what you were hearing.
Guest:Were they telling you?
Guest:I don't remember.
Marc:I don't even know.
Guest:No.
Marc:So, you know, because I was like trying to do other stuff.
Marc:I'm doing comedy, you know, and I don't like, you know, we're doing the show.
Marc:But I don't I don't remember any promise of anything.
Marc:I'm sure that I was always worked up about the possibility of something taking off.
Marc:But, you know, I think as time went on, I just felt abandoned by it, by everything.
Marc:And there was always this talk of like how much it was costing to record a growl.
Marc:And I'm like, well, what do you want me to do?
Marc:Then stop it.
Marc:I don't even remember how it ended, to be honest with you.
Guest:Well, that's probably how it ended, is that they realized that the idea of this recording live to tape and then sending it out syndicated was not going to be worth the expense to keep producing the show that way.
Guest:That's my guess.
Marc:I just remember, we got to talk about that one night, man, the fuck show.
Guest:So explain what that is.
Marc:Well, we would pre-record the show live, and then Andy would package it, produce it a little bit, clean it up.
Marc:And there was one show that I accidentally dropped a fuck.
Marc:Which is not a big deal because we're pre-recording it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But then Jim dropped a fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To counter my fuck.
Marc:And then we just started dropping a lot of fucks and a lot of shits.
Marc:And just like, we just started doing it like crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Just getting laughs from Laughing Andy.
Marc:And, you know, we finished the show.
Marc:And I'm like, you're going to take those out, right?
Marc:You're going to beep them.
Marc:He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So...
Marc:So we leave.
Marc:And then I got to go to Vegas.
Marc:All I know is I'm in Vegas and I'm doing a show at the Palms and Misha's with me and we're trying to have a nice time.
Marc:And I don't remember that comic's name who texted me.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I know who it was.
Guest:It was Spencer Dobson.
Guest:Spencer Dobson.
Marc:What happened to that guy?
Guest:I don't know what happened to him, but he was writing jokes.
Guest:We wound up roping him in and he became one of our monologue joke guys.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he texted you that he was so proud to work on a show that had the balls to do what you just did.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And I'm like, what happened?
Marc:And what happened was Andy didn't fix it.
Guest:I don't think that's true, actually, unless maybe it is true.
Guest:And what you told me at the time was just out of your rage at Bill Kolar.
Guest:But what I was told at the time was that there were two versions, right?
Guest:That there was a corrected version.
Guest:Because it was not Andy's job to do anything with the show, right?
Guest:He just gave you guys the file at the end.
Marc:So Kolar put up the original version.
Guest:Kolar put up the fuck version, not the bleeped version.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:That's what went out into the world.
Marc:And all I'm thinking is like, I'm finished.
Marc:I mean, you know, this is it.
Marc:This is the bit.
Marc:And I'm like with Mishnah, we're trying in Vegas.
Marc:And now she's got her husband's melting down again about something else radio related.
Marc:All I'm thinking is that a show is just aired in Los Angeles for two hours.
Marc:That's just a fuck, a fuck fest.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, I know that it's not not a good kind of.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:And and but I also like, you know, someone told me, I think in that time, like, you know, at late at night, it's not the same requirements.
Marc:It's called Safe Harbor.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Safe Harbor.
Marc:But but still, it was crazy.
Marc:I'm thinking Don Martin's going to hear it.
Guest:Oh, you'd get fired for it.
Guest:It's not, it's not like, yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't get FCC violations.
Guest:Cause you're, you're, again, that's the safe Harbor hour at 10 o'clock or later.
Guest:You're not, it's not governed by the same regulations for what you can say, but you'd get fired from a station for that.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I thought I was going to get fired.
Marc:Then I remember losing my fucking shit on Kolar.
Marc:And then like a miracle happens.
Marc:Nothing happens.
Marc:No one says anything.
Marc:No, there was no, there was no complaints.
Marc:There was no feedback on it.
Marc:No reprimand.
Marc:No.
Marc:It's like that Albert Brooks story.
Marc:You know, the phones didn't light up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No one's calling in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And except for Spencer.
Marc:Spencer Dobson heard it.
Marc:He's probably listening for his jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I love that he was proud.
Guest:He was like, wow.
Marc:God, this is really pushing the envelope.
Marc:I melted down so much.
Marc:I don't know how many years I took off my life with the amount of anxiety and anger and aggravation that I went through during that period from getting fired all the way through it.
Guest:Yeah, well, and it didn't it didn't last that long.
Guest:So February 28 was our first show.
Guest:And then July 14.
Guest:That was your last day, I believe, if I'm looking at the info I had and matching everything up.
Guest:I think on the show, on the air on like July 5th, you announced that you couldn't come to an agreement with them about syndicating.
Guest:You had an escape clause in your contract.
Guest:I don't know if that was true, but that was how you announced it on the show that said if they couldn't syndicate the show, you didn't have to do it.
Marc:Well, that's probably a nicer way of putting it, but they were sort of like, do whatever you want.
Marc:It's over.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:I can't believe we owed anybody anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so July 14th, 2006, that was your last show.
Guest:It also coincidentally was Janine Garofalo's last day at Air America.
Guest:She quit at that same, on that same exact day, unrelated from the majority report show in New York.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That was the short four and a half month run of the Marc Maron show, right?
Marc:Not even legendary, not even appreciated by anybody.
Yeah.
Guest:It's not underappreciated.
Guest:It's non-appreciated.
Marc:It happened in a vacuum and no one was the wiser.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But it does lead to, I mean, it's going to lead to other things we'll talk about on future episodes, how, you know, we did Break Room Live stemming from, you know, a lot of this stuff.
Guest:But, you know, a lot of the things we were doing
Guest:were helpful in setting up this podcast, right?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:First of all, stuff we don't do anymore, like using improv comics to do kind of comedy bang bang style things that, you know, that was kind of an early version of that on this show.
Guest:That was basically the next two years for me was trying and failing to make this happen somewhere else.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And were you at Sirius yet?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I was trying to get it on there and it just wasn't,
Guest:i know probably many reasons but it wasn't anything anyone was willing to spend money on you were sending them tapes we're sending them lots of reels like different kinds different kinds to different places i'd go to i'd have meetings with people at places where i was doing work so that i could be like hey you know what i do and i can bring this here and there were always reasons nah we can't do that it's not saleable whatever non-appreciated yeah totally
Marc:I've got, I've got a box of the CDs.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:Cause that's everything you had to, it was cash and carry.
Guest:Just walk out of Mark Grouse studios with the show every night in your hand.
Guest:Well, and also I think you weren't like, I think things like were probably not great with you and Misha at the time.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I don't know what your.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:She left me in 2007.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So leading up to that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Wow.
Marc:Man, I just have so few memories.
Marc:I remember interviewing Thurston Moore.
Guest:Yeah, Thurston Moore.
Guest:That was in the Mark Grau days.
Marc:Was it?
Marc:He was at Growl?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wasn't a good interview.
Marc:I remember, I can't remember any other real celebrity guests.
Marc:Did we have any?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were, you know, there were a good amount of comics who just came in.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:The guest list was a lot of people who we then went back to in the first year of WTF because we knew they'd be around.
Guest:They'd be good people to talk to.
Guest:Doug Benson, Chris Hardwick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Carlos Alzaraki, Greg Fitzsimmons, Greg Proops, Harry Shearer.
Guest:I don't even remember having him on, but apparently he was on.
Guest:Jeff Ross, Jim Short, Jim David, Louis Black.
Guest:That's the Marc Maron show?
Guest:Yeah, this is all Marc Maron show.
Guest:Maria Bamford a couple of times, Paul F. Tompkins, Rick Overton.
Guest:Oh, Mort Saul, you didn't like that, huh?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I wonder how that interview sounds.
Marc:Oh, my God, this is hurting me.
Guest:When you say that, what's the hurt from?
Guest:Just the fucking embarrassment, dude.
Marc:It's just like, you know, to do these things in a vacuum and with all the sort of energy that you and I put into something or that I put into something there, you know, with the thinly veiled desperation of it all.
Marc:And, you know, and trying to just, you know, keep your shit together and believe in something and believe it's, you know, it's good, you know, on top of my other insecurities at that time and whatever my relationship was and wherever I was in comedy.
Marc:It's just like it feels it's vulnerable and embarrassing.
Marc:It's embarrassing somehow.
Guest:I mean, I can understand all the things you're saying about it feeling nebulous and that.
Guest:I guess the embarrassing thing, it only makes sense in the context of your duration of your career at that time and what your expectations out of it must have been and how that was missing the mark.
Right.
Marc:Just never making a break, dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like, it wasn't even missing the mark.
Marc:It was like, can't we land something?
Marc:You know, after, you know, the great work we did at Morning Sedition and getting pushed out and then going through all that bullshit that, you know, sucking up and dealing with just Siberia of waiting for basketball to end and then, you know, finally figuring out we could pre-tape it and trying to make these quality shows and just having it go nowhere to no one.
Marc:You know, it just like, it was sort of,
Marc:That was the beginning of the fucking end in terms of my hope for having a career in show business, really.
Marc:Because then, you know, my wife leaves me not long after that.
Marc:And I'm thrown into the sort of chaos of, you know, a divorce.
Marc:And, you know, just spending hours and days, you know, photocopying bank receipts.
Marc:Like, you know, disclosure stuff.
Marc:Just being beaten down.
Marc:I mean, it was...
Guest:It was a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, those I mean, those days, that's that's interesting because I honestly don't really know.
Guest:It's a it's a gap for me that I don't really know what was going on in your career for like those two years.
Guest:I mean, you and I, when we would talk during that time, it was almost exclusively about what was going on with you personally because it was so difficult.
Guest:and challenging.
Guest:And I think every now and then you'd guest host like the Rachel Maddow show or, or Sam Cedar show or something.
Guest:So I'd see you then, but I don't really have any sense of what your career was leading up to that.
Guest:And I think maybe the next time we do one of these origin things, as tricky as it might be for you to, to piece it together.
Guest:Cause I know you say a lot of times like PTSD makes it hard to remember some of this stuff.
Marc:Maybe it's something worse.
Marc:But, but like, I just know that,
Marc:In 2007, whatever the date was, when I did that tour with Garofalo and Henry Rollins, I remember that was a big deal.
Marc:Like, you know, it was a profile gig.
Marc:And I don't remember if Janine asked me or what.
Marc:And I didn't know Henry, but we do this three-person show in New York down there.
Marc:What was that venue?
Marc:You must have come to that, did you?
Guest:I don't think I did, but I think it was- Mercury Lounge or something?
Guest:Oh, Mercury Lounge, okay.
Marc:Is that a place?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then we come out here.
Marc:I come back from New York from that week in New York, which was sort of a resurrecting sort of live event for me to be part of that bill.
Marc:And I get back from New York and like the next day my wife leaves me.
Marc:And then I got to do, you know, like a few of those shows in L.A.
Marc:So I show up in L.A.
Marc:Rollins and Janine are there.
Marc:And I'm like my my wife left me this morning and I got to do these shows.
Marc:So I know that happened.
Marc:So you're saying after that between.
Marc:Well, then break room started at some point, not too long after that.
Guest:That was in like the summer of 2008.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So I'm struggling through this divorce, watching everything go down the toilet and watching my money go away and not really having any gigs to back me up.
Marc:All the Air America money that I saved is getting dumped into this divorce that I'm fighting for.
Marc:And then when they decide to do break room, I'm like, I need money up front to stop her from destroying my life to end this divorce.
Marc:And they did it.
Marc:So that's how I entered break room.
Guest:And, you know, ultimately, that break room live show, as as fraught as that was, and I have about as much trauma going on with that as you did with the Marc Maron show, just because how difficult it was, that was directly responsible for us starting up this podcast.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:But it was yet again, although they saved me from complete financial ruin.
Marc:due to that divorce, it was just another show that went absolutely nowhere.
Marc:Oh, less than nowhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, we were streaming before it was accessible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do have, as difficult as it was, there are a lot of fun memories about things we did during that time.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And we did have some good laughs.
Marc:Good laughs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Very good laughs.
Marc:A lot of fun short films.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's just like, I just remember the daily discouragement.
Marc:You're not unlike, but it was pre-accessibility to this.
Marc:Just, you know, looking at numbers from stream, you know, they spent like $40,000.
Marc:$40,000 on a website that we were dumping shit on every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And just like 800 people, 572 people.
Guest:it was brutal dude yeah well at least we had sam there to uh make you crazy and uh call the executives idiots oh the milking the cow thing yeah we just say sam's like there's some people have that like one word where you're like oh man they really they really put some grease on that word yeah and sam's is definitely idiots like yeah idiots like he it pours out of him and it's so satisfying every time
Marc:And he just loved fucking with him.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, we can go down through some of those happier, but also equally traumatic memories the next time.
Guest:And sorry to drag you through this, but I guess you don't have to pay anyone for it this time.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:And also the other thing we got to make sure we remember is like that guardian thing.
Marc:Just everything I did just went nowhere.
Yeah.
Marc:And we're out there, you know, doing this thing, simulcasting for Break Room and The Guardian.
Marc:And we're trying to do live technology before the technology was available.
Marc:We didn't know if anything was working.
Marc:It took forever to upload anything from the road.
Marc:It was insanity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's all culminated with probably the most frightening thing I've ever seen you do.
Guest:But it was understandable at the time.
Guest:And I will divulge that the next time we do one of these.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:I don't even know what you're talking about.
Guest:Yeah, I bet you don't.